Crash Read online

  “So far. Can you do something for me?”

  “What is it?”

  “Search ‘exterior gas valve shutoff.’ Hurry.”

  He only hesitates a split second, and then he does it, but the computer takes agonizingly long to load anything. “Why am I doing this?”

  “Because I can’t see the web pages. I only see the crash.”

  “Oh, God, that’s so weird.”

  “Please hurry.”

  “I’m trying,” he mutters, shaking the mouse side to side. “You’d think Dad could start collecting newer models of computers, but no, that’s too logical.” The minutes tick away, and he types and taps his fingers on the desk. “Here it comes, finally,” he says, and then reads everything he finds about shutoff valves.

  I jiggle, nervous energy pulsing through me. He can’t read fast enough. “Okay, thank you. Trey?”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you.”

  He looks at me. “Jesus, Jules. What are you doing?”

  I bite my lip. “I have to go out for a bit. The crash—I think it’s happening tonight.” I want to say more, but I can’t. I need him to say something. Something big, so I know he’s on my side.

  He doesn’t move. Only his eyes flit back and forth on mine. “Tell me everything,” he says finally.

  I glance at the clock and jump to my feet. It’s after six. “I don’t have time. It’s happening at 7:04 p.m.” I glide through the piles of junk to my room and grab the Elvira wig. “I gotta go.” I slip my arms around his waist and hug him.

  He hugs back. “But, Jules, this is cra—I mean, this is, ah . . .”

  “It’s okay if you don’t believe me,” I find myself saying for the second time today. “I just have to do this, and I’ll—I’ll see you later. I’ll be at Angotti’s. Don’t tell them—Mom and Dad—unless . . . unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “Jules, you’re talking scary. Just sit tight, okay? Stay here. I’m going to get Mom.”

  “Trey,” I say, and I’ve never been more calm. “If you stop me from saving Sawyer Angotti, I will never, ever forgive you. If I’m actually crazy right now, nothing will happen to Angotti’s or to me, and I’ll be fine, and you can tell Mom everything then. But if I’m not crazy, and this crash is really about to happen, I have to do something. I have to. I can’t not do it. I have a feeling this vision thing won’t totally leave me until it’s all over, but it calms down when I do the right thing. And right now, I’m doing the right thing—that’s all I’m sure of.” I look at him. “I need you to keep Mom and Dad from noticing that I’m gone, or I’m totally screwed. Okay?”

  He shakes his head at me, a perplexed look on his face. “Jesus, Jules.” He leans over and grips the back of the desk chair and gives it a little shake.

  “You said that already.” I grab his arm. “Trey, come on. Don’t doubt me. You know me. I’m not insane.” Is it a lie? I guess we’ll find out.

  “We should call the police, then,” he says, turning back to face me.

  “And tell them what? That a crash is about to happen? Yeah, that’ll work.” Worry grips his face, and I totally understand why, but I’m running out of time. All the muscles in my body are twitching, urging me to go out the door, but my brain tells me I have to get at least one person to sort of believe me or everything else will be messed up.

  He just shakes his head, and I can hear his phone vibrating in his pocket. He checks it. “Mom,” he says. He gives me an urgent look. “Okay,” he says finally. “I’ll cover for you. Just don’t do anything stupid, don’t be Superman, and call me immediately when it’s . . . over. Or whatever. Right?”

  Electricity surges through me, like I’ve won a battle. “Thanks. I’ll call you. I promise!” I grab my wig, coat, and keys and fly to the door.

  “Wait,” he says. He looks around the dining room frantically. “Hold up a sec. You need . . .” He spies something and goes to it, wrestling a red box from the middle of a pile of junk. He pulls it out, causing an avalanche, and opens it—it’s a toolbox. “You need this,” he says, handing me a wrench. “For the gas valve. A quarter turn will shut it off. Do it and get the hell out of there. Promise me.”

  I take the wrench. “Promise.” I reach up and grab him around the neck, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek, which he doesn’t even wipe off. “See you in a bit.” And then I turn and go down the steps as quietly as I can and escape out the door to the alley and hop into my giant meatball truck.

  On my wristwatch: Both white-gloved Mickey Mouse hands point at the six. Thirty-four minutes to explosion. Way too much time wasted. I wind the giant meatballs around town, and the route that normally takes me just under five minutes takes twice as long because of the snow and the cars. I want to barrel right over them. “Hurry up!” I scream, shaking the steering wheel. Finally I drive past Angotti’s, and my suspicion is confirmed. The decorations are up now—giant puffy crepe-paper pendant-like hearts that look like . . . well, apparently they look like light fixtures from far away. The Angottis must have hung them this morning.

  But I don’t have time to ponder trivial things. I drive to the street where the snowplow will come from. At 6:41, I park a couple blocks away so nobody sees my truck.

  I take out my cell phone and text Sawyer, not caring what he’ll think of me when he gets the message. “I was wrong. The explosion is TONIGHT at 7:04. Please, Sawyer . . . I won’t bother you again, I just had to tell you. Get out of there.”

  I don’t have time to wait for a reply. I grab the wrench, shove the wig on my head, and fly out of the truck and down the street in the snow. I pass the sign and glance at the fire hydrant across the street. The snow level isn’t right—it’s too low—and I almost stop, but the vision’s frequency ramps up when I start to slow down, so I keep going. I reach the back of the building and sneak along it, edging under the window, praying that nobody comes out the back door right now.

  When I get to the gas meter, it’s covered in snow. I wipe it clean and look for the lever that Trey described to me. Finally I find it, but it’s encased in ice. I try to break the ice around it with my hands, but it doesn’t budge. I chip away at the ice with the Crescent wrench, cringing at every noise it makes. Sweat pours from under my wig as I whip my gloves off to get a better grasp on the joints around the lever, and I can’t even think about how much time is passing because it just makes my fingers fumble. At one point the wrench slips and splits open my knuckle. “Faaaaahck,” I mutter. But I keep going, blood and all.

  Finally the lever is free. I glance at my watch and frantically figure out the timing. If I turn the gas off too soon, their stoves will go out and they’ll come out and check on it at just the wrong time. So many ways for people to die here, I think.

  My watch says 6:53. I close my eyes, my thighs quaking from sitting on my haunches for so long, my finger still bleeding and starting to throb. Gingerly I put my gloves back on, watching a stain form in the cloth, but there’s no time to worry about something so trivial now. I still haven’t figured out how to save Sawyer and the other three.

  I glance at a window of a nearby house and watch the scene. If Sawyer believes me and plans to get out of there, my bet is that his body bag will disappear. But it only takes a few seconds to find out that there are still four dead from this event. “Come on, Sawyer,” I whisper. “Believe me.”

  It’s 6:56, and I’m still sitting here. My phone buzzes in my pocket but I can’t look at it. When I hear a rumbling, I look up and almost wet my pants. A snowplow is barreling up the road in my direction, eight minutes early. I shake my watch in case it stopped, but the second hand keeps ticking away.

  A second later I realize the truck is going slower than the one in the vision, and its plow is engaged. It hits me now—in the vision, the road is freshly plowed, and the out-of-control truck has its plow up. This is not the same truck. I breathe a sigh of relief and mop my sweaty forehead.

  The plow reaches the end of the road, sweeps around, an
d does the other side. The snow pummels the sides of the road, reaching the top of the fire hydrant and a third of the way up the signpost. If I weren’t so freaked out, I’d be amazed at the way everything is coming together.

  As soon as 6:59 hits, I take the wrench, engage it with the lever, and pull until it’s crosswise from the pipe, a quarter turn. And then I get to my feet and run like hell, hoping it’ll take at least five minutes for the kitchen to figure out the ovens aren’t firing.

  It takes me less than a minute to run the two blocks back to the truck, and I’m using some strange superpower energy that I don’t normally have. Chest heaving, I climb in, start it up, and hit the gas. I barrel over the pile of snow left by the recent plowing and drive to Angotti’s and into their parking lot. It feels eerily like what the snowplow will be doing in about three minutes.

  Then I stop the truck and just look at this crazy scene, so familiar, so freaking spooky. All the cars are in exactly the right places, the lighting and snow are right, the tables I reserved are empty. I stare for a second, amazed at how everything is exactly as it is in the vision. It’s like being in some weird Twilight Zone episode. But I have no more than a second to ponder it, because I’m still not sure exactly what I’m going to do with this truck.

  What I’d like to do is park it in the path of the snowplow and make a run for it, but then it’ll plow my truck into the restaurant too, so I know I’ll have to gun it as it hits me to try to spin the plow. I pull up into that area just to see what happens, and now there are five body bags in the vision. That’s obviously not the way to go. I back up and the bags number four again. “Jeez,” I mutter, checking my watch: 7:02. “A little help here, please.”

  I grip the steering wheel and get no inkling, no clue from the vision god. “Ugh!” I yell. “Don’t do this to me!” But the vision just plays in my side mirror, not giving me any help at all. I peer down the road and suck in a few breaths, trying to keep my hands from shaking, and back up a little farther.

  Before I can check the vision again to see if my move changed anything, I see a dark figure running toward me. For a second I’m paralyzed, unsure of whom this could be, because there is no scene like this in the vision. Then my passenger door opens and Trey hops into the truck. “Nice hair,” he says, breathing hard. He slams the door shut.

  “What are you doing?” I scream at him. “You have to get out!”

  “I can’t let you do this,” he says. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  The vision plays brightly on the windshield like a warning, and suddenly there are five body bags again. “Shit,” I say. “Shit! Trey, get out. You’re going to die if you don’t get out of here!”

  He stares at me and puts his seat belt on. My watch says 7:03.

  “Fuck, Trey, I’m serious. Get out! The snowplow will be coming from there in one minute,” I scream, pointing, “and you’ll get crushed!” I can’t scream any louder.

  “Just calm it down, Demarco!” he yells back, and then he softens. “I can’t let you do this alone. What if you’re one of the people who ends up dead? How would I live with that, huh, Jules? Did you think of that? Just don’t get T-boned.”

  I stare at him hard. “Don’t get T-boned,” I whisper. And then I see it in my head—I’m doing it wrong. I need to sideswipe the plow, not let it hit me full-on. I whip the truck into reverse. “You’re brilliant, you stupid jerk.”

  “I know,” he says.

  I barrel around to the back of the lot and turn my truck to face the restaurant, parallel to the road. I’ll be able to get a moving start alongside the plow, then angle into it where it jumps the curb to steer it back to the street, where it belongs. “Okay,” I say. “Get into the middle seat and strap in, you stubborn fuck. I got this. Shit, damn, hell! It’s 7:04.”

  There’s no time to focus on the mirror, and I can’t afford to lose my concentration now. No time to know if this is a winning plan or not, I just have to do it. I suck in a deep breath and grip the wheel tighter, watching for it, rolling forward slightly to get traction.

  “Oh my God, look . . . ,” Trey says, the words trailing off. His head is turned and he’s looking behind us out the window. He points and his voice turns to wonder. “Holy crap, Jules. You were right. Here it comes.” He turns and gives me a look of utter terror. “You’re going to have to gun it!”

  Thirty-Three

  I glance at the restaurant one last time and see Kate, the smoking girl, coming outside. “No,” I shout, though there’s no way she can hear me. “Get back!” She must be one of the people in the body bags, I realize with a pang. I ease onto the gas so we gain speed without spinning out, just before the snowplow jounces over the curb and the snow. By the time it comes up alongside me, we are moving well, and I edge my nose in front of it, hanging on for the initial jolt. The snowplow’s not slowing, and I have to floor it to stay in front. I tap it twice more. “It’s not moving over!” I scream, and then I swerve hard into it, breaking Trey’s window. It’s bumper cars for the big leagues.

  “Shit!” Everything goes in slow motion. My insides quake and slam against each other. My head bangs against my window and then cracks into Trey’s head, but I feel no pain. The hood of our meatball truck flies open as I find the gas pedal again and gun it once more, blinded but trying with all my might to push the plow away from the building. “Help me!” I scream. “I can’t hold it! I can’t see!”

  Trey grabs the wheel and together we crank it, and I catch a glimpse of the snowplow driver’s head smashing against his window and flopping forward, his body held up only by his seat belt.

  “Hang on!” Trey yells.

  The grinding sound of metal on metal makes my head want to explode. I lean left to try to look around the hood, seeing the restaurant window and the blond girl safely off to my left. “We’re doing it!” I yell.

  A split second later all I can see from my side window is a brick wall coming at me. I try to get away from it, leaning my head toward Trey, but momentum is against me and the rest of me won’t follow. I feel my body pressing hard against my door, against my will.

  When the plow slams us into the corner of the restaurant, there is an enormous crunching sound, and pressure, pressure. Pressure.

  All goes black.

  • • •

  Sirens. All I hear are emergency sirens trying to play a song, but nobody gets the tune right. I want them to play a song I know, but they don’t listen to me. They can’t hear me.

  In the background of the horrible siren song is the vision, playing slow, and I can see through everything like they are ghosts. It’s a different story now. The snowplow speeds toward the restaurant, swerving to the wrong side of the road, jumping the curb, where a food truck in the back of a mostly empty parking lot speeds to meet it. The truck noses in front of the plow, trying to guide it away from the restaurant, but the plow doesn’t help it. The food truck turns sharply, smashes its passenger side into the side of the snowplow. A smoking girl watches dumbfounded from the back step of the restaurant, about to be smashed to bits, yet frozen, unable to move. A young man in the window stares wide-eyed. He checks his watch, drops settings on an empty table, and runs.

  The food truck makes a last grand effort to push the plow away from the building, and finally it succeeds, just barely. But there’s not enough room for both vehicles to clear it. The food truck slams into the corner of the building as the snowplow is forced to turn toward the road. It ramps up the hood of a parked car, tips over it, and lands with a shudder on its side, sliding and coming to rest in a quiet intersection. The food truck, wrapped around the corner of the building, is bent like an elbow and hissing. Two giant meatballs have snapped off and soar through the air, coming to an abrupt rest in a snowbank.

  No one moves.

  • • •

  The smoking girl comes to life. She makes a phone call with shaky hands and opens the door from which she came, screaming for help.

  • • •

  When re
d and blue lights make the evening glow, two body bags lie in the snow.

  A moment later, one of them disappears.

  The vision ends before the wheels of the snowplow stop spinning.

  Thirty-Four

  I hear things. People talking, shouting. I hear a familiar voice, but I can’t place it. For a second I open my eyes, looking for the vision in the shattered, blood-spattered windshield and not seeing it. A voice shouts my name. But it’s very noisy there. I have to close my eyes and go back to where it’s quiet again.

  • • •

  Every time I open my eyes, I hear the shouting and the screeching and the buzzing, and I can’t stand it. I need to get away from it. My stomach hurts and I feel like I am in a lot of trouble. I snuck out again. My father is going to be so mad. But I can’t think for long because I have to get away.

  • • •

  When I wake up, an animal is attacking my face. I try to reach for it but only one of my arms moves. I grab the animal and pull its skinny legs out of my nose, but that only hurts more. I have to get out of there. I have to get it off me. I hear noises again, but it’s all muffled—everything is muffled, and I wonder if my wig has slipped down over my ears.

  Somebody holds my arm and I go back to sleep.

  • • •

  The next time I wake up, I just open my eyes and stare at the weird ceiling above me. For a moment I wonder if Dad did something to our bedroom. I frown at it, puzzled. I try to swallow and my throat hurts. I blink a few times, not quite sure if I’m going to get out of bed today, but I know I probably have a test or something . . . or wait, no—it’s a food holiday so it’ll be busy. I have to work. I brace my right hand on the bed to try and scoot myself up to sitting, but I’m just too tired. I’ll try again later.

  “Julia?”

  I turn my head slowly and see my mother. She looks terrible. “What’s happening?” My voice comes out all raspy.