The Accident (7 page)

“You’re right. I’ll try. But I’m so excited. And right now I’m off to the bathroom to take a wonderful bath and put on just a tiny bit more makeup. Then I’m off! This is Saturday night. I’ve got places to go, people to see.”

Juliet paused in front of the mirror and said, “Megan, thank you! You won’t be sorry.”

But Megan was already sorry. And scared.

Before Megan could utter any one of the thousand new questions spinning around her, Juliet, with a happy wave and an equally happy smile, was out the door.

The thud it made as it closed felt to Megan like the closing of a tomb.

I’m overreacting. Being silly. I’ll just get out of this dark, cold place, and everything will be fine, just like Juliet said.

But it wasn’t. When she left the mirror, the sensation of darkness, of coldness, of being totally separated from the world she knew was devastating.

No one can see me. No one can hear me. As far as the world is concerned, I’m not here. Is this how Juliet felt all those years? So isolated? How lonely it feels not to be a part of the world!

The only way to ease the feeling was to go where there were people. There was no reason for her to stay in the bedroom, alone. So Megan went downstairs.

Her family was gathered in the kitchen. Megan remembered then that Thomas was in a play that night. He had the lead in a production of
Peter Pan
at Circle-in-the-Square Theater.

Although the loneliness Megan felt was eased somewhat by being around people, watching her family was like looking at one of those What’s Wrong With This Picture? drawings.

I’m watching myself eat and laugh and talk … but it’s not me. It’s Juliet. And no one in this room knows that but the two of us. How can my parents not know? Can’t they see that Juliet is laughing more and talking more than I do?

And then there was Juliet’s makeup.

She looks like someone straight out of a forties movie. I never wear blue eyeshadow, and she must have at least eight coats of mascara on those eyes. I should have gone into the bathroom with her and helped her out.

“You’re not wearing all that goop to my play, are you?” Thomas asked Juliet.

She stared at him. “Play? I’m not going to any play. I’m going to the mall.”

Megan groaned silently.

“You’re not going to the play?” Megan’s mother echoed. “But we’ve planned this all week. I thought you and Justin had agreed to meet there. Isn’t he doing a write-up on it for the school paper? And Hilary will be there, too. Betsy’s in it, remember?”

Megan told Juliet,
“Betsy is Hilary’s little sister, Juliet. We’ve been planning for weeks to go to this play tonight.”
Talking and knowing only Juliet could hear her made her feel even more isolated.

Juliet laughed. “I was just kidding,” she told the family quickly. “Of course I’m going to the play. I wouldn’t miss it. It’ll be fun.”

“Well, good,” Megan’s mother said. “Because we definitely don’t want you wandering around town by yourself. Not until Sheriff Toomey can tell us there’s no risk involved. You’ll be safe with us at the theater, and I won’t have to worry.”

While they finished eating, Megan wrestled with a strong desire to call off the whole thing. Watching Juliet being her was so much harder than she’d thought it would be. She had expected it to be like watching herself in one of her dad’s homemade videos. But this wasn’t anything like that. She always knew that was
her
on the television screen. No matter how silly or how stupid she felt, she always knew she was watching
herself
on tape.

But watching Juliet as Megan Logan made her feel the way she’d felt in the nightmare … trapped, imprisoned. And knowing that she couldn’t reach out and touch her parents, touch Thomas, increased her sense of desolation.

How was she going to make it through a whole week of this?

Miserable, frightened, and more lonely than she had ever been, Megan followed her family to the Circle-in-the-Square Theater.

T
HE THEATER WAS AIR
-conditioned and packed. Megan noticed that hers weren’t the only parents accompanied by teenagers. Hilary had told everyone who would listen that she’d been pushed off the catwalk. Most of the parents had believed her. Fear shone from their eyes.

“What’s with the war paint?” Hilary asked as she joined the Logan family in front-row seats. “Have you been sampling the goodies at Phar-Mart’s cosmetics counter?”

Juliet laughed and shrugged. “I thought it was time for a change. I
am
going to be sixteen, Hilary. Have you seen Justin?”

“He’s parking. He’ll be here in a minute. So, did you ask His Royal Cuteness to be your birthday date yet?”

“I’m asking him tonight. And he’ll say yes,” Juliet answered.

Hilary looked impressed. “Wow! I guess it’s true what the ads say about makeup. You
are
a new woman!”

Megan warned,
“Careful, Juliet. Don’t overdo the ‘new woman’ bit or Hil will guess that you’re not only a
new
me, you’re not even a
me
at all.”

If Justin was surprised by the enthusiastic reception Juliet gave him when he arrived, he hid it well. At intermission in the lobby, she chattered, laughed at his quips, and held his hand the whole time.

Megan, watching miserably, reminded herself that Justin, after all, thought that it was Megan flirting with him. And he certainly seemed to be enjoying himself. But seeing Juliet having such a good time with him was hard to take. Megan wanted so much to touch Justin, the way Juliet was doing. And she couldn’t. For one long, endless week she wouldn’t be able to touch him or smile at him or talk to him.

Megan now realized that it was going to be the longest week she’d ever known.

After the play, Constance Logan insisted that everyone come back to the house, squelching Juliet’s plans to be alone with Justin. “I know you think I’m a worrywart,” Megan’s mother said apologetically, “but I’d really feel better if you were at the house. Humor me, okay? Justin and Hilary can come along, too.”

“But it’s Saturday night!” Juliet protested. “Everyone will be at the mall.”

Mrs. Logan shook her head. “I don’t think so. I talked to a lot of the other parents tonight, and they’re keeping their kids home, too.” She patted a disconsolate Juliet on the shoulder. “It’s just for a few days, honey, until Sheriff Toomey catches whoever tampered with those cars and pushed poor Hilary off that catwalk. I’m sure everything will be back to normal in time for your birthday party.”

Juliet looked stricken. Her eyes widened and her face paled as she drew in a deep breath of dismay.

She’s seeing her week of fun going down the tubes. I tried to tell her this was a lousy time in Lakeside. But I guess it was now or never. Poor Juliet.

When they got to the house, Thomas and his father took the boat out. Mrs. Logan went down on the dock to “relax and enjoy the night sky,” and Justin talked Hilary and Juliet into watching a science-fiction movie in the den.

Since Justin seemed to be enjoying Juliet’s company so much, Megan began to wonder if he would be disappointed when the week was up and the “old” Megan returned.

I could never be like her, all sparkly and giddy and outgoing. No wonder she was popular forty-five years ago. I couldn’t be like that … could I?

Hilary, Megan noticed, didn’t seem to be having very much fun, though. She looked almost as lost and lonely as Megan felt. And she kept looking at Juliet, obviously confused by her friend’s un-Meganlike behavior.

Poor Hil can’t understand why all of a sudden I’m Miss Personality. I wish I could have told her what was going on.

Megan decided to join her brother and her father out on the lake. Maybe being out in the open would ease her misery.

The lake was crowded with boaters trying to escape the heat, including many of Megan’s friends. She was happy to see Barbie Winn, a bandage across one side of her face, in a canoe with her boyfriend. She’d been luckier than her older sister. Donny Richardson went by in a boat crowded with people Megan guessed were relatives. The two boys who had rescued Hilary with the ladder went by, and so did Vicki Deems, surrounded by boys Megan didn’t recognize. From a nearby town, probably. Vicki must have already conquered the entire male population of Lakeside and been forced to seek out fresh new territory.

Unfortunately Megan found that being outside with the trees and the lake around her did nothing to help her mood. Neither did venturing into the depths of the lake, where she discovered the cold and the wet couldn’t touch her. Frustrated and unhappy, she surfaced, only to be again surrounded by laughter and chatter from the boats on the lake.

I would rather feel the wet and the cold than this terrible, empty feeling. Nothing could be worse than this. Nothing!

When her father aimed the boat toward home, Megan went, too.

As they neared the dock, something moving in the water caught her attention. Megan moved in closer to get a better look. What was it?

A tree branch? Remnants of someone’s lakeside picnic?

Megan saw hair, splayed like seaweed on the water. She saw two arms, two legs. …

A voiceless scream soared up through her.

Her mother was floating, facedown and unconscious on the water.

T
HE SIGHT OF HER
mother’s limp form floating like debris on the black water made Megan feel as helpless as she’d felt in the spiderweb dream.
I’ve got no voice, so I can’t scream. I’ve got no body, so I can’t drag her out of the water. And if she dies, it’ll be all my fault. If I hadn’t traded places with Juliet, I could save Mom now.

Thomas’s frantic shout broke through Megan’s frustration. In a second, he was out of the boat and plunging through the shallow water to Constance Logan, crying out to his father. He grabbed at her shirt, ballooning out around her, full of air and water. His frantic shouting, “Mom, Mom!” was high and shrill with fear. His father arrived at his side, and together they lifted the unconscious woman and carried her up the embankment.

Megan wanted, needed, desperately to help her family. There was only one way she could do that. She raced up to the house.
Mom, Mom, please don’t be dead!

Inside the house, she sought out the only person who could hear her cry for help. She found Juliet in the den with Justin. They were seated, very close together, on the velvet settee. Hilary was nowhere in sight.

“Juliet! Juliet, quick! Dial nine-one-one! It’s Mom! In the lake. Hurt. Hurry! I’ll tell you what to say.”

Juliet flew off the settee and rushed to the telephone on the table beside the bookshelves. At that moment, Thomas ran into the room, crying. He repeated the chilling news. In his panic, he failed to notice that Juliet had already dialed Emergency Services and was beginning to repeat the words Megan fed her.

“Dad’s doing CPR on her right now,” Thomas told Justin. “But she’s … she hasn’t moved.”

As Juliet hung up the phone, Thomas turned to her. “I’m scared. She isn’t even
moving.
”

“Let’s go!” Justin urged.

“Emergency Services will be here right away,” Juliet said as they ran out of the house and down the slope. “I told them to come straight down to the dock.”

“Do you have a crystal ball you haven’t told me about?” Justin asked Juliet as they raced through the darkness.

“What?” Juliet asked.

“You had already gone to the phone
before
Thomas came in. How did you know something was wrong?”

“Oh,” Juliet said, startled. “I saw them. Through the den window. I knew something was wrong.”

Apparently satisfied with that explanation, Justin nodded and increased his speed.

When they reached the dock, Megan’s mother was half sitting, half lying against her husband’s chest. Although she was choking and coughing and gasping for breath, they were all relieved to see that she was conscious.

A siren in the distance announced the approaching ambulance.

“You okay, Mom?” Thomas asked, kneeling at his mother’s side. “What happened? You’re a good swimmer.”

“I wasn’t swimming,” she answered weakly. “I was sitting. On the dock. Just thinking, enjoying all of the lights out on the water. And … and something hard hit me from behind. That’s all I remember? She tried to smile. “Like they say in the movies, everything went black.” She moved one hand to the back of her head, and when she brought it back down, the light from the boat lantern shone on a red, sticky mess.

With a dying shriek, the ambulance arrived. Megan’s father rode with it to the Medical Center. He asked Justin to follow with Juliet and Thomas.

Megan, too, went in the ambulance. While the attendants cared for her mother, she fought rising panic. First, her closest friends had been attacked, nearly killed. Now someone had deliberately hit her mother on the head and watched as she fell into the lake, leaving her to drown.

But who? Everyone liked Megan’s mother. Like the other victims, she had no enemies. Until now.

We have to switch back. Now! I hate to go back on my promise and disappoint Juliet, but I can’t just stand by and watch while some maniac hurts my family. I hope Juliet understands. I never should have agreed to switch in the first place.

When Constance Logan had been comfortably installed in a hospital bed, a thick white bandage on the back of her head, her husband announced that he was staying with her all night.

“No!” she cried, her eyes, clouded with medication, snapping open with alarm. “I want you home with the children. I don’t want them in the house alone, not now!”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” Tom Logan agreed, and he took his family home.

When Juliet had told Justin good night and gone upstairs, Megan followed.

“Juliet, I’m scared. Seeing my mother lying there in the water made me realize how helpless I am like this. I mean, I couldn’t pull her out, and I couldn’t scream. It was really terrible. I don’t ever want to feel like that again. We have to switch back. Now!”

Juliet, searching through Megan’s denim shoulder bag, scattering papers and old tissues every which way on the bed, had just located the hairbrush she’d been seeking and had begun to brush the dark curls absentmindedly. At Megan’s words, she dropped the brush, her eyes filling with tears. “Oh, no, Megan, you can’t mean that!” she cried. “You can’t! I haven’t even had a whole day yet!”