Strange Highways

dangerously slick roadway longer than he should have, mystified by what she'd said. "What're you talking about?"
     Staring at the lighted face of the radio, she said, "I was a sophomore when you were a senior. I had a terrible crush on you. I was in despair when you graduated and went off to college."
     He was barely able to look away from her.
     Sweeping around a curve, the road passed an abandoned mine head and a broken-down tipple that loomed out of the darkness like the half-shattered skeleton of a prehistoric beast. Generations had toiled in its shadow to bring forth coal, but they were now gone to bones or to city work. As he followed the curve, Joey braked gently, slowing from fifty to forty, so badly rattled by what the girl had said that he no longer trusted himself to drive safely at the higher speed.
     "We never spoke," she said. "I never could get up the nerve. I just ... you know ... admired you from afar. God. Sounds so stupid." She glanced at him from under her brow to see if, in fact, he was amused at her expense.
     "You're not making any sense," he said.
     " Me? "
     "How old are you? Sixteen?"
     "Seventeen, almost eighteen. My dad's Carl Baker, and being the principal's daughter makes everything worse. I'm a social outcast to begin with, so I have a hard time striking up a conversation with a boy who's even ... well, who's even half as good-looking as you."
     He felt as if he were in a chamber of fun-house mirrors where everything, including conversation, was distorted until nothing quite made sense. "What's the joke here?"
     "Joke?"
     He slowed to thirty miles an hour, then slowed further still, until he was not quite keeping pace with the racing water that nearly overflowed the wide drainage ditch along the right shoulder of the highway. The surging torrents cast back leaping silvery reflections of the headlights.
     "Celeste, damn it, I'm forty years old. How could I be just two years ahead of you in high school"
     Her expression was somewhere between astonishment and alarm, but then it swiftly gave way to anger. "Why're you being like this? Are you trying to spook me?"
"No, no. I just-"
"Trying to give the principal's kid a real scare, make a fool of her?"
"No, listen-"
     "You've been away to college all this time, and you're still that immature? Maybe I should be glad I never had the guts to talk to you before."
     Tears shimmered in her eyes.
     Nonplussed, he returned his attention to the highway ahead - just as the Springsteen song ended.
     The deejay said, "That's 'Thunder Road,' from Born to Run , the new album by Bruce Springsteen."
      "New album?" Joey said.
     The deejay said, "Is that hot or not? Man, that guy is gonna be huge."
     "It's not a new album," Joey said.
     Celeste was blotting her eyes with a Kleenex.
     "Let's spin one more by the Boss," said the deejay. "Here's 'She's the One,' off the same album."
     Pure, passionate, exhilarating rock-'n'-roll exploded from the radio. "She's the One" was as fresh, as powerful, as joyful as it had been when Joey had first heard it twenty years ago.
     He said, "What's this guy talking about? It's not new. Born to Run is twenty years old."
     "Stop it," she said in a voice colored half by anger and half by hurt. "Just stop it, okay?"
     "It was all over the radio back then. He knocked the whole world on its ass. The real stuff. Born to Run."
     "Give it up," she said fiercely. "You're not scaring me any more. You're not going to make the principal's nerdy kid cry."
     She had fought back her tears. Her jaw was clenched, and her lips were tightly compressed.
      "Born to Run," he insisted, "is twenty years old."
     "Creep."
     "Twenty years old."
     Celeste huddled against the passenger door, pulling as far away from him as she could.
     Springsteen rocked.
     Joey's mind spun.
     Answers occurred to him. He dared not consider them, for fear that they would be wrong and that his sudden rush of hope would prove unfounded.
     They were traveling through a narrow passage carved from the mountain. Walls of rock crowded the blacktop and rose forty feet into the night, reducing their options to the road ahead and the road behind.
     Barrages of cold rain snapped with