The Accident

by Glasko Klein

  Copyright © 2019 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

  Darby Creek

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  Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

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  Image credits: long8614/Shutterstock.com; VshenZ/Shutterstock.com.

  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 12/17.5. Typeface provided by Adobe Systems.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Klein, Glasko, 1990– author.

  Title: The accident / Glasko Klein.

  Description: Minneapolis : Darby Creek, 2019. | Series: The do-over | Summary: When a night with his friends ends in a devastating car accident, fifteen-year-old Daniel wishes he could do the night over again, so when he receives a mysterious offer giving him a chance to do just that, he eagerly accepts.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018014398 (print) | LCCN 2018020310 (ebook) | ISBN 9781541541924 (eb pdf) | ISBN 9781541540293 (lb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781541545472 (pb : alk. paper)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Traffic accidents—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.K643 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.K643 Ac 2019 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018014398

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1-45234-36616-7/26/2018

  For Meagan Jackson

  1

  Daniel thought he’d get a few months off from Memorial High School once school let out for the summer after freshman year. But if he wanted to learn how to drive, he’d have to tough out a few more weeks in his least favorite building with his least favorite teacher. Despite his lack of talent for teaching something as simple as dodgeball, Coach Falcone was in charge of teaching summer sessions of Driver’s Ed. Still, it wasn’t all bad.

  As luck would have it, Trisha, his best friend Charlie’s girlfriend, was in the same class as him. Charlie had gotten his license a few of months ago, but Daniel and Trisha still had another couple months to go. So now they were in the back of the classroom, while a low-budget DVD paraded the aftermath of various teen car accidents across the screen. A droning voice-over explained the causes of each wreck: “Texting while driving can kill. Eating nachos while driving can kill. Too many friends in the car can kill.”

  Daniel had a healthy appreciation for how dangerous driving could be, but he felt that class time might have been better spent if Falcone had actually bothered to teach them anything. So far, on days when they didn’t watch a cautionary video, they just had silent reading time to go through the Four Wheels and You textbook before taking quizzes that Falcone never seemed to get around to grading.

  Just before the muggy heat of the packed classroom managed to put him to sleep, Trisha got Daniel’s attention by tapping her pencil on his desk. “Hey, Daniel,” she whispered.

  Falcone was wrapped up in a copy of 10,000 Easy Crosswords! at his desk up front, and the coast seemed clear for a little conversation. “What’s up?”

  “So you know how this has been the worst summer ever?” she said, jerking her chin toward the video.

  Daniel sighed. “I dunno if I’d go that far—” he started. Falcone let out a loud shush from the front of the room without looking up from his puzzle.

  The two sat in silence for a few moments, watching a wailing teenager say that she never should have tried to put mustard on a sandwich while driving. “No sports, no parties,” Trisha listed as Daniel nodded along, “no scandals, no new kids to try to figure out. It’s been a total bust.”

  Daniel agreed—and he was having an even worse time than Trisha, although he’d never tell her that. At least she had Charlie. They let Daniel tag along to the Valley Vu for the free movies and popcorn Charlie got for working there as a ticket taker. But he could only be the third wheel to his best friend and his girlfriend so many times.

  “You don’t have to remind me,” Daniel whispered.

  “I do if I want to convince you to come to the best party ever,” Trisha responded slyly.

  This woke Daniel up a little bit.

  “My cousin knows this kid with a huge house out in Mountain Glen . . .” Trisha began, and Daniel immediately thought of a million reasons why this would never work. Mountain Glen was almost 40 miles away. Even if he could convince his parents to give them a ride, they would insist on meeting the host’s parents. Daniel couldn’t tolerate that level of embarrassment, no matter how cool the party at the end of the tunnel was.

  He was about to mention some of these issues when their conversation was interrupted by Falcone. “Listen up lady and gentleman in the back, I know you might think this whole thing is a big joke, but your parents won’t when they’re peeling you off the side of the road. So if you could please pay attention to the video, I won’t have to dock today’s classroom hours and force you to make them up over the weekend.”

  Falcone wasn’t exactly a man of action, but he also wasn’t one for idle threats once he got moving. “Later,” Daniel whispered once Falcone had settled back in. Although he was skeptical about this party, he was also intrigued at the possibility of an adventure. Who knows, Daniel thought. Maybe this party really is going to be a turning point in my summer.

  2

  The rusty swing set at Alvern Park groaned as Daniel and Charlie swayed slowly back and forth in the evening sun. Trisha had explained the plan to him after class, but Daniel hadn’t wanted to commit to anything. When she headed home for dinner, Daniel met up with Charlie at the park.

  Charlie seemed to think that if he just explained the plan a little more enthusiastically, Daniel wouldn’t be able to say no. To be honest, there was something about his energy that was contagious.

  “I mean, honestly, what could go wrong?” Charlie asked.

  “Where do you want me to start?” Daniel said. He had to admit that Charlie and Trisha’s plan wasn’t the worst he’d ever heard. Ever since he and Charlie were kids, they’d rotated whose house they stayed at pretty much every weekend during the summer. But Charlie’s parents were going up to their cabin for the weekend and had forgotten to tell Daniel’s family they were leaving town.

  “Our cover story basically wrote itself!” Charlie laughed. “I already told my folks I’d just spend the weekend at your place, so all you have to do is tell yours that you’re staying at mine. I mean, when’s the last time they actually called to check up on you?”

  “True, but when’s the last time we drove your parents’ car without asking?” Charlie didn’t have his own car, but his parents had only taken one of their cars up to the cabin, and Charlie knew where they kept their spare keys for the other one.

  “You worry too much,” Charlie responded casually, kicking off the ground and beginning to swing. “It’ll be fine,” he called out, “I’m official, man. I’m a licensed driver—it’s not like we’re breaking the law or anything.”

  Daniel began swinging as well, trying to match his momentum to Charlie’s so they could hear each other. “But you’re not allowed to have three people in your car yet because your license is still probationary. And you know as well as I do that something doesn’t have to be illegal for your parents to have a problem with it.”

  Charlie swung even higher. “They won’t have a problem with it if they don’t know about it,” he said. “Besides, I don’t have to poin
t out to you that we’re about to be sophomores and still haven’t gone to a real high school party yet. We’ve got to start going to them sooner or later. Think of this Mountain Glen party as a trial run. We’ll be far enough away from our neighborhood that nobody will even know how boring you are.”

  Before Daniel could object, Charlie jumped off the swing and landed in an impressive shower of wood chips. By the time Daniel dismounted, Charlie was already texting Trisha, telling her that Daniel was officially in on the plan. Daniel had seen Charlie like this before, and he knew no amount of headshaking and hand wringing would change Charlie’s mind now.

  Charlie pocketed his phone with a grin and said, “Glad you were willing to see things my way, Dan-o.”

  “Sometimes I really hate you, man, you know that?” Daniel said.

  “You say that now,” said Charlie, “but just think about what you’re going to say once we’re at this party having the time of our lives! Or what about in thirty years when we think back to the night our high school careers finally took off? I ask you again, what could go wrong?”

  “You wouldn’t even listen if I told you,” Daniel said.

  “That’s what I love about you, Daniel,” Charlie said with a grin. “You know me so well.”

  3

  After Driver’s Ed on Thursday, Daniel and Trisha met up with Charlie at the oak tree behind the school. Charlie rode up on his bike, skidded to a stop, and said, “Hey darling, how was class?”

  Trisha scrunched up her nose and frowned, “The usual—painful, long, boring.”

  “How about you, Dan-o? You holding up okay?” Charlie asked, hopping off his bike and laying it down in the grass next to theirs.

  Daniel forced a smile and said, “Same old, same old.” But Charlie clearly noticed something was off. He was actually pretty good at picking up on people’s feelings when he wasn’t ignoring them intentionally.

  “You’re not having second thoughts about the plan, are you?” he asked.

  “To be fair, you never really let me have any first thoughts on it,” said Daniel.

  Trisha folded her legs at the knees and cradled her chin in both hands, pretending to be seriously interested. “Tell us about these thoughts that you’re having, Daniel. Do you find that they make it difficult for you to step out of your comfort zone?”

  Daniel was still nervous about sneaking off to the party tomorrow, but he was starting to realize that neither Trisha nor Charlie were going to let him off the hook very easily. On the other hand, there were risks to not going to the party too. If he stayed home while they went and the party turned out to be all that Trisha promised, Daniel would hear about nothing else for the rest of the summer.

  “All right, all right, I get it. You guys can lay off now. Tomorrow we’ll go to this party, we’ll have a great time, and I’ll thank you both later,” Daniel said.

  Trisha leapt to her feet and wrapped him in a gigantic hug. Daniel looked helplessly over her shoulder at Charlie, who was grinning at another successful plan set in motion. “I knew you’d see it our way, Daniel!” Trisha said. “You’re not going to regret this—we’re going to have the time of our lives. Especially you.”

  Daniel shook himself free of her arms and asked, “What do you mean? Is there something you guys aren’t telling me here?”

  “Yep—she saved the best for last,” Charlie said. “You know I like a girl who has a flair for the dramatic.”

  “Okay, so,” Trisha began, her eyes dancing with excitement, “my cousin—her name is Laurie—is getting a little sick of the small town boys in Mountain Glen . . . and I took the liberty of informing her that my intelligent, hilarious, and devilishly good looking friend Danny would be at the party and that he’d love to meet her.”

  “Danny?” Daniel asked.

  Charlie punched him in the shoulder. “That’s you, my friend!”

  “You know I only go by Daniel, and besides, I don’t need you guys to set me up. I can find a girlfriend on my own,” Daniel said, rubbing the sting out of his shoulder. Only one of these things was true, and all of them knew it.

  “Well, at this party, you’re Danny—gentleman, scholar, and rebel without a cause,” Charlie grinned.

  “Great,” Daniel sighed, resigned. But as the trio pedaled home, he realized that this might actually turn out to be pretty great. Maybe he and Laurie would hit it off, and at homecoming next fall they’d be laughing about how they almost never met because of his nerves.

  4

  The next day Daniel told his mother that he was going to a screening of Jaws with Charlie and Trisha before heading to Charlie’s for the rest of the weekend. He was on his way out the door when his mother called after him, “Daniel, hold on!”

  Daniel stopped in his tracks. This was not a good sign. Maybe Charlie’s parents had remembered to call his parents after all. Maybe the whole plan was going to fall through before it even had the chance to get started. He turned in the doorway to face her. There was a look of concern on her face. Well, thought Daniel, this is it—no party.

  “I know you’re just going to roll your eyes at me, but are you sure you want to see that movie now?” his mother asked. “When I was your age, I watched it and it ruined my whole summer—I was too scared to swim in the lake for almost a year. I know how you worry . . .”

  Daniel felt his cheeks redden and let out a heavy sigh, “Yes, Mom, I’m sure.” Maybe his friends were right. If his own mother was still worried about him seeing a PG-13 movie from the 1970s because it might make him afraid of water, then he had probably been playing it a little too safe.

  “All right then, have fun!” his mother’s voice rang out as he closed the door behind him.

  The next step was to head down to the library and meet up with Trisha and Charlie. Daniel would ride his bike to the library and meet them there to throw off any suspicion about the three of them being in the car together. Charlie still had a probationary license, so he was only supposed to take one passenger with him at a time.

  Of course, as usual, both Trisha and Charlie were late, so Daniel ended up slouching on a bench outside the library. He hoped his parents wouldn’t happen to drive by and notice him across town from the Valley Vu. After checking his phone fifteen times in five minutes, he at last heard a familiar voice. But it was not the one he expected.

  “Daniel, is that you? What are you doing out here looking shady?” Daniel looked up at Gloria, a sophomore who’d sat next him in his honors geometry class last year.

  “Oh hey, Gloria! Uh . . . how’s it going?” Daniel managed. He hoped he’d be a little quicker on his feet once he was at the party but decided this might be good practice for actually talking to a girl.

  “A Friday without a pop quiz is a good one in my book,” she said, sitting down on the bench next to him.

  Daniel smiled, thinking back to Mr. Curr’s Friday ritual. “But is it really a pop quiz if it happens on the same day of the week, every week?” he asked her.

  Gloria brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled. “True enough, good thing Curr doesn’t teach English—he’s a bit loose with his definitions. But hey, I didn’t know you were into The Twilight Zone! That’s why you’re here, right? The Freaky Friday Nights Sci-fi Screening?”

  It wasn’t why he was there at all, but Daniel was in fact a fan of The Twilight Zone. And the later Trisha and Charlie were, the more nervous he was starting to get. He realized how easy it would be to simply say yes and watch some retro sci-fi with Gloria. After all, she actually seemed to like him just the way he was, they shared at least one interest, and hanging out with her would probably be way more fun than going to a party full of cool strangers.

  He could text Charlie and Trisha some dumb excuse about his parents making him stay home and skip the whole ordeal. Before he managed to make a decision, much less come up with a good response for Gloria, the long blare of a car horn drew their attention to the parking lot.

  5

  “Hey, Danny! You
ready to go to this party or what?” Trisha called out to him from the window of Charlie’s car.

  Daniel rubbed the back of his neck and gave Gloria a sheepish look. “Uh . . . actually, I’m just here to meet some friends,” he said.

  “Danny, huh?” Gloria said with a smile. “Danny who goes to parties. Well, there’s a surprise—you never struck me as a party kind of guy.”

  “Well, it’s hard to be in a party mood while Curr is trying to teach you how to do triangle proofs,” Daniel joked. “But actually tonight we’re headed out to Mountain Glen—”

  He was cut off by another shorter blast from Charlie’s horn and a shout from Trisha, “Come on, let’s get moving!”

  Daniel turned toward the car and held up a hand, mouthing that he would just be a second. He turned to Gloria and tried to think of something cool to say, but thankfully she spoke first.

  “Well hey, I don’t wanna crash your party, but I’ve already seen every episode of The Twilight Zone like a thousand times . . . would you and your friends mind if I tagged along? I’d like to get to know ‘Danny’ a little better,” Gloria said, smiling. She quickly added, “If it’s, like, a private thing, don’t worry about it. I just thought it might be fun.”

  If I’m going to try out this whole “Danny” thing, I might as well go all in, Daniel thought. “Yeah, no problem!” he said. “It’s an open invitation, so no worries.” He felt a bit fake using some of Charlie’s lingo, but Gloria didn’t seem to notice.

  “Great!” she said. “Let’s get going then.”

  The two walked over and hopped into the back of Charlie’s car. Charlie raised his eyebrows at Daniel in the rearview mirror. “So who’s your friend, Danny?” he asked.

  “This is Gloria. She was in Curr’s geometry class with me last year. Gloria, these are my friends, Charlie and Trisha,” Daniel said.