What am I doing?
She asks herself this, sitting in her jalopy, fingers eerily still on the wheel as she stares down the flickering red traffic light about twenty feet off. Her vision wavers; reaching up to rub at her eyes, she nearly misses the distinct green color that flashes, taking the red light's place, and takes her foot off the brake, slamming on the gas with a sense of peevish annoyance that she's rarely felt before. The '93 Lincoln gurgles and sputters as it lurches forward, crawling through the intersection as traffic blurs by.
The bookstore is closed.
She'd driven all the way across town to get to it. She considers that today is Sunday, so of course they'll shut down early, and she can always go in tomorrow.
(It doesn't annoy her any less.)
With an annoyed huff, she listens carefully for other cars through the din of her radio that scratches on and off. She doesn't dare reach over to adjust the dial, for fear of losing what little sight of the road she has.
"What the hell," she shouts when a bicycle, thankfully decked in a bright, visible orange, cuts in front of her. "Look out—Jesus." Under her breath, she mutters insults and throwaway suggestions that the young man on the bike learn how to turn handlebars and that the town put in some sidewalks already. In front of her, the bike stutters and twists oddly as the boy on the seat hunches nervously. When they reach a stop sign, he puts his feet down to steady himself while a Volkswagen glides by on a left turn. Despite his efforts, the bright orange bicycle topples and falls over, and he goes down with it, cringing.
The image of him on the ground beneath his hideous bike is too much for her. His bright, starlit hair is dusted with a few leaves from the curb and there's gravel on his hands, and he looks shocked enough to have heard a gunshot, mouth hanging open in sheer peevish horror.
Evidently, he hears her cackling in her stupidly dilapidated car behind him, because he turns back and his look of shock transforms into one of mild embarrassment, and perhaps a bit of humility. She can hardly see a thing but she recognizes the soft red on his cheeks and his body language, and can see the way that his shoulders shake with his own peals of laughter.
A horn, staccatoed and insistent, blasts through the quieted street, and for a moment she falters, squinted eyes barely seeing the boy and his bright red bipedal as her foot lets off the brake in surprise. But then he's standing up, fingers gripping the scuffed handlebars, and walking over to the curb so that she can pass him by. She presses the gas, sparing a final glance to find him staring at her with a look of amusement, and in seconds she's out of the neighborhood, the ugly bike and its boy out of sight and mind.