The Summer It Came for Us Read online

  “Is that your blood?” I interrupted, glancing between Malcolm and the bed.

  “No, I don’t know whose blood that is,” he said.

  My jaw went slack. “Seriously?”

  “Of course it’s my blood, Remi. It’s not like I murdered a hooker last night.”

  “Malcolm,” Zoe chided.

  I continued, hot in the face. “Because that’s a lot of blood. Should you be in a hospital?”

  “She’s right. You probably should be in a hospital,” Zoe said.

  He started pacing, running his hands through his charcoal-black hair. “That flash,” he said, ignoring us, “whatever it was, it killed the car’s power—power brakes, headlights, dashboard lights, everything.”

  “You talked to Jace?” I said hopefully.

  “Remi, I literally woke up two minutes ago,” he said. “I was bleeding all over the place, I went to the bathroom, I came out. Here we are. That is all I’ve done, alright? I don’t know any better than you what the hell happened last night.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Let me see under your bandage.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that looks like fake blood and I don’t believe you.”

  He shrugged and lifted the bottom of his tank top. “Knock yourself out.”

  I swallowed and stepped up to him, carefully peeled up the bottom edge, hyperaware of just how burning hot his skin was under mine.

  The beginning of a nasty scrape came into view, and I jerked back, wiped my hand on my shorts.

  “It’s a real cut,” I said.

  Seeing Malcolm’s bewildered expression, Zoe responded, “We weren’t sure if you guys were pranking us.”

  “Maybe only Vincent and Jace were in on it,” I said. “I mean, Vincent was trying to scare us the entire night . . . and Jace was driving, right?”

  “That was no prank,” Malcolm said.

  “Then why didn’t anybody call the police?” I said. “We drove off a freaking cliff. Jace probably totaled his car.”

  An odd thought occurred to me.

  I’d been in a car crash last night, I didn’t remember anything afterward, and everyone was acting sketchy—I felt pretty damn calm, considering.

  Maybe it was Malcolm’s calm, rubbing off on me. He always gave the impression everything was under control.

  Whether it was or wasn’t.

  “Vincent said he saw something, right?” Zoe said, glancing between us. “Right before the flash?”

  We both looked to Malcolm, but he merely shook his head, his lips a grim line.

  “Didn’t he?” I said.

  “He was just messing around.”

  Zoe touched her forehead. “Do you think we have concussions?”

  “No duh, Zo,” I said, “how else do ten hours just get blacked out?”

  “Enough. Everybody chill.” Malcolm fetched his phone and clicked through his missed calls. His frown deepened.

  “What? Did they call?” I tried to peek. “Did you get a missed call?”

  He angled it away from me as he dialed a number, pressing his finger to my lips.

  Ugh, the nerve of him! I swatted his hand away. “Who are you calling?”

  “Jace. Shush.”

  We all waited in tense silence, Zoe and me exchanging another nervous glance.

  Malcolm was always in control. Of everything. If he had no idea what was going on, the whole thing started to seem a lot more sinister.

  Did none of us remember what happened?

  Absently, I reached behind me to scratch my back, which still itched.

  “Jace, it’s Malcolm, call me back,” he said ominously and hung up, and my heart sank.

  Still no word from Jace.

  “I called Vincent, too,” said Zoe. “He’s not answering, either.”

  Malcolm stared at his phone a second longer, then pocketed it and hunched over the back of his desk chair, gripping it so hard the wood began to splinter.

  “We have to go to their houses,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “We have to check on them.”

  Malcolm nodded to Zoe. “Keys.”

  Zoe twirled around, spotted the keys to his convertible on his nightstand, pranced over to fetch them, and attempted to casually toss them into his outstretched hand.

  They missed by about five feet and clattered in the hallway.

  “Nice throw,” he deadpanned, rising with an eyeroll to get them.

  I stifled a giggle, which earned me a glare from her.

  That was the effect Malcolm had on people.

  He was so unimpressed all the time, you couldn’t help but try to impress him, even if he was the world’s biggest dick.

  “The hell’s all that racket?” called his stepdad from downstairs. “Quit jerking yourself off up there, Malcolm!”

  Sensing a hostile encounter, I said, “Malcolm, don’t even listen—

  “I’ll cum on your face!” Malcolm hollered down.

  “—to him.”

  “Oh yeah? I’ll cum on your MOM!” came the reply, followed by hoarse laughter.

  “Yep . . . bastard’s drinking already,” Malcolm muttered. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “We’ll just take the window again.” Zoe grabbed me and pushed me toward the window, as eager as I was to flee the house unseen.

  But then she stopped.

  “Remi, your . . . your back,” she whispered.

  “What? What’s on my back?” I turned my head, then turned the other way, frantic to look.

  “You’re bleeding, too.”

  “I am? Where?”

  “Let me see.” Malcolm strode over, and I felt both their fingers prodding the base of my neck, where my spine began. I fought the urge to shiver.

  “There’s blood dotting her shirt all the way down,” Zoe murmured. “Look . . .”

  She pulled down the back of my tank top—and promptly clamped her hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp.

  “Whoa,” said Malcolm.

  “What?” I hissed, trying to twist away from them and see my back at the same time. “What is it?”

  “Those are claw marks,” he said.

  No, I told myself, tilting Zoe’s makeup mirror in the backseat of Malcolm’s convertible to get a better look, they aren’t claw marks.

  They were just three thin scratches that happened to look like claw marks.

  Probably made by twigs.

  Scratching had reopened them.

  Still, the mere suggestion gave me the heebie-jeebies, and despite the warm summer air blasting my cheeks, my arms had formed goose bumps.

  Claw marks made by what? And how come they only itched but didn’t sting, as if the skin had been numbed?

  Had something attacked me?

  Malcolm took yet another curve way too fast, making the seatbelt dig in painfully to my already bruised hip.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be driving like this,” I said, “considering this is exactly the kind of driving that caused us to crash in the first place.”

  “We don’t know we got in a crash,” Malcolm said.

  “Then what do you call it when you drive into a ravine?” I said.

  “All I’m saying is we don’t remember the impact. We went over, but none of us remember actually hitting anything.”

  “Well, Jace’s car didn’t sprout wings, did it?”

  “Maybe she got scratched by a bear,” Zoe said, trying and failing to subdue her whipping ponytail.

  “Guys, they’re not claw marks.”

  My own long hair caught the wind and lashed my back, right where I’d been scratched.

  It hurt so bad my eyes watered. At least that stung.

  “They’re claw marks,” Malcolm said, as if that settled the matter.

  Tires squealing, he swerved into a driveway and was out before I’d even registered Jace’s sprawling suburban house.

  “Jace!” Malcolm yelled, bounding up the walkway.

  “Could also be fingernails,” Zoe said, unbuckling her belt to
follow him.

  “Ew, that’s even worse, Zoe.”

  I had no idea how, in the heat of summer, Jace’s parents managed to keep a green lawn and neatly trimmed hedges, which pushed out against the encroaching wilderness like a tiny bubble of paradise.

  “JACE!” Malcolm thumped on the door.

  Zoe knocked.

  I rang the doorbell.

  From inside came muffled music.

  “Jace!” I called toward his open bedroom window, where fan blades spun lazily behind the screen.

  No one answered.

  His parents would be at work, but he should be home—if he made it out of the crash.

  “Back up, back up.” Malcolm shooed us backward. “I’m breaking down the door.”

  “Wait.” I caught his arm and tried the doorknob.

  Unlocked, the door swung into the cool, air-conditioned entryway.

  I gave him a sly smile. “Now wasn’t that easier?”

  “Fucker won’t answer, he deserves to have his door broken down.” He stepped in ahead of us. “Jace!”

  Typical Malcolm. The guy was a liability.

  Inside, the music was so loud, the walls and hardwood floors buzzed, vases rattled in their display cases.

  I followed Zoe and Malcolm up the stairs to Jace’s bedroom, which we found open.

  And empty. The bed neatly made.

  I clamped my jaw, wanting to punch something. This was getting so frustrating.

  Up here, the music sounded fainter.

  “Where’s the music coming from?” Zoe asked, reading my mind.

  All our eyes met, and we blurted out at the same time, “Basement.”

  Sure enough, we found Jace—alive, to my immense relief—in his basement, jerking his hand across his electric guitar and whipping his head back and forth. Volume turned to max, his car-sized amplifier belched out horrible, grating screeches.

  Zoe and I had to cover our ears.

  “Jace!” Malcolm yelled.

  He didn’t look up, but continued to strum, his unruly hair bouncing up and down.

  Malcolm charged in and yanked out the power cord, and the room fell into ringing silence.

  Jace looked up. “Come on, man, I was right in the middle of a riff.”

  “Are you deaf, dumbshit?”

  “I was aware of you, dude, I could see you in my peripherals. Just wait next time.”

  “Last night. What happened?”

  Jace gave him a blank look, and shrugged.

  “No, you tell us right now. What happened?”

  He flinched back. “Jesus, I don’t know, nothing, alright? Nothing happened. Why?”

  “Jace, where’s Vincent?” I said. “Did he make it home last night? Is he okay?”

  He strummed another silent chord on his guitar. “How should I know?”

  “Because you were the driver.”

  Jace scowled, glanced between us. “What the hell are you guys talking about?”

  “Oh, you think this is funny?” said Malcolm.

  Watching their back and forth, I could tell something was wrong. Jace wasn’t on the same page as us.

  “The crash,” I said softly. “You remember the crash, right?”

  In the basement’s harsh fluorescent lights, the bob of his Adam’s apple was clearly visible. “What . . . what crash?”

  Then it occurred to me.

  Maybe his memory cut out earlier than ours.

  “We were driving to that party in your parents’ car, remember? You lost control and we went over the edge, and that’s the last thing any of us remembers. Malcolm, Zoe, and I woke up back in our beds, but we have no idea how we got back . . . we thought you brought us back.”

  “There was that bright flash of light,” said Zoe.

  Jace blinked at us. “Whoa, that is trippy . . . so you guys had that same dream?”

  “Dream?” Malcolm scoffed. “That was no dream.”

  Okay, this was starting to get really creepy.

  How could we all not remember?

  When I first woke up, I’d briefly wondered if it was a dream, too, but it wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t. The memory was as real and concrete as any other.

  Dreams had a vague, flimsy feel to them. You could always tell.

  Jace laughed nervously. “Come on, guys, that was definitely a dream . . .” He trailed off, and his eyes narrowed to slits. “Did you guys read my dream log?”

  “Dreams don’t do this, dipshit.” Malcolm lifted his wifebeater to show his bandaged side, and a very chiseled pelvic V.

  “That looks fake. That’s fake.” Jace twirled his finger at the gauze. “Lift it up.”

  Malcolm dropped his shirt and spun away in a huff. “I don’t believe this guy.”

  “You keep a dream log?” Zoe teased, suppressing a giggle.

  “It’s for my therapist,” Jace snapped.

  “Jace, he’s got a real injury,” I said. “I checked. And I got this in the crash.” I pointed to my bruised forehead.

  “And claw marks on her back,” Malcolm said.

  “Scratches,” I corrected.

  Jace set down his guitar and held up his palms. “Look, I don’t know how you guys hurt yourselves, if you bumped your head sleepwalking, Remi, or what, but that car crash where I totaled my parents’ SUV . . . that was a dream. I wrote it all down in my dream log . . . which is obviously where you guys got it. So just cut it out, alright?”

  Listening to Jace, I got this funny feeling deep down, like he was hiding something, like something really bad had happened to him, and he didn’t want to tell us.

  “Jace, you have to believe us,” said Zoe. “We were all in that crash.”

  “Everything went cold,” I said, “and there was this bright flash . . .”

  “Knocked out your lights, your power steering,” said Malcolm.

  “Then I drove over the edge, and then I woke up,” said Jace. “Yes, that is literally, word for word, exactly what I wrote down in my dream log. Good job, guys, you can read.”

  “But it wasn’t a dream,” I said. “We were all there, we all remember the same thing.”

  “Here, I’ll prove it was a dream.” He rose to his feet, shaking his head. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. Here, it’s in the garage.”

  On his way across the basement, he punched Malcolm in the shoulder.

  I followed him, my heart beating quicker.

  Proof? What kind of proof did he have?

  He opened the door to the garage, flipped on the light, and stepped back. “There . . . look.”

  As the fluorescent lights flickered on, I made out the gleaming contours of a red vehicle, and all the breath left my lungs.

  His parents’ Subaru Forrester.

  It should have been lying at the bottom of a ravine, all crumpled and dented.

  “I found it just like that this morning,” Jace said. “Completely untouched.”

  Chapter 3

  I couldn’t speak, could only stare.

  My heart thumped away in my throat, the beats strangely heavy.

  No, it couldn’t be . . . I had heard metal denting. There should have at least been scratches.

  Like the scratches on me.

  Speechless, I circled the SUV.

  It looked brand-new, perfect, pristine. Not one speck of mud, not one chip in the paint.

  How?

  “Then your parents bought a new car,” Malcolm said.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Jace. “Will you guys quit it already?”

  “Maybe there was another road down below,” Zoe said, “and Jace somehow managed to maneuver onto it without a scratch.”

  “That’s not how I remember it,” said Malcolm. “We hit a branch, shattered the windshield, dented the frame on Jace’s side . . . either they bought a new car or someone did some major bodywork here.”

  “You remember all that?” I said.

  “Bits and pieces.”

  “I mean, could you fix dents like that?”r />
  “Mmm,” Malcolm stroked his chin, “not sure.”

  Aside to Zoe, Jace whispered, “Did I put that in my log? The part about the shattered windshield? Because I don’t think I put that in my log.”

  “Oh my God, we didn’t read your stupid dream diary,” she said.

  He still didn’t believe us.

  Or he was lying, and he was in on it.

  Duh, Remi. He was obviously in on it.

  Four people didn’t spontaneously have the same dream and have real injuries to show for it.

  But as I stared at the car, I couldn’t make sense of one thing.

  If Malcolm’s, Zoe’s, and my stories were all true, and we had crashed this car yesterday, that meant Jace had somehow driven us all home, tucked our unconscious bodies in bed, then taken the car to the shop, and then decided to lie about it.

  Not only was that not like Jace at all, but it didn’t even seem possible.

  No one would do that. No one could do that.

  But if it wasn’t Jace . . .

  A whisper of cold brushed the back of my neck. I didn’t even want to imagine what else it might be.

  “Hang on, I’ll be right back,” Jace said, backing toward the door. “Nobody move.”

  “Yeah, you go consult your dream log.” Malcolm opened the driver’s door and reached under the steering column to pop the hood, then ambled around front to check out the engine.

  “Guys, is it just me,” said Zoe, “or is this really, really weird.”

  “I’m getting that vibe,” said Malcolm.

  “I think he’s lying,” I said.

  “Well, he thinks he’s telling the truth.” Malcolm reached under the hood and tugged on something.

  “What? You see anything?” I slid in next to him and stared down at the incomprehensible jumble of tubes and boxes, trying to be useful.

  “If there was a short, you might get some carbon residue,” he said.

  “Really?”

  I had no clue what he was talking about.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m even looking for. Watch your fingers.”

  I snatched my hands away, and he let the hood clack shut.

  “If we had a VIN,” he said, “we might be able to check. Right now, I got diddly.”

  “Check what?” I said.

  “If it’s the same car.”

  “What’s a VIN?” Zoe asked.

  “Vehicle Identification Number.”