On the Day I Died Read online

  “It insisted you steal it?” I snorted.

  “I know it doesn’t make any sense, but it’s the truth. I—”

  He stopped, as if something had interrupted his thoughts. Pulling over to the side of the road and triple-checking to make sure the car’s blinkers were on, he grabbed the ornament and climbed out of the car.

  “Now what?” I said.

  “I just need a minute.” He walked around to the front of the grandpa-mobile and set the ornament on its hood. The thing looked both silly and spooky, like one of those fake tombstones people put in their front yards at Halloween. For a second, Kev just ran his hands over the ornament’s glinting chrome. Then, after pawing around in the car’s backseat for a roll of duct tape and a wire coat hanger, he started jerry-rigging it to the car.

  I got out, too. “Can’t you at least wait until we get home?” I asked. I was still worried about Darryl.

  Kev shook his head. “It has to go on now.”

  “How come?”

  “It just does.”

  I persisted. “What’s the big hurry?”

  Kev whirled, face flushed, sweaty hair flopping. “Because I want to put it on now, Rich. Okay? It has to go on right now!”

  I raised my hands in mock surrender. “Hey, defib, okay? You stole it, so I guess you can do whatever you want with it. But it’s going to be hard not to say ‘I told you so’ when it goes flying on the expressway.”

  Kev slapped another piece of duct tape around the base of the thing, gave it a test wiggle. “It’s not going to fall off. It’s on good and tight.”

  I doubted it. Kev’s mechanical abilities rated right up there with his social skills—meaning they were practically zilch. Three different times he’d tried to fix the grandpa-mobile’s passenger seat belt—a matter of simply tightening the retractable spool—and three different times he’d failed. The belt was still useless, all thirteen feet of it hanging out like a dog’s tongue on a hot summer’s day.

  I climbed into the car and sat on that lame beach towel.

  Kev slid behind the wheel. But he didn’t start the engine right away. Instead, he sat gazing through the windshield at the shimmering stallion. “Want to hear something strange, Rich?” he finally said. “I really like seeing that hood ornament out there. It makes me feel, I don’t know, like Clark Kent bursting out of a phone booth or something. Kind of invincible, like nothing and no one can touch me.”

  From then on, things were pretty normal until we got back into the city. I pushed Cheap Trick into the cassette deck, then banged along on the dashboard while Kev clutched the steering wheel and navigated rush-hour traffic. But as the city’s skyline rose into view, something came over Kev. He was staring straight ahead, his eyes wide despite the blinding glare ricocheting off the hood ornament.

  “Earth to Kev,” I called.

  That’s when the wildness crept into his face.

  “Kev?” I asked. “You okay?”

  Kev answered by smashing down the accelerator. The car leaped forward.

  “Holy crap!” I cried as the grandpa-mobile registered speeds you can bet it’d never reached before—ninety … ninety-five … a hundred miles per hour! “What’s the matter with you? Slow down!”

  Kev yanked the car across three lanes of traffic. Brake lights flashed. Horns blasted. “Woo-hoo!” he hollered, as if he was riding one of the roller coasters at Great America. He sped up, slipping behind a gravel truck.

  “Slow down! Slow down!” I cried as the truck’s back end loomed, filling the windshield. I braced for the impact, sure we were going to die in a fiery crash.

  Kev swerved out of the lane without even checking his side mirror, barely missing a blue Chevette. The guy driving lay on his horn. Kev just laughed and tore away, careening through the traffic like a psycho.

  My stomach lurched and my armpits turned to puddles. “Stop it! Slow down!”

  He grinned at me like a jack-o’-lantern. “I told you, Rich. I’m invincible, man. In-friggin’-vincible!” He tilted back his head and howled like a wolf.

  Then he gave the accelerator another punch, and the Chrysler responded like a rocket. Veering crazily onto the shoulder, he took the 159th Street exit ramp so fast I bounced out of my seat. Outside, the familiar sights of Tinley Park swept past in a blur of color and speed. Just minutes later, Kev wheeled the car into my driveway, coming to a squealing, slantways stop.

  “Are you crazy?” I gasped, clawing open the passenger door and stumbling out onto the driveway. “You could have killed us both!”

  “But I didn’t,” said Kev, his chest still heaving from his adrenaline rush. “That was some ride, huh?”

  It was all I could do not to knock his teeth down his throat. Kicking the car door shut, I huffed toward the house.

  “Hey,” he called after me. “What’s your problem?”

  I didn’t even look back. I just kept walking.

  I steered clear of Kev for the next week or so. Sure, I was still plenty mad, but I was scared, too. And not just by his driving. No, something else had frightened me. It was the look on his face as he’d clenched that steering wheel. Wild. Uncontrolled. His eyes glinting like those on that crazy chrome horse he’d strapped to his hood.

  Then on the Saturday before school started, he pulled up in front of my house.

  “Hey,” he said. He got out of the Chrysler and strolled up the driveway to where I was tinkering under the hood of my beater, a ’72 Ford Pinto I’d dumped my entire life savings into—all five hundred bucks of it. “Looks like she’s coming along.” Leaning down, he tapped the new running lights I’d just installed. “Looks good.”

  I knew this was Kev’s way of making up, that his complimenting my wreck of a car was the closest I’d ever get to an apology. I accepted it.

  Pulling my head out from under the hood, I took a closer look at him. Jeez, he looked like crap! His eyes were sunken, and he’d lost weight. His T-shirt hung on him like wet laundry, and his belt—cinched on the last hole—barely held up his baggy jeans.

  “What have you been up to?” I asked, wondering if he’d been sick.

  “Driving,” he said. “I’ve been driving.”

  Just the word seemed to trigger a change in him.

  “There’s nothing like driving, Rich,” he went on, and even though his face looked hungry, his voice sounded slack, as if he was reciting some dull poem from lit class. “It fills your mind, and all you can think of is going fast, going far, getting there.”

  He wasn’t making any sense. “Getting where?”

  “Wherever the roads take me—to the city, to Mexico, to the moon. It doesn’t matter just as long as I’m driving.”

  He looked away for a moment, and when he looked back his face had lost its wildness. In its place was a sad, thoughtful expression. “I should go.”

  “What’s your hurry?” I said. “You just got here.”

  “I know, but …” He stumbled around for an excuse before adding, “I’ve got to be somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  Kev didn’t answer. He just started down the driveway toward his car.

  I trailed after him. “Listen, man, are you okay? Do you need—”

  I couldn’t finish my sentence. The grandpa-mobile! It was as changed as Kev. A spiderweb of cracks spread across the left side of the windshield. The right rear bumper was caved in. And the puke-beige paint blistered and bubbled in places as if he had driven it through a furnace. The car was ruined … well, almost. The hood ornament still glowed shiny and bright.

  When he opened the driver’s door, a hot billow of air puffed out. It stank of burned matches and something else I didn’t recognize. Papa Smurf was singed a dull brown.

  “What’s this all about, man?” I asked. “What happened?”

  “Driving happened,” he answered. Sliding in behind the steering wheel, he turned the key.

  The Chrysler’s motor revved, and I swear I saw smoke—real smoke—puff from the stallion’s flari
ng nostrils.

  Kev leaned out the window then, and his eyes met mine. “There are back roads out there, Rich. Lonely, forgotten roads leading to places no one’s ever gone, places that can’t be found on any map.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The car revved again, eager and impatient. The hood ornament seemed to glow even brighter, its red eyes flashing.

  “It’s time to go,” Kev said. Putting the car in gear, he roared away.

  I stood there, looking down the empty street.

  Back roads … places that can’t be found on any map.

  Worry began to eat at me.

  “Where have you been going, Kev?” I said to no one. “Where have you been going?”

  The next afternoon, I took a stroll over to Kev’s house. The grandpa-mobile was in the driveway. It was splattered with something wet and slippery that reminded me of the insides of the fetal pigs we’d dissected last year in biology. In places, the splatters were chunkier, fleshier. Picking up a stick, I poked at an especially big chunk. It oozed pus green.

  I jumped back, startled and disgusted, and flung the stick away. With a shudder, I wiped my hand on my jeans. I saw black smoke seeping from beneath the hood, giving off that same acrid burned-match stench I’d smelled coming from the front seat yesterday. The car’s paint was bubbled over most of the fenders and hood, and along the wheel wells black scorch marks angled backward.

  Behind me the screen door slammed.

  I turned.

  Somehow, Kev looked even thinner than yesterday—his dark eyes hollow, his skin pulled tight over his skull. He shuffled toward me, car keys in his hand.

  “What’s the deal, Kev?” I was shaken and needed answers.

  “I told you. I’ve been driving.”

  I glanced back at the car. On the hood, the stallion’s red eyes began to glow orange, like hot coals. It was as if a fire was burning inside the ornament, as if I was looking through the window of a furnace.

  It all became clear to me. “It’s the hood ornament, isn’t it? It has some sort of power over you.”

  His laugh sounded hollow. “It’s led me on amazing adventures, Rich, taken me to incredible places.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” I grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Come on, Kev. Walk away from it. Just walk away.”

  “You don’t get it! I’m different now,” he said. He stepped around me and got into the car.

  “This isn’t you!” I shouted. “Don’t you see? It’s that … that … thing!” I grabbed it, to rip it from the car’s hood. It was searing hot, frying the skin on my palms like bacon. I jumped back, waving my throbbing hands, blowing on my blistered fingertips.

  Kev started the engine.

  “Stop!” I cried.

  “I can’t, Rich,” he said. “Don’t you see? I have to drive.”

  I yanked open the passenger door and grabbed wildly for the keys. Kev batted me away, and in that second, the car bolted backward, flinging me headfirst into the space between the seat and the glove compartment. With a screech, the car roared down the road, weaving and careening like a rodeo horse, like it was trying to toss me out. And I would have fallen out, too, if not for the length of broken seat belt coiled on the floor. I grabbed it, clung to it, used it to steady myself on the front seat.

  “Get out!” shouted Kev. “Get out while you still can!” Taking a hand off the steering wheel, he shoved me hard.

  I swung toward the still-open door, gripping the seat belt, feeling a rush of wind and pavement inches from my face. The car made a hard turn and the force pulled me back in. I grasped the door and yanked it shut.

  The locks clamped down with a snap that sounded like a gunshot.

  “No, no, no!” Kev moaned beside me. He was wrestling with the steering wheel, trying to gain some control. “This is all wrong. You shouldn’t be here. It was supposed to be just me—just me and it.”

  Through the windshield I could see the stallion. Chrome legs pumping, hooves pounding. The thing was alive!

  Fear coiled inside me, thick and suffocating.

  “Slam on the brakes!” I shouted.

  “Don’t you get it?” cried Kev. “There’s nothing we can do—nothing but go along for the ride.”

  Outside the window, our neighborhood melted into a blur. In seconds—yes, seconds—we were on I-94, leaving the city. I turned in my seat to look out the back window as Chicago’s skyline winked goodbye.

  And then we were barreling along roads I’d never known existed, country roads that were abandoned and forlorn, snaking through tangled marshes and treeless fields. Once we shot across an expanse of bloodred water on a rickety suspension bridge, and I covered my eyes, sure we would plummet to our deaths. Instead we dropped into the dark, wet throat of a tunnel that spiraled down into complete darkness. I couldn’t see a thing, only sense the hurtling speed, feel the car heating up. I screamed just to let myself know I was still there. Still in the car. Still alive.

  Kev’s voice came to me through the blackness. “Brimstone. That smell is brimstone.”

  It was the same sulfury, burned-match smell that had invaded me in Kev’s driveway, only this time it was all over me. Coating my skin. Creeping into my lungs. The stench burned my nostrils, seared my throat, made my eyes stream.

  “I’m so sorry, Rich,” said Kev. “You weren’t supposed to come along on this trip.”

  We shot out of the tunnel into a tangled forest. As we hurtled along the narrow dirt road, the trees scratched and clawed at the car, and an especially big oak limb slammed into the passenger window, shattering the glass. I shrieked as the Chrysler skittered off the road and into the woods, plowing through barbed grasses and bushes with thorns the size of kitchen knives. Snakelike vines writhed and knotted, while black toadstools dripped yellow poison onto the forest floor. All around us the air was thick with black flies the size of my fist.

  We burst out of the woods at the top of a tall sand dune, and I recognized where we were. I knew this place. It was Mount Baldy, one of the tallest dunes on Lake Michigan. Only it wasn’t. It was like everything was backward, as if I was looking at it from the wrong side.

  The Chrysler stopped at the very top of the dune. It idled, catching its breath.

  Spread out before us as far as the eye could see was water—a boiling black witches’ cauldron of water. It stretched to the horizon, where red bolts of lightning flashed and angry storm clouds swirled. The air grew hot, furnace hot, so hot that tiny burning cinders began to fall from the sky like rain. They hissed and sizzled on the sand, the waves, the roof of the car.

  A firestorm. It’s a firestorm.

  Overhead, thunder rumbled.

  The car revved its motor in eager answer.

  I felt the back wheels spin in the sand, searching for traction. On the hood, the stallion’s powerful front hooves pawed the fiery air.

  I didn’t have time to think it through. I still had the seat belt in my hand. I saw the shattered passenger window. I seized my chance—my only chance.

  “There’s no use fighting,” Kev said hopelessly as I knotted the strap around my waist and began to crawl out the window. “You can’t win.”

  “I can try!” I shouted.

  I was hanging halfway out when the car leaped forward, propelling me the rest of the way through the window. Jagged shards of glass raked across my legs as I was flung backward like a tethered kite, slamming onto the car’s trunk.

  I crouched there a moment, caught my breath, the cinders burning tiny holes in my shirt, my jeans, my skin. Then, with all my might, I gripped the luggage rack. Fighting the searing heat of its metal, I heaved myself up and over the roof. The fiery wind screamed in my ears. The heated sand pelted my skin like buckshot. The car hit the beach, charging toward the water’s edge. I had just seconds left. Eyes squeezed shut, I let myself roll down the windshield and across the hood. As I did, I felt patches of my skin peel away from my face and arms, sizzling like hamburgers on a grill.


  The seat belt held, pulled me up short, my head dangling between the car’s headlights. Somehow I managed to right myself, brace my feet against the front grille and grasp the white-hot hood ornament. Steam rose from my hands, and the burned-meat stench of charred flesh—my flesh—savaged my nose. But I was beyond caring, beyond pain. I wrenched the monstrous ornament from the hood.

  I struggled to hold it as the stallion kicked and bucked furiously in my charred hands. Arching its neck, it turned and sank its fanglike teeth into my thumb, its red eyes wide and maniacal.

  “You can go to the devil!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. And just as the Chrysler reached the water’s edge, I flung the ornament. I heaved it with all my might. It flew through the thick heat, legs flailing, eyes blazing. Out of the roiling water rose a hungry wave. It snatched the ornament in midair. There came a loud hiss and a spout of red steam, and then the ornament was gone, devoured by the lake.

  And in that instant, everything changed. Suddenly, I was looking at the beach and Mount Baldy as I’d always known them. The water was blue again, cold instead of boiling. A cool breeze lifted off the waves. I turned my blistered face, took a deep breath.

  “The lake!” Kev hollered, and panic filled his voice. “The lake! We’re sinking!”

  We were still in the water, the car’s hot metal sizzling as we sank. Already the water was up to the bumpers, and it was rising quickly.

  “Kev!” I shouted as I wrestled with the knot around my waist. “Get out of there!”

  I could see him through the windshield—his eyes clear—the old Kev I’d always known. Rolling down his window, he splashed into the water and dog-paddled clumsily toward me.

  “Get going! Get help!” I panted, gesturing toward the beach. “I’m right behind you.” I tore frantically at the seat belt, but it was no use. My ruined fingers couldn’t work the knot. The water was deep now. Even though I was kneeling on the hood, the waves splashed around my waist.

  “B-but …,” sputtered Kev.

  “Get going!” I shouted.