He was sleeping. Normally that would have been fine and dandy because normally seventeen-year-old Benjamin Kritzer was always in bed fast asleep at two o’clock in the morning. Unfortunately, Benjamin Kritzer wasn’t in bed fast asleep at two o’clock in the morning, Benjamin Kritzer was in a Tempest Le Mans convertible driving east on the Ventura Freeway at two o’clock in the morning. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep; in fact he’d done everything he could to not fall asleep. He’d pulled off the side of the road twice, he’d turned the radio up really loud (singing Wooly Booly at the top of his lungs──if that stupid song couldn’t keep you awake, nothing could), he’d put the convertible top down so that the cold night air could slap him into alertness, but, despite all that, he’d fallen asleep at the wheel.

It had been a long day. He’d arisen early, borrowed his former girlfriend’s sister’s Tempest Le Mans convertible, and done the drive up to Atascadero for his date with Mary Beth Hall, a wonderfully cute sixteen-year-old he’d recently met at a party in Culver City. He’d spent the day there; he’d met her parents, they’d driven by the insane asylum that was Atascadero’s most well-known attraction, he’d taken her to a nice dinner, and then they’d gone to see a community theater production of Annie Get Your Gun.

Benjamin had really enjoyed Annie Get Your Gun, but even more than he’d enjoyed Annie Get Your Gun, he’d enjoyed making out with Mary Beth Hall in the Tempest Le Mans convertible for an hour-and-a-half afterwards. They’d kissed and kissed and just when they thought they could kiss no more they’d kissed again. It was all very passionate, and then he’d taken her home. They’d promised to see each other in the near future, and then they’d kissed goodnight one final time. Benjamin had started on the long ride home at one o’clock in the morning.

He could hear sounds, distant sounds. It sounded like horns honking or something, and he could feel some vague sensation of being shaken about. It was curious, but he was sleeping, after all, and he figured it was just part of some nagging dream tugging at the edge of his consciousness.

Suddenly, his eyes shot open. He could hear screeching and honking and the sickening sound of metal crunching and twisting and glass shattering. For a minute he didn’t know what was happening, he couldn’t focus his eyes. Then, as if he were watching himself in a movie, he saw the guardrail at the side of the freeway. The Tempest Le Mans convertible was perpendicular to it and skidding against it. Benjamin, for reasons he couldn’t fathom, jerked the steering wheel to the left and the car came away from the guardrail and began spinning wildly. He then slammed on the brakes, which caused the car to spin in the opposite direction and head directly for the guardrail again.

As the car continued to skid and approach the guardrail Benjamin began to scream. He’d never screamed before, and that scream came from so deep within him it was almost more frightening than the approaching guardrail──the guardrail that he was quite certain the Tempest Le Mans convertible was going to crash through at any moment, which, of course, would send him plummeting over the side of the freeway to a fiery death.

His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly as the car smashed into the guardrail. The front of the car seemed to cave in like an accordion, and Benjamin could smell the odor of burnt rubber and gas. The car mercifully did not crash through the guardrail and go over the embankment; it just stopped, shuddered, groaned, and died.

Benjamin sat there for a minute, certain he was mortally injured. He was shaking wildly and he was cold, he was so cold it was as if he were in the meat freezer at his father’s restaurant. He could see people in other cars pulling off to the side of the road. Two of them had gotten out of their cars and were running toward him. He tried to open the door, but it was smashed in and stuck. Since the top was still down he managed to climb out of the car. He began walking around crazily, looking this way and that, his heart thud-thudding in his chest, trying to figure out exactly what had happened. The two running people reached him and one of them was shouting, “Are you all right?”

Benjamin had no clue if he was all right. He felt his face to see if blood was streaming out of any wounds, but he could feel nothing out of the ordinary, and when he looked at his hands there was no blood on them. The other running person was saying, “Sit down, sit down on the ground, you’re in shock.”

Benjamin had no clue if he was in shock. He looked at the two people and asked, “What happened?”

“What happened? You came all the way across four lanes of traffic, crashed through the center divider and came all the way over on the wrong side of the freeway and then smashed into the guardrail, that’s what happened.”

“Oh,” replied Benjamin.

That was the best he could do, response-wise, because he was shaking so badly it was like he was doing some weird rock-and-roll dance, like the Boogaloo or the Pony. He looked over at the borrowed Tempest Le Mans convertible──it didn’t even remotely resemble the car it had once been. The white paint was charred and blackened, the front was completely caved in, the windshield was smashed and smoke was pouring out from under the caved-in hood.

“Someone went to call an ambulance. It should be here any sec,” said one of the people. That person then put a jacket around Benjamin’s shoulders. He didn’t know why it was so cold──after all it was the middle of August──but he was freezing and there was simply no warmth in his entire body.

He wasn’t supposed to have gone to Atascadero for his date with Mary Beth Hall in the first place. In fact, Minnie Kritzer had forbidden him to go when he’d asked if he could take his father’s car. She’d said, “Benjamin, you are not taking the car, it’s too far away. I put my foot down.”