“The same thing that possessed me and Abigail to get into this car with you,” Billie says and turns around and looks at me. She looks older to me now. I notice for the first time that there’s a slight dullness in her eyes I hadn’t noticed before. After that, no one says anything. We head towards Woodward Ave but nothing seems able to stay in my mind. We are going too fast.

            Mr. Wolf clears his throat several times and adjusts his black-wire rimmed glasses. He adjusts his collar and pulls his tie a little loose. He fixes his mirror and looks down at Billie staring out the window and me in the backseat, staring straight ahead. Such a long car ride, I think to myself.

            “I’d like for you to finish your story,” he said quietly.

            “What else is to tell?” Billie said, continuing to stare outside of the window.

            “How did it end? Did you get to go home?”

            “Not right away. They made me go into their store with them. It was destroyed on the inside. They were upset. The woman was talking about leaving. She wanted to move to Dearborn.”

            “Dearborn, huh? There’s a town you’ll never see me living in!” Mr. Wolf shook his head for emphasis. Dearborn was a suburb of Detroit on the west side. I knew that Grandma had talked of moving there once but we didn’t the money. Certain parts of Dearborn were on the wrong side of Telegraph and Grandma said the houses were too small and more than her budget to handle. So, like Mr. Wolf, she never said anything nice about Dearborn.

“They probably moved cause I never saw them again in that neighborhood

I like to play in. I never saw them. They disappeared. They took me straight to the police station that night. The woman hated me. She called me the worst kinds of names. She hated me. Her store was destroyed. She accused me then of trying to give her a heart attack. I got mad and I got smart with her and I told her that I didn’t do such a thing. And when I said that, Mr. Wolf, I didn’t even cry in front of her!” Billie said.