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"Born to Run," he insisted, "is twenty years old"

"Creep"

"Twenty years old"

Celeste huddled against the passenger door, pulling as far away frosteen rocked

Joey’s mind spun

Answers occurred to him He dared not consider the and that his sudden rush of hope would prove unfounded

They were traveling through a narrow passage carved from the mountain Walls of rock crowded the blacktop and rose forty feet into the night, reducing their options to the road ahead and the road behind

Barrages of cold rain snapped with bullet-hard ferocity against the Mustang

The windshield wipers throbbed--lubdub, lubdub--as though the car were a great heart pu time and fate instead of blood

At last he dared to look at the rearview ht from the instrument panel, he could see little, but what little he could see was enough to fill him onder, with aild exhilaration, with fear and with delight siht and the highway had become In the mirror, his eyes were clear, and the whites of theer bleary and bloodshot fro Above his eyes, his broas smooth and unlined, untouched by two decades of worry and bitterness and self-loathing

He jammed his foot on the brake pedal, the tires shrieked, and the Mustang fishtailed

Celeste squealed and put out her hands to brace herself against the dashboard If they had been going fast, she wound have been thrown out of her seat

The car skidded across the double yellow line into the other lane, coward the far rock wall, but then slid into a hundred-eighty-degree turn, back into the lane where they’d begun, and ca direction

Joey grabbed the rearview mirror, tilted it up to reveal a hairline that had not receded, tilted it down past his eyes, left, right

"What are you doing?" she de uncontrollably, he found the switch for the doht

"Joey, we could be hit head-on!" she said frantically, though there were no headlights approaching

He leaned closer to the smallto capture every possible aspect of his face in that narrow rectangle

"Joey, damn it, we can’t just sit here!"

"Oh, my God, my God"

"Are you crazy?"

"Am I crazy?" he asked his youthful reflection

"Get us off the road!"

"What year is it?"

"Drop the stupid act, you moron"

"What year is it?"

"It isn’t funny"

"What year is it?" he demanded

She started to open her door

"No," Joey said, "wait, wait, all right, you’re right, got to get off the road, just wait"

He swung the Mustang around, back in the direction they had been heading before he’d slammed on the brakes, and he pulled to a stop on the side of the road

Turning to her, pleading with her, he said, "Celeste, don’t be angry with me, don’t be afraid, be patient, just tell me what year it is Please Please I need to hear you say it, then I’ll know it’s real Tell --as irl crush on hier Her expression softened

"What year?" he repeated

"It’s 1975," she said

On the radio, "She’s the One" rocked to its glorious end

Springsteen was followed by a co hit in theDay Afternoon

The past su to beco, Vietnam had fallen

Nixon had left office the year before

Amiable Gerald Ford was in the White House, caretaker president of a troubled country Twice in September, attempts had been made on his life Lynnette Fromme had taken a shot at hione after him in San Francisco

Elizabeth Seton had become the first American to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church

The Cincinnati Reds had won the World Series in seven games

Jiht chati for Mr Goodbar

Disco Donna Suh still soaked, he realized that he wasn’t wearing the suit in which he had attended the funeral and which he had been wearing when he’d fled Henry Kadinska’s law office He was in boots and blue jeans Hunter’s-plaid flannel shirt Blue-deni

"I’m twenty years old," Joey whispered as reverentially as he once would have spoken to God in the hush of a church

Celeste reached out and touched his face Her hand arainst his cold cheek, and it tre him, a difference that he was able to sense only because he was young again and acutely sensitive to the currents of a young girl’s heart

"Definitely not forty," she said

On the car radio, Linda Ronstadt launched into the title song from her current hit album: "Heart Like a Wheel"

"Twenty years old," he repeated, and his vision blurred with gratitude to whatever power had brought hie

He wasn’t iven a second chance This was a shot at

whole new beginning

"All I’ve got to do is the right thing," he said "But hoill I knohat it is?"