"I knew you'd understand," he said. "From the moment I saw you, I knew you, out of all of them, were the only one who'd understand."

I seriously wanted to throw up. I mean it. He didn't get it. He so didn't get it. I mean, hadn't he thought about his mother at all? His poor mother, who had been so excited because a girl had called him? His mother, who already had one kid in the hospital? Hadn't he thought how his mother was going to feel when it came out that her only son was a murderer? Hadn't he thought about that at all?

Maybe he had. Maybe he had, and he thought she'd be glad. Because he'd avenged what had happened to his sister. Well, almost, anyway. There were still a few loose ends in the form of Brad … and everyone else who'd been at that party, I suppose. I mean, why just stop at Brad? I wondered how he'd managed to secure the guest list, and if he intended to kill everyone on it or just a select few.

"How did you know, anyway?" he asked in what I suppose he meant to be this tender voice. But all it did was make me want to throw up even more. " About the guardrail, I mean? And their car horn. That wasn't in the papers."

"How did I know?" I jerked my head from his reach. "They told me."

He looked a little hurt at my pulling away from him. "They told you? Who do you mean?"

"Carrie," I said. "And Josh and Felicia and Mark. The kids you killed."

His hurt look changed. It went from confused, to startled, and then to cynical, all in a matter of seconds.

"Oh," he said with a little laugh. "Right. The ghosts. You tried to warn me about them before, didn't you? Right here, as a matter of fact."

I just looked at him. "Laugh all you want," I said. "But the fact is, Michael, they've been wanting to kill you for a while now. And after the stunt you pulled today with the Rambler, I am seriously thinking about letting them."

He stopped laughing. "Suze," he said. "Your strange fixation with the spirit world aside, I told you: today was an accident. You weren't supposed to be in that car. You were supposed to ride home with me. Brad was the one. Brad was the one I wanted dead, not you."

"And what about David?" I demanded. "My little brother? He's twelve years old, Michael. He was in that car. Did you want him dead, too? And Jake? He was probably delivering pizzas the night your sister was hurt. Should he die for what happened to her? Or my friend Gina? I guess she deserves to die, too, even though she's never even been to a party in the Valley."

Michael's face was white against the bits of sky I could see through the window behind his head.

"I didn't mean for anyone to get hurt," he said, in an oddly toneless voice. "Anybody except for the guilty, I mean."

"Well, you didn't do a very good job," I said. "In fact, you did a lousy job. You really messed up. And do you know why?"

I saw his eyelids, behind his glasses, narrow.

"I think I'm starting to," he said.

"Because you tried to kill some people I happen to care about." I swallowed. Something hard, that hurt, was growing in my throat. "And that's why, Michael, it's going to stop. Right here. Right now."

He continued to stare at me though those narrowed eyelids.

"Oh," he said in the same expressionless voice. "It's going to stop, all right. Believe me."

I knew what he was driving at. I almost laughed. If it hadn't been for the painful lump in my throat, I would have.

"Michael," I said. "Don't even try. You so don't know who you're messing with."

"No," Michael said quietly. "I guess I don't, do I? I thought you were different. I thought you, out of everyone at school, would be able to see things from my point of view. But I can see now that you're just like everybody else."

"You don't have any idea," I said, "how much I wish I were."

"I'm sorry, Suze," Michael said, undoing his own seatbelt. "I really thought you and I could be … well, friends, anyway. But I am getting the distinct impression that you don't approve of what I've been doing. Even though no one – no one – will miss those people. They really were wastes of space, Suze. They had nothing meaningful to contribute. I mean, look at Brad. Would it be such a tragedy if he simply ceased to exist?"

"It would," I said, "to his father."

Michael shrugged. "I suppose. Still, I think the world would be a better place without all the Josh Saunderses and Brad Ackermans." He smiled at me. There was nothing, however, warm in that smile. "You, however, disagree, I can see. It even sounds to me as if you're contemplating trying to stop me. And I really can't have that."

"So what are you going to do?" I gave him a very sarcastic look. "Kill me?"

"I don't want to," he said. "Believe me."

Then he cracked his knuckles. Can I just tell you, I found this quite creepy. I mean, aside from the fact that cracking your knuckles in front of somebody is creepy, anyway, this was especially disturbing since it drew attention to the fact that Michael's hands were actually quite large, and were attached to these arms that I remembered from the beach were remarkably muscular, and filled with ropy sinews. I'm not exactly a delicate flower, but hands attached to a pair of arms like that could do a girl like me some serious damage.

"But I guess," Michael said, "you haven't left me with much choice, have you?"

Oh, sure. Blame the victim, why don't you?

I don't know if I said the words aloud, or simply thought them. I only know I went, "Now would be a good time for Josh and his friends to show up," and that a second later Josh Saunders, Carrie Whitman, Mark Pulsford, and Felicia Bruce all appeared, standing in the gravel by the passenger side door of Michael's rental car.

They stood there blinking for a second, as if unsure what had happened. Then they looked beyond me, at the boy behind the steering wheel.

And that's when all hell broke loose.

C H A P T E R

18

Was it what I intended to happen all along?

I don't know. Certainly there'd been a moment in Dopey's room when I'd been seized by a kind of rage. It was rage, not bicycle pedals, that had propelled me down into the Valley, and rage that had prompted me to put that quarter into that pay phone and call Michael.