The Summer It Came for Us

  Chapter 1

  “Whoa, guys, did you see that?” Vincent lunged toward the window, his seatbelt pulling taut as he craned his neck to follow a dark cluster of trees. “What the hell . . . ?”

  I looked, too, my body tensing from a sudden rush of adrenaline . . . until I realized he’d got me, again.

  “Ugh, no one thinks you’re funny,” I muttered, giving him a shove.

  “See—see what?” whispered my best friend Zoe, clutching my arm and peeking over my shoulder.

  “He didn’t see anything,” I said firmly. “He’s just trying to scare us.”

  “No, this time I swear I saw . . .” Vincent continued to stare out the window, “. . . yeah, in between those trees . . .”

  “We’re not listening,” I snapped.

  “It was like this weird blue light,” he said, “just hovering there.”

  Despite myself, the back of my neck broke out in a chill. “It was probably a deer, you ass.”

  He turned back to me, his sly smile lit in the reflections of the car’s high beams. “Last I checked, deer don’t emit light—unless we’re talking about Rudolph the blue-nosed reindeer here.” He paused to consider this.

  “Quit trying to scare us, Vincent,” said Zoe in a trembling voice. “It’s not funny.”

  “Guys, I’m not making this up. I don’t know if it was a UFO or what—”

  “What you saw, numchuck,”—upfront, Malcolm rapped the windshield with his knuckles—“was that. Now all of you shut it while we figure out these crap directions.”

  The trees dropped away in a ravine, giving us a bird’s-eye view of the river valley below—along with a distant cluster of blue-white floodlights, belonging to the Shasta-Trinity Supercollider complex.

  “Ah, that would explain it,” said Vincent, while I let out a breath of relief.

  Yep, nothing supernatural out there in the woods tonight.

  Just the lights from an old high-energy physics lab.

  Zoe squeezed against my shoulder to get a better look. “Weird, I thought they closed that place down.”

  “Guys, seriously, could we have some peace and quiet right now while we figure this out?” Our other friend, Jace Johnson, white-knuckled the steering wheel as he navigated the perilous mountain road, while Malcolm read off directions from his smart phone.

  “Stay on Ridgeview Drive,” he said. “Three more miles.”

  Wedged between Zoe and Vincent in the backseat of Jace’s parents’ Subaru Forester, I watched the reflective yellow line slither out of the darkness then veer sharply, replaced by a wall of pine needles glowing gold in the high beams.

  My eyes froze on the precipitous drop beyond the guardrail.

  “Turn, TURN!” Malcolm barked.

  Jace cursed and yanked the wheel just in time, and the force of turning crushed Zoe and me into Vincent.

  “And you’re sure we can just roll up uninvited like this?” said Zoe, straightening up. “To the party?"

  “He’s a friend of mine,” said Malcolm. “All of you bitches relax.”

  “Some friend,” Vincent scoffed. “Didn’t even invite us?”

  “Yeah, how could anyone not want Malcolm at their party?” I added sarcastically.

  “Both of you, SHUT IT!” Malcolm’s nostrils flared as he scanned the dark woods around us.

  Vincent and I laughed and high-fived.

  Despite Vincent trying to scare us and Malcolm being a jerk, like always, I couldn’t help but feel excited.

  Summer before college was awesome.

  I had all my best friends around me, the most amazing years of my life right around the corner, and not a care in the world—and tonight, because we were all a little bad, we were crashing a ritzy party on the lake.

  Malcolm shushed us again, even though no one had spoken. “Anybody else hear that?”

  I sat forward. “What?”

  All I heard was the growl of the engine, the crunch of pine needles under the tires, the whack of overgrown saplings against the grill.

  Unnerved by his odd behavior, I glanced side to side, then out the back window.

  Dense, dark clusters of pine trees passed through the red glow of the taillights and sank into blackness. But nothing else.

  Then I felt it.

  All at once, a nagging sense of wrongness tickled my inner ear.

  Of deep, soul-crushing dread.

  Suddenly, we passed through a cold patch of air, and the warmth was sucked right out of me. I shivered and clutched my shoulders, my breath misting. The car felt like a freezer.

  “Uh . . . guys?” I whispered.

  I heard Zoe’s teeth chattering next to me. So she felt it too.

  Malcolm’s head whipped to the side. “The hell is that—?”

  Suddenly, a brilliant light blazed in front of the car, forcing me to squint, to shield my eyes. For a split-second, the night outside turned to day.

  Then pitch darkness.

  With a pop, the headlights, the high beams, and all the dashboard lights went out.

  “Jesus, I can’t see crap!” Jace shouted, jerking a lever on the steering wheel.

  “Stop the car,” Malcolm ordered.

  “I’m trying,” he yelled, stomping on the brakes. “It’s not . . . doing . . . shit!”

  We were driving blind, barreling down a dark highway at forty miles per hour.

  I blinked away the glare, my night vision throbbing with an imprint of the flash, grateful for once to be sandwiched between Zoe and Vincent in the back where it felt safe while Jace and Malcolm handled this emergency.

  I wasn’t even scared.

  Because really, how often do people actually get in crashes?

  The headlights came on again.

  See, nothing to worry about—

  Except we were heading straight for a hairpin turn, the end of the asphalt, a cliff beyond. No guardrail this time.

  With a sick feeling, I realized we were going to go over and there was nothing we could do about it.

  “Everybody hold onto your dicks,” Malcolm said grimly.

  It happened in surreal slow motion. The SUV rolled off the pavement, pitched forward in terrifying freefall, and crashed down the side of the mountain, bouncing like the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. I actually thought that.

  The Indiana Jones ride.

  Never once did I stop screaming.

  I woke with a gasp in my bed, my skin scalding under a ray of morning sunlight, my heart still galloping from the adrenaline.

  My body felt like one giant bruise.

  I reached for my blankets, getting a sharp twinge in my ribs and, wincing, sat up on the edge of my bed.

  Car crash.

  We were in a car crash.

  Straining to remember, I touched my forehead, only to jerk my hand back at another stab of pain.

  Head injury?

  As if to confirm, a wave of nausea washed over me.

  I must have blacked out, or been knocked unconscious, because I didn’t remember anything after we plunged into the ravine. First everything went cold, then there was that blinding flash of light, Jace lost control of his car, and then . . . nothing.

  So how did I end up back in my bedroom?

  Did my friends carry me back?

  I glanced around, hoping for clues, and my gaze settled on my mirror.

  Besides a nasty bruise on my forehead, and a line of bruises running down my torso from my shoulder to my hip, I looked unscathed. Half hidden behind long, tangled hair, my doe-like brown eyes stared back at me.

  My back also itched, right in the middle where I could barely reach. Ugh, so annoying.

  What about the others?

  I raised my hand to my mouth and chewed my fi
ngernails. They better be okay. I looked around my bedroom again.

  It felt different than I remembered, like someone had just been here and subtly shifted everything.

  Probably just my imagination.

  “Mom?” I called.

  I listened a moment, but except for the chirp of insects outside and the whir of the overhead fan, the house was silent.

  I opened the door and yelled out into the hall, “Dad?”

  No reply.

  Was it a weekday? I always lost track during summer. They must be at work.

  Well, if they knew about the crash, it must not have been important enough for them to take the day off. That’s good, I guess.

  Okay, so what actually happened? I could figure this out.

  I got knocked out in the crash, but the others—Zoe, Malcolm, Jace, and Vincent—were all fine, so they brought me back to my house.

  Except I’d woken up in pajama shorts and a tank top, no bra.

  My lip curled. So they undressed me?

  But . . . no.

  My friends weren’t shady like that. Well, maybe Malcolm. But even him. If I was unconscious, they would have taken me straight to a hospital.

  Unless I was acting coherent last night, and they hadn’t realized I had amnesia. Or something like that.

  In either case, I doubted we made it to that party.

  I checked my cell phone, unplugged it from its charger—did I plug it in last night?—and carried it to my bed.

  Seven missed calls from Zoe, a bunch of urgent texts—OMG pick up! Call me back, you ho! R u alive?

  Zero from anyone else.

  A weird pressure formed in the center of my chest.

  Everybody please please please be fine.

  With a tight throat, I called her back.

  “Zoe?”

  “Okay, thank God,” she answered. “Are you okay?”

  Hearing her voice, I breathed easier, and lay back down on my bed. At least she was okay. “Yeah, I’m fine. Are you?”

  “Not a scratch. So you’re . . . you’re at home?”

  “Yeah . . . so, like, what exactly happened last night?” I said. “Is everyone okay? I don’t remember anything.”

  “You remember we got in a crash, right?”

  “I mean, I remember Jace going over the edge, but then I must’ve blacked out or something. Did you guys bring me home?”

  “That’s . . . the last thing I remember, too,” she said. “After that flash.”

  I sat up, growing more uneasy. “So you have no idea what happened?”

  “No, I was hoping you could tell me.”

  My heart began pounding. She’d woken up just as clueless as me.

  “You call Jace,” I said breathlessly. “I’ll call Vincent . . . we have to make sure they’re okay.”

  “Remi, hold on—”

  “No, we have to call them right now.”

  “Remi, I already did,” Zoe said. “I already called them. I can’t get a hold of them.”

  My skin turned to ice.

  If any of them had gotten hurt, or died . . .

  No, I refused to even think about it.

  “Then we have to go to their houses,” I said. “Malcolm’s closest.”

  “Right. I’m leaving now.”

  Since neither Zoe nor I had cars, we met up on bikes at the end of my road, then coasted the rest of the way down the winding two-lane highway to Malcolm’s Street. A nervous adrenaline buzzed in my ears the whole way.

  “Do you think it could have been a prank?” Zoe rode up next to me, her blonde ponytail flapping in the breeze. “You know, something the three boys did to us?”

  That possibility had occurred to me too. “No, Zo, they’re mean, but they’re not that mean. I have bruises on my rib cage.”

  “Not to mention the memory bit,” she said. “They would have had to drug us.”

  “God, I hope they wouldn’t do that.”

  “Yeah,” Zoe snorted.

  The morning was fast becoming a scorcher, and by the time we reached Malcolm’s cabin, surrounded by creaking pine trees, rusted motorcycle parts, and half-dismantled pickup trucks, we were soaked in sweat—and my back had started itching again.

  “Crap,” Zoe said, braking in the middle of the road. “That’s his stepdad’s truck.”

  The dust kicked up from our wheels floated off into the forest, catching shafts of sunlight.

  “So?”

  “Can we, like, not ring the doorbell and just peek into Malcolm’s window? It’s just . . . his stepdad scares me.”

  “Bet you he’ll scare you even more if he finds you on his roof.”

  But I didn’t want to ring the doorbell either, so we stashed our bikes among the trees and snuck in from the side, where the roof slanted almost all the way to the ground.

  “Gah, these stupid bugs,” Zoe muttered, slapping her face.

  “Shh,” I hissed.

  Zoe gave me a boost onto the roof. As I scrambled up, the edge of the shingles jabbed my bruised ribs, making me bite down hard. I reached back for Zoe, and we scampered the rest of the way up to Malcolm’s second-story dormer window.

  I knelt in a clump of dead pine needles and cupped my face to the glass.

  Inside a cave of a room, sheets spilled off an unmade bed. Were those his legs tangled in the comforter? My heart gave an excited—and nervous—jolt.

  Zoe’s shadow loomed behind me.

  “See anything?”

  “Move, you’re blocking the light.” I waved her away.

  When my eyes adjusted, I felt a wave of disappointment. Just ruffles in the sheets.

  The bed, and the room, was empty.

  “Malcolm’s not here,” I said.

  “Good, this place gives me the creeps,” said Zoe. “Let’s go to Jace’s house, before his stepdad sees us.”

  But then my eyes fell on the window latch, one of those old-school brass levers—unlocked.

  There was no screen.

  Before I could chicken out, I pressed the base of my palms against the window and eased it up with a screech.

  Zoe grabbed my hand. “Are you crazy? What if his stepdad catches us?”

  “I just want to see if he came home last night.”

  “Like you would be able to tell,” she said.

  “If his cell phone’s here, maybe, or if the clothes he wore last night are in the hamper. I don’t know, maybe if we just look, Zoe.”

  “Yeah, it was the same gray wifebeater he has fifty thousand of,” she said. “And jeans.”

  “And navy blue Calvin Klein boxer briefs.” I shoved the window another inch. Dust and chips of paint sprinkled on my arms.

  “You know what underwear he was wearing?” Zoe said, her tone all different now.

  I blushed. “I saw them when he got in the car. Just . . . shut up, okay?”

  I slid one leg into Malcolm’s room, then the other, then dropped to the creaking hardwood floor like a cat. His room smelled like gunpowder, spicy cologne, and leather—basically what Malcolm smelled like all the time, and I felt my pulse speed up in response.

  Malcolm could be . . . intense.

  Photos of his mom and dad sat on his bureau, many with cracked panes. Covering the woodpaneled walls were posters of girl surfers in bikinis, which made my hackles bristle, and military recruiting posters of crew-cut men and women in uniform—The few. The proud. The Marines.

  Zoe dropped in behind me, grumbling again about me being crazy.

  Suddenly, she gasped and covered her mouth.

  “Remi, look—”

  She raised a trembling finger toward the bed, which I hadn’t seen properly in the dim light.

  Now I saw what she was pointing at, and a chill went down my spine.

  I approached the bed slowly, raised my hand to my mouth. “Oh God . . .”

  Where Malcolm should have been lying, there was only a thick, wet bloodstain.

  Chapter 2

  “You could have just knocked,” sai
d a cold voice.

  Zoe and I both shrieked and spun toward the door, clutching our hearts.

  Malcolm stood in the doorway, having just emerged from the bathroom, shirtless.

  A strip of blood-soaked gauze stretched down his side, no doubt the source of all the blood. Because I couldn’t help it, I stole a peek at his heavily muscled pecs and lean six pack before going back to the bandage. “Are you . . . ?”

  “Car must have crumpled in. I’m fine.”

  “Because . . . you don’t look fine.”

  He sauntered into the room and opened his bureau, leisurely pulling on a gray wifebeater tank top over his low-slung jeans before he answered. “Looks worse than it is. What about you? Injuries?”

  Zoe shook her head, and Malcolm’s cruel gray eyes flicked to me, then my forehead.

  I covered my temple, wishing I could shrink from his probing stare. “I’m fine,” I said, almost defensively.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m fine. I just have some bruises.”

  “Where?” His intense eyes stayed on mine.

  I answered slowly, feeling like I was facing the Spanish Inquisition. “On my ribs.”

  “Come here.” He beckoned me forward with two fingers. “Lift your shirt.”

  His words gave me a flash of panic, before I realized that just because he told it like an order didn’t mean I had to obey him, and I backed away. “No, I’m not letting you ogle me. I’m fine. You’re the one who’s not fine. Look at you.”

  “Remi,” he said, an amused arch to his eyebrows, “I’ve seen you in a bikini.”

  The relish in his voice made me instantly flustered. “They’re just bruises from the seatbelt,” I snapped, already irritated with him.

  One-on-one time with Malcolm was unbearable.

  We needed Jace and Vincent to balance him out, to make it actually fun and not plain miserable.

  God, I hoped they were okay.

  “Malcolm, have you heard from Vincent or Jace?” I asked.

  “Last night,” he said, ignoring me, “after Jace went off the edge, what do you guys remember?”

  Zoe and I exchanged uneasy glances. “Uh . . . we were hoping you could tell us.”

  “Nope. I don’t remember jack.”

  “The flash?” Zoe sat down at the foot of Malcolm’s bed, steering clear of the bloodstain.

  “I remember the flash.”

  “By the way, how did we all get home?” Zoe asked.