Cold as Marble

by Zoe Aarsen

  “Man, I don’t like the looks of that bridge.” Henry slowed the truck down a few feet before we reached the tollbooth, frowning with consternation. Next to me on my right side, Trey tensed up.

  I didn’t have to ask why. We’d be vulnerable as we crossed a five-mile bridge spanning the point at which the deep waters of Lakes Huron and Michigan connected. In the dark. With the wind blowing. Perhaps Violet’s spirits weren’t strong enough to hurl a pickup truck off the side of a bridge, but they’d been conniving enough to distract my mom and cause her accident, which was reason enough for alarm.

  “Four dollars,” the tollbooth operator told Henry when he rolled down his window. The heat of the truck was immediately replaced by a bone-chilling gust from outside.

  Henry fumbled with loose singles in his wallet. I let my eyes wander ahead toward the long, long bridge, the edges of its deck dotted with streetlamps flickering against the blackness of the night. I could see the first tower, well lit with golden floodlights, beckoning and reassuring, summoning us to come closer. The light from the streetlamps bounced off the surface of the calm water on both sides of the deck, generating glimmers of amber-hued texture that brought a sense of choppy dimensionality to the otherwise black scenario before us.

  As we cleared the tollbooth and were about to cross the bridge, my scalp began tingling, which made me even more paranoid about the likelihood of Violet’s spirits interfering with us at any second. We were the only vehicle southbound on the bridge heading toward the Lower Peninsula. Even though it was an odd hour of the evening on a bitterly cold Thursday night, the lack of traffic seemed suspicious to me.

  “Henry, just wait,” I said. I withdrew my keys and lanyard from my pocket.

  He rolled to a stop and idled just as we were about to cross onto the body of the bridge. “There’s no other way to get to Mt. Farthington at this point unless we drive all the way around the bottom of Lake Michigan. That’s easily another day and a half of driving,” he reminded us. He didn’t have to say what another day and a half of driving probably meant. Even if we drove without stopping, which would have been impossible since Henry was already tired, we’d arrive at Mt. Farthington hours after the new moon—presumably too late to stop Violet before more people would die.

  “I don’t think we should cross this thing,” Trey said. “If we go the other way, we’ll still get to the ski place by Friday, right?”

  “We’ll get there too late in the day,” I interjected. “The new moon starts at around four o’clock. We need to stop her as soon as possible.”

  Henry seemed conflicted. Surely, the tollbooth operator we had just paid was wondering what we were doing, just idling there. “Should we ask that thing of yours whether or not we should cross?” Henry asked me.

  Trey told us in a softer tone, “I can already tell you what’s going to happen on the bridge. I dreamed about this last night—I just didn’t realize what the dream was until I saw the bridge lit up like this.”

  I asked, “What do you think is going to happen?” This was not an ideal time for Henry to learn about Trey’s relationship to Violet or his prophetic dreams.

  Before Trey could reply, Henry asked skeptically, “You dreamed about this?”

  Trey nodded, keeping his eyes fixed on the bridge ahead. “The bridge is covered in ice, and a truck hasn’t come through in a while to salt it.”

  “Ice,” I repeated. Of course it was ice. Black ice, difficult to see on pavement at night.

  “If we try to drive across it, we’re going to slide in the middle and spin out toward one of the edges.”

  “Will we fall over the edge?” I asked Trey.

  “Don’t know,” Trey admitted. “But I don’t see any value in trying to cross this bridge to make it to Traverse City before the new moon if we’re going to die in the process. There might not be anything we can do to save those people, anyway. And if we die, then Violet can keep doing her thing.”

  Henry sounded exasperated. “You guys really think we should change our entire plan and risk both Mischa and Tracy dying—and who knows how many more people—because of a bad dream?”

  This was a serious matter, and because Henry didn’t know that Trey had dreamed about Olivia’s death right before it happened—plus I didn’t completely trust that Trey wasn’t intentionally trying to delay us from arriving at Mt. Farthington in time to stop Violet—I was stuck in the middle. My scalp was tingling like wild, but I was reluctant to explain what that meant to Henry. “I’m going to ask the keys, you guys. We can’t leave this to chance.”

  Before I even had a chance to dangle the keys from my finger, Trey unbuckled his seat belt and got out of the truck. He slammed the door behind him and started walking despite the fact that it was freezing outside and he wasn’t wearing a scarf or hat.

  Henry reacted by rolling his eyes and grumbling, “Great.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” I said and slid over to the passenger-side door to follow Trey.

  “Yeah, please do. I don’t feel good about leaving anyone on a bridge at night when it’s not even twenty degrees outside.” He muttered something more under his breath that I didn’t catch all of, but was something along the lines of “even if he watched my sister die.”

  Trey was walking briskly back toward the tollbooth operator’s station, and I trotted to catch up with him. “Hey! Wait up!”

  When he turned around to face me, he looked upset enough to punch a wall. “I’m not going over that bridge,” he told me, pointing ahead toward the truck and the direction in which it had been headed. “If we end up in the water, we’ll be dead within seconds.”

  I placed my hands on his shoulders gently. “Okay, okay. I get it. But let’s talk this through. Maybe the dream you had was intended just to intimidate us out of going to Michigan.”

  “I don’t think so.” Trey shook his head. “It was pretty vivid. I don’t want you to drive over that bridge either. They’re going to try to stop us because we’re getting closer.”

  I was terrified of crossing the bridge, but my teeth were chattering, and I was growing more anxious by the minute about getting to Mt. Farthington in time to prevent whatever big catastrophe Violet had in store for her classmates. “We don’t have an option, Trey. This is literally the only way to get from here to ski lodge. If Violet’s spirits are the ones that supply your dreams, then they must know that we’ll never make it to Mt. Farthington in time.”

  Trey stared me down. He looked as if I’d slapped him. “So you don’t believe me.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at the truck. Exhaust continued to pour from its tailpipe as Henry waited for us. “I believe you! But…” This was the worst possible time to bring up the diary and the spell. However, it had also become crucial that I ask Trey whether or not he knew about it so that I could determine if he was trying to prevent us from reaching Mt. Farthington. “Look. The morning your parents drove you back to Northern Reserve, I went in your basement and found your mom’s diary.”

  I couldn’t remember a time before when Trey had ever been angry with me, but now he was furious. His eyes narrowed, and his forehead wrinkled. “Are you serious? You went in my house and searched through my mom’s stuff? I already told you what I found down there.”

  My eyes were filling with tears because there was no rewinding what I’d done or the fact that I’d confessed to him. “I’m sorry! But I had to—you don’t know what it’s like when I hear these voices telling me what I need to do. I thought there was something in that diary I needed to see, and there was.”

  Trey put his hands on his hips and glared at me. “What? What about my mom’s pathetic affair with her college professor was so important that you needed to see it?”

  “The spell,” I managed to choke out. “The spell she cast.”

  He glared at me for a few seconds before shaking his head in denial. “What spell? What are you talking about?”

  If he was faking ignorance, he was doing a convincing job of it.
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  “There was a folded piece of paper toward the back with these, like, instructions about planting something to get revenge. And it said that the revenge would grow with each cycle of the moon,” I told him. “Did you see it when you went through her diary?”

  “I didn’t see any spell. And that doesn’t seem like something my mom would do.”

  “I know, but it was there! Tucked in between some of the last pages. I swear. I took a picture, but it’s on my phone,” I explained.

  Although he was listening, I could tell he didn’t want to believe what I was telling him. Behind me, I heard a car door open and close. Henry had gotten out of the truck and was walking toward us. Desperate to convince Trey to get back in the truck with us before he and Henry got into an argument, I continued, “That’s why I think you absolutely have to be with us when we play the game again. I think Violet having to make all these sacrifices might be connected to whatever spell your mom put on her dad. And”—I paused as Henry joined us—“I think Violet’s spirits may have manipulated your dreams, because that’s one of the easiest ways they have of trying to convince you not to come with us.”

  Henry interjected, “Look, guys. We’re down to less than a quarter tank of gas. I can’t keep running the engine or we’re gonna need a tow. So what’s it gonna be?”

  I looked at Trey with pleading eyes. “Please, Trey. We can ask the pendulum anything you want if it’ll make you feel safer.”

  He looked down at his feet dismissively as if the notion of allowing our fate to be determined by the pendulum was absurd, and for a second I was sure he was just going to tell me that he was taking off—whether it be back to Northern Reserve or Willow or wherever fortune carried him. But then he said, “Fine. Ask it if you believe I intentionally played a part in killing Olivia.”

  His request stunned me. At first I wondered if he wanted me to ask that of the pendulum as part of the weird adversarial thing he had going on with Henry. But then he added, “Go ahead. Ask it. I need to know whether or not you believe me.” He wasn’t joking around. He sensed my apprehension about what he’d been doing in Green Bay the night of the accident and having proof of my belief in his innocence was more important to him than I’d realized.

  Hyperaware of Henry’s presence, I didn’t want to ask the pendulum anything that might result in either him or I having a reason to blame Trey for what had happened to Olivia. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t think it can tell you what I believe.”

  My reluctance just served to wind Trey up more. “Right,” he snapped at me. “Look, I know you think I’m holding out on you. Ever since you figured out who my dad is, you’ve been suspicious about me. I get it, I really do, but I don’t know what more I can say or do to convince you that I don’t have anything to do with the Simmons family. I’m not working with Violet!”

  Henry looked from Trey over to me in confusion. “Who’s his father? What are you guys talking about?” Then, inferring the obvious truth from the expressions Trey and I were trading, he balled his fists and raised his voice. “Wait—are you kidding? All this time—you didn’t tell me?”

  This was what I’d been dreading.

  Henry charged forward and shoved Trey by the shoulders, knocking him backward. “What the hell, man! I knew it! I knew it was weird that Olivia was in that car with you that night.”

  Trying to prevent either one of them from taking a swing, I stepped in between them. “Henry, hold on. There’s more you don’t—”

  But Henry was completely enraged. He stepped around me to shove Trey again. “She wasn’t even friends with you. My parents wanted to have the cops question you, you know that? They wanted to know how she’d ended up taking a ride from some weirdo from school who she barely knew.”

  “Henry!”

  “But I talked them out of it because it seemed like it had to be an accident. Right? Who could plan a murder around a hailstorm and make it look like a freak accident?” Henry and Trey were circling each other, both cocking their heads as if gearing up to throw a punch.

  “You’re wrong,” Trey fired back.

  “You knew all along what was supposed to happen to Olivia that night, didn’t you? You went out there to make sure Violet’s little story came true.”

  Henry had corralled Trey over to the guardrail, and I hurried toward them with my arms extended in an attempt to maintain my balance on the ice. He had grabbed Trey by the collar of his winter jacket, as if there were anywhere else for Trey to go to evade him. Trey’s back was pressed against the guardrail, and icy water splashed mere feet behind him. “You guys, stop! Stop it now!” I shouted.

  It was as if Henry didn’t even hear me.

  Trey answered, “I would never have hurt your sister, okay? You’re right—we weren’t friends. But that doesn’t mean I was trying to kill her!”

  The word “kill” was what finally drove Henry to raise a fist. He punched Trey square in the jaw with a right hook, and I screamed.

  The impact of the blow sent Trey stumbling to the side, but fortunately it didn’t knock him over the guardrail into the water. “Just stop!” I shouted again, this time throwing my full weight at Henry to prevent him from striking Trey a second time. “This is what they want, don’t you get it? They want us to fight so that we never make it to Michigan.”

  Henry looked over at me as if hearing my voice for the first time since getting mad at Trey. His chest heaved as he breathed heavily, trying to calm himself down. Trey staggered a few more feet away while rubbing his jaw, wanting to be safely out of striking distance if Henry moved in for another punch.

  “Ask that thing,” Henry said hoarsely. “Ask it if we can trust him.”

  My blood ran cold. I was afraid of what the pendulum would reveal since I wanted to believe Trey’s explanation about his dream, but I wasn’t completely certain that I did. Desperately desiring someone else to be telling the truth wasn’t the same thing as being positive that they were. “Is that okay with you, Trey?” I asked, not wanting him to think I was siding with Henry if I just followed a request.

  Trey told me, “Ask it whatever you want.”

  Hating all of this, I took the pendulum out of my coat pocket, dangled it from my fingers so that both Trey and Henry could see that I wasn’t influencing its movement with wrist gestures, and first said, “Pendulum, show me what yes looks like.”

  It swung back and forth.

  “Now show us what no looks like.” Side to side, just as I was expecting.

  “Pendulum.” My voice was shaking. The entire fate of our trip to Mt. Farthington as well as my relationship with Trey depended on how it responded. “Pendulum, did Trey drive out to Green Bay the night of Olivia’s death with the intention of saving her?”

  The keys hanging from the lanyard remained immobile for a few seconds, making me suspect that the pendulum was confused about what I was asking. I held my breath, paralyzed with fear about what it might do next. The three of us watched it in tense silence until it started moving on its own, wobbling in a lackadaisical circle before picking up speed and resuming its linear motion, back and forth. A solid yes.

  “That’s a yes,” I informed Trey and Henry. Despite the frigid temperature and arctic wind chill, I felt the warmth of relief flooding from my heart down to my fingertips and toes. Trey had told me the truth. He’d been honest with me all along.

  I looked from Trey to Henry to make sure they were both watching. “Okay?” I asked. “It’s telling us that Trey is innocent, and it’s never lied before.” Henry’s mouth tightened, and he pushed his fists deeply into his coat pockets, still too fired up to apologize.

  While the three of us were standing there with the pendulum swinging through the night air, I asked, “Pendulum, if we drive across this bridge right now, will we make it to the other side safely?”

  It significantly slowed down its motion as if it was less certain about our chances than it was about Trey’s innocence, but it continued moving back and forth, b
ack and forth. “It says we’ll be okay,” I reiterated its message for the guys.

  “We should get going,” Henry said. He was watching the tollbooth operator, who had a phone pressed to her ear as she watched us as if she was discussing the three crazy kids brawling outside on the bridge in the freezing cold. “We’ve got an audience.”

  “Wait,” I said, stopping them both from walking back to the truck. There was one more thing I needed to ask the pendulum to confirm, because it was just my hunch, but something that I thought the boys needed to know. “Pendulum, do all three of us need to be present when we play the game with Violet to break the curse?”

  The pendulum slowed its speed and then picked back up again. Whether it was because I knew I’d need help from at least two other participants in the game to lift Violet as I predicted her death, or because Trey’s biological connection to Violet and Henry’s spiritual connection to Olivia would be critical, I didn’t know. But the pendulum reiterated my assumption. They would both have to be there in order for us to be successful.

  “This can’t happen again. Do you guys understand? The only chance we have of breaking this curse is if we work together. I can’t do it by myself. I need both of you.”

  We climbed back into the truck and Henry started its engine. Driving at a safe speed of forty miles an hour over the entire five-mile length of the bridge, we arrived safely on the Lower Peninsula. Even though we’d made it across the bridge without incident, every muscle in my body remained tense. We were getting closer to Violet, and I was sure that the boys’ fight on the bridge was nothing compared to what else was in store for us.

  CHAPTER 18

  WE STOPPED AT THE FIRST motel we came across outside Traverse City, and Henry went inside alone to pay for a room. Trey interrupted the uncomfortable pressure in the car first. “I’m sorry if I gave you a reason to feel like you couldn’t trust me.”

  “You didn’t,” I assured him. “I’ve just been suspicious of everyone and everything for the last two months. I don’t even trust things happening in my own head. All I want is for this to be over.”