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“Small!” shrieked the woman. “Small spaces! Keep to small spaces or see what happens to you! Just see!” She burst into wild laughter. The plastic witch sitting on the Brewsters’ porch laughed like that. “Now give me that book!” Her laughter turned into a whistling sob.
Ollie heaved the Schwinn around and fled with it up the trail. The woman’s footsteps scraped behind. “Come back!” she panted. “Come back!”
Ollie was already on the main road, her leg thrown over the bike’s saddle. She rode home as fast as she could, bent low over her handlebars, hair streaming in the wind, the book lying in her pocket like a secret.
The creepy, spine-tingling adventure continues in . . .
1
WINTER IN EAST EVANSBURG, and just after dusk, five people in a beat-up old Subaru peeled out of town in a snowstorm. Snow and road salt flew up from their tires as they got on the highway heading north. The five were nearly the only people on the road. “A major winter storm is blanketing parts of northern Vermont with eight inches overnight . . .” said the radio, crackling. “Be advised that the roads are dangerous.”
The Subaru kept going. In front were two adults. In the back were three kids.
Coco Zintner sat in the middle of the back seat, because she was the smallest. She was short and skinny, her eyes blue, her hair (Coco’s favorite thing about herself) an odd pinkish blond. Coco peered nervously through the windshield. The road looked slippery. They were going to spend the next three hours driving on it.
“Awesome,” said the girl to Coco’s left. Her name was Olivia Adler. She was Coco’s best friend, and she wasn’t nervous at all. “Eight inches overnight.” She pressed her nose to the car window. She had big dark eyes and the kind of corkscrewing curls that couldn’t ever be brushed, because they’d frizz. She stared out at the snowstorm with delight. “We’re going to have so much fun tomorrow.”
Coco’s other best friend, the boy on Coco’s right, grinned back at Ollie. The Subaru’s storage area was piled high with bags. He reached into the jumble and patted his green ski boots. “It’s gonna be lit,” he said. “Don’t look so nervous, Tiny.”
That was to Coco. She scowled. Brian gave nearly everyone a nickname. She liked Brian, but she hated her nickname. Probably because she was actually kind of tiny. Brian had the best smile of anyone Coco knew. He’d been born in Jamaica, but his parents had moved to Vermont when he was a baby. He was black, not particularly tall, and the star of the middle school hockey team. He loved books as much as he loved scoring goals, and even though he could sometimes act like a dumb hockey player, Brian was good at noticing what went on around him.
Like the fact that Coco was nervous. She wished he wouldn’t tease her about it.
It was the first day of winter break, and the five of them were going skiing: Ollie and Brian and Coco, plus Ollie’s dad (who was driving) and Coco’s mom (who was riding shotgun).
Neither adult could really afford a week of skiing. Coco’s mother was a journalist, and Ollie’s father sold solar panels. But the month before, Ollie’s dad had come home from work smiling.
“What?” Ollie had asked. She and Coco were sitting in the kitchen of the Egg, Ollie’s rambling old farmhouse. They’d gotten themselves mugs of hot chocolate and were seeing who could build the biggest marshmallow pyramid on top.
Mr. Adler just grinned. “Want to go skiing over the winter holiday?”
“Huh?” said both girls in chorus.
Turned out Ollie’s dad had won a prize. For selling a lot of solar panels. A week for him and four others at Mount Hemlock.
“Mount Hemlock?” Ollie had asked, stunned. “But it’s not even open yet!”
Mount Hemlock was Vermont’s newest ski mountain. It had never been open to the public before. Some school had owned it. But now it had new owners, who were turning the mountain into a winter getaway.
“Yep,” said Mr. Adler happily. “They’re hosting a few people over the holiday, before the official opening. Want to go? Coco? Do you and your mom want to go?”
Coco had only learned to ski that winter, and still thought that sliding fast down a mountain was cold and scary. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to go. But Ollie was already doing a happy dance around the house, and Coco didn’t want to disappoint her.
“Sure,” she said in a small voice. “Yeah, I’ll go.”
Now they were actually in the car, actually going, and Coco had butterflies in her stomach, thinking of the storm, the slippery road, the big cold mountain at the end of it. She wished they were still back at Ollie’s house, in front of Bernie the woodstove, making marshmallow pyramids. The wind whipped snow across the windshield.
Coco told Brian, in a voice that probably fooled no one, “I’m not nervous about skiing.” She waved a hand at the windshield. “I’m nervous about driving in a snowstorm.”
“Well,” said Mr. Adler calmly from the front, “technically, I’m driving in a snowstorm.” He changed gears on the Subaru. His hair was as dark as Ollie’s, though it was straight instead of curly. For the winter, he’d grown out a giant reddish beard. Keeps me warm, he would say.
“You’re doing amazing, Dad,” Ollie said. “You and Susie.” Susie was the Subaru. “Dad’s driven through a lot of snowstorms,” she said to Coco reassuringly. “All fine.”
The streetlights disappeared a little outside of Evansburg, and it was dark on the road except for their headlights.
“It’s okay, Tiny,” said Brian. “We probably won’t slide into a ditch.”
“Probably?” Coco asked.
