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1

The Present

With one final quick pump down on the accelerator, Sherry Littlefield let the engine in her 1966 Canary Yellow Mustang Fastback 2+2 redline, then fall to idle. Her slender hand reached down and turned the key, killing the motor. She smiled with grim satisfaction at the quick silence that surrounded the sleek classic sports car. Leaning back in the bucket seat, she lit a cigarette from a pack perched on the dashboard. The car’s lighter had never worked, but the Zippo’s flare lit the car’s dark interior, illuminated her face. It was a pretty face—like the car, classic. American teen angel. Had she looked into the rearview mirror at herself, she would have smiled again despite her weariness and the grainy, sleepy feeling that coated her eyes.

Although she was far from conceited, Sherry Littlefield liked the way she looked. She had just turned eighteen, but she was already a great-looking woman. Sometimes, she could hardly wait to feel as mature as she looked. She took a deep drag off the smoke, felt it burn her lungs, and reached out her open window to adjust her outside mirror so she could see the empty road behind her. It stretched off into the early morning blackness. The lights from town were bright on the night sky. Otherwise, and all around her, covering everything, was a moonless shroud so dark that it seemed to blot out the stars.

She inhaled again and expertly blew the smoke out through her nostrils. The ease with which she picked up the habit annoyed her. But cigarettes were part of the ritual, she knew, or thought she knew. It was the final action in a series of deliberate movements begun the previous afternoon, a process carefully orchestrated to bring about a desired conclusion.

Desired conclusion, she thought. Was it? She shook her head at the doubt. Too late for questions, especially for that question. Too late to rethink this. This was her last chance, and she wanted to be sure she did everything right. If it didn’t work, at least she would know it wasn’t because of something she failed to do. In matters like this, effort counted for everything. Success depended on forces she couldn’t even imagine.

And she had put in the effort. Of that much, she was sure. Her every sense was locked in a straightaway path, a steady and inexorable course that should lead to one destination. She didn’t dare falter, look off, even for a second, or the results could be catastrophic. And she’d have to live with that for a long time. Maybe forever.

There was also the risk that she might not live through it. Sherry didn’t think much about that. She couldn’t.

She took another drag when a realization struck her made her start upright. She reached down and twisted the ignition key to the ACC setting, reactivating the radio, which was tuned to an oldies station and now once again blasted forth vintage Rock ’n’ Roll on the car’s vintage Philco AM radio. “Run Run Run, ‘Runaway’ . . .” the speaker announced as a number concluded.

“Shit,” she whispered to herself. After the brief burst of panic wore off, weariness again settled over her. She shook her head from side to side. “Don’t screw it up, Sherry,” she lectured herself. “Stay alert, and don’t screw it up.”

She tapped a fingernail on the steering wheel to the Rock ’n’ Roll beat and wondered how important the music really was, whether or not things would work without it. Too risky to chance, she decided. She cranked up the volume and listened to the Platters for a few minutes, then chain-lit another smoke and settled back again and studied her rearview mirror’s view of the road behind her. She hated looking into the mirror. Sometimes, this night especially, she believed, it looked back. What she saw didn’t please her at all. Sometimes, it terrified her.

After a few minutes, she flicked the cigarette butt into the barditch on the other side of the pavement and got out of the car, shut the door behind her, and leaned against it while Sha Na Na sassed and wailed behind her. Her clothing, too, was a part of the ritual. She wore a man’s white dress shirt, rolled up at the sleeves and hanging loose over jeans that were rolled up to midcalf. Her long dark hair was pulled behind her in a tight ponytail, secured with a rubber band hidden beneath a big red ribbon. On her feet she wore rubber-soled black-and-white saddle oxfords and bobby socks. She looked like she had stepped out of an old photograph, a yearbook shot from the fifties or early sixties, a time that was a memory long before she was born.

She looked behind her car down the stretch of highway and sighed. Maybe another cigarette would do the trick, she thought, hoped, and she reached in for one and lit it with a snap of the Zippo. Behind her, Buddy Holly and the Crickets crooned “True Love’s Ways” on the radio, and she was reminded that he sang that song for the first time on the night he was killed. She remembered that Waylon Jennings was a Cricket, that he was supposed to have been on that flight, but he gave up his seat to the Big Bopper. Or was it Richie Valens? She wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter, really, for they were all killed. And now Waylon was dead, too. She wondered if he had ever wondered about it, if he had been haunted by the ghosts of songs on snowy nights. For a moment she thought she heard the sound of a small airplane in the darkness overhead, but it passed or faded quickly. A shudder ran through her, but she shrugged it off and searched the heavens for stars. There were none. Everything around her was jet.

Almost as if mocking her thoughts, the Big Bopper’s deep bass voice announced to his honey that he had no money, but that he liked Chantilly lace. She shrugged. Idly, she wondered if there really was such a thing as Chantilly lace.

She had waited—and worked—a long time for this moment, and she could feel her heart beating in anticipation of what was—or should be—about to happen. She could only hope that she was up to it. Oddly, she didn’t feel afraid at all, at least not threatened, not directly. Inside her head, a steady hum of anxiety almost drowned out the music. What she felt wasn’t fear, not in any immediate sense. She had confidence in her machine, and she had confidence in herself. This has to work, she told herself. There was no other way.

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Framed