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The girls in the back screamed as we came within inches of sailing over the edge. My hands shook so violently I could barely keep them on the wheel.
I was all over the road, struggling to keep us straight. A car heading in the opposite direction flashed its headlights at us.
Unable to focus, I rode the dirt shoulder and let the truck overtake us. He blasted his horn one last time and barreled down the road, tail lights glowing like red eyes.
We sat there, panting for oxygen, struggling to breathe, puzzling over what we’d seen.
“W-What was it?” Hazel said, her voice barely a whisper.
“I… I don’t know,” I said.
But that wasn’t true. I knew what it was. We all knew what it was.
“It was… It was… a… a…” Victoria said.
“No, it wasn’t,” Sirena said. “It couldn’t be. They don’t exist.”
“I know what it was,” Maddy said. “We all do.”
“I’m with Sirena,” Bianca said. “It was a trick of the light, that’s all.”
“And the minivan rising into the air like that?” Hazel said.
“A figment of our imagination,” Bianca said.
But her face was pale, her eyes wide and bulbous. Somehow, she still managed to look gorgeous.
“If it was a… a… you know,” Sirena said. “How are we still here? It should have sucked us up by now.”
“It would have,” I said. “But the truck came in the nick of time and stopped it.”
Out the front windshield, the big truck’s taillights shrank as they wound around a wide bend that would take it to the other side of the mountain.
The other side of the mountain.
The truck would be gone and we’d be alone again.
I turned the key in the ignition and pulled out without checking my mirrors.
“I’m not sure you should be driving,” Sirena said. “I mean, if you’re seeing things that aren’t really there…”
I kept my eyes focused on that truck and didn’t slow down as I took each bend of the road. I usually kept strictly between my lines but tonight was different.
“Can you slow down?” Bianca said. “I’ve never known you to speed before, Alice.”
“If we lose sight of that truck, that thing is going to come for us again,” I said. “We have to catch up to it.”
“We’re not going to catch up to anything if we slam into the cliffs—”
“Sirena,” Hazel said, not taking her eyes off the road. “You know I love you, but shut the fuck up. Let Alice concentrate.”
Sirena was just scared like the rest of us, but if we wanted to avoid seeing that bright light again, I needed to focus.
Two minutes of driving like a madwoman, I caught up to the truck. The tension in my muscles eased and I hung back at a safe distance. I didn’t care if the truck was slow. It could get us home safely. That was all that mattered.
The others relaxed too. They no longer slept or listened to deafening music. They stared out the windows, peering up at the twinkling stars and the dead of night. Never before had the night sky seemed so dangerous.
All memory of the bright light faded. We’d probably just drank too much. That was all. We imagined everything.
