Hazel led the way. I couldn’t help but glance back at that wall. I felt like their eyes were following me.
We joined the others at the minivan and hit the road. I had to turn back and return to the hotel twice—the girls having put something in the wardrobes and drawers too important to leave behind. After the second time, I went through all the rooms myself and made sure nothing had been left behind.
To my complete lack of surprise, they had forgotten a bunch of stuff.
I packed them in a single tote bag and dumped it in the back. And still the girls spoke up, suddenly remembering something they’d forgotten:
“My comb!” Victoria said. “We have to turn back! I forgot my comb!”
“Got it,” I said.
“My hairdryer!” Sirena said. “I can’t live without my hairdryer!”
“Got it,” I grunted.
“My makeup bag!” Bianca said. “I kept it under my mattress!”
“Got it!” I said loudly. It was only a moment later when I thought again. Makeup bag under the mattress?
Oh well. I’m sure the hotel would send it to us. We were leaving Party Central and I wasn’t going to turn back now.
Victoria and Maddy sat on the seats at the very back. They pulled blindfolds over their eyes to block out the lights from the few cars that passed. They lay sprawled on comfortable chairs. That was why I ordered this particular minivan ahead of time. The chairs were leather and you could lean back and really get comfortable. The journey was a three-hour drive with traffic and, although not long, I knew what state the girls would be in once we began to head back home.
Bianca and Sirena sat in the middle seats directly behind me and Hazel. They squirmed in their seats as if they had ants in their pants.
“Turn the music up!” they kept saying. “Louder!”
Meanwhile, those in the back, already close to drifting to sleep, groaned and complained about the music being too loud. We were only twenty minutes into the journey and already I wanted to pull over and dump them by the side of the road. I couldn’t put up with this for another two and a half hours and, thanks to planning ahead of time, I didn’t have to.
I opened the glove compartment and pulled out the large headphones I’d stored in there. I handed them to the girls behind us. After several failed attempts, they managed to plug them into the car’s audio system. They could listen to music as loudly as they wanted.
I glanced over at Hazel. “I can turn the music up if you want to listen?” I said.
She shook her head. “I like the quiet.”
She returned to staring out the window. I thought about our conversation earlier when she was spewing her guts out. About her second thoughts of marrying Tom. The others were distracted, so it was the perfect time to bring it up. But how? It was a difficult subject to broach.
Just then, a bright light illuminated the entire minivan, filling every nook and cranny with glaring amps. I turned the rearview mirror to one side to avoid it glaring in my face.
“Damn drivers,” I grumbled. “Why do they always use the high beam?”
I focused on the road ahead, purple cigarette burns dancing in my vision.
“Slow down,” Hazel said. “Let them overtake.”
I put my hazards on and pulled over as close to the side of the road as possible. The barrier prevented me from going any further. The lights remained just as bright.
I could see far ahead down the long straight. No trucks or other vehicles came toward us. I lowered my window and waved my arm for them to overtake. It was safe.
“Asshole wants the whole road,” I said.
A strange electronic thrum strummed from behind us. I shared a look with Hazel. It was the weirdest noise I’d ever heard and wanted to make sure someone else had heard it too. By how she clamped her hands over her ears, I guessed she had.
The bright light dimmed, but not because the driver had kindly lowered the brightness level, but because the light moved away from us…
Directly up.
The vehicle—whatever it was—had shot up into the sky at a terrific speed.
A cold tingling sensation shivered up my back. There had to be a plausible explanation. Maybe we were driving over a hill and the lights only appeared to move up into the heavens.
But the road was flat. Sure, it was winding, but horizontally not vertically.
I ignored my dry mouth and jammed my foot on the gas.
“Alice…” Hazel said.
“I know,” I said, not looking over at her.
“It just…”
“I know.”
I didn’t want to talk about it.
I sat bolt upright, staring out the front window as if we were suffering from torrential rain and it was difficult to see. Maybe if we ignored it, pretended like we hadn’t seen or heard it and never spoke about it ever again, we could believe it hadn’t happened.
In the back, the music still blared and the girls danced merrily, grinding against the grateful seats. Further in the back, one of the girls was snoring. Probably Victoria.
The rest of the world hadn’t noticed the bizarre goings-on. It was probably just us. It was nothing, I told myself. Nothing but a figment of our imagination.
Then the light blinked on again, this time directly above us. It was even brighter this time, like a hospital’s fluorescents. It exploded across the front and side of the minivan, spreading our shadow over the canvas of the sheer mountain alongside us.
I felt the effect immediately—a gentle but persistent tug on the roof.
I pressed my foot on the gas. The engine roared but we didn’t zip forward. The front lifted, dragged by that incredible light.
Thinking quickly—or perhaps not thinking at all but letting my instincts take over—I shoved the car into reverse and slammed my foot on the pedal.
The rear wheels bit the tarmac and pulled hard. They didn’t pull us backward, and instead
