Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick by Joe Schreiber Page B

of a car's motor getting louder.
    "Annie, can you hear—"
    "It's Mom and Dad!" Annie's voice burst out suddenly, full of relief. "Oh, Perry, they're home! They're back! It's okay!"
    "Annie, wait! Tell them not to go in the—"
    She was already gone.

18
What invention would the world be better off without, and why? (Kalamazoo College)
     
    I held up the phone, looking for the redial button.
    From down below, at the bottom of the rock pile, I heard a click.
    "Come down, Perry," Gobi said.
    Shit.
    "So are you going to kill me?" I asked.
    "I do not want to." She stepped into the cast of a streetlight, her shadow stretched out behind her along the sidewalk like something cut from black felt by a pair of very sharp scissors. She was still carrying her big bag with her, dangling from one shoulder. The gun in her other hand was pointed straight at my head. "But you know I will if I have to."
    "Then I might as well make it worth your while," I said, and I lifted her BlackBerry up and flung it as hard as I could toward the pond.

19
Are we alone? (Tufts)
     
    Watch it fly.
    A small thing, the weight of a pigeon, five ounces of circuitry and technology pinwheeling through the night air, screen glinting briefly as it arced downward toward the water and disappeared. Plip. Not even a splash. A duck quacked once and flapped away—Requiem for a BlackBerry.
    I watched the ripples spread, reflecting the city lights.
    Gone.
    The next thing I heard was Gobi scaling the rocks toward me, scraping and clamoring up like a force of nature. I was halfway down the other side when she grabbed me by the throat and pulled me in, our mouths close enough that I felt her hair brush against my face.
    "You have caused me a great deal of unnecessary difficulty tonight, Perry."
    "Gee, you know, I'm really sorry. Maybe if you hadn't dragged me along on this whole thing, it wouldn't have been such an inconvenience for you."
    Her other arm snapped across my elbow, hooking me close and marching me back through the park to the pond. As we passed the pond, Gobi glanced over and shook her head. "That BlackBerry was my ... How do you say? Lifeline."
    "So ... done for the night then?"
    "Not even close."
    Stepping back out onto Fifth Avenue, we stopped and looked back at the Sherry-Netherland. My dad's Jag was exactly where I'd left it in front of the hotel. Except now there were two NYPD cruisers parked in front and behind it, rolling their lights. An ambulance had pulled up in front of the canopied entrance, and it didn't take a psychic to guess the identity of the body being carried out on the litter. A small crowd of midnight gawkers had gathered under the clock. New York City had rubberneckers even at this time of night, I guessed, and they didn't seem to care who knew it.
    "First the BlackBerry and now the car," Gobi said. "You are on a roll, Perry."
    I tried to shrug again but couldn't pull it off. My shoulders felt fastened into place with a set of rusty bolts. Gobi stepped to the curb and hailed a cab.
    "Brooklyn," she told the driver as she tossed the bag into the back and climbed in next to it. "Red Hook."
    The cabbie started the meter and we swung into traffic.
    "I thought we were going uptown," I said.
    "That was before you interfered with my plans," Gobi whispered, not looking at me, leaning just enough that I could hear her. "Tonight was the only night that all five of my targets are going to be in the city. You have created another mess that needs taking care of. And this time you can take care of it yourself."
    We rode along in silence, each lost in our own thoughts. I thought about Annie and my parents and wondered how they would react to what she told them about the bomb in the basement. I imagined my mom wanting to call the police and my dad dismissing the whole thing as ridiculous. He would probably march right down to the boiler room himself with a flashlight just to prove a point. When he actually found something—
    Wait.
    Annie had seen