Chapter 10

When she was just a few yards from the phone booth, she heard the whine of a distant engine. She stopped in her tracks and looked back down the road, ready to wave her arms and flag the driver down. This might be the only car she'd see out here, and she wasn't about to trust her luck and let it go by. The way her luck was running, the phone would be out of order.

The whine was getting louder; Jenny stepped into the middle of the road. She'd let the driver see her from a distance and have plenty of time to slow down. She was glad she was wearing white shorts and a rainbow-striped T-shirt. She'd be hard to miss.

Finally the car came into view. No, not a car, a motorcycle. As long as it has wheels, Jenny thought. And plenty of gas. She raised her arms above her head and started waving them up and down in big arcs. The motorcycle got closer.

It was black, Jenny could see now, and its rider

had on a black helmet, a sleek, space-age type that hid his face and made him look like Darth Vader. She thought of him as a he, anyway, but she couldn't really tell. She didn't really care, either, just as long as he stopped.

A few more seconds had passed when Jenny suddenly realized that the rider had no intention of stopping. He was moving toward her very fast, the whine of the engine had become a roar, and Jenny knew there was no way he could have missed seeing her bright shirt and frantically waving arms. But the engine's roar only got louder, the driver didn't slow down, and as Jenny moved quickly toward the side of the road, she felt such a rush of anger that she wanted to scream.

She did scream, but not in anger. She'd just reached the safety of the roadside when she turned and saw the motorcycle coming straight at her. Her scream was one of fear, and she leaped back, bumping against a comer of the phone booth and scraping her bare arm painftilly on its metal edge. The motorcycle swerved, kicked up a shower of dirt and gravel, and roared off.

It had been deliberate. There was no doubt in Jenny's mind about that. She leaned against the booth, her knees actually weak and her heart pounding so loud in her ears that at first the other noise didn't even register as anything but a noise. Then she realized what it was, that it was the high-pitched whine of the motorcycle getting louder and louder. It was coming back.

She glanced around wildly, her breath coming in short little gasps. Then she felt the warm glass of the phone booth on her back, and without even thinking about it, she got herself inside and slammed the door shut.

The whine turned into a roar again, and Jenny could see the motorcycle through the glass, heading straight for the booth. She closed her eyes and sank down to the gritty cement floor, her knees jammed up against her chest. When the roar reached its highest peak, her eyes flew open, just in time to see the motorcycle swerve again, miss the booth by inches, and tear off in the other direction.