Driver's Ed by Caroline B. Cooney

life spun through Morgan’s mind as if he were channel-grazing his future. Prison/handcuffs/trials. His father’s horror blended into his mother turning away, his sister’s cruel laugh.
    â€œThere was a terrible accident,” said Mr. Fielding. “Did everybody hear about it?”
    Accident
. Morgan seized on the word. Yes. Totally accidental. Nothing to do with me.
    Christine, assuming that not everybody had heard, repeated the television commentary. It was like a rerun from a younger, watered-down Anne. The words dripped in Morgan’s ears like full sponges. He could wring his brain out.
    â€œWhy do they always blame kids?” said Kierstin, who got belligerent easily. She was duking up for a fight.
    â€œAnd even if it is a kid,” said Taft, “it’ll be one of the scums who goes around keying cars and spray-paintingbuildings and breaking into vending machines. It won’t be one of us.” Taft looked to Morgan for confirmation.
    Morgan could not stop himself from looking down at the tabletop and swallowing hard. When he looked up, Taft was staring at him.
    â€œEverybody outside,” said Mr. Fielding.
    â€œIt’s cold out,” said Lark, though it was not. “I have to get my coat.” Lark would not join them on the lawn. She hated the outdoors and felt it had no right to exist.
    The kids whined and complained. Why they were meeting this police officer on the lawn, instead of here in the classroom, nobody could imagine.
    Morgan knew.
    He was going to be arrested in front of his peers. They were going to make an example of him.
    He pictured the phone call to his father. He hadn’t talked to his father in years. The opening subjects would be jail and bail.
    Somehow he stumbled with the rest out of the library and down the hall to the near exit. His feet landed on pavement and carried him across the bus drop-off circle.
    He would not look at Remy. If he did, he would hang on to her, or she to him, and they would be ruined.
    There, towed onto the winter-dying grass of the school campus, close to the flagpole, displayed to all traffic on Warren Street, was the vehicle that Denise Thompson had driven to her death.
    It was so crumpled, so destroyed, Morgan did not know how they had gotten her corpse out. What parts of it had killed her? Remained stuck in her? Gone with her into the grave?
    Kierstin and Cristin began to cry. Joss yanked out a little Kleenex pack and handed tissues around. No boy took one.
    Morgan forced himself to look at the car. Taft was still watching him. Taft could not actually know, but he could guess. Morgan thought he had already guessed.
    â€œSo what’ve we got?” said the cop.
    The steering wheel was folded in two, as if it had been made of Play-Doh.
    â€œWe’ve got a dead mother,” said the cop.
    Remy’s sob escaped her throat, a high, awful keening, like a dying bird.
    Don’t do that! thought Morgan. You’ll give us away.
    But in the strange way of girls Cristin and Kierstin seemed to find Remy’s reaction reasonable, and they comforted her.
    â€œAll because some teenager wanted a sign for his bedroom,” said the cop. “You know what I mean? This woman died, she’s not a whole lot older than you are, you know, and her baby’s never gonna remember his mommy, all because some teenager didn’t stop to think.”
    I was like Lark, Morgan thought. I stopped, but I didn’t stay stopped.
    â€œProbably the same kids that are playing mailbox baseball did this. Something to do. Thursday night, kids didn’t care about their homework, just wanted something to do. Well, you just remember this,” said the cop. “Denise Thompson is never going to have something to do again.”
    Wait.
    The cop had not come to arrest him. This was just driver education. Just another lecture. The car was a visual aid. More impact than a film.
    â€œHow do you know it’s kids?”