"This is Officer Jagusiak on Northbound Highway Thirty-One just past the exit at Old Dixie Highway. We've got a school bus overturned with possible injuries."
Frozen with fear, simmering with fury, Trey and I watched from the back seat of the police car. The officer behind the wheel had slammed on the brakes to call in the accident, and his partner burst through the passenger side door to run toward the bus. But Trey and I were helpless prisoners of that back seat; there weren't even handles on our doors. We were locked in, stuck in that stale-smelling, vinyl seated compartment.
"I saw this," I whispered to Trey. "When we were meditating with Bachitar. I saw the bus fall over. I saw Mr. Dean helping Jason Arkadian."
Trey's eyes, round like orbs, told me that he believed me, but when he looked through the windshield of the car toward one blazing bus and another on its side, smoke escaping from its hood, he shook his head. "So many people have got to be hurt. Why didn't they listen to us? We were trying to prevent this."
"You two just sit tight back there," Officer Jagusiak told us before he left us in the car alone, in such a rush that he left the driver side door wide open. Chilling wind rushed into the car and stole the heat from around us, causing a shiver to run through me.
Trey reached for my hand and squeezed it. "We have to get out of this car. That bus is going to blow," he said flatly.
I didn't respond; there was no conceivable way out of the car. We had nothing with us to cut through the mesh separating us from the front seat. Through the snow gathering on the windshield, I saw windows opening on the side of the overturned bus facing upward. It had fallen over on its right side, the door pressed to the ground submerged in snow, blocking any possible escape through the most obvious exit. Kids must have been standing on each other's shoulders in order to reach the windows, because the few that were able to climb out did so with difficulty. The big back door finally swung open and kids spilled out of the back of the bus into the snow in a jumble of flailing arms and legs. Red speckled the snow; I saw Erica Bloom clutching the broken frames of her glasses to her face, ignoring the blood that gushed from her nose as she followed the other kids back up the hill and onto the highway.
The back door of the blazing bus had also opened, and kids were jumping from it. Surprisingly, Roy Needham stood beside the open door helping other kids make the nearly four-foot leap down to the slushy pavement. It was perfectly ironic that a kid who hated school and who was loathed by teachers would be the only one to take to heart all of the emergency bus drills we'd been running through since elementary school. Emergencies tended to make heroes out of the most unlikely of people. Kids pouring out of the bus nearest to us covered their mouths with the sleeves of their winter coats as they choked on smoke.
Miss Kirkovic jumped out of the back of that bus, and joined Roy in assisting others down. Oliver Buras appeared at the back of the bus with a middle-aged woman who I assumed to be his mother, probably a volunteer chaperone on the trip. She must have been sitting toward the front of the bus near Miss Kirkovic at the moment it crashed into the back of the first bus because she had a long gash across her forehead and appeared to be in a daze as blood dripped into her left eye.
I jumped when suddenly Henry was climbing into the front seat of the police car.
"We need to get you guys out of here."
I wasn't sure how he'd managed to run past both of the buses, as he'd been driving ahead of them in the lane for well over an hour, but perhaps because Trey and I had been so fixated on which of our former classmates were clawing their way free, we hadn't noticed him making his way toward the police car.
" Henry, if you let us out of this car, the police are going to have to arrest you whenever they next find us," I warned. It wasn't that I wanted to be stuck in the police car; I just didn't want Henry to land himself in as much trouble as Trey and I were already in.
"I can live with that," Henry said. "Come on, we don't have much time." He flipped a switch on the dashboard of the car and Trey and I both heard pops from the doors on either side of us. Henry hopped out of the car and opened my door from outside, and then dashed around the back of the car to let Trey out. Trey and I both unfastened our seatbelts and stood, uncertain, in the freezing cold afternoon, not sure of whether to help our classmates or make a run for it.
Unable to even process what I was seeing quickly enough to make sense of any of it, I watched as Cheryl climbed out the back door of the overturned bus. Mr. Dean followed her, moving slowly, carefully, and then I saw that he was assisting Jason Arkadian. As Jason dragged himself through the back door of the bus and across the snow, I saw that his left leg was bent in a gruesome position. With uncharacteristic patience, Mr. Dean assisted him up to his feet, and helped him up the slope of the ravine as he hopped on his right foot, wincing all the way. Other kids stood at the crest of the hill facing the highway holding each other and crying. Some, like Liam Lapham, one of the guys on the basketball team with Pete, just stood there, emotionless. Stunned.
The site of Jason and Mr. Dean ascending the incline brought the bitter taste of bile to my mouth. The sense of déjà vu was so strong that I felt certain I was going to be sick; the site before me was like a frame-by-frame replay of the vision I'd had when Bachitar had led us through a meditation at the Preet Wellness Center. As I watched in awe, Mr. Dean's eyes met mine, and instead of gratitude, I saw confusion and fear. Whether he was realizing that he should have believed us, or was insinuating with his eyes that I had brought these accidents on the buses, I couldn't tell.
"C'mon!" Henry was motioning for us to follow him. "We have to go! Now!"
We hurried through the slush toward Henry's truck, which was abandoned a good hundred feet in front of the blazing bus. Flames were pouring out from underneath the hood of the bus, so tall and high and spewing such thick black smoke that I couldn't even see through them to determine whether or not the bus driver had ever made his way to safety. I felt Trey's arm on my bag as he gently urged me around; it was no time to dawdle. Although the police had both slid on their backsides into the ravine to assist students evacuating the turned-over bus, if they glanced up at the highway, they'd see us, and no doubt we were in much more trouble at that point than we were when they'd originally locked us in the back of their car.
As we slipped and slid our way toward Henry's truck, I remembered the latter half of the vision I'd had in Bachitar's meditation studio. In my vision, I'd seen a white car... and Violet had been tied up in the back seat. But in reality there wasn't a white car, there was only the silver pick-up—
BOOM!
An explosion blew the aluminum hood clean off the front of the bus and sent it flying over our heads. Trey pushed me to the ground and shielded me from flying glass with his own body, both of us soaking the knees of our pants and sleeves of our coats in the melting snow. One peek stolen over my shoulder informed me that there was no way anyone who'd been knocked unconscious or still at the front of the bus had survived; tongues of flame leapt through broken windows and poured through the frame where the windshield had just been.
"Hailey," I mumbled to myself, knowing that my childhood friend had just died in that instant exactly as Violet had told her she would. Probably twenty feet away from the blazing bus, Abby Johanssen's body was being carried out of the other bus and set in the snow.
"Come on!"
Henry's voice cut through the billowing smoke just as I saw the dark silhouette of one of the police officers attempting to approach the fiery bus. There would be more cops, a fire department, and paramedics at any moment; we needed to make ourselves scarce.
None of us said a word after we got into the pick-up truck and sped away. After a few minutes on the highway, after we'd driven far enough away from the accident that we could no longer see smoke in our rear view mirror and could only faintly smell it in our clothes and hair, it almost seemed liked we'd imagined the bus crashes.
"One of the tires blew out," Henry said numbly, his eyes on the road as snow lightly began falling again. He flipped on his windshield wipers. "On that first bus that flipped over."
Next to me, hands jammed into his coat pocket, Trey said, "We have to get off this road. They're going to be looking for us."
He was right; there was only one direct route back to our area of Wisconsin leading over the top of Lake Michigan, and the buses had been following Henry on it. Police could catch us off guard at any given moment along our way now that they knew where we were headed.
Henry made a right turn off the highway and we wove around a small town until he found an unassuming residential street lined with pine trees and turned off the truck's engine. We sat in silence parked in front of someone's two-story brick house, letting the events of the morning catch up to us and the horror saturate our thoughts as the snow fell.
"I'm not sure what to do here, guys," Henry finally said. "Those cops took down my license number and every cop in Michigan's going to be looking for a silver pick-up truck. And unfortunately," he tapped his dashboard, "I've got less than half a tank of gas, which means between here and the Mackinac Bridge, I'm going to have to stop somewhere."
"You could siphon gas out of another car's gas tank," Trey suggested, and Henry scowled.
"That's—that's crazy, Trey. We don't have straws or... whatever you're thinking we'd use to do that. The fact is, if we pull into a gas station anywhere along Route Thirty-One, we're going to get busted. There's only one way back to Wisconsin, and we're going to have to cross that bridge again."
Henry was right. Unless we found an alternate way to get home, we were going to get busted at the bridge, if not before we even reached it. Trey and I had been chased by police before but never for a five-hour drive with no particular destination in mind. We were driving wildly back to Weeping Willow, but for what? Once we got there, potentially with cop cars wailing their sirens behind us, were we going to just drive straight to the Simmons' house and demand to be let in? Even if that was our big plan, there was a security wall encircling the Simmons' property. A big iron gate. A high-tech security system that would require a code if we planned to drive a truck through the gate and onto the property.
"What do you think, Henry?" I asked, wanting to hear his opinion as to what we should do next. We hadn't stopped the curse. At least two of our classmates were dead, maybe even more if kids had played games with Violet and we hadn't heard about it. And we'd given Mr. Dean and Miss Kirkovic ample reason to think we had something to do with the bus accident since we predicted it less than an hour before it happened.
"I think," he said, his voice trailing as his eyes focused on a snow-covered point far, far down the block. "It might be in the best interest of you guys if we double back across Michigan right now, we drive across the state, and..." he pulled up a map on his cell phone, "We try to get you two over the border here, at the St. Clair River near Sarnia."
I inched closer to Trey in panic. Canada. The temperature of my blood dropped by at least ten degrees. That would be the end of it all, at least our efforts to stop Violet's curse. We'd talked about Canada before and had overruled it until we knew Mischa was safe, but now we couldn't possibly find out her status, and we were in deep, irreversible trouble. My eyes met Trey's and he seemed to me telling me with his expression that this was it—our last chance. The lower half of my face cramped as I tried to suppress the urge to cry. Crossing the border would mean we could disappear into a new country, change our names, not look back. I would be able to call my mom in a few days from a pay phone and let her know I was alright. Surely we'd have to be careful for a long, long time, as Canadian officials were likely to have been notified about two runaway teens, but it seemed dubious that they'd put a great amount of effort into tracking us down. I didn't know much about Canada, but I assumed it was a safe assumption that Canadian police had bigger worries.
"There are ferries," Henry said after a moment. "Along the river. You wouldn't need a passport to cross over, but you'd need one to come back. I think we'd be less likely to get busted stopping for gas along the way if we took side streets and kept a low profile heading in that direction."
"What about you?" I asked, finding it hard to shake an image in my head of him standing on the edge of the St. Claire River, his back pressed against his silver pick-up with his balled fists in his jeans pockets, watching us disembark on a ferry bound for a safer shore. "It's not fair of us to just leave you behind."
"Eh," Henry said, "I can't leave for Canada. Even if my parents have to visit me in prison for the next ten years, at least they'd have that, and I can't take that away from them."
"McKenna," Trey's voice cracked halfway through eeking out my name. "I think this is it. If we don't make a run for it now, they're going to keep coming after us. I don't think we'll ever be safe."
I wasn't sure if by they Trey meant the police or Violet's spirits, but it didn't matter. Both would continue to follow us as long as we kept pursuing Violet.
My heart felt like it was cracking right down its middle. "Trey, what about what Jennie said? We just have to get Violet to play the game with us. Then we can break the spell."
Trey mashed his lips together, trying to find the right words to talk some sense into me.
"And what about Mischa? We can't just disappear without making sure she's alive," I said. I realized that what I was saying was making little difference to him. He was shaking his head. I took a deep breath, not liking at all what I was about to say, but knowing in my heart that it was right. "You should go," I urged him. "We can drive across the state just to lose the cops for a while and you should go to Canada. But I can't. I started this thing, don't you see? I'm responsible. I have to finish it."
Only then did he look up at me. "Maybe we can't beat her, McKenna. Maybe this curse is just... more complicated than we think, and the best thing we can do is save ourselves until we figure it all out. Maybe we've been kidding ourselves this whole time that there's even a way to break the curse. I mean, it's not like there are laws that govern evil, you know? Maybe once a curse is on you, it's just on."
Despite the huge lump in my throat, I told Henry we should turn around and begin driving toward Sarnia, an hour north of Detroit, so that we could put Trey on a ferry to cross the border. I fell silent even though Trey continued ranting about how the time had just come for us to do what was sensible, knowing that if I opened my mouth, a river of sobs would pour out of me. I didn't want to send Trey out into the world alone not knowing what might happen to him. I wasn't particularly keen on following up on Violet without him, either. They shared genes, abilities. He was far better equipped to take her on than I was, and I knew it.
Without putting up a fight, Henry turned the truck around and we drove south for an hour back toward the Fitzgerald's Lodge, reversing our route but sticking to side streets, avoiding the highway. The falling snow became our ally, distracting police from pursuing us. We rolled through small town intersections, passed dry cleaners, pharmacies, car washes, always holding our breath when we paused at traffic lights. My ears were peeled for the shrill whine of a siren behind us, but somewhat surprisingly, town after town, I heard nothing.
We were driving parallel to Route 66 when the needle on the truck's gas tank finally reached "E" and Henry spotted a gas station up ahead.
"Are you sure that's safe?" I asked. There were already several cars filling up at the station. The mini-market appeared to be pretty busy as well, as customers lined up to pay for snow storm emergency items, like bottled water, batteries, and canned soup. The news on the radio was predicting that the snow would keep falling all day and into the night.
"We don't have a choice," Henry said, making a right turn into the station's lot. "We're not going to get much further if we don't stop now."
"This is a bad idea," Trey said. "I feel weird about this."
Henry pulled right up to the only unoccupied gas dispenser—unleaded—and said, "I'll just fill it up, swipe the card, and we'll be on our way."
"Wait!" I said before he slammed the door shut. "Maybe you should pay in cash so that there isn't a transaction record of us having been here."
"Good thinking."
Alone in the cab of the truck with Trey, I could hear his flurry of thoughts as if he were speaking them aloud. He was furious that I didn't want to go to Canada with him. He was certain that Violet had outfoxed us and all that awaited us in Weeping Willow was punishment. He was imaging an improbably optimistic future for us across the border, with both of us making an unrealistic amount of money as baristas in coffee shops, sharing a modern, cool apartment. The reality was... I was afraid. I didn't want to go to Canada and end up living in a homeless shelter, and not be able to see my mom or dad again for decades. Unlike Trey, who had been emotionally distant from his parents for a long, long time, my heart ached for my mom. Despite his gloomy expressions and affinity for wearing the color black, I was the skeptic of the two of us. I was the one who knew firsthand that things could always get worse.
"I'm sorry," I managed to spit out. "I know what you're thinking and it's not that I don't want to be with you, Trey, it's just—"
He stared out his window as snow collected along its bottom, and held up his left hand to cut me off. I was offended for a split second before he said, "Look."
I followed his gaze out the window, and there, two rows over from us, was a white Audi. And standing next to it, absent-mindedly filling up the tank with gas wearing a well-tailored gray wool coat, was Mr. Simmons, Violet's father. Even in profile, his resemblance to Trey was remarkable. There they were, those blue-blue Simmons eyes.
Startling us both enough to make us jump, Henry tapped on the windshield to indicate that he was about to head into the mini-market to pay. Trey and I nodded in unison, not wanting to tell him just yet what we were both seeing and thinking. Somehow, impossibly enough, we'd caught up with the Simmons' as they were driving Violet home. Like us, they must have decided to turn around while they were northbound, returning to Wisconsin by driving south around the bottom of the lake. Breathlessly, we both studied that car with our eyes, and saw a lifeless lump in the back seat that could only be Violet, sleeping.
Inside the mini-market, I saw Henry step into a lengthy line, his hands in his pants pocket, his head held low. The line inched forward painfully slow after a man wearing a leather jacket paid for his coffee and lottery tickets. Trey and I both tensed as Mr. Simmons swiped his credit card at the gas dispenser and waited. A moment later, he looked at the payment console in confusion, and tapped a button on it. He climbed into the front seat of the Audi, and without closing the driver side door, he started the engine.
"He has to go inside to pay," Trey murmured. "The credit card thing isn't working. It must be the snow storm. None of them are working... everyone's going inside. He's just turning the engine on to keep her warm."
This was the piece of the vision I'd had at Bachitar's wellness center that had been missing. I'd seen a white car, and Violet in its back seat. My muscles were tight, my pulse was racing. I knew what we were going to do, but I wasn't sure how we were going to work up the nerve to actually do it. There were pins and needles behind my temples, in my throat, on the back of my tongue. Mr. Simmons stepped into the mini-market, swallowed by its steamy door, and momentarily disappeared behind the advertisements taped to the door for Bud Light and Corona specials.
"You know what happens next, don't you?" I asked in a solemn voice.
The Audi's keys were in its ignition. Anyone could have slipped into the driver's seat and roared away. Inside the market, Henry was paying, pulling bills out of his wallet for the gas charge at stand #8. Mr. Simmons stepped into the line behind a woman wearing a sweat suit and her two children, completely overlooking Henry, who he had certainly seen if not met before during the court proceedings against me and Trey back at home.
"This isn't what it seems like," Trey said, shaking his head. "This is an illusion. It doesn't feel right."
"We don't have time to think about what feels right!" I exclaimed. "This is our chance to grab Violet and drive her somewhere to play the game! We could reverse the curse right now! We might not even have to wake her up if she's sick. We won't hurt her, Trey. We'll just play the game and leave her somewhere safe, and then you and I can take the ferry together. I promise."
When I made that promise, I meant it with my whole heart. As long as we'd given breaking the curse according to Jennie's instructions our best shot, I would have been willing to follow Trey anywhere. Being with him was the most important thing to me, after saving Mischa's life and securing our own safety. I could justify the pain I'd cause my parents by leaving if I'd at least made good on my vow to Mischa to do my best to keep her from the same gruesome fate as Olivia and Candace. As Tracy. As Hailey, Abby, and all of the kids back in Violet's town in Illinois who had suffered her curse before she'd relocated to Weeping Willow.
Trey accepted my promise with his blue eyes, and opened his passenger side door.
We both slid out of Henry's truck and darted between the other cars filling up at the station, our hats pulled low on our heads to obscure our faces. I rested my fingers on the handle of the white Audi's driver side door until we saw Henry step outside the mini-market, and Trey motioned for him. Then in a flash of action that felt like the same kind of slow motion sensation of a bad dream in which my legs just couldn't run fast enough away from danger, I climbed into the driver's seat. Trey ran around the back of the car and shoved Henry into the front seat between us before he climbed in himself and closed the door on his side.
"Dad?"
Violet stirred in the back seat, and Henry quickly surveyed the options on Mr. Simmons' dashboard. He found a switch with an icon on it and pressed it. Immediately we heard all four doors of the car lock. Parental power lock. Violet was now locked into the back seat much in the same way we'd been imprisoned in the back seat of the police car an hour earlier.
"This seems like a very bad idea," Henry said. "But drive."
I hit the gas, and the Audi swerved out of the lot, its back tires spewing filthy slush everywhere.