by Aarsen, Zoe
Or, I might have died alongside her.
Mom had actually cooked a real dinner: a turkey meatloaf and baked sweet potatoes, a menu that consisted of foods from Rhonda’s recommended list for me, showing that my mom cared more about the impact of Olivia’s death on me than she had let on earlier in the day. We ate in silence, and she told me that Dad had called before I’d gotten home.
“Your dad’s worried about you,” Mom told me. “If you want to talk to a professional, he can make arrangements for you to see one of his old colleagues in Sheboygan.”
I didn’t look up. I continued stabbing at my turkey meatloaf with my fork. My feelings about Olivia’s death were too complicated to share with a psychiatrist. I was upset about her loss, of course. But I also was being honest enough with myself to admit that after only three weeks of close friendship, I didn’t really have the right to be completely devastated by her death. I didn’t know Olivia all that well, not at all, and now I never would. My predominant feelings were of surprise, and of overwhelming indirect responsibility. My throat and chest felt raw from crying because of this sense of guilt, not because I couldn’t bear the thought of going on with my life without Olivia in it. A professional psychiatrist couldn’t possibly have understood how I felt, convinced that my participation in a stupid party game had led to my friend’s death.
And worse: we’d all played the game. Hannah had predicted all of our deaths.
Well, except mine.
For the first chilling time I wondered in terror… would Candace or Mischa be next?
“I’m fine,” I told my mom before clearing my plate.
Before bed, and after I had changed into pajamas, Moxie scratched at my closed bedroom door to let me know that she wanted to run around the back yard one more time. I put on my slippers and my denim jacket, and followed her to the kitchen. When I slid open the door to our small deck, I was startled to see Trey sitting on the steps, his back to me. He had changed out of his suit and was wearing his army coat and jeans again. He only budged when Moxie rushed toward him and attacked him with dog kisses, her tail wagging. His right hand moved up to her thick fur coat to pet her, and he turned to permit her to lick his face. He kept his left arm, still in its blue brace, pinned to his side.
Moxie’s attention was caught by fluttering leaves at the far corner of the yard, and she trotted off as quickly as she could on her sore limbs to investigate. I hesitated for a moment before walking across the deck and sitting down on the steps next to Trey, leaving as many inches between us as the width of the steps would allow. The moon was full, filling the yard with pale light as clouds slowly moved past it in what looked like nomadic caravans. There was simply nothing to say, I knew, despite the fact that my brain kept testing out greetings in my head, all of which I deemed unworthy. Even just simply saying are you okay felt like it would come out wrong. Of course he wasn’t okay; that much was obvious. I didn’t dare look at him, not even out of the corner of my eye, because I knew if I even got the slightest glimpse of his face I would be unable to stop staring at his swollen, black eye. Mischa had said that Trey hadn’t been able to speak at the hospital on Friday night. It was entirely possible that he wasn’t speaking yet at all.
After a few minutes of silence, without saying a word, he suddenly reached for my left hand with his right hand, and I snapped to attention at the touch of his moist skin against mine. We sat there quietly with my hand in his in the cool night air, our hands locked between us on the wooden step, for longer than I could estimate. I could feel my heart beating against my own rib cage and I struggled to keep my left hand still. It baffled me why Trey Emory, who I had known my whole life, was suddenly having such an effect on me. I should have been concerned about Evan and his state of grief, but any kind of future between me and Evan was now completely up in the air.
“I’m sorry you missed the Homecoming dance,” Trey said finally.
Of all the things for him to have said in that moment, the last thing I was expecting was an apology from him about the cancellation of the dance. The dance, and all of my romantic expectations for it, seemed like part of a different life, one I could barely remember.
“I don’t care about the Homecoming dance, Trey,” I said truthfully. There were suddenly so many more things on the horizon that were more urgent than slow dancing with a guy I barely knew. Like trying to figure out if Hannah actually murdered Olivia in some roundabout way.
“Yeah, but you did care. Before Friday, you cared,” Trey said slowly, stating what he assumed to be a fact rather than phrasing his statement as an accusation.
I felt an obligation rising. I felt like I had no choice but to disclose to him what we’d done at Olivia’s birthday party, how we had summoned these events, and how Mischa and I were trying to make sense of them, how they were driving Candace mad. Now he was a part of it all, and I had to wonder if Hannah had seen Trey in her vision of Olivia’s death. But I couldn’t be sure of Trey’s state of mind, whether he’d be open to hearing my paranormal mumbo jumbo so soon after the horror of the accident.
“Nothing before Friday matters,” I said finally, deciding not to tell him anything about Hannah’s game just yet.
He turned toward me, and only when I felt his gaze on me did I dare turn to the left to examine him. His right eye was swollen nearly shut and the bruising around it was an angry shade of purple. I hadn’t noticed at Gundarsson’s, but he also had stitches sewn in black thread, a single-file line of X’s, along his right cheekbone, and swelling along his lower lip. His eyes were blue, a dazzling aquamarine blue, I made note, recalling how I had neglected to check during our last late night encounter.
“That’s not true. A lot of things happened before Friday night that matter.”
I didn’t respond. I was so taken aback by how seriously he had been hurt in the car crash, I couldn’t say a word. It was a miracle he hadn’t also been killed instantly. He never could have known when he’d offered Olivia a ride what awaited him on the highway, but I’d known. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “That you got messed up in all of this.”
His lips parted in question for a second, but I was already standing, my hand sliding out of his. “Moxie, come on, girl,” I called, and the dog looked up at me from across the yard and began her lop-sided hobble back to the deck. Even as I stood there, awkwardly waiting for my dog, I wondered if I had just blown a shot at having him kiss me, my first real kiss with a boy I really liked. But Trey wasn’t supposed to be the boy who kissed me my junior year. It was supposed to be Evan at the Homecoming dance, Evan about whom I would daydream.
None of this was supposed to be happening.
“Where have you been?”
In the locker room on Tuesday morning, Mischa and I found Hannah in the farthest corner, changing into her uniform. Her complexion was pale and her eyes looked sunken, as if she had suffered through the flu all weekend. When she saw us approaching her, her expression remained unchanged, and she looked away immediately, securing her combination lock on her locker. She sat down on a nearby bench to lace up her running shoes.
“Did you hear me? I’ve been texting you all weekend, Hannah. What is going on?”
Mischa put her hands on her hips and stood over Hannah, fuming. For someone of such small stature, Mischa exuded a terrifying amount of power.
Other girls around us, also changing for gym class, looked over their shoulders at us. The entire high school was on edge that day. It was like the weekend of unexpected tragedy had pushed us all hard from behind—like a shove off a plane to force someone to reluctantly begin skydiving—right into a Tuesday schedule. Olivia’s death had been mentioned in the announcements during Homeroom, inspiring half of the student body to spontaneously burst into tears before the day had even really begun. There were rumors going around about Homecoming being rescheduled for the weekend, and even more rumors about it being cancelled completely. I hadn’t seen Pete or Trey yet that morning, and the notion of stepping into the cafeteria a
t lunch time and having to see either of them was giving me a sickly stomachache.
When Hannah looked up at us, both laces tied, her eyes were glassy with tears and she was grimacing, kind of like the unfulfilled urge to sob was causing her physical pain.
“I’m sorry, but what did you want me to do? I knew as soon as I heard about Olivia that you guys were going to be mad at me,” Hannah said.
“We’re not at mad at you!” Mischa yelled, certainly sounding mad. Now other girls were staring as they changed. We were creating a locker room spectacle. “But you have some explaining to do, Hannah, and I think you know why.”
I stood behind Mischa with my arms crossed over my chest. Confrontation really wasn’t my style, and I was a little terrified to accuse Hannah of anything without having a better sense of exactly how much she had manipulated events leading up to the crash that took Olivia’s life. I felt the tiniest little seed of an idea, of acting as sort of a spy to get closer to Hannah, begin to grow in my head. Mischa was more than happy to deliver all of the accusations, so I let her, and lingered behind her like a shadow.
“Let’s go, ladies! I want to see you out on that track! I want ten laps from each and every one of you.” Coach Stirling’s booming voice entered the locker room, and seconds later she appeared around the corner of a row of blue lockers in her sweat suit, her whistle around her neck on a lanyard cord. “Portnoy! Brady! Suit up. Let’s go.”
Hannah glared at both of us, and while Coach Stirling was still present to give her cover, she darted out the locker room doors and onto the track.
Mischa set her tote bag down on the bench and pulled out her gym suit. “She knows something,” she said, her eyes squinted. “I can tell that girl knows more than she’s willing to admit.”
On the track, it was a perfect September day, the air scented with dry leaves and the sun still warm on my bare arms and legs as Mischa and I broke into a run to catch up to Hannah, who was already at least one lap ahead of us.
“You can’t run forever, Hannah,” Mischa warned her from behind.
Hannah slowed to a jog and then a walk to allow us to fall into step with her. She looked straight ahead, avoiding eye contact with us, and pulled her ear buds out of her ears, letting them swing on long white cords to her knees.
“Why weren’t you answering your phone all weekend?” Mischa demanded.
“What would you have wanted me to say?” Hannah said, her voice high-pitched and wild. “I didn’t know all those things were going to happen. It was a total coincidence but as soon as I heard about it, I knew you guys were going to think I had something to do with it.”
“Uh, yeah, duh,” I said as gently as possible, not wanting to upset her more. “Hannah, how could we not? You predicted every detail of it.”
“I didn’t predict it,” Hannah insisted.
“Well, then what would you call it?” Mischa asked. “You knew what was going to happen, how it was going to happen right down to the details of what was going to happen to Olivia’s body, where it was going to happen, and exactly when it was going to happen. We’re not paranoid, Hannah. That’s too many coincidences to be believed.”
“Yeah, okay,” Hannah agreed sarcastically. Sarcasm was new from her. Her tone was so surprisingly biting, it didn’t even sound like her. Up until that point of our acquaintance with Hannah, she had been shy and eager to please. “I saw into the future at Olivia’s birthday party and predicted this horrible accident right down to every last detail. Listen to yourself, Mischa. You sound crazy.”
Mischa was quiet for a moment.
“I mean, if I really could see the future, I’d be working for the CIA to prevent terrorist attacks. And I’d play the lottery every night, and live in a castle with all my winnings. I mean, come on,” Hannah reasoned, gaining confidence in her voice. “Am I right, McKenna?”
I winced. She was right, it was ludicrous of us to suggest that she had magical powers. But at the same time, I felt certain that there was something not quite right about Hannah. She had told me, and only me, that she had weird visions about people. Why had she told me that? Maybe she wasn’t sure if I’d told the other girls about that conversation we’d had on the track. But then, I hadn’t. Why hadn’t I told them? Somehow, Hannah must have known that by confiding in me about her abilities—in the specific context of how it related to her knowledge of my sister’s death—that I wouldn’t tell the others. It made me very uncomfortable that she was trying to align with me, relying on me to prove her point, but it might have given me an advantage over Mischa in figuring out what really happened to Olivia.
“I guess,” I admitted quietly. “But Hannah, you have to admit this is all really weird.”
“Yes, it’s weird,” Hannah agreed. “Just try to understand how I feel. Olivia was my friend, too.”
Hannah inserted her ear buds again and ran off ahead of us on the track.
CHAPTER 7
After school, I saw Mr. Dean having a conversation with Hannah in the hallway as I collected my books. With Olivia gone and Candace in the hospital, I was reduced back down to my sophomore routine of walking home alone. Hannah had a solemn look on her face, and was nodding slowly, listening to every word Mr. Dean told her. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was talking to her about Student Government. In all of the chaos of the weekend, I hadn’t bothered making my campaign posters or lugging them with me to school. The election had been postponed because of Olivia’s unexpected death, but only by two weeks. Voting had been rescheduled for the following Monday and Tuesday, so I had little choice but to get my posters in order once I got home that afternoon.
The following morning, I walked to school early, hoping with every step of the two-mile walk that no one from school, particularly Trey (who I hadn’t seen at all on Tuesday), would drive past and see me carrying my giant rolled poster boards. At school, I hung my posters with little loops of masking tape by myself, finding myself hanging my posters always a few inches from those belonging to Michael Walton, which I guessed was sort of a subconscious strategy. By the time I got back up to the hallway where my locker was located, kids were already starting to stream in through the hallways, and I noticed something incredible at the far end of the hall.
Hannah was hanging up a poster above the drinking fountain, and Tracy Hartford seemed to be holding a few more pieces of poster board, assisting her.
Unable to control my curiosity, I walked toward them as if in a trance. Sure enough, the poster that Hannah was hanging up announced that she was running for Class President. The poster featured a picture of her smiling face, with HANNAH SIMMONS FOR JUNIOR CLASS PRESIDENT neatly written in block letters drawn in red felt marker ink, colored in carefully. It was somehow far more stylish, even though simplistic, than my own posters, on which I had tried to obscure my lack of artistic inspiration with tons of glitter.
“Um, what’s going on?” I asked as Hannah smoothed the poster against the wall with her palm to flatten it there.
“Oh, hi, McKenna. Mr. Dean asked me yesterday if I would consider running for Class President since the election is so close at hand,” Hannah said innocently.
“She’d be a natural,” Tracy said, smiling at Hannah, as if anyone had asked her for her opinion.
“Really,” I said, sure that I wasn’t doing a good job of hiding the doubt in my voice.
“Well, I was Class Secretary at my old school,” Hannah said, tucking her hair back behind one ear. This was the first time I’d heard about Hannah’s involvement with Student Government at her old school in Illinois. “And I mean, if Tracy’s a shoe-in for Class Secretary here, it would be dumb for me to run against her. So if she’s Secretary and you’re Treasurer, we could have so much fun if I win.”
“Is anyone else running?” I asked her rather impolitely. I was just so surprised that Olivia hadn’t even been dead a whole week, and already Hannah was running for her office. It was a cold, cold move, but I could see that Hannah was already trying to innocentl
y spin her ruthless ambition into a charitable service for the rest of her classmates.
Hannah and Tracy exchanged uncomfortable looks and Tracy rolled her eyes. “Well, of course Michael Walton wants to run for Class President, but he was nominated for Vice President, and it’s too late to change the nomination.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. Mr. Dean was the only teacher on staff who cared much about the Student Government, so he could have easily repealed any of the rules if it suited his fancy. “How did you convince him to let you run? You already missed the nomination period.”
I’d had to collect five signatures to be allowed to run, which I’d collected from Candace, Isaac, Pete, Mischa, and Matt at lunch time on the Friday before the meeting. There had to be a reason why so many loopholes were being created for Hannah.