by Zoe Aarsen
“Do you want to be alone?” Trey asked me.
I thought about it for a minute, and decided that I actually really did not want to be alone in my yard with a pile of dirt. I also did not want to be alone in my house, listening to my mom’s sobs through the wall that separated our bedrooms. “No,” I replied.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” he asked, looking kind of uncomfortable, shoving his free hand into the pocket of his jeans.
I agreed to go for a walk, and we put our shovels back in our respective garages. Not wanting to venture back into the house too far, I grabbed one of my mom’s unfashionable heavy cardigans from a hook on the wall just inside our side door, and met Trey back on my front lawn a few minutes later.
Without exchanging words, we took a left at the end of Martha Road and began walking toward one of our town’s small shopping centers. It was one of the few paths in town from my house that could be traveled entirely on sidewalk, as so many sidewalks within town limits withered off into ditches along rural highways, making it kind of difficult to take a long walk without having to worry about being mowed down by a speeding car. Dry, sweet-smelling leaves crunched beneath our feet, and the chirping of summer crickets was noticeably absent.
“So, I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Trey began once we were a few blocks away from home. “Monday night in your yard you apologized that I had been mixed up in all this. What did you mean by that?”
Trey’s words pulled me out of my fog over Moxie’s death, and I tried to remember back to exactly what I had said when we were on my deck. Had I given him any reason to think that Olivia’s death was related to anything else?
“I just meant, you know, that you were involved in the crash, that’s all,” I tried to explain, not especially wanting to think about Violet at such a sensitive time. But then I got to thinking: Violet had made mention of Moxie. She knew I had a dog. Was it crazy to think that Violet had played a part in Moxie’s death? Other than her ongoing problems with arthritis, the dog really hadn’t given any outward signs of health problems in recent weeks. The simple notion of Violet having done anything to bring on Moxie’s death made me so angry I broke out into a light sweat despite the cool night.
“That’s not what it sounded like when you said it,” Trey insisted after a moment. “It sounded like you knew something about the crash. And it freaked me out, you know? Because right before that truck hit us, Olivia was going nuts in my car. She kept saying, It’s just like the story. You have to pull over. We’re going to get hit. Do you know what she was talking about?”
I remained silent, not sure if it was the right time to confess to him everything from Olivia’s party. It hadn’t even been a week since he’d survived the accident, so it was crazy to think he was emotionally ready to hear all the details of Violet’s story.
He continued, “Because I really need to know. It’s been driving me crazy, McKenna. It’s all I can think about. What was she talking about? What story? How did she know that truck was going to hit us? She was so certain that we were going to be hit head-on that I was afraid she was going to open the passenger-side door and jump out of the car. She wanted me to pull over, but I couldn’t see well enough to pull over because the hail was coming down so hard. So she grabbed the wheel, and then everything happened so fast.”
We were on a long stretch of wooded road that preceded an intersection where a handful of stores were located, and very few cars were driving past us. It was almost dark out, and the few streetlights that lined the road were coming on. Somehow, the onset of night made it more difficult to tell Trey the truth. Talking about any of what we’d done after dark seemed like an invitation for more terrible things to occur. Nothing was safe in the dark. “Do you have any idea what she was talking about?” he asked again.
I took a deep breath, knowing there was no way to reverse things if Trey decided I was a total nutcase after I shared the events of Olivia’s party with him. “Okay, all of this is going to sound completely insane. I will admit that. But there’s something just so weird about it that it has to fit together somehow.” I dared to look up at him to see if he seemed skeptical yet. He appeared eager to hear more, so I continued. “At Olivia’s birthday party two weeks ago, we were up late and we decided to play a game.”
“Just you and Olivia?” Trey interrupted.
“No, it was me, Olivia, Candace, Mischa, and Violet, that new girl at school from Illinois. Violet suggested that we play this game called Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board. It’s a dumb game, something that kids in, like, middle school play. But we were bored, so we said okay. The whole thing with this game is that one person is the storyteller and makes up this elaborate tale about how one of the other players is going to die. Then, at the end of the story, the other girls playing the game chant and raise the girl whose story was just told up with their fingertips.”
“What do you mean, with fingertips?” Trey asked.
“Exactly that,” I said. “Okay, I forgot to say that while the storyteller is telling the story, the girl who’s the subject of the story is lying down on the floor. And at the end of the story, if the game works right, she’s weightless. It’s like a spell has been cast on everyone playing the game, and that girl can be lifted effortlessly until someone sneezes or laughs or something to break the spell.”
“Okay, that sounds like some messed-up kind of game,” Trey said. “I’ve never heard of a game like that.”
“Yeah, well,” I agreed reluctantly, “a lot of people say it’s a game that invokes evil spirits, but that’s just silly. My father says it’s a form of group hypnosis. Everyone playing the game becomes hypnotized by the chanting. You can do a lot of seemingly impossible things when you’re hypnotized, you know.”
“So you guys played this weird game and someone predicted Olivia’s death?” Trey asked.
I stumbled over a crack in the sidewalk in the dark, and he grabbed me by the elbow to steady me before I fell. “Yeah. But it was so, so much more than just predicting her death, Trey. Violet was the storyteller, and . . . I can’t even explain it. She just told the story so convincingly. Right down to minor details. She knew all of it, about Olivia going to the mall to buy shoes, about it happening the night before the dance. She even knew that someone was going to offer Olivia a ride home in the parking lot after her car refused to start.”
I saw Trey shiver beneath his army coat, and he looked ahead toward the strip mall, stone-faced. My heart was racing as I waited for his reply. I hadn’t wanted to sensationalize the story, or lead him to believe that we’d willingly played some kind of scary paranormal game, but I’d been unable to control my blabbing and done exactly that which I’d tried to avoid.
“Did she predict me? Did she know it was going to be me driving Olivia home?”
I’d been wondering that, myself.
“She didn’t say anything about you, Trey,” I told him honestly. “But that doesn’t mean Violet didn’t know. She just didn’t mention that part.” I paused and carefully chose my words before asking the question that had been troubling me since I’d learned he had been the driver of the car involved in Olivia’s accident. “What were you doing out in Green Bay the night of the accident?”
Trey looked at me with blank eyes, completely stumped. “I don’t know. I must have gone out there to buy something, right? But I don’t remember what. The emergency room doctors told me I might have some issues with short-term memory loss, but that’s the only thing I’m having a hard time remembering. I really have no idea why I drove all the way out there after school on Friday.”
Although he hadn’t answered my question, it seemed reasonable enough that he would have forgotten his reason for going to the mall, considering the physical and emotional trauma he’d been through just a few days earlier. I let it go.
We reached the shopping center and walked across the parking lot slowly as Trey led the way toward Rudy’s Ice Cream Shop, where a whole bunch of kids who appeared to be in around t
he fourth grade were spilling out of a minivan in their soccer uniforms.
“Have you guys told anyone about this? Like, parents?” Trey asked.
“Oh my God, no,” I said. “I mean, Candace probably has, but she’s in a psychiatric hospital. We would sound like idiots. Or lunatics. No one would believe us. Mischa and I confronted Violet, and she acted like the whole thing was in our heads. Maybe . . . maybe it is.”
Trey stopped and lingered in front of the door to the ice cream store. “Do you want any ice cream?”
I did, but refused. “Nah. I feel gross talking about all this stuff.”
Trey raised an eyebrow at me, like he couldn’t believe I was turning down ice cream. “Well, what if I get a cone and you just have a lick?”
We ventured inside and waited in line behind all the rowdy kids on the soccer team. Trey ordered a double-scoop chocolate cone with rainbow sprinkles.
“I would never have figured you for a rainbow kind of guy,” I teased him.
He replied with a smile, “I’m full of surprises.”
Back outside in the parking lot, he handed the cone to me before he even sampled it. “The first lick is yours.”
I licked the tiniest bit of sprinkles off the top scoop, and savored the sweetness on my tongue. The last time I’d eaten ice cream had been at Olivia’s birthday party.
As I handed the cone back to Trey, I noticed a blue pickup truck driving past the shopping center. Its driver was Henry Richmond. My heart twisted in my chest. I hadn’t said much to Henry at the wake because he’d been shadowing his mother closely and politely thanking guests for coming. I felt awful for not having made more of an effort to act kinder toward him that day, especially since I’d lost a sister too. But for that reason I knew that his grief was probably so enormous that words were not going to offer much consolation. We’d texted back and forth a few times, but I was self-conscious about it, unsure of how the cancellation of the Fall Fling impacted our somewhat new friendship.
Trey had noticed Henry driving by too.
“Is that guy your boyfriend or something?” Trey asked.
“No, not even,” I replied, not wanting Trey to have any idea just how much I’d liked Henry just as recently as a few days earlier. “He had asked me to the dance because he knew I was friends with his sister, and I said yes because I wanted to go to the Fall Fling. That’s all.”
“Last year that guy used to call me a freak in the cafeteria. This year, I’m the person who hears his sister’s dying words. High school is just . . .” Trey trailed off as if he’d forgotten the rest of what he wanted to say.
I had forgotten that Henry was the kind of guy who had picked on less-popular kids when he was still in school with us, which hadn’t been that long ago. The realization made me feel protective of Trey, who I was discovering to be a lot kinder and more sensitive than I ever thought a boy my own age could be. It made me ashamed that anyone ever teased him at school, never mind that a year ago, I was teased from time to time too.
“So, you like him,” Trey repeated, seeking some kind of confirmation from me.
“Used to like him,” I said.
“When did it become past tense?” Trey teased.
I was pretty sure I knew what he was getting at, and I was eager to know if he was interested in me or if I’d just been imagining the closeness between us over the past week. “Recently,” I said. “Probably right around the night those kittens were born, he lost his appeal.” This was completely true. Despite everything that had happened because of the game at Olivia’s party, Trey had been on my mind a lot, and not just because of my mom’s pesky nagging.
Trey stopped walking and reached for my right hand. He laced his fingers through mine, and a car drove past us as he looked into my eyes. I knew then what he was about to do, and I wished I could slow down time because this was a moment I wanted to remember forever in perfect detail. He leaned forward and awkwardly kissed me. At first our lips did all the wrong things, our noses bumped and teeth clashed. I guess that’s how first kisses between people usually go if neither person really knows what to do. But then after a few seconds, everything fell into place and Trey pulled me closer.
“Glad we finally got that out of the way,” he said with a shy smile after we both took a step back.
“Really? What was it in the way of?” I teased.
“Everything,” he replied perfectly, making my heart soar.
“So, let me ask you this,” Trey said as we continued our walk back home, my hand in his. “When you guys were playing this game, did Violet tell the story of anyone else’s death? Did she predict yours?”
I felt the darkness around us swell, and all the comfort and joy I had just experienced a moment ago, when Trey had kissed me, vanished. How could I have forgotten so quickly that death was right around the corner? It could claim me, or Trey, at any moment. “She predicted everyone’s,” I nearly whispered. “Except mine. She couldn’t imagine any kind of a death for me, except . . .”
Trey looked at me with intense interest.
I continued, “She said she just saw fire. She saw Jennie’s death. Not mine.”
We walked for a block in silence as Trey thought about this. For the first time I wondered if my own death was imminent. Not even when Jennie had died had I so strongly sensed my own fragile mortality. Everyone dies, everything dies, but never before that moment on the sidewalk with Trey had I ever really wondered when my own death would occur. What was it that Violet had done to invite so much tragedy to unfold in a matter of days? Was it intentional? Did she have some kind of secret desire to kill all of us who had befriended her?
“How well do you know this girl Violet?” Trey asked, as if reading my mind. “She sounds like a pretty crappy friend.”
* * *
I shared with Trey the details of the stories that Violet had told about how Candace and Mischa would die and confided in him about my plan to get closer to her in an attempt to figure out what exactly her deal was.
“This whole thing sounds really dangerous. It seems to me like this girl Violet needs to be banished back to the ninth circle of Hell more than she needs you as a friend,” he said.
“But she likes me. And I suspect she thinks maybe there’s something special about me because she wasn’t able to predict my death. I really believe that getting to know her better is the only chance I have at figuring out if the rest of our predictions are going to come true too,” I told him. The more I thought about my intention to get closer to Violet, the more I convinced myself I could be successful. And from what Trey had told me about Olivia grabbing the wheel of his car and forcing her own prediction to come true, it seemed urgent for me to figure this whole thing out before something bad happened to another one of us.
Trey volunteered to do some research into paranormal phenomena to see if there was an otherworldly explanation for Violet’s power. We traded phone numbers, which was funny since we’d known each other our whole lives but had never texted before. I returned home feeling as if I were on a mission, which dulled the pain of not hearing Moxie trotting down the hall to greet me at the door.
As I got ready for bed, I wondered if Violet felt the least bit guilty about what she’d done, or if she was already fast asleep, completely unbothered by how she’d crushed Olivia’s family. I envisioned Trey staggering away from the scene of the crash. And as I drifted off to sleep, I remembered Jennie waving to me through the flames in our front window as our house burned down. I had to do whatever it took to understand what Violet had done to Olivia. I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t.
* * *
In the morning, it was strange to not be awakened by the sound of Mom pouring food into Moxie’s bowl in the kitchen. When my alarm went off and I ventured out of my room, Mom’s door was still shut. On my way out of the house, I hurriedly put Moxie’s food and water bowls in a box in the garage so that my mom wouldn’t have to see them when she got up. Unexpectedly, Trey was sitting on our front sto
op, waiting for me. Without exchanging words, we embarked on the walk to school together.
Together, which felt right in every way.
I wouldn’t read the article in the Willow Gazette about Olivia’s wake and funeral until I got home. Beneath the headline A COMMUNITY MOURNS HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT, Willow High School junior Violet Simmons was quoted as saying, “No one can believe this has happened. Olivia Richmond was an inspiration to all of us and was one of my best friends.”
Anyone in town who read that article in its entirety would have thought that Olivia and Violet had been friends their whole lives.
CHAPTER 8
CANDACE RETURNED TO SCHOOL THE following Monday, sedated, a little thinner, and humorless. It was only after she changed so drastically that I realized how much I had liked her previously, when she was like an explosion of sunshine and noise. Her schedule had been rearranged by her mother the previous Friday. Mischa and I had seen Mrs. Lehrer sitting in the principal’s office with Mr. Bobek, the guidance counselor. Mischa told me that Candace’s mom had called her own mother asking more questions specifically about Violet, and had informed Mrs. Portnoy that she was going to have Candace switched out of all the classes she shared with the new girl in town. Only after a week of intense psychiatric care and sedation had Candace stopped rambling about Violet’s alleged evil powers and involvement with Olivia’s death.
Whatever it was that Candace’s mom had said to Mr. Bobek as justification for switching around Candace’s required classes, it had resulted in me, Mischa, and Violet being called into the principal’s office for a stern lecture. When an office runner arrived in my English classroom with a pink slip requesting my presence, I was genuinely surprised.
“Girls, I don’t know what your religious upbringings have been, and to be perfectly honest, it’s none of my business,” Principal Nylander told us as he leaned back, way back, in his swiveling desk chair. The three of us sat on the brown couch in his office. I was in the middle, as was fitting, it seemed, trying to maintain a safe distance of a few inches from Violet, who sat to my left. I could practically smell the fury emanating from Mischa, on my right. “But when I hear accusations of students at my school playing games involving evil spirits, or even alleging to involve evil spirits, I feel personally obligated to step in.”