Shannon was driving north on Aurora when the convertible in front of her left the ground. First the front wheels, and the driver, a young man in his twenties, too young to own a convertible, really, so sleek and thin in the way only the really lazy can be, swore and wrenched at the wheel. She could see him fighting to control the car, teeth white, face petulant. The back wheels came loose from the road and then the car was sailing up into the sky. The last she saw of the young man he was yelling into the earbud of his cell phone. Then he was gone, lost among the low clouds of late September. She was just outside Shoreline, among the used car lots and massage parlors with dubious names. It was late enough that she was the only car on the road, now that the convertible was gone.

She stopped her car in the middle of the road and sat hyperventilating for a while, shaken. A police car came up behind her and bleeped at her. The patrolman came jangling up to her warily. “The hell you doing?” he asked. “Show me your license.” She gave it to him, her hand twitching visibly and he looked at her sharply. “You high?”

“No,” she said.

He grunted and took the license back to his car. She fought against herself and had stopped shaking when he came back.

“I’m not going to write you a ticket, since there’s no harm done,” he said, “but you keep moving. What d’you think this is, a parking lot?”

She laughed raggedly. “Thanks,” she said. “I mean– thanks.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just keep moving.”