The Accident (3 page)

When Megan still said nothing, the thing called Juliet added, “I would have been sixteen the day of my party. Like you, Megan. Sweet sixteen …”

The wispy plume began spinning like a top. Soft, anguished sobs filled the room with pure pain. “I’d been planning that party for ages. I was sure it meant all the fun would begin. The best time of my life. I was pretty and very popular.” The spinning stopped, but the voice was heavy with distress. “Everyone said I had so much promise. But that horrid accident took my life from me before I ever had a chance to live it.”

Megan was struck by the horror of Juliet’s words. Fresh tears streamed down her face, and her eyes were full of pain. “No, oh, no,” Megan whispered. Then, lifting, her head, she said, “But this isn’t happening. This is
not
happening.”

“Oh, dear, I’ve made you cry again. I shouldn’t have upset you. I’ll leave now, but I’ll come back another time. Thank you for listening to me … Most people wouldn’t have.”

And before Megan could cry out, the light dimmed, went out, and the mirror was clear again. There was nothing in it but the reflection of a girl, shaking violently beneath a blue print quilt, her face streaked with tears.

The lights came up to full power, and the radio came back on, as if Juliet had flicked a switch as she left. Once again, the room became suffocatingly hot.

Megan trembled for a long time. After a while, she removed the comforter, took off the party dress, and hung it carefully on a hanger in her closet. She got ready for bed, moving the entire time in stunned slow-motion. When she crawled up underneath the canopy, she pulled the pale blue sheet up over her in spite of the suffocating heat, unable to shake the chill left by the wraith in her mirror and the words the wraith had spoken.

I dreamed the whole thing, she told herself, staring up at the yellowed ceiling. I’m dreaming right now. I’m dreaming that I’m just going to bed, when the truth is, I’ve been asleep for hours.

The thought was comforting. It allowed her to relax and go to sleep.

The next morning when she awoke and remembered, her eyes flew to the mirror.

Except for Megan’s own sleepy-eyed, tousle-haired reflection, the mirror was empty.

O
N THURSDAY
M
ORNING,
L
AKESIDE
residents awoke to disappointment. The sky was still a sullen gray, the sun hidden, the heat still suffocating the town.

Megan felt like she’d slept in a sauna. Her head ached, her skin felt sticky, and her hair was matted to her head.

After checking the mirror and finding it empty, she thought immediately of her friends. Were they okay? She hoped her parents had heard something. Maybe her mother had talked to someone at the hospital.

As she got ready for school, her eyes returned repeatedly to the big mirror. Although there was nothing there, the feeling of a foreign presence lingered in the room. Something that didn’t belong had entered her room, uninvited. It was gone now, but the sense of it remained.

But I
did
dream that whole thing, she told herself after her shower. She pulled on white shorts and a pale yellow top. I dreamed it because I was so upset about the accident that nearly killed three of my friends. So I dreamed about someone my age who
had
died in an accident.

It had been so real, though. She remembered clearly every second of it. Slipping her feet into a pair of sandals, she pulled her thick mass of curls into a ponytail and fastened it with a yellow clip. Her morning shower had done nothing to ease the headache. The pounding behind her eyes was relentless.

Megan deliberately kept her back to the freestanding mirror as she halfheartedly applied a touch of blush and mascara. But as she left’ the room, her biology book in her arms, her blue denim shoulder bag hanging from one wrist, she couldn’t resist glancing one more time into the wooden-framed glass.

There was nothing in it but the reflection of a pale-faced girl in yellow and white. I look like a wilted daisy, Megan thought in disgust. When she closed the bedroom door behind her, she hoped she was closing out all memory of the strange wraith and its tragic story. And she hoped that when she came home later that day, her room would feel like her own again.

The early-morning mist on the water had already cleared as Megan pedaled her bicycle to school, using the bike path above the lake. Glancing up at the granite-colored sky, she told herself it was going to be another skin-sticky day. Everyone at school would be moaning and groaning about the weather.

Unless they were preoccupied with last night’s accident.

Megan crossed the highway to Philippa Moore High School, where groups of teenagers in shorts and tank tops milled about on the lawn. Her mother hadn’t had any news about the physical condition of her friends. She had found out only that they were all still alive. Locking her bicycle in the rack beneath the huge flagpole, Megan quickly searched for someone who could give her more information about Jenny, Barb, and Cappie.

But no one knew anything until lunch period, when Megan met Justin and Hilary and learned that Hilary had called the hospital and talked to Mrs. Winn.

“Barb’s okay,” she told Megan and Justin. “She was thrown clear and landed on grass. She’s going home today. Cappie has a broken wrist and a lot of bruises. But Jenny wasn’t so lucky. She has a really awful head injury, and her collarbone was shattered. There weren’t any seat belts in the car because it was so old. Mr. Winn had ordered some, but they hadn’t come in yet.” Hilary paused, then added quietly, “Mrs. Winn was crying the whole time we were talking.”

Megan shuddered. Her nasty headache persisted. My friends could all have been killed, she told herself, believing it for the first time. They could have died.

Like poor Juliet.

Except Juliet wasn’t real. She was just a dream. An awful dream.

What was almost worse than the dream was the feeling now that she was being watched. She felt eyes on her, following her every move. Her skin itched. It had started when she walked up the school steps, and it stayed with her. She had to keep fighting the urge to glance over her shoulder. When she did look around nervously, no one was paying any attention to her.

The student body at Philippa Moore was sprawled across the back lawn on the embankment sloping down to the lake. The air was thick and sluggish, making any sort of movement an effort. Too wiped out by the suffocating heat to play volleyball or toss a Frisbee, everyone studied or talked softly while they ate.

But the disturbed quiet across campus had nothing to do with the heat. It was the direct result of three of their own narrowly escaping death. The students were trying to deal with the grim fact of the accident.

“I don’t get it,” Justin said. “Jenny’s a good driver, and it wasn’t raining yesterday. No slippery roads. Anybody hear how it happened?”

Hilary, sitting on the ground with her legs crossed, leaned forward. Her thick, straight blonde hair was cut short and square around her ears in a shining cap, her round face pink-cheeked and healthy looking. “Mrs. Winn told me that when they hit that curve, Jenny aimed the car around it just like she always did. At least she tried to. But nothing happened. Barbie told her mother that the car just wouldn’t turn. It went straight into that utility pole like it had a mind of its own.”

“Sounds like the steering went,” Justin commented.

Hilary shrugged. “Maybe. Mrs. Winn said the sheriff is checking out the car.”

Justin frowned. His sandy hair curled softly across his forehead. He was wearing khaki shorts and a white short-sleeved T-shirt. His warm gray eyes were pensive behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “Jenny could be out of commission for a long time. She’s going to go stir-crazy in that hospital.”

“Well,” Megan said, “as soon as she can have visitors, we’ll just have to see that she doesn’t get lonely.”

Justin smiled at her. “If anybody can cheer her up, you can. You’re good at that.”

“Well, I think it all stinks!” Hilary complained. “School’s almost over, and Jenny won’t get to finish out the year.”

After a moment or two of somber silence, Hilary sat up straighter and said, “Let’s not talk about this anymore. Too depressing.” She made a face of disgust as she said, “Guess who asked me out this morning?” Hilary could switch moods as easily as she changed a T-shirt.

“Who?” Justin asked. “Who do we know without a single shred of taste?”

Hilary crossed her eyes at him. “Donny Richardson. He asked me to a movie. Isn’t that a hoot?”

“What did you tell him?” Megan asked, knowing perfectly well that short, squat, mustached Donny was definitely not Hilary’s type. He wasn’t tall enough or cute enough. He wasn’t athletic, and he wasn’t popular. Definitely not Hilary Bench’s type.

“I said, ‘Not in this lifetime.’ The guy has the personality of a hangnail.”

“Hilary, did you have to be so cruel?” Megan asked. It wasn’t hard to imagine the pain of that kind of rejection. If Justin ever treated her like that, she’d die. “You could have been a little bit nicer.”

“If you’re polite with guys like Donny, they never give up.”

“Well,” Justin said, “I think you could have been more tactful.” He grinned. “Although we know that tact isn’t among your limited virtues, Bench. Denny’s not a bad guy, and the girls in this school treat him like dirt. He probably has his limits, like everyone else. I was with Jenny a couple of weeks ago when Donny asked her to a movie. She turned him down. She was more polite than you, Hil, but he stomped off down the hall like he was squashing bugs. He was
not
happy.”

Megan frowned. “He asked Jenny out? Jenny Winn?”

“Yeah.”

“I think he asked Cappie out, too,” Hilary said. “I saw them arguing in the hall last week. Donny yelled something about girls who say they have to wash their hair when anyone with eyes can see their hair isn’t the least bit dirty.” Hilary grinned. “I thought it was pretty funny.” The grin disappeared. “Now I’m not so sure.” Her blue eyes narrowed.

“I feel sorry for Donny,” Megan said. “Nobody likes him, and I think his home life stinks. His parents are divorced, and he moves back and forth between two different homes. That can’t be much fun.”

“My parents are divorced, too,” Hilary said airily, “but I’m not a dweeb like Donny.”

“Sure you are,” Justin said lazily, grinning. “You’re just prettier than Donny.”

“It must be awful to be so unpopular,” Megan said slowly. She was remembering the dream, hearing Juliet say again that she’d been popular. Donny wasn’t. But he was still luckier than Juliet had been. He just didn’t know it.

“Oh, Megan,” Hilary said in exasperation, “You’re always feeling
sorry
for people! You just don’t get it that there are some really crummy people out there who don’t have good excuses for the rotten way they act. Get with the program, will you?”

“But that’s what makes her so lovable,” Justin said lightly, giving Megan’s arm a reassuring squeeze. “That’s part of her charm.”

Megan smiled up at him. Hilary made a gagging gesture, but she grinned as she did it.

Before they went back into school, Megan turned and looked back at the lawn. No one seemed to be paying any particular attention to her. So why did she have this feeling that she was a specimen under a microscope? It gave her goose bumps.

Later, passing Donny Richardson in the hall on her way to art class, she found herself smiling at him with more warmth than usual.

He looked surprised, and his skinny black mustache remained in place, refusing to curve into a return smile. Megan had a feeling that even if he had smiled, it wouldn’t have reached his eyes. They seemed so cold and empty.

When she reached the art room, she went straight to her assigned cubbyhole at the rear of the room. There was a square of red construction paper sticking halfway out, sandwiched between her latest drawing and her box of pastels.

She hadn’t used red construction paper lately.

Curious, she slid the paper out of the cubbyhole and looked at it. What she saw was a crude, childish drawing of a large yellow car with no top, filled with a strange cargo.

Megan walked over to the big window to look at the picture in better light.

It was horrible. Seated in the driver’s seat of the crudely drawn car was a … horse? Wearing a string of pink beads around its throat. On the passenger’s side of the front seat sat what looked like a large candy bar beside a fat yellow-and-black-striped blob with wings. A bumblebee.

What on earth … ?

Her eyes moved to the backseat. A hat of some kind was drawn there. It had a visor with an emblem on it. A baseball cap? There was a small, green ball beside it. A green baseball? No. It looked more like an oversized green pea.

As people began to file into the big art room, Megan studied the picture carefully. It was a simple puzzle. The car was clearly Jenny’s. The candy bar and the bumblebee were easy: Bar. Bee. Barbie. And the cap and the pea meant Cappie. But why was there a horse in the driver’s seat?

What kind of twisted mind would draw such a sick picture about a tragic accident?

And why was it in Megan’s cubbyhole?

Was it a joke? If it was, someone at Philippa had a very bizarre sense of humor.

Shivering, Megan crumpled the picture angrily and tossed it into the wastebasket.

On her way out of class fifty minutes later, Megan plucked the wrinkled drawing from the trash and stuffed it into her notebook. She didn’t know why she did it. She only knew that it seemed like a good idea.

When she got home, Megan approached her bedroom door with hesitation, wondering nervously if the room would still feel strange. It had been almost a whole day since the dream. Her bedroom should feel like her own room again by now.

Megan slowly pulled the door open. Instead of closing it behind her, she stood in the doorway, listening, and searching all four corners with her eyes. The room, its flowered wallpaper faded and peeling slightly in spots, would ordinarily be filled with sunshine at this time of day, but because of the slate-colored sky, it looked dreary and gray.