“Isn’t that so weird?” Becca laughed. “We didn’t hang out through school, but then I went and locked my keys in the car.” She leaned forward and swizzled her paper straw around the whipped cream on the top of her iced mocha, poking at curled chocolate shavings. “We probably never would have had a reason to hang out if I hadn’t been so silly the other night.”

  Austin laughed and nodded. His phone rang on vibrate, buzzing from his front pocket. Although he knew that it was probably Jynx, and probably something important having to do with the saucer, and yes, the saucer was hovering and everybody was looking for it, but he was sitting across the table from Rebecca DeWeiss, finally, and they could just hold on for like an hour, maybe two.

  “Can I be honest with you, Austin?” She picked at the tiny sparkling teardrop-shaped gem that hung from an impossibly thin gold chain around her neck. Like a tiny glimmering model of the saucer itself, Austin found himself just slightly distracted when the breeze shifted, carrying the scent of her cocoa butter tanning lotion. He nodded mechanically, ignoring the ongoing action in his pocket. “I kinda knew you were working at the towing company when I called down there.” She preened the edges of the whipped cream.

  Austin couldn't hear anything but the crashing of his own heart jitterbugging in his chest. He thought he saw her blush slightly, her sun-kissed skin taking on a particularly healthy momentary glow. The thin strap of her sundress fell from one shoulder, revealing a nearly perfect all-over tan. Between that and the vibrations of the phone in his front pocket, precariously close to a sensitive area, Austin grew increasingly nervous.

  “There’s just always been something about you, Austin; something about how chill you are all the time like you’d just be so much fun to be around.” She shrugged and smiled at him.

  Confused, Austin took a bit of pastry gravel from his plate and set it into his mouth, washing it down with a splash of tepid coffee. Each move he made was slow and deliberate, worried that his hand might shake. Admiring her across a crowded hall had been easy enough, and the few times they had casually spoken he had frozen in abject terror. Just watching her eyelashes now, he was hypnotized and prepared to cancel all of his plans for anything and everything right after this date and possibly look into college. That she had asked him out to coffee was more than he could have hoped for, that she might have planned it, even, was causing him to fairly buzz with endorphins or the phone in his pocket.

  Matching the tone and frequency he felt the ominous reply before he could have heard it. A low reciprocal growl that canceled his ecstasy instantaneously, Mr. Ouija's distinctive glass pack snarled hard into the Lucky Mart parking lot as Ashley decelerated. Austin's collegiate plans were momentarily put on hold as he tumbled from low orbit and impacted with the real world, still spinning away.

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  She hovered on a cloud of menace, coasting across the lot like a jungle cat. Her tire walls scuffed against the curb like brushing her muzzle for attention. She might seem affectionate, but still terrifying, nonetheless. The engine snarled again, and as the tinted passenger side window lowered, Austin's heart dropped with it. Having ignored his phone nearly to a climax, they had found him anyway. “Oh, hey, Becca!” Ashley chirped, twiddling her nails at the two-time Miss Arroyo Grande.

  Becca sort of snarled a reply, “Oh, hey Ash.”

  “Austin, honey,” Ashley said, her voice gone sickly sweet, “Could you do me a little favor and pick up your damn phone, please?” She cocked her head and smiled. “Thank you, sweetie.” She twiddled her rhinestone manicure at them both and punched it back into first, she revved the engine, spreading another hot rubber forensic breadcrumb as she dropped into second over the curb on her way out of the parking lot.

  “You know,” Becca said as a set of sirens suddenly squealed from somewhere to the north, picking up speed as it gave chase to Ashley’s quickly vanishing tail. “I so badly wanted you to ask me to homecoming junior year.” The sirens crescendoed with a shrill but sufferable example of the Doppler effect.

  “Really?” Austin asked, as the second set of sirens started up and spun tires catching up to the first chase car.

  “I practically begged you,” Becca confessed, slightly embarrassed. The nuance of her admission was slightly lost to the sound of several SUVs starting their engines, trumpeting their incomplete exhaust systems like a biblical charge.

  Austin thought back, attempting to ignore the chorus of squealing tires joining the apocalyptic horn arrangement. “You asked if I had a date,” he remembered, watching as the first of the big black government trucks roared past, each flicking on their sirens.

  Becca leaned forward, speaking up a little, but she licked her lips, “Yes,” she said, and Austin wondered if her lip gloss was just slightly tinted pink.

  Another police cruiser of some sort, this one another local deputy, screeched tires and the back end skittered across the highway as it sped off south to join the massive car chase. “And I said no!” he called, struggling to be heard as a few more SUVs rocketed past.

  “And?!” Becca queried, waiting for him to put the pieces together, and contemplating putting her knuckles into her ears as well.

  It took a moment, but Austin finally realized he’d missed his shot almost two years prior, and probably because he was too busy picking Pony stickers off his motorcycle to notice that Becca had been dropping a hint. It wasn’t his imagination; she had flirted with him. “Oh,” he said, inaudibly.

  Becca didn’t need to hear him to see that he finally understood. “Austin!?” she asked, leaning much closer to him, close enough that he could smell the subtle hints of dark roasted espresso beans and artisan milk chocolate on her breath.

  “Yeah!?” he called back, watching the movement of her lips just as she watched his own. He wondered if this might be their first kiss, and he felt unprepared like it was some sort of pop quiz he should have studied for.

  “Do you think maybe…!?” she leaned in closer, practically shouting at him to be heard over the rush of a dozen performance-tuned SUVs racing past with bumper lights flashing and the sirens drowning out almost all other sounds. She was close enough that he felt he could have kissed her, he wished he could, but he seemed uncertain if he should, mostly because she was yelling in his face. “Maybe you should answer your phone, Austin!”