leaving a wake of personal debris behind us. “Stop that,” he said. “Do you see me watching?” I turned around and faced forward. I couldn’t look, but I could listen. The engine whined as the speedometer needle climbed. Glass broke, wood splintered. Things were lost. “Don’t you think that’s dangerous?” “To who?” “To other people. Other men, like us.” “That back there is dangerous. But not because of me.” I understood, but I didn’t believe. Not for many years. Not until I stood in my own house, wondering what I should do with all this stuff, all those things. It had happened both slow and sudden, as I know now it always does. Eventually, I loaded up my car and went for a ride. I drove for a long time, searching for a particular person, a particular kind of place. When my brake lights finally flashed on that rainy pavement, he ran forward and climbed into the passenger seat, smiling. I did not smile back. Instead, I pulled the lever that popped the trunk, then asked him the questions I had to ask.
Matt Bell is the author of How They Were Found, a collection of fiction published by Keyhole Press in 2010, and Cataclysm Baby, a novella forthcoming from MLP in 2012. “El Camino Education” was originally published in Drexel Online Journal in 2005. It was his first published story.