Wrong Chance by E. L. Myrieckes Page B

proceeding. “Before the accident I was working on a novel where the protagonist has anger issues. In one sense, he’s his own antagonist.”
    â€œI’m not listening.”
    â€œBut you’re responding so you hear me.”
    â€œSmart ass,” he mumbled.
    â€œWould you rather I be a dumb ass?” Then: “Terrance—that’s the protagonist’s name—reminds me of you. He’s older than you by two years.”
    â€œYou act like you can’t see I’m ignoring you,” Jaden said. “I’m exerting all my energy trying to be nice, but you’re starting to push my buttons.” He went to the other side of the living room.
    Buank. Buank. Buank. Buank.
    â€œThrough Terrance I discovered that the problem with poisoning by anger is it eats away your insides. Everything Terrance does and says is poisoned.” She thought about their situation and sighed. “After a while a person who poisons themselves with anger feels nothing. I don’t want that to happen to you, Jaden.”
    â€œYou have a lot of nerve preaching the choir to me about an unfinished, undeveloped character. You couldn’t possibly know how Terrance’s personal conflict is gonna unfold because you’re too weak to discover an ending, to close the story. He can’t go any further than he’s been like I can’t.” He stomped across the room and stood over her. “I have every right to be angry. You—nobody else—ruined everything and took me away from my dad in the process. I’ll never forgive you. And I promise to remind you of that fact every day.”
    Buank. Buank. Buank. Buank.

EIGHTEEN
    H e stared into Stygian darkness. It was getting harder to breathe. And being stuffed in the trunk of an Infiniti didn’t have a damn thing to do with it. Yancee didn’t know what was happening to him or why. He did Number One and Number Two on himself, and the stench was turning his stomach. He couldn’t move a lick. His motor skills had taken a permanent lunch break. But oddly he could feel every agonizing inch of pain each time his head slammed against the rim of the spare tire. He didn’t know what had gotten into Chance. This was way beyond the perimeter of their normal fighting and bickering. But he realized that Chance had dedicated himself to playing bumper cars with every pothole in the city.
    After listening to the thrum of tires cruise against different textures of road for an undetermined amount of time, the tires crunched over a long strip of gravel, then the car stopped.
    The engine was shut off; he could hear it tick.
    Apprehension set in; his heart sounded like a bass drum in his ears.
    The car door was slammed shut.
    What had Chance so pissed? Yancee tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but the stubborn thing wouldn’t go down.
    Urgent footsteps fell on gravel.
    A key slid into the trunk’s lock.
    Yancee couldn’t move. So the urge to attack he had was no good.
    The trunk opened and without preamble, Chance said, “You stink.” Then: “Dude, you’re gonna die of respiratory failure if I don’t inject you with this.” He showed Yancee a syringe. “But not before I make you feel all the pain I’m feeling.”
    Yancee’s eyes moved right, left, up, and down. Wherever he was there was a tree-leaf canopy covering them. He looked through the leaves and saw the sky had darkened. Africa was going to kill him for being late. She was going to swear up and down he was out fooling around on her again, he thought, totally blowing off the seriousness of his immediate predicament. He smelled hints of rain mixed with a pine-needle breeze and his bowels.
    Then his eyes pinned Chance and reality sucker-punched him, putting things in proper perspective. “Why are you doing this?”
    â€œHunch,” Chance said, grabbing two fistfuls of Yancee’s UPS work shirt. “But my sixth