Flames

written by Brandon French

The way I remember it, I had stayed after school that day, discussing the ending of Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice” with my English teacher. The street was empty when I came out, except for a very old Chrysler stalled in the middle of 104^th Street and a blond, blue-eyed fellow who was pushing it with sweaty determination, his right arm gripping the steering wheel through the open driver’s window.  To my mildly myopic, twelve-year-old eyes, he looked a lot like James Dean, with his long, sandy blond hair, Levi’s and motorcycle boots, a resemblance that was especially alluring since the real James Dean had died the month before in a car crash in Cholame, California, and I, along with several million other American teenage girls, was mourning his loss.