The Accident Read Online Free

stunned slow-motion. When she crawled up underneath the canopy, she pulled the pale blue sheet up over her in spite of the suffocating heat, unable to shake the chill left by the wraith in her mirror and the words the wraith had spoken.
    I dreamed the whole thing, she told herself, staring up at the yellowed ceiling. I’m dreaming right now. I’m dreaming that I’m just going to bed, when the truth is, I’ve been asleep for hours.
    The thought was comforting. It allowed her to relax and go to sleep.
    The next morning when she awoke and remembered, her eyes flew to the mirror.
    Except for Megan’s own sleepy-eyed, tousle-haired reflection, the mirror was empty.

Chapter 4
    O N THURSDAY M ORNING, L AKESIDE residents awoke to disappointment. The sky was still a sullen gray, the sun hidden, the heat still suffocating the town.
    Megan felt like she’d slept in a sauna. Her head ached, her skin felt sticky, and her hair was matted to her head.
    After checking the mirror and finding it empty, she thought immediately of her friends. Were they okay? She hoped her parents had heard something. Maybe her mother had talked to someone at the hospital.
    As she got ready for school, her eyes returned repeatedly to the big mirror. Although there was nothing there, the feeling of a foreign presence lingered in the room. Something that didn’t belong had entered her room, uninvited. It was gone now, but the sense of it remained.
    But I did dream that whole thing, she told herself after her shower. She pulled on white shorts and a pale yellow top. I dreamed it because I was so upset about the accident that nearly killed three of my friends. So I dreamed about someone my age who had died in an accident.
    It had been so real, though. She remembered clearly every second of it. Slipping her feet into a pair of sandals, she pulled her thick mass of curls into a ponytail and fastened it with a yellow clip. Her morning shower had done nothing to ease the headache. The pounding behind her eyes was relentless.
    Megan deliberately kept her back to the freestanding mirror as she halfheartedly applied a touch of blush and mascara. But as she left’ the room, her biology book in her arms, her blue denim shoulder bag hanging from one wrist, she couldn’t resist glancing one more time into the wooden-framed glass.
    There was nothing in it but the reflection of a pale-faced girl in yellow and white. I look like a wilted daisy, Megan thought in disgust. When she closed the bedroom door behind her, she hoped she was closing out all memory of the strange wraith and its tragic story. And she hoped that when she came home later that day, her room would feel like her own again.
    The early-morning mist on the water had already cleared as Megan pedaled her bicycle to school, using the bike path above the lake. Glancing up at the granite-colored sky, she told herself it was going to be another skin-sticky day. Everyone at school would be moaning and groaning about the weather.
    Unless they were preoccupied with last night’s accident.
    Megan crossed the highway to Philippa Moore High School, where groups of teenagers in shorts and tank tops milled about on the lawn. Her mother hadn’t had any news about the physical condition of her friends. She had found out only that they were all still alive. Locking her bicycle in the rack beneath the huge flagpole, Megan quickly searched for someone who could give her more information about Jenny, Barb, and Cappie.
    But no one knew anything until lunch period, when Megan met Justin and Hilary and learned that Hilary had called the hospital and talked to Mrs. Winn.
    “Barb’s okay,” she told Megan and Justin. “She was thrown clear and landed on grass. She’s going home today. Cappie has a broken wrist and a lot of bruises. But Jenny wasn’t so lucky. She has a really awful head injury, and her collarbone was shattered. There weren’t any seat belts in the car because it was so old. Mr. Winn had ordered some, but