by Diane Hoh
Alex’s immediate, unspoken response was, How safe were we, really? And then she wondered why she’d thought it.
Probably because of the electricity going out. She hated darkness. She didn’t find it romantic or comforting, the way some people did. She had brought a night light with her to college, a pretty, softly glowing crystal hummingbird that plugged into an electrical outlet. The twins had never mentioned it, for which Alex was grateful.
No, she didn’t like being in the dark, not at all. Darkness didn’t seem…kind.
Now, Alex watched the road carefully, peering out over the front seat through the mist-moistened windshield, watching for objects in the road. Julie was talking to Gabe about the new fortune-telling booth, and she occasionally glanced in his direction. Alex didn’t think that was such a hot idea. With all that stuff on the road, Julie should be watching every single second.
“Well,” Julie said, steering carefully around a broken tree limb lying in the highway, “The Wizard didn’t promise to make me beautiful this time, but there’s always a next time. If at first you don’t succeed….”
“I think he’s creepy,” Alex said, not taking her eyes off the highway for a second. “Those eyes give me the chills.”
“Everything gives you the chills,” Jenny said. “You still sleep with a nightlight.”
Alex was caught completely off guard. She couldn’t believe Jenny had revealed to everyone in the car, including Marty, that she was afraid of the dark. Well…not afraid of…not really. Uncomfortable with, was a better way of putting it. She wasn’t comfortable in total darkness, that was all.
So what? Julie was terrified of spiders, and Kyle was afraid of heights. It was all the same thing. Still, it wasn’t the kind of thing a college freshman wanted to advertise.
Shrugging, Alex returned her attention to the highway stretched out like a long gray ribbon in front of Julie’s headlights. They were closer to campus now, and there seemed to be less debris.
She couldn’t wait to get back to the safety and comfort of their dorm room. Thanks to Jenny’s creativity, Julie’s efficiency, and Alex’s generous stepfather, it was one of the prettiest and nicest rooms in Lester. Alex’s favorite thing in the room was the huge rainbow they’d painted on one of the walls one Saturday, each girl painting a different color: salmon-pink, turquoise, and yellow.
That rainbow was beckoning to her now, calling her back to safety and comfort.
“Almost there,” Julie said cheerfully, turning her head slightly toward the passengers in the backseat. Her attention was away from the road for only a second, but that was a second too long.
Alex saw the tree before anyone else did.
Too late, she screamed a warning.
Julie gasped and slammed on the brakes. In vain.
The car plowed into the upper half of a mammoth old tree lying across the road, a thick black barrier. Its fat, leafless branches reached up and out like grasping hands. Just before impact, one of the branches punched its way through the windshield, showering the car’s interior with glass.
Julie cried out, her hands flying to her face.
Then they hit, hard.
The impact flung the upper part of Julie’s body forward. Her head slammed into the steering wheel, bounced back against the seat, and ricocheted forward a second time. Then she lay still, her arms hanging limply at her sides, her bloodied face resting against the steering wheel.
At the same moment, the front of the car crumpled inward like an accordion, driving twisted metal backward, straight into Gabe’s legs. He screamed just once before passing out, his head flopping loosely against the back of the seat.
The passengers in the backseat were flung forward, too, in spite of their seat belts. Their faces slammed into the back of the front seat and then bounced backward, as Julie’s had.
The car, pinioned by the tree branch in the windshield, skidded sideways just once, and then came to a rest, sideways in the road.
Behind it, Kyle’s truck shrieked to a halt.
Chapter 3
NO ONE IN THE car moved. No one made a sound. Gabe and Julie were unconscious, and the backseat passengers had been stunned into a frozen silence.
Tiny spots of black and orange whirled around Alex’s head. She shook it, trying to erase the spots. Her ears rang, and she couldn’t remember where she was. What was she doing in this car? Shouldn’t she be home in bed?
Oh. She didn’t live at home anymore. She lived on campus. With twins.
The girl sitting beside her…Alex decided this girl was probably one of the twins…sat up with a groan and called out a name.
Julie. The name she called was Julie. Her sister, Alex thought. Her twin sister. The driver…the girl whose face wasn’t there anymore. Her head was lying on the steering wheel, but her eyes were closed and everything else was all smeared together in a sort of bright red mess.
When the twin in the backseat got no response, her voice rose to a scream.
The boy beside Alex, cursing softly, struggled with his seat belt.
A boy’s face appeared at the front window on the passenger’s side. Alex had no idea who he was. Someone called out, “Kyle! Get us out of here!” So she thought the boy’s name must be Kyle. Did she know someone named Kyle? She couldn’t remember.
The black and orange spots continued to spin, like a constellation, around Alex’s head.
A different face appeared at the driver’s window. Now there were two people on the outside of the car, both struggling to open a door. A girl joined them. She, too, wrestled with the door handles.
Feeling detached, as if none of this had anything to do with her, Alex thought, That girl will get us out. She looks strong enough to open just about anything.
There were three people struggling to get the car doors open. None was having any luck. The doors remained solidly jammed.
“I want out of this car right now!” Alex said aloud.
The twin on her right was sobbing.
It was a two-door car, and the half-windows in the back didn’t open at all. When the boy beside Alex finally got free of his seat belt, he got up and pushed past her to attempt to open the front window. But the windows were electric, sealed shut.
His arm brushed against the head of the injured boy in the front seat, and the boy moaned.
Groaning in defeat, the boy who had tried to open the window flopped back into his seat and put his head in his hands. “God,” he said, “is that gasoline I smell?”
Alex pretended she didn’t smell a thing. The girl beside her was already hysterical. What would she do if she thought the car might catch on fire at any second?
But Alex did smell gasoline. Were they all going to be burned alive?
Someone was shouting…one of the boys outside the car had pressed his face against the window and was hollering something. Alex thought his face looked really funny, all smashed against the glass like that, like a pumpkin discarded after Halloween.
“Kiki called the fire department!” she heard.
Who was Kiki?
“The firemen will get you out,” the mouth in the mashed face continued. “Hang in there. They’re bringing an ambulance, too.” Then the mouth added, “Is Jenny okay?”
Jenny? The twin, sobbing hysterically. Jenny was definitely not okay.
The Jenny who was not okay leaned over the front seat and began to shake the driver, trying to awaken her.
Alex snapped out of her fog to grab Jenny’s arm. “Stop that right now!” she cried. “Don’t touch her! She could have a neck injury, or a spinal thing. You’re not ever supposed to move anyone when they’ve been in an accident.”
The words surprised…astonished her. An accident? Is that what was happening? They had had an accident?
How had it happened?
Why had it happened?
Was anyone dead?
“Is anyone dead?” Alex said aloud, and then laughed, because of course if someone were dead, they wouldn’t be answerin
g her, would they?
The boy who had tried to open the window was looking at her funny.
She probably shouldn’t be laughing when they’d just had an accident.
The black and orange spots disappeared. They were immediately replaced by a blinding headache. Alex closed her eyes. The gasoline smell made her stomach churn.
The loud wail of approaching sirens seemed as if it would split her skull in two. But she knew it was a good sound, a sound they’d been waiting for.
It took firemen in yellow slickers, shiny as patent-leather, ten long, agonizing minutes to remove the seriously wounded passengers from the front seat, clearing a path for the three in the back seat to fumble their way to freedom and fresh air.
The cool, clean air cleared Alex’s head a little. They’d had an accident. A bad one. Julie, her roommate, was hurt. Gabe, Julie’s boyfriend, was hurt, too. And the boy who had tried to open the front window was Marty, and the twin in the back seat was Jenny, another roommate. Alex didn’t think she had more than two roommates, but she wasn’t sure.
There were many cars parked along the roadway, and people, most of them students, stood on the grass watching the firemen hose away the gasoline.
They’re glad they weren’t in this car, Alex thought. They’re sorry for us, but they’re glad it wasn’t them.
She didn’t blame them.
Although she insisted repeatedly that she was fine, just fine, Alex was loaded into an ambulance with Marty and Jenny. Julie and Gabe were placed in another ambulance. Sirens screamed again as both vehicles spun around and headed back toward the community hospital in Twin Falls.
The doctor in the emergency room found nothing more than a bruise on Alex’s forehead and a deep scratch on her neck from flying glass.
“I didn’t know what was happening,” she admitted with some embarrassment. “I mean, I was really out of it back there. I thought maybe it meant that something had happened to my head.”
“That was your mind protecting you from the knowledge that something terrible had happened,” he explained. “Perfectly normal. Too bad we can’t escape like that all the time, right?”
Alex didn’t agree. It had been awful not knowing what was going on.
She came out of the emergency room just as Marty did.
“You okay?” he asked, taking her elbow.
Alex winced. Another bruise. “I’m fine. Are you?”
He nodded. But she noticed he was limping slightly.
Together, they walked to the waiting room, anxious for word of Julie and Gabe. The stuffy little room was crowded.
“Where’s Jenny?” Alex asked Kyle, who met them at the door, two cups of hot coffee in hand. He handed a cup to each of them.
“Still in the emergency room with Julie. No one’s told us a thing about Julie. But Gabe’s already on his way to surgery. His legs are a mess.”
Feeling suddenly faint, Alex sank into an orange plastic chair. “But Julie’s okay, right?”
“Don’t know yet.” Kyle leaned his bulk against the wall. “It’s Jenny I’m really worried about. She wouldn’t even let a doctor look at her. She didn’t want to leave Julie. I guess they let her stay in there, because she never came back out.”
Then Kyle told her that Bennett had broken one of his crutches trying to break a window to get them out of the car.
For a moment, Alex couldn’t remember who Bennett was, and worried again that her brain had been dislodged when her head slammed into the back of the front seat. But then her eyes focused on a big, blond guy in jeans and a Salem U sweatshirt, standing beside Marty. He was leaning casually on one crutch as if he’d brought it because he liked the way it looked, not because he needed it.
Catching her eye, Bennett hip-hopped on his crutch over to stand by her chair. “Gabe won’t be playing football for a while,” he said.
Alex looked up at him in alarm. “What are you talking about? Have you heard something?”
“No. But I saw his legs when they pulled him out of the car.”
The girl Alex now recognized as Kiki was not so delicate. “His legs looked like they’d been attacked by a power mower,” she said bluntly. Then her voice hardened. “Why wasn’t Julie paying more attention?”
Shocked, Alex cried, “You can’t possibly blame Julie! It wasn’t her fault.” Julie certainly hadn’t planned to smash up her car…and her face.
Just then Jenny appeared in the doorway. Her face was mushroom-colored and she swayed dangerously.
Kyle rushed over to lead her to a chair. The others gathered around, eager to hear about Julie’s condition.
Jenny had difficulty getting the words out, as if saying them aloud would make them real and she couldn’t bear that. She twisted the edge of her gray university sweatshirt as she struggled to speak.
“Her face…her face…she hit the steering wheel so hard…and when the windshield shattered…she has so many cuts…” Her blue eyes were bleak, the edges rimmed scarlet from her tears. “The doctor said…he said most of the bones in her face were broken…her jaw is fractured, and one cheekbone…” She couldn’t continue. She covered her face with her hands.
No one spoke. The dismal news had rendered Julie’s friends speechless with horror.
Jenny lifted her head. Her eyes, full of pain, moved to Alex’s face. “Oh, Alex,” she said so quietly that Alex had to bend her head to hear, “Julie’s beautiful face, the one she said was so boring…it’s ruined. It will never look the same again.”
Then she leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes.
No one knew what to say.
They all waited together. But there was no further word about Julie or Gabe.
Jenny refused to leave the hospital. The doctors and nurses assured her that Julie would probably sleep through the night. Alex and Marty reminded Jenny that she’d had a bad time herself and needed some rest. Kyle told her gently that she wouldn’t be any help to Julie if she herself was exhausted.
Their efforts were futile.
“I’m going to be there when my sister wakes up,” Jenny said firmly, her face bleached white, an ugly purplish bruise forming on her forehead. “Whenever that is, I’m going to be there.”
Giving in, one of the nurses arranged for a cot to be installed in Julie’s room, and led Jenny away.
Alex’s expression was forlorn as she watched them leave. She wanted to stay, too. Her roommates were in pain. How could she just walk away? But she wasn’t a member of the family. She would have to go back to the dorm…alone.
Kyle drove them home. No one talked on the way.
Alex sat staring out the window, unseeing. There had never been a darker, more vicious night, as far as she was concerned. When they drove by the accident scene, she began to shake violently. Julie’s car was gone, but skid marks were clearly visible on the highway. Bits of broken glass sparkled like jewels in Kyle’s headlights. The cruel tree branch that had impaled the windshield lay beside the road, its grasping black claws reaching up and out.
Waiting for another victim. Alex wrapped her arms around her chest and pulled her eyes away from the road, staring down at her lap instead.
Without Jenny and Julie, room 614 in Lester dorm seemed cold and forbidding, like the night outside.
Seeing the bleak expression on Alex’s face as she stood in the doorway, Marty offered to stay with her. “If you think you won’t be able to sleep, we could talk. And we could call the hospital every once in a while to see if there’s any word about Gabe or Julie.”
Alex shook her head. “Thanks. But I’ll be fine. You could help tomorrow, though, by giving me a ride into town. I want to get flowers, and maybe some magazines for Gabe and Julie. There’s a nice flower and gift shop right next door to Vinnie’s. If it wasn’t struck by lightning,” she added darkly.
“Sure. What time?”
Since neither had a ten o’clock class, they settled on nine-thirty.
Before he left, Marty put a hand on her shoulder an
d smiled down at her. “You sure you’re not going to sit here obsessing about what happened? You’re going to get some sleep, right?”
Grateful for his concern, Alex returned the smile. “Right.” She sighed. “I think I could sleep for a year right about now.”
His smile disappeared, and he nodded grimly. “Right. See you in the a.m.”
When he had gone, the emptiness of the room, in spite of its clutter, seemed to shout the twins’ absence. Alex stood by the open door, watching Marty walk, limping, down the hallway. In her mind, she saw the accident again, watched as his head snapped forward and back. She winced.
Alone in her room, she slipped off her jacket, and without changing out of her jeans, blouse, and suede vest, collapsed on her bed. When she closed her eyes in the dark, quiet room in the dark, quiet building, her head began to throb. She saw again the anguish in Jenny’s face as she’d told all of them that Julie’s face would never be the same. And quiet tears began to streak her own face.
Plastic surgeons could work miracles, couldn’t they? Was Julie going to need a miracle?
Just before she finally fell into an exhausted sleep, Alex remembered Julie’s comments at Vinnie’s. What was it she had said? Something about being sick of her “boring old face”? It wouldn’t be the same old boring face now, would it?
But the face that appeared then in Alex’s semiconscious mind wasn’t Julie’s. It was the dark, chiselled face of The Wizard.
And he seemed to be smiling.
Chapter 4
ALEX AWOKE EARLY THE next morning to a bruised and aching body. Her left eye was encircled in purple, her lower lip swollen and painful. Showering and dressing was agony. Her jeans hurt her legs, and the soft blue turtleneck sweater she slipped on felt like rough wood against her aching neck.
When she called the hospital, she was told that information about Ms. Pierce and Mr. Russo could only be given to relatives.
I should have said I was Julie’s mother, Alex thought sourly as she hung up. Why wasn’t a roommate and best friend as important as a relative? Not fair.