23 Minutes by Vivian Vande Velde

unsafe behaviors. Zoe says, “She was ahead of me. And at one point she looked over her shoulder to see how close I was. And just then the Greenbergs were backing up out of their driveway, and she was going down the sidewalk like a bat out of hell, and she didn’t see them, and they didn’t see her, and she smacked right into their car, right … I don’t know what that’s called … behind the back passenger door, kind of where the gas cap is? What is that—the fender?”
    He nods, either to acknowledge that it is in fact a fender she’s describing, or simply to indicate for her to get on with her story.
    â€œAnd there was like one heartbeat where I thought, Hey, at least she wasn’t two seconds faster, or she would have been run over. And then Jessie and the bike went flipping over the trunk of the Greenbergs’ car, and she went sliding into the street, right under the wheels of another car. She …” It took months before Zoe could get the picture out of her mind, and now here she’s gone and invited it back in. “You didn’t need to look close to know she was dead.”
    Zoe has come to realize during the telling of this story that his steely-eyed poker face does not come naturally to him, because he’s lost track of watching over what his expression reveals. Which is agood thing, she supposes. Would she be able to trust someone who could hear about Jessie’s death without wincing?
    She continues, “I stopped my bike, and I couldn’t believe what had happened, how fast it had happened. You know? Not a hint of danger, of worrying, of thinking, Maybe racing isn’t such a smart idea. And then that collision. I put my arms around myself …” Zoe sees that her hands, apparently possessing a mind of their own, are no longer dutifully on the table where she put them, but are hugging herself. She very carefully clasps her hands in front of herself again, where she can keep an eye on them and not accidentally initiate a playback.
    Daniel is watching all this with his I-am-a-rock face once again in place.
    She tells him, “And I was wishing I could do it all again. A do-over. Before getting on our bikes, Jessie and I had been playing one of her Nancy Drew video games, and they have this ‘Try Again’ feature—if you make a mistake and get killed, you can restart from right before you made your bad decision, and go through that section of the game again. And that’s what I wanted, and that’s what I said out loud. Not because I thought anything would happen, but because I was kind of in shock. Everybody had rushed out of their cars—the driver who’d run over her, Mr. and Mrs. Greenberg, their assorted kids and nephews and nieces—there were always too many Greenbergs to keep track of. They were all …” Once again, the exact word she’s looking for eludes her. Plus, she realizes she’s talking like a thirteen-year-old, as though she’s channeling her younger self, and she’s unable to stop. “They were all … whatever the frantic version of milling about is. Yelling, ‘Call 911!’ Yelling for a doctor, a blanket, Jessie’s mom. Nobody sure what to do becausethere very obviously wasn’t anything to do. So I said, to nobody in particular, just babbling, I said: ‘I wish I could try again. I wish I could play back time …’ And all of a sudden, Jessie and I were in her garage, with her leaning down to put some air in my tires ’cause they were kind of wonky.”
    Daniel takes a breath, and she keeps on talking, not giving him a chance for questions. “And I was like ‘Whoa!’ and she was like ‘What?’ And that was the first time. Jessie had no memory of any of it. She was all, ‘Well, if you don’t want to race, just say so. We don’t have to race.’ And I was all, ‘No, but we did: down Thurston,