Sixteen Moons.
The song that had disappeared from my playlist. The song no one else seemed to hear. The song Lena Duchannes had been playing on the viola. The song that was driving me crazy.
The light turned green and the Beater lurched into drive. I was on my way, and I had absolutely no idea where I was going.
Lightning ripped across the sky. I counted—one, two. The storm was getting closer. I flipped on the windshield wipers. It was no use. I couldn’t even see halfway down the block. Lightning flashed. I counted—one. Thunder rumbled above the roof of the Beater, and the rain turned horizontal. The windshield rattled as if it could give way at any second, which, considering the condition of the Beater, it could have.
I wasn’t chasing the storm. The storm was chasing me, and it had found me. I could barely keep the wheels on the slick road, and the Beater started to fishtail, skating erratically back and forth between the two lanes of Route 9.
I couldn’t see a thing. I slammed on the brakes, spinning out into the darkness. The headlights flickered, for barely a second, and a pair of huge green eyes stared back at me from the middle of the road. At first I thought it was a deer, but I was wrong.
There was someone in the road!
I pulled on the wheel with both hands, as hard as I could. My body slammed against the side of the door.
Her hand was outstretched. I closed my eyes for the impact, but it never came.
The Beater jerked to a stop, not more than three feet away. The headlights made a pale circle of light in the rain, reflecting off one of those cheap plastic rain ponchos you can buy for three dollars at the drugstore. It was a girl. Slowly, she pulled the hood off her head, letting the rain run down her face.
Green eyes, black hair.
Lena Duchannes.
I couldn’t breathe. I knew she had green eyes; I’d seen them before. But tonight they looked different— different from any eyes I had ever seen. They were huge and unnaturally green, an electric green, like the lightning from the storm. Standing in the rain like that, she almost didn’t look human.
I stumbled out of the Beater into the rain, leaving the engine running and the door open. Neither one of us said a word, standing in the middle of Route 9 in the kind of downpour you only saw during a hurricane or a nor’easter. Adrenaline was pumping through my veins and my muscles were tense, as if my body was still waiting for the crash.
Lena’s hair whipped in the wind around her, dripping with rain. I took a step toward her, and it hit me.
Wet lemons. Wet rosemary. All at once, the dream started coming back to me, like waves crashing over my head. Only this time, when she slipped through my fingers—I could see her face.
Green eyes and black hair. I remembered. It was her. She was standing right in front of me.
I had to know for sure. I grabbed her wrist. There they were: the tiny moon-shaped scratches, right where my fingers had reached for her wrist in the dream. When I touched her, electricity ran through my body. Lightning struck the tree not ten feet from where we were standing, splitting the trunk neatly in half. It began to smolder.
“Are you crazy? Or just a terrible driver?” She backed away from me, her green eyes flashing—with anger? With something.
“It’s you.”
“What were you trying to do, kill me?”
“You’re real.” The words felt strange in my mouth, like it was full of cotton.
“A real corpse, almost. Thanks to you.”
“I’m not crazy. I thought I was, but I’m not. It’s you. You’re standing right in front of me.”
“Not for long.” She turned her back on me and started up the road. This wasn’t going the way I had imagined it.
I ran to catch up with her. “You’re the one who just appeared out of nowhere and ran out into the middle of the highway.”
She waved her arm dramatically like she was waving away more than just the idea. For the first time, I saw the long black car in the shadows. The hearse, with its hood up. “Hello? I was looking for someone to help me, genius. My uncle’s car died. You could have just driven by. You didn’t have to try to run me down.”
“It was you in the dreams. And the song. The weird song on my iPod.”
She whirled around. “What dreams? What song? Are you drunk, or is this some kind of joke?”
“I know it’s you. You have the marks on your wrist.”
She turned her hand over and looked down, confused. “These? I have a dog. Get over it.”
But I knew I wasn’t wrong. I could see the face from my dream so clearly now. Was it possible she didn’t know?