Olivia's memorial service was held on Monday, and school was cancelled for the day so that everyone could attend. It was a somber occasion, almost unbearably long, as students, parents, and the Richmonds' extended family drifted in and out of Gundarsson's funeral home over the course of three hours. Mom insisted on accompanying me, even though I knew that hanging out in a funeral parlor was hardly how she would have preferred to spend her day off from teaching. The Richmonds, all tall and fair, gathered near the front of the large room, speaking in hushed voices, tapping the corners of their eyes with handkerchiefs. Olivia's casket, ornate and shiny, was closed. Next to it, a huge picture Olivia smiling in her volleyball uniform was placed on an easel, with a few of her baby pictures pinned on top of it in a sort of hastily assembled collage. I had heard rumors that Henry had been forced to identify his sister's body at the coroner's office because it had been so mangled that Mrs. Richmond had passed out at the sight of it. He had greeted me with a painful smile when I'd first arrived, but after a few minutes of strained conversation, he excused himself to retreat back to his family's territory near the casket and avoided even looking in my direction.
Over the course of the weekend, I had aggregated snippets of the story from various sources. The headline on the Saturday morning issue of the Willow Gazette had been Tragedy in Green Bay: Local Teen Killed in Collision. The three sparse paragraphs about the crash claimed that two local teens from Weeping Willow High School had been involved in a crash just outside Green Bay when an eighteen-wheeler truck had hit them head-on during the hailstorm. The driver of the car in which Olivia had been riding hadn't been named, but had allegedly stumbled away from the scene with minor injuries. A picture of what was left of the car had run alongside the article. It was unrecognizable as a vehicle; it looked more like a gnarly knot of scrap metal, and the expression on the face of the state trooper who had been photographed next to the wreckage indicated that he was thinking the same thing that I was thinking: how was it possible that someone had walked away alive from that kind of an accident? The newspaper claimed that the truck driver responsible was devastated; he hadn't even seen through the heavy hail that he had swerved out of his lane. Cheryl had called me on Saturday afternoon to share the rumor that Olivia's body had practically been cut in half from the force of the collision. The shoes she had just bought at the mall were found nearly thirty feet away from the car, off to the side of the rural highway, in the woods. Not far, Cheryl added, from Olivia's severed arm.
Of course I wondered who had been driving her, if perhaps she had run into someone from school at the mall and had decided to hitch a ride either to the game or back to town when her car refused to start. In none of the tearful conversations I'd had with friends who'd called to talk had the name of the driver been mentioned. It didn't seem like anyone knew with whom Olivia had spent her final moments.
At the back of the room, just inside the doors, I lurked in a corner, watching quietly as kids from school and teachers drifted in. No one knew quite what to say to Olivia's parents, quite how to stand, where to put their hands, where to rest their eyes. Everyone was hungry for more details, myself included, but it was absolutely out of the question to talk about the accident at the memorial. Soft classical music played throughout the afternoon, pumped in through the air vents along with chilly air. There were enormous floral arrangements on both sides of the casket; sent from the Lions Club, the Knights of Columbus, the PTA, the faculty union at the high school, and Olivia's dad's accounting firm. A hanging arrangement of pale pink bud roses and baby's breath draped over the casket's top, held together with silky cream-colored ribbon. It was probably not all that different from the corsage that Pete had planned to place on Olivia's wrist the night of the Homecoming dance, the dance that had been cancelled in light of Olivia's tragic death. It was a morbid thing to think; but if Olivia had been able to share her opinion of her own wake, I think she would have approved.
Pete had arrived not long after me and my mom, staying just a few brief minutes with his parents before hugging Olivia's mom and dad, and promptly leaving. He had nodded at me from across the room, his eyes red and swollen. Seeing a boy my own age who had quite clearly been crying made me feel very uncomfortable. He was so good-looking, he was almost shocking, and I found myself embarrassed to even be thinking about his attractiveness just three days after Olivia's death. His suit seemed to fit him perfectly and I wondered if maybe it had been bought recently for the dance.
Tracy Hartford and her mother arrived early, their faces solemn and pious. They made a point of greeting everyone who entered and thanking them for coming, as if they were part of Olivia's family. In reality Olivia barely even spoke to Tracy and thought she was an annoying gossip, but the Hartfords thrived on gossip and were certainly in their element that day at the funeral home. They asked everyone in attendance to sign the guest book and they were so insistent about it, it was almost as if reaching a goal of signatures would bring Olivia back.
I couldn't remember having attended a memorial service or wake for Jennie, but presumably if there had been one, it had been in the very same room where we all gathered to pay our respects to Olivia. Willow was a small enough town that everyone was waked at Gundarsson's and buried either at our church, St. Monica's, which was where Jennie was buried, or the Jewish cemetery on the other side of town. Wearing my only black dress, two sizes too large for me, I picked the light blue nail polish off of my thumbs and made small talk with people I recognized as they entered and left. Mischa and Amanda arrived with their parents, and Mischa and I hugged for what felt like five minutes even though we had been talking on the phone almost hourly since dawn on Saturday morning.
"Has Candace come yet?" she asked me.
I shook my head.
Candace was having a complete and utter freak-out. As if it wasn't enough to have unexpectedly lost her best friend, her whole-hearted belief that Olivia's death had been pre-meditated somehow by Violet was driving her to the brink of sanity. She had called me three times since Friday night, each time rambling hysterically about how she wanted to tell the whole world about what Violet had done because Olivia would have wanted it that way. I hadn't heard a word from her since Sunday morning, and hadn't even received a response when I had texted her to see if she was okay on Sunday afternoon.
"Her mom admitted her to the hospital yesterday," Mischa confided in me. "Julia texted me. They were afraid she was having a nervous breakdown and she's in the psychiatric ward."
I bit my lower lip, suddenly feeling unbearably cold in the funeral parlor's frosty air. A certain and unshakable fear that we had brought this unthinkable tragedy upon ourselves nestled into the marrow of my bones. We had done something so childish and irresponsible by playing that stupid game, and now, if my irrational fears were correct, Olivia had paid for it with her life. Poor Candace. No one would believe her, of course. I wasn't even sure, despite my own creepy feeling, that I believed Violet had predicted Olivia's death in such boggling detail. I imagined the patient, patronizing look on her attending physicians' faces at the hospital as she wildly blabbed about the birthday party game, sounding absolutely crazy.
Light as a feather, stiff as a board.
"I thought maybe her mom would let her out to come to this, but maybe not," Mischa mused. "Maybe she's worse than I thought."
It couldn't be discounted that Olivia's death had been a purely random coincidence. Even though it seemed pretty undeniable that Violet had known exactly what was going to happen, it was still hard to believe that it was true. There was simply no explanation for how she could have predicted everything, or had a hand in making all the events actualize.
"We're stepping outside for air," I told my mom, who was fiddling with her purse like she was ready to leave. Naturally, people couldn't help but stare at my mom; many of the guests in attendance at Olivia's service had also attended Jennie's. Surely they were thinking that my mom had some kind of an obligation to offer words of comfort to the Richmonds, having herself lost a child in a freak accident. But my mom wasn't like that; even after eight years, her grief over Jennie's death was still very private. When she'd seen Tracy Hartford's mother approach her earlier in the afternoon, she had busied herself by pretending to read Olivia's prayer card. "You don't have to stay. I can get a ride home when I'm ready."
My mom looked like I had handed her a winning lottery ticket and confessed to having some lesson plans to prepare at home. She accompanied me and Mischa outside to the parking lot, and we waited in silence, our backs pressed against the brick exterior of Gundarsson's, until she got into her car and drove off. It was cold out, significantly colder in just the ten days that had passed since Olivia's birthday. Cold enough that I buttoned up my denim jacket and Mischa pulled her wool cardigan around her waist. We stood outside watching traffic pass on the highway in silence for a few seconds, our eyes adjusting to the bright, overcast day after being in the dim funeral parlor for so long.
"My parents asked me about the game. Candace's mom called my mom, and wanted to know what we did on Friday night," Mischa finally said, her voice flat and emotionless.
"Jesus, you didn't tell her, did you?" I asked, suddenly fearful that rumors were going to sweep the high school that we had been invoking spirits or worshipping the devil. My stomach felt upset, like I knew I was going to get in trouble, only I was far too old to be afraid of punishment. Primarily I felt embarrassed, because the game we'd played was so childish, for middle-schoolers. It would be mortifying for the entire high school to find out that was how the most popular girls in the junior class had spent a Friday night.
"No! Of course not," Mischa exclaimed. She thought for a second, and then added, "I said we were telling ghost stories, but that was it. I mean, I feel bad kind of implying that Candace is lying, but she needs to get a grip! She can't just go around claiming that Violet had something to do with Olivia's death. She's going to make us all seem nuts."
"Have you heard from Violet at all?" I asked. "I've left her two voicemails, but she hasn't called me back."
A car entered the parking lot of the funeral home and both of our heads turned. It was the Emorys' car, and when it parked, Trey emerged with his parents, looking almost unrecognizable. It wasn't so much the black eye he had or the bright blue sling around his left arm that made him look so much like a different person, but the dark navy suit he wore with a silk tie. My immediate assumption was that he'd been in some kind of fight, and I wondered if he'd been out causing trouble on Friday night. I knew he sometimes hung out at Tallmadge Park with the heavy metal guys from school, and every once in a while troublemakers from Ortonville would show up there looking to throw some punches. Our eyes met across the parking lot and he looked away quickly as he approached the entrance with his parents.
"I cannot believe he's here," Mischa commented as the Emorys' approached where we were lingering.
"Why? Because he wasn't friends with Olivia?" I asked.
Mischa looked at me as if I was crazy. "No, McKenna. Trey Emory was driving the night of the accident. How did you not know that?"
Time came to a standstill. My heart paused for a prolonged second as I tried to make sense of what Mischa had told me, working backwards from the present to the beginning of Trey's involvement with Olivia's death. Trey had been with Olivia at the moment she died. He'd approached her in a parking lot, offering assistance. That was the part that disturbed me the most, that he'd offered his help to her. Maybe I'd started thinking of him as my own at some point, because he lived next door to me. But it really bothered me to think that maybe Trey had a crush on her, and thought he could win her favor by driving her home from the mall. Olivia never would have given a guy like Trey a second thought, never would have seen how special he was. Suddenly the lift he'd given me to school during sophomore year when it was raining seemed a lot less significant. He was just a guy who gave rides. There was nothing meaningful between us, and the realization made me feel hollow.
"We've talked on the phone, like, fifty times since Saturday morning and you never mentioned that," I said, sounding hoarse.
"I thought I told you this morning. He ran into Olivia in the parking lot at the mall and offered her a jump start, and when that didn't work, he said he'd give her a ride back to Willow. Then the hail started."
The Emorys' reached the entrance to the funeral parlor, and Trey strode inside without even acknowledging me and Mischa. Mrs. Emory recognized me and paused to greet me, and Mr. Emory stood loyally behind her, his hand on the small of her back as she leaned forward to kiss me on the cheek. Mrs. Emory smelled like powdery perfume, one that was expensive and worn only on special occasions.
"Hello, McKenna," she said, sounding tired. "Is your mother here with you?"
"She already left," I said. "She had stuff to do at school."
"I'll stop by the house to say hi later," Mrs. Emory said wistfully, as if she and my mother were confidantes. Mrs. Emory was a little younger than my mom and to the best of my knowledge they rarely spoke other than trading niceties in the driveway. She and Mr. Emory entered the funeral parlor, and Mischa raised an eyebrow at me.
"Who did you hear that from, about Trey?" I asked, my voice sounding a little strangled.
"Do you, like, know them?" Mischa asked suspiciously, distracted by my interaction with Trey's parents. Her eyes darted toward the doors of the funeral parlor, specifying that it was the Emorys' to whom she was referring.
I let my eyes wander out casually over the cars parked in the lot. "Sort of. They live on our street."
That explanation seemed sufficient for Mischa to believe that I hadn't been holding out on her about us having some kind of secret friendship. "There's a girl on my gymnastics team whose mom works in the emergency room at St. Matthew's Hospital in Suamico. She told me that Trey was brought in by an ambulance on Friday and he was in shock. He couldn't even tell the doctors what had happened. He saw everything," Mischa told me, her eyes enormous. "They had to sedate him and take his ID out of his wallet to even figure out who to call. My stupid parents made us go to gymnastics practice last night even though we're like, in mourning. So I only found out last night when Megan told me."
Mischa continued grumbling about her parents' insensitivity about Olivia's death and insistence that she continue her training in preparation for the state sectionals in February. Her voice grew distant as my knees weakened with nausea. My heart ached for Trey and my feelings were even more hurt that he hadn't said hello to me as he had passed us on his way into the funeral home. If Olivia's actual injuries had been as terrible as predicted by Violet, I couldn't imagine being inches away from that kind of gore. I thought of Trey's beloved Corolla, and made the connection that it was the scrap heap I'd seen in the photo that ran in the town newspaper. That car, the one he'd spent so many weekend afternoons fixing, was completely wrecked.
I was so caught up in thinking about Trey, and wracked with anxiety about whether or not we would exchange words before he left Gundarsson's, that I forgot if Mischa had said she'd heard a word from Violet. The sun began to set just after six o'clock, and Mischa's parents insisted on driving me home. On my way out of Gundarsson's, I finally submitted to Tracy Hartford's request for me to sign the guestbook. Nearly every single page was covered in the neat penmanship of parents, crude drawings of kitties, butterflies, hearts, and unicorns. Michael Walton had been enough of a freak to write Junior Class Vice President beneath his name as if he was the Vice President of the United States, as if Student Government elections had already been held. As I slowly signed my name in my best handwriting, I felt like I was making a promise to Olivia that I would find out why this happened. I remembered her trying to bribe me with tacos. If I had been a better friend, if I'd wanted her to like me more, if I hadn't been so adamant about running for office and trying to carve out a little independence for myself, I might have saved Olivia's life.
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. Violet 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 Henry and his state of grief, but any kind of future between me and Henry 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 Violet 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 Violet 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 Violet'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 Henry at the Homecoming dance, Henry 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 Violet 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, Violet. What is going on?"
Mischa put her hands on her hips and stood over Violet, 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 at lunch time and having to see either of them was giving me a sickly stomachache.
When Violet 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," Violet 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, Violet, 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 Violet 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 Violet, 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."
Violet 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 Violet, who was already at least one lap ahead of us.
"You can't run forever, Violet," Mischa warned her from behind.
Violet 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?" Violet 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. "Violet, how could we not? You predicted every detail of it."
"I didn't predict it," Violet 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, Violet. That's too many coincidences to be believed."
"Yeah, okay," Violet 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 Violet, 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," Violet 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 Violet. 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, Violet 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 Violet, you have to admit this is all really weird."
"Yes, it's weird," Violet agreed. "Just try to understand how I feel. Olivia was my friend, too."
Violet inserted her ear buds again and ran off ahead of us on the track.