Everything Breaks Read Online Free PDF

even a second because I had to watch and watch and watch like in a nightmare you have to watch and watch and watch.
    Directly below that switchback curve and down the beach a little way from the bonfire, the burning Mustang was planted up to its windshield in the gravelly sand.

III
    THE FIRE WAS MORE ALIVE than anything I’d ever seen. It was a wildly beautiful creature made of flame and with the mindless energy of a demon, and it had pounced directly on Trey’s car and was sinking long claws and razor fangs deep into the steel and glass and the smoking tires.
    When my feet hit the sand, I started running blindly toward the thing, screaming Trey’s name, yelling at him to throw it into reverse and give it the gas and get out of there. My legs were numb and uncoordinated and the sand got hotter the nearer I came until I could feel the soles of my feet blistering right through my boots. But I somehow thought that I could pry open the burning doors and pull them free so they could run clear of the fire, maybe bruised and bumped around a bit, but still . . . themselves. Yes, I pictured myself freeing my friends, then all four of us would run to safety, propping each other up and laughing in a horrified, slaphappy way about the too-close call.
    For a while, the police didn’t notice me any more than I noticed them, I guess because they were busy keeping most of Clevesdale’s junior and senior class behind sawhorse barricades along the beach. I managed to get really close to the Mustang, so close it hurt to breathe. I put my arm over my nose and mouth and moved even closer, then through the wall of smoke I actually glimpsed Trey, his hands on the wheel. Yes, his hands on the wheel! He might yet give the engine some gas and get out of this. Trey was famous for successful last-ditch efforts. Eking out a D-minus on a final exam he couldn’t afford to fail. Charming some girl’s parents into believing he’d brought their daughter home two hours late because of a highway detour. Getting the very last tickets for a concert everybody thought was sold out. Trey’s luck was legendary.
    â€œHurry, man!” I screamed to him, though I couldn’t hear my own words. The fire itself was deafening, and there was a sort of high screeching sound coming from the car. “Trey, gun it!” I yelled. “Get out of there, man! Give it all you’ve got, do it
now
!”
    The car began giving off puffs of fire from somewhere deep inside itself, protesting its death by spewing clots of solid flame. Blast furnace heat arose from all directions. I smelled my eyebrows and eyelashes scorching.
    And then, just before the fire exploded upward to completely engulf the car, the black smoke around the windows became white and nearly transparent and I had a much clearer view of Trey.
    But I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing.
    If I’d stayed a few seconds longer, I probably would have gone up in flames myself, but my shirt was grabbed from behind and I was yanked several yards backward by what turned out to be a policeman. “What do you think you’re doing?” he screamed when we were clear of the worst of the heat. “How’d you get over here on this side of the vehicle?”
    He shone his flashlight in my face.
    â€œI . . . came down the bluff,” I said. I doubted if he could hear me. All the sound in the world was being sucked into what had now become the death roar of the car.
    â€œYou’re making no sense, son. Nobody can come down that bluff! And look at your boots! How’d you get gasoline on them? Or wait . . . is it blood?”
    But I couldn’t look at my boots. Though I could no longer see anything of Trey through the new clouds of black smoke, I could see a bit of the trunk of the Mustang. I had to stand watch, to keep vigil, to keep my eyes on Trey’s fine car for as long as I could see any small part of it.
    Another