It didn’t, at least not enough for me to hear anything. Still, Katie seemed happy in the back seat bopping along to whatever she could make out from Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone.”
“Did you bring this car from your last house?” I asked as she drove.
“No,” she replied. “We were stationed in Germany. I didn’t have a car there and it sucked. First thing I did when we moved here was buy this thing with every dollar I saved up for the last sixteen years.”
“Was it nice? Germany?”
“It was fine.” Samantha didn’t take her eyes off the road. “I could drink alcohol, which was cool.”
“You can drink here, too. Kids do it all the time.”
“Yeah, but I could do it legally there, which was weird. Nothing kills a buzz like drinking with your mom. I prefer pot anyway. It’s more mellow.”
“I have never smoked.”
“Shut up. What else is there to do in this tiny town? I have driven around for days and I couldn’t find three cool things.”
“Movies, and stuff. I don’t know. I haven’t really had the most typical high school experience.”
“Why not?”
I looked back at Katie and then back to the road. “Make a left up here.”
Samantha didn’t press me, which I appreciated. Instead, she turned the car to the left and turned onto my street. “Nice houses. Way nicer than the place we’re renting.”
“Thanks. I had nothing to do with it, though. It was all my parents.” I pointed as we approached my house. “It’s up here on the right. The light purple one that needs a paint job. Mom won’t be home for a while, so you can park in the driveway.”
After Samantha parked, I led her to the end of my street, which dead ended in a cul-de-sac, with the woods stretching out for miles behind it. They wanted to build a house on the lot by the woods, but nobody bought it after a bunch of people protested, so they decided to let the woods overtake the property.
“This is far less creepy than you made it out to be,” Samantha said. “I was expecting pentagrams and hexes and such. That would have been pretty cool, honestly.”
“Well, I didn’t want you to come, so there’s that.”
“Be nice,” Katie said to me.
“That’s fair. Listen, I know you don’t want to talk about it,” Samantha said. “But I kinda know all about you, so maybe I can just ask you a couple questions.”
“How do you know everything about me?”
“I didn’t say everything, but it’s a small school and people talk, especially high schoolers. You’re kind of famous.”
“Is that why nobody talks to me?”
“No,” Samantha said, stepping over a log. “I think it’s because they fear death and you’re marked with it. It’s all over you.”
“And you don’t fear death?”
“Lots of my dad’s friends died, and when you’re a military kid you get to deal with the fact that Daddy might not be coming home. It’s a looming threat, so you just kind of live with it.”
“I have lived with the looming threat of death my whole life.”
“Even before Katie?”
“Even before Katie. People I love have been dying on me since I was a baby. Most of the time I feel cursed.”
“You’re not cursed,” Samantha said, snapping a twig with her shoe as she walked behind me. “People just die. It sucks.”
“Yeah, well lots of people around me died. All I have is Mom and Joanne left.”
“Joanne, that’s Katie’s mother, right?”
“Do we have to talk about this?” I asked with a deep sigh.
“I want to hear about it,” Katie said. “Let her talk. Engage with her. Please. For me.”
“Yes,” I responded to Samantha. “Joanne is Katie’s mother. She kind of became my mother too, after my Dad died.”
“And Katie…she like, just died, right?”
I nodded. “She just died.”
“And I’m sitting in her seat in Hooper’s class?” Samantha gulped loudly.
“You are.” I nodded again, staring straight forward.
“Wow, I can see why you hate me.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“Please don’t lie to me.”
I chuckled. “Fine. I kind of hate you, but I kind of like you, too. But I can’t let you get too close. I’m trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
“From me. From whatever it is within me that makes people die.”
Samantha laughed. “You’re kind of full of yourself. Did you know that?”
“I am not!” I threw my hands in the air. “Why would you say that?”
“You think death gives a shit about you? It doesn’t care about you. It’s just something that happens, and sometimes you have the bad luck to be caught in its path.”
There was nothing I could say to that. We were completely silent for a long moment before Katie broke in.
“Holy crap,” she said. “That was almost profound. I really like her, Banana. Please let me keep her.”
I stopped and turned to Samantha. “What I have to show you is just up ahead, but I have to warn you about something.”
“Whatever it is, I’m ready.”
I took in a deep breath. “I’m not sure that I’m ready to see it again. And I’m not even sure you’re going to be able to see it. It’s very possible I’m hallucinating.”
“You’re not!” Katie said.
I raised my eyebrows. “How would you know? That’s exactly what a hallucination would say.”
“Okay, now you’re freaking me out a little,” Samantha said. “Who are you talking to?”
“Katie,” I said. “She came to me a few nights ago and told me there was a hole that opened in the fabric of space that separated Earth from somewhere called the Dark Place. She told me that the hole is opening fast, and I have to help her stop it.” I stopped to look at Samantha, to see the horror in her eyes, but that’s not what I saw. She was looking at me with utter fascination. “You’re not freaking out?”
She shook her head. “This all seems completely logical to me.”
“So, you believe me?” I snapped my fingers. “Just like that?”
“Yup.”
“And if you don’t see this hole in space,
