“We have a fairly long car ride ahead of us. I think we have time for complicated.” I don’t answer and Ashley sighs. “You don’t have to tell me everything,” she offers gently. “But you do have to explain some of this. Like, for starters, what the freak happened to your hair?”
I burst out laughing. In no time I’m laughing so hard that I can’t even sit up straight, and Ashley is giggling right along with me. I shake my head, struggling to catch my breath. I don’t notice at first when my laughter turns to tears. But soon I’m crying so hard that I can’t even see the road in front of us. I can’t even see a few inches in front of me. All I can see are the tears in my eyes, blurring everything so that the world is even more confusing.
Ashley pulls over. She unclicks her seatbelt and reaches across the front seat, taking me into her arms. For a few seconds I let her rock me back and forth like she’s my big sister instead of my best friend, but then I pull away, shaking my head.
“No,” I say through my sobs. “We don’t have time to stop. We have to keep going, as fast as we can.”
Ashley must hear the desperation in my voice, because she nods and restarts the car.
“There are tissues in the backseat,” she offers without taking her eyes off the road.
I twist around and grab them. “Thanks,” I say, sniffling.
“Sunshine, talk to me.”
I take a deep, ragged breath. Then another, then another, until finally I’m breathing almost normally. “Like I said on the phone last night . . .” I concoct a version of reality that will make sense to my friend. She’s as skeptical about ghosts as Mom used to be, so I’m not about to tell her what’s really going on. Instead, I say that my birth father isn’t who I thought he was, and I needed to get out of there. It’s not that far from the truth.
Things get a little trickier when I explain why I absolutely must get to Nolan as quickly as possible. Luckily Ashley has no trouble believing I’m in love with him. “I’ve been rooting for you two to get together for months now!” she squeals. She doesn’t even balk when I explain that we’re rushing home so I can tell Nolan how I feel before he falls into the arms of this other girl he’s been seeing since I left town. It sounds like something out of a romance novel, but Ashley buys it, hook, line, and sinker. Thank goodness my best friend is boy crazy.
Ashley would never guess Nolan is in real danger and I need to get him out of harm’s way before it’s too late. Not that I have any idea how I’m going to get him away from Helena.
Or how I’m going to get myself away from her once Nolan is safe.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Homecoming
Ashley and I take turns driving. I force myself to sleep when it’s her turn; I have to be strong to face Helena. As we drive the landscape shifts: out of the jungle and into the desert, and then up through Texas. It reminds me of driving from Austin to Ridgemont with Mom back in August, though it’s hard to believe just how much has changed since then. The weather goes from balmy to frigid somewhere along the way. At a rest stop in Idaho I put a sweater on over my T-shirt, change from shorts to long jeans, and slip the knife and map from one back pocket into another. I’m dozing when we cross the state line into Washington.
I dream of Nolan. No—it’s not a dream. I know that now. It’s a vision. He’s sitting. He’s struggling to get up, but an invisible force is holding him down. He’s bleeding from a gash above his left temple. I read somewhere that a cut to just the right part of the temple can kill a man. Drops of blood drip onto the chair’s upholstery. A chair that looks so familiar . . .
“The GPS says we’re only seven minutes away from your house.” Ashley’s voice wakes me. Groggily I open my eyes. We’re driving through downtown Ridgemont—well, as much as Ridgemont has a downtown—turning onto Main Street. It’s nearly midnight, and all the storefronts are dark. I gaze longingly at the pizza place where Mom and I had take-out on our very first night in this town. That seems like a million years ago. For most girls homecoming is a word associated with dresses and football and glittery plastic crowns.
Not for me.
Ashley turns a corner, and I find myself staring at the coffee shop where I dreamed of Nolan with Helena.
Wait. Just wait. This isn’t a homecoming. I’m not going home. Not to my actual house. I’ve got to get to wherever Helena is holding Nolan hostage. I close my eyes and try to remember every detail of my vision. I know I recognized it, but it feels out of reach somehow, like a word on the tip of my tongue that I can’t remember.
“Stop!” I shout.
Ashley slams on the brakes so hard that if I hadn’t been wearing my seatbelt, I would have slammed into the windshield. I turn around and look for cars honking like crazy behind us, but it’s late at night in our quiet little town, and the streets are empty.
“I didn’t mean stop, stop.” Slowly Ashley presses on the gas.
“Be more specific next time. What kind of stop did you mean?”