Shadows on the Sand by Gayle Roper

watching Chaz.
    My heart did its usual foolish happy dance, and I sighed. How could I be so idiotic, suffering from a ridiculous case of unrequited love at my age? Such heart palpitations were for sixteen-year-olds like Andi, swooning over unworthy swains like Bill. Or even guys like Ricky, enamored with an older woman like my sister. I was supposed to be mature, to have my act together. All those years of counseling had to be good for something, like discerning the realistic from the unrealistic.
    I tore my gaze from Greg and watched Chaz climb into a yellow Hummer. I blinked. Chaz could afford a Hummer, even a used one, but not his rent? His view of reality was more skewed than mine.
    Chaz shot Greg a final dirty look, then backed the Hummer out of his slot with a heavy foot and a complete disregard for the neighboring cars, which he sprayed with gravel. The constable went back into the Sand and Sea, but Greg stayed to watch his ex-tenant off the lot. Chaz paused to shift gears, then roared forward.
    Right at Greg.

7

    I screamed as Greg tried to jump out of the way.
    The Hummer bounced over the little concrete barrier that was supposed to keep residents from parking too close to the building and roared across the narrow strip of dirt edging the parking lot. With a great crashing noise, it rammed the Sand and Sea, a yellow behemoth bent on destruction.
    I stared in shocked disbelief, unable to process what I was seeing. Still, I managed to scream long and loud. At least I assumed it was me yelling like a banshee. No one else was around to break the sound barrier.
    I lost sight of Greg as he dived for cover.
Oh, Lord! Oh, God! Please don’t let him be hurt!
    The ice paralyzing my limbs melted in the hush following the crash. I started running. “Greg! Greg!”
    Not that there was no noise. I could hear falling building parts, the rumble of the Hummer’s engine, and the slap of my feet, but by contrast to the fearful roar of the crash it seemed deathly quiet.
    As I ran, I could see Chaz in his Hummer, still embedded in the building, pushing the now-deflated air bag out of the way. He looked at what he had done, looked at the guy with the badge rushing from the building with a gun in his hand, and threw the Hummer into reverse. At the movement, his face crumpled as if he were in pain, which he would be after being hit in the face and chest with the air bag. He stepped on the gas, and with a great roar the car tore itself loose from the building and flew back across the lot.
    “Halt!” the man with the gun yelled as he pointed his weapon.
    For the briefest of moments, Chaz and I stared at each other as hefought with the gearshift. I had a vision of him going for me as he had for Greg, eyewitness that I was, but he jerked the wheel and squealed out onto the street, disappearing toward the bridge that would take him off the island.
    “Shoot him!” I yelled at the constable as he raced after the Hummer into the street. “Shoot him!” I had never known I could be so bloodthirsty.
    “Can’t.” The constable gave a frustrated snarl. “Too populated.” He slipped his gun into his trouser pocket and jogged back to the apartment.
    Of course he couldn’t. What was wrong with me? I hadn’t even noticed the older couple walking down the street or the young mother and her two little children who rounded the corner of the building.
    The constable knelt by Greg. “You okay, Barnes?”
    Greg didn’t respond, just lay there in the strip of dirt by the complex, eyes wide. In pain, in disbelief, or in death? My heart climbed to my throat where it threatened to choke me.
    I fell to my knees beside him. “Greg, can you hear me?”
Oh, God, let him be okay!
    I flinched at the bleeding gash on his cheek, and a lump was rising on his forehead. Blood seeped from the many abrasions on his arms and cheek, all angry and painful looking. None appeared to my inexpert eye to be life threatening, but what if the Hummer had hit him? Were