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Stories from the Verse
Re Verse All
Chapter 74: Takano 37
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Hastings 210
It was chilly and raining by the time Tommy and her friends got to the car.
“You guys gonna be all right?” Johnny called from his car, and Peggy waved and called back, “we’re fine.” They all piled in the car, Tommy riding shotgun and staring into the wet darkness through the windshield. The wipers scratched their way across, and she was not happy with the ride. Once again she noticed that there were no seatbelts, but didn’t mention it because she knew that these were not common in that world.
They worked their way north out of Camden into the rural roads of Burlington County, Peggy moving at a fair clip.
“Can you see all right?” Dot asked from the rear.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Peggy said. “Who’s first? I think Dot.”
“Clark makes more sense,” she said.
“Yeah, but if I have any road trouble, I’ll want Clark and Jimmy to help.”
This seemed to settle the matter, and they drove on in silence.
Abruptly something dashed into the headlights--a deer, certainly, and Peg swerved to miss it. She didn’t, her driver side headlight smashing into the animal’s rear hip, and the car careening off the road into a tree. Tommy felt her body disconnect from the seat and her head connect with the windshield, which gave way but left her unconscious.
The first thing she recognized as consciousness returned was that the rain had stopped. Then she realized she was lying in snow surrounded by trees. Trees made sense; Burlington County had a lot of trees. Snow did not.
She sat up. There was no sign of the car, or of the road, or of her friends. She closed her eyes and relaxed, and could feel her belongings somewhere in what she guessed must have been where she was headed, but Johnny Angel wasn’t out there.
She was in another world.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with five other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #381: World Complications. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
