“What a jerk!” Magda yelled out the car window as she pulled out of the school parking lot. In her rearview mirror she saw Jack look up from his phone as she turned onto the main road. “Can you believe he actually tried to ask me out?”
“He’s a butt,” Amanda said. She was riding shotgun next to Magda and was twisted halfway around to talk to Paige in the back seat. “Don’t let him upset you, Paige. You’re better off without him.”
Paige leaned forward, poking her head between their seats. “I know. I really appreciate you guys being there. It’s just that I can’t believe he’s doing this right before prom.”
She could see why Jack would like Magda. She was a pretty blonde with gorgeous hazel-green eyes. In fact, she and Amanda were both really pretty. Magda was beautifully curvy while Amanda was model slim with silky, auburn hair. Whenever the three of them were together Paige noticed how the boys always watched them. She didn’t think she attracted that kind of attention when she was by herself. She’d been taking dance lessons ever since she could remember and had started running track in high school. While she was proud of her athletic physique, she couldn’t help feeling that most guys were more attracted to her friends. Jack’s reaction to Magda was proof. It just ticked her off that he would make a pass at her best friend while she was standing right there.
Paige could feel her face getting hot again. In spite of her best efforts, she couldn’t stop the tears spilling from her eyes. Magda looked in the mirror at that moment and saw her crying.
“Hey,” Magda said. She reached back and lightly squeezed Paige’s hand that was resting on her seatback. “It’s okay. He’s not worth getting upset over.”
Her words washed over Paige, enfolding her in a comforting embrace like a favorite blanket. Paige immediately felt herself starting to relax.
“Thanks,” Paige sniffed, smiling at Magda’s reflection. “I always feel better when you’re around.”
“Don’t waste your time thinking about him,” Magda said. “You don’t need him. He’s a pig.”
Amanda scrunched up her nose and started making snorting noises. The three of them broke out laughing.
When Magda could tell that Paige was feeling better she placed both hands back on the steering wheel. Up ahead she saw that the light had changed to yellow. Although she could have hit the gas and made it through the intersection, she knew that one of those new traffic cameras had been put up at that corner and she stepped on the brake instead. They had just come to a stop when a small SUV pulled up next to them and honked. Magda recognized Tom Gallo’s car. As usual, James Caruso, Danny Vidal, and Dimitri Apostolos were with him. Tom’s cousin, James, had claimed the front seat leaving Danny and Dimitri to squeeze into the back where they were sitting with their knees half drawn up to their chests. Both of them were over six feet tall, with Dimitri topping out at six-five. They didn’t call him Tree for nothing.
James had his window down and was leaning out of the car gesturing for the girls to lower theirs.
Magda waved and rolled down her window as Paige quickly wiped her eyes and ran her fingers through her hair. She had recognized Tom’s car, too.
“Hey, Mags,” James called. “I think I left my phone at your house. Can I come over and get it?” Magda, Tom, James, Danny, and Dimitri all lived within a few blocks of each other and had been friends since they were little.
“Sure,” Magda said. “We’re going back to my house to work on our econ project.”
“Yeah, I should probably get started on that, too,” James said.
“You haven’t even started it yet?”
James shrugged. “I still have time.”
“You’re an idiot,” Magda said.
“But you love me,” James said, grinning.
Magda rolled her eyes. A moment later the light changed and she pulled away. The boys followed. Had James been driving he would have tried to turn it into a race but Tom let the girls go first. They lived across town but it would only take them a few minutes to get there. Mayfair Park wasn’t all that big.
A short time later Magda turned onto Woodfield Road and headed east, her usual route home from school. Woodfield was one of the main streets in town. It was a winding, tree-lined road that ran through the middle of some of the quieter residential areas. It was a little out of their way but it was faster than Mayfair Avenue because it only had one traffic light. Magda also liked it because it was such a peaceful drive. The road was small enough that a lot of the trees on either side grew up and over the top, making it feel like you were driving through a green tunnel.
As she maneuvered the little hatchback along the road, Magda looked in her mirror and saw Paige glancing through the rear windshield.
“Don’t worry,” Magda said, “You look fine.”
Paige jerked around. “What … I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Paige, it’s me. I know what’s up.”
Paige dropped her eyes. “Do you think I’m being—”
“Absolutely not! Jack doesn’t have anything to say about who you hang out with. You don’t owe that jerk anything. Besides, you do know that Tom’s not going out with Erika Koko, don’t you?”
Paige’s eyebrows arched at that news. “But she’s been telling everybody they’re a couple.”
Magda sucked her teeth. “Erika’s had a crush on Tom since sixth grade. He put up with her silliness for a while because their moms know each other, but ever since that thing with Robbie Coleman, Tom won’t have anything to do with her.”
Robbie Coleman was a little kid who was often the target of other kids at school. He had skipped two grades, making him the youngest, and smallest, kid in the senior class. While Robbie was a whiz at things like math and physics (he had won the science fair three years in a row) he was clumsy and rather geeky, and some of the meaner kids liked to pick on him. For some reason, Erika and her minion, Robin Ersatz, had decided it would be funny to bake some Ex-lax chocolate cupcakes and offer them to other students. Robbie had eaten three of them and ended up missing an entire week of school—but not before having a very unfortunate incident in the middle of world history.
“So why doesn’t he tell her to stop spreading that rumor?” Paige said.
“You know how Tom is,” Magda said. “As long as he feels that he’s doing the right thing he doesn’t care what anybody else thinks. He just doesn’t want to do anything to mess up his mom’s friendship with her mom.”
“Yeah, but still—”
“LOOK OUT!” Amanda’s shout reverberated inside the car.
The road up ahead took a slight curve to the right. A small dog had appeared out of nowhere as they started around the bend. Then everything seemed to happen at once. Magda slammed on the brakes and twisted the wheel to the left. The dog froze for an instant, then turned and tried to scramble back to the curb. But it was limping badly and Magda knew it would not be able to get out of the way in time.
Just as they were about to run over the helpless animal, Amanda screamed and threw her arms up in front of her face. In that instant the dog seemed to leap high into the air, disappearing over the roof of their car. By this time the car was angling directly at a telephone pole on the other side of the street. Magda twisted the wheel back to the right. Now all three girls were screaming as the car tipped sickeningly to the left as it threatened to roll onto its side.
A moment later there was a loud crunch as the left side of the car slammed into the pole then continued on and plowed into a tree several yards away.
The boys were right behind them and had seen the whole thing. Tom stood on his brakes and was able to quickly bring his car to a stop. He threw open his door and sprinted across the street. He was already around Magda’s car and at the driver’s side door while the others were still piling out of his SUV. Inside he could see Magda slumped over the steering wheel. Beyond her in the passenger seat he saw Amanda stirring, and in the back seat he saw Paige checking herself over. But Magda wasn’t moving.
&nb
sp; Tom reached through the open window and shook her.
“Magda?”
Magda moaned softly.
Tom grabbed the handle but the door wouldn’t budge. That was when he noticed that the driver’s door had a huge dent in it from where the car had slammed into the telephone pole.
Tom felt his heart begin to pound in his chest. He grabbed the door by the open window frame and pulled. For a moment nothing happened. Tom gritted his teeth and pulled harder. A metallic groan came from the door. A moment later the entire door came off in his hands. Tom stumbled backward a step and looked at the door in his hands, dumbfounded. He looked around uncertainly for a second, then tossed the door aside. Reaching into the car he unhooked Magda’s seatbelt and scooped her up in his arms.
By this time the others had arrived and were helping Amanda and Paige out from the other side of the car. They seemed a little shaken up but were otherwise unhurt.
“I’m okay,” Magda said.
Startled, Tom looked down at her.
“Really,” Magda insisted. “You can put me down.”
Tom carefully lowered her to her feet.
“But you weren’t moving,” Tom said. “And you made that awful sound like you were hurt.”
“Not hurt, upset. How am I going to explain this to my dad? He’s going to kill me.”
Tom looked up as the others came around to their side of the car.
“Are you guys alright?” Tom asked Magda’s passengers. Although he had addressed the question to both girls, he was looking at Paige. She met his eyes, then looked away shyly.
“Wow!” James said as he looked at the damage to the car. He walked to the front where the car had finally been stopped by a tree. Thanks to Magda’s braking the car had slowed down considerably by the time it struck the tree. Even so, there was a good-sized dent in the bumper and the driver’s side headlight was smashed.
“Wow!” James said again as he completed a circuit of the car.
“It was a dog,” Amanda said. “It just appeared in the middle of the street. Magda tried to miss it and…”
“We saw,” Danny said. “That was some pretty cool driving, Magda.”
“I still crashed,” Magda said. She turned to examine her car. The side of the car was scraped up and the front bumper was pushed in on one side. The worst of the damage was the missing driver’s door. She looked at Tom.
“Did you have to pull the whole door off?” she scolded him.
“It was already messed up from the crash!” Tom sputtered. “All I did was pull on it a little and it just came off. Besides, I thought you were hurt.”
Magda’s expression softened. She reached for Tom and gave him a hug. “I know. Thanks.” After a moment she released him and turned back to the car. “My dad’s still gonna kill me.”
“Actually, it doesn’t look all that bad,” Paige said. “I bet Reed could fix it.”
Magda perked up. “You really think so?”
“Sure. Let me call him.”
As Paige took out her phone the others began finding places on the curb to sit down. A few cars were slowing down to pass by the accident scene and they could already hear a siren in the distance. One thing about living in a small town, news gets around fast.
Magda started suddenly, and began looking around the street.
“Where’s the dog?” she said. “Did anybody see what happened to it? Did I hit it?”
“The dog went over your car,” Danny said.
“Oh no,” Magda said. She was starting to sound panicked. “You mean I hit it that hard?”
“I don’t think so,” Danny said. “It didn’t look like you even touched it. It jumped over your car before you hit it.”
“Yeah,” James chimed in. “It flew out of the way like it was shot out of a cannon or something.”
Magda looked confused. “But it was limping. It couldn’t even run back to the sidewalk. There’s no way it could have jumped out of the way.”
“I don’t know about that, but it went right over the top of your car like it was on steroids,” Danny said.
Magda was still searching the road. “But where did it go?”
The others began looking around as well. They checked the sidewalks and front yards of the nearby houses but could find no trace of the dog.
“Hey guys,” Dimitri said. They all turned to look at him. Dimitri was staring at something over their heads. He pointed up.
Thirty feet overhead they saw the dog perched precariously in the branches of a tree. The animal’s eyes were wide with fear as it sat whining in the crook of a branch.
“What the…?” James said.