Crystal Frost 4 Read online

  The following day at school passed by hazily as I contemplated what it all meant. The three people I love most—my mom, Emma, and Robin—would all be at the festival on Saturday, and I was supposed to die to save them from . . . from what? The most dangerous thing at the festival would be tripping on a root along the haunted trail. What could possibly happen to them?

  By the time lunch rolled around, I still hadn’t come up with any good ideas. I sat by Emma, but Derek was nowhere to be seen. Emma and I chatted, and I put on a smile in hopes of making one of my last lunches with her a bit more memorable. She didn’t talk about Derek, and I didn’t bring him up. I only hoped they would work it all out when I was gone.

  When I was gone . . . Why did I have to go? I only thought about it more and more as the day wore on. If I had to die to save three people, then it would be safe to assume they’d all be in the same place at once. Maybe if I could keep them all apart, nothing bad would happen to them.

  “Hi, Sophie,” I greeted when I entered Divination after school. A couple of younger kids were browsing through costumes nearby, but there weren’t many left since it was so close to Halloween.

  She looked up from behind the counter. “Hi, Crystal.”

  “Where’s my mom at?”

  “She and Diane are in the back organizing some stuff that Tammy and Sheryl asked us to bring for the festival. Need help with anything?”

  I smiled reassuringly. “No, I’m good.” I passed by the front counter and headed toward the storage room.

  “Oh, I can use that in my tent,” my mom said to Diane, grabbing the table cloth from her hands. She looked up and noticed me. “Crystal.”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “What’s up?” She pulled herself from the floor and dusted off.

  I shrugged. “I just wanted to talk to you. Is that okay?”

  “Sure, sweetheart. What is it?”

  I glanced at Diane on the floor. “Diane looks busy. Can we talk in the break room?”

  “Sure.” My mom followed me across the hall to the small room where they kept their purses and snacks. A table with four chairs around it sat in the middle of the room.

  I turned back to my mom and crossed my arms over my chest when the door clicked shut. “Mom, I need to know something, and I don’t want you to lie to me this time.”

  “Lie to you?” she asked innocently. “I wouldn’t lie to you, sweetie.”

  I chewed the dry skin on my lip because I wasn’t sure exactly how to confront her about this. “Mom, the last time I asked you this, you completely diverted the question, so please be honest with me.” I took a deep breath. “Have you ever not been able to help someone?”

  Her brows shot up. “You want me to be honest with you? Then you’re going to have to be honest with me.” Her tone softened. “Crystal, what is this about?”

  I swallowed hard, but it felt like trying to force needles down my throat. I had to lie to her. If I told her the truth, she’d want to take my place. Everyone I loved would die for me, and I couldn’t let them do that. “Mom, I need you to trust me when I say that I can’t tell you, okay?”

  She bit the inside of her cheek. I wasn’t sure if it was because she was disappointed or because she was thinking hard. “I don’t like this.” She crossed her arms over her chest and pursed her lips. “Can’t you trust me enough to tell me?”

  “It’s not like that, Mom. I do trust you.”

  Her voice rose slightly. “Then why can’t you tell me what’s wrong with you? You’re my daughter, and I’m supposed to protect you. How can I do that when I don’t know what’s wrong?”

  And how can I save myself when I don’t know how I’m going to die?

  “Please believe me, Mom,” I begged. “It will put people in danger if I tell you.”

  Her nostrils flared, and her breaths grew shallow. She took a deep breath to calm herself. “Okay. You really want to know if I could save everyone? The answer is no, I couldn’t. Please, take a seat.” She gestured to the break table, and I slid down in the chair farthest from the door. “Excuse me for a minute.”

  I didn’t ask why she had to leave the room, but she came back a couple of minutes later with Sophie and Diane in tow.

  “Uh, don’t you have customers out in the shop?” I asked. My heart thumped in my chest nervously. What was so important that they all needed to be in here at once?

  “We closed up early,” my mother answered.

  “But it’s so close to Halloween! You can’t close up.”

  “This seemed more important,” my mom said.

  She took the seat across from me while Sophie and Diane sat in the chairs on either side.

  My mother shifted in her chair. “I asked Sophie and Diane in here to help me tell the story.”

  I blinked a few times. “Uh, okay. Why?”

  They all exchanged a glance, but my mother was the one who spoke. “Because the story has to do with all of us. We were all there. We all watched Sam Marshall die.”

  Chapter 18

  “Who’s Sam Marshall?” I shifted my gaze between all of them. They swallowed in unison like they had all suddenly formed a lump in their throats. My pulse quickened in response.

  “We knew him in college,” Diane explained.

  “He was a friend of your father’s. He was also my sister Theresa’s boyfriend,” Sophie clarified.

  I drew in a sharp breath. “Oh, my gosh. Justine’s mom’s boyfriend?” It took me a second to absorb the information. Did that make Sam Marshall Justine’s father? I’d never met her dad, but I thought her parents were still together. Plus, Justine’s last name was Hanson, not Marshall. Apparently my question was written in my expression because Sophie quickly clarified.

  “He was her boyfriend at the time. Justine’s dad came into the picture later.”

  I hadn’t realized how quick my pulse had become, but it returned to normal once Sophie explained. “Is that why she dropped out of college? Because her boyfriend died?”

  Sophie shook her head. “No. This happened about a year before she dropped out.”

  My mother spoke next. “I met Sam shortly after I met Sophie and then her sister, Theresa. It wasn’t long after we formed our Sensitive Society group. Ever since I met him, I kept having visions of his death, how he was going to get hit by a bus while on his bike.”

  My eyes widened. That must have been terrible for her.

  “I couldn’t feel anything strange from him,” Sophie said, “and Diane couldn’t see anything from his past out of the ordinary. Your mom was the one who could see his future, but we were there to support her 100 percent.”

  I drew closer to the table, completely engrossed in their story.

  Diane took over. “We invited him to my dorm room one night to warn him about it. We thought maybe if he didn’t ride his bike around anymore, it wouldn’t ever happen.”

  “But it did,” I finished for her.

  My mother nodded. “The hardest part wasn’t telling him that we were psychic. It was warning him of his death.”

  Sophie rested her elbows on the table and leaned closer to me. “At first when we told him we were psychic, he just kind of scoffed. He said he saw the posters around campus and thought our ‘little joke’ was kind of funny.”

  “We tried to tell him we were serious,” Diane continued, “but he didn’t believe us. I remember him asking, ‘And why should I care?’”

  My mother swallowed hard. “And that’s when I told him about his death. I told him I’d seen it and that if he didn’t trust us, he was going to die.”

  The surface of my skin began to heat. My mother had told me about how people had rejected her and her abilities before. A boyfriend in high school had told everyone she was a witch, and she had to transfer schools. This was another one of those stories, I knew, and she was finally giving me the details. I couldn’t bear to think about all the people who had rejected her throughout the years.

  “Then what?” I asked.

 
“He freaked,” Diane answered. “He told us it was true what everyone was saying, that we were all witches.”

  My breath caught in my throat. I couldn’t believe what they’d been through.

  Sophie spoke. “I think he was more scared than anything. I’m not sure if he really believed we were witches, but we certainly freaked him out.”

  “He just kind of ran after that,” my mom told me. “We chased after him. I remember calling out to him and asking him to trust me, but he just kept running down the hall and out of the building. When we made it out of the dorm hall, he had already grabbed his bike from the bike rack next to Diane’s dorm, and he was riding away. We chased after him, and that’s when it happened.”

  Her eyes glistened with tears. When I glanced around the table, I realized they were all on the brink of crying.

  Sophie stared into the distance, not really looking at anything. “He was so scared. He wasn’t watching where he was going. He crossed the street just as the city bus was coming down it. We rushed over to him, but it was too late to do anything.”

  Silence settled over the room until my mother’s whisper cut through it. “I watched him take his last breath. I held his hand while he died.”

  I wanted to cry, but nothing came out. How did my mother handle her abilities after that? Everything I’d gone through over the past few weeks now seemed trivial in the grand scheme of things. Except, if they couldn’t save Sam, then would I be able to save myself?

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “If Sam only died because he was running away from you, wouldn’t that make it a self-fulfilling prophecy?”

  My mom shook her head and gazed down at her hands. “It wasn’t like that, exactly. In my visions, it always happened a different way. He was wearing a different shirt, and the bus number was different. I remember thinking the same thing, but after looking at it all closer, I realized his real death wasn’t the same one I was seeing in my visions.”

  “It’s like he was always meant to die that way,” Diane told me. “It almost didn’t matter if we told him or not because he’d always end up getting hit by a bus one way or another.”

  My head hurt thinking about it. I didn’t understand how I could save Sage from her death but they couldn’t save Sam. If Sage was supposed to die from suicide several months ago, did that mean she would die from suicide later? If I didn’t die this Saturday, would I end up dying later on to save the people I loved?

  I voiced my thoughts. “Why can we save some people from death and not others?”

  They all sighed in unison as if collectively agreeing this was a difficult question to answer.

  Sophie was the first to compose herself. “Sometimes we’re supposed to save them.”

  “I don’t get it,” I complained again. “If we’re supposed to save the people we’re led to, then why would Mom have a vision of Sam in the first place? Doesn’t that mean she was supposed to save him?”

  “Not necessarily,” my mother pointed out. “Sometimes the things we see don’t mean anything at all. Maybe my visions of Sam weren’t even meant for me.”

  Though it was difficult to wrap my head around, I understood on some level. Sometimes I knew people’s secrets without even caring about the answer, but I’d never seen something so huge without being able to help.

  “Or maybe it wasn’t even about his death,” Diane said.

  I cocked my head. “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t about saving him. Maybe it was about teaching us something. We all became very close after that day. We learned a lot about keeping our secrets . . . well, secret.”

  My mother reached across the table and rested a hand on mine. She spoke soothingly. “Crystal, I’m sorry if that’s not the story you wanted to hear.”

  I wiped a stray tear from my eye. “No, it’s okay. I think that’s exactly what I needed to hear.”

  I left the break room mulling over their story again. My dad’s warning wasn’t about my death and how I could prevent it. It was about my loved ones’ deaths and how I could save them. I had around 48 hours left of my life—if I was right about this all happening at the festival—and I was going to make it count.

  I passed by the costumes on my way out, and one caught my eye. I finally knew what I was going to dress as for Halloween.

  Chapter 19

  “Crystal, can I be honest with you?” Emma asked at lunch on Friday.

  I looked up from my pizza. At least we were having something tasty on one of my last days. “Sure.” Though I was dreading what was to come, I spoke confidently. There was no point in making my last few hours miserable or causing others to worry about me.

  Emma shifted in her chair. “I’ve been feeling . . . strange.”

  I stopped chewing. “Strange? What do you mean?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure I can explain it. We haven’t done our psychic practice sessions in a while, so maybe I’m getting rusty, but I think I’m feeling something. Maybe it’s a bad omen?”

  Through Emma’s practice, she’d become talented at feeling good or bad about a situation since everyone had some intuition. My abilities had been so weak lately that I’d almost forgotten there was a chance she could pick up on my bad vibes.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” I lied to her. It was the only option I had. “It’s probably just about your breakup with Derek. Are you second guessing going to the festival?”

  “You think he’ll be there?”

  I forced a look of uncertainty on my face, even though I knew he said he probably wouldn’t come. It was the best way to distract her from trying to weed the truth of my prophecy out of me. “He might be.”

  She looked down at her food. “Maybe I can just avoid him, unless you were planning to hang out with him.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I told her. I still felt bad that I hadn’t been able to give Derek a proper goodbye and figure out what was wrong with him, but I didn’t know what else to do when he wouldn’t talk to me about it. “If you come, then I’ll hang out with you.”

  If you come . . .

  The words echoed in my mind. What if there was a chance she didn’t come? Then the three people I loved most wouldn’t be in the same place at the same time, and I might have a chance of preventing whatever was supposed to happen. Unless whatever it was wasn’t supposed to happen tomorrow night . . .

  Make up your mind, Crystal, I scolded myself. Are you going to die for them or not?

  I would. I would die for them if I had to. But what if it never came to that? What if keeping them apart was how I saved them?

  “Maybe you’re getting sick,” I suggested. “If you’re getting sick, you probably shouldn’t come to the festival. You don’t even have a costume, do you?”

  Emma’s face fell. “You’re right. It’s probably just a mixture of heartbreak and the flu or something.”

  “I think maybe you should go home and get some rest over the weekend.”

  “I do feel kind of sick,” she admitted.

  Except I knew it wasn’t the flu. She could tell something bad was coming. She just didn’t know what her intuition was telling her.

  “Well, go ahead and rest over the weekend, okay?” I said.

  After school, I returned home and killed time by completing my homework. I wasn’t sure if it would matter, though. After Teddy arrived home, I told him I was going on a walk, and I strolled the few blocks to Divination. I knew my mom wouldn’t be around, but I double checked anyway.

  “Is my mom here?” I asked Sophie after waiting for her to check out a couple of customers.

  “I’m afraid not. She’s attending a last-minute festival meeting for us.” Sophie checked the clock on the wall. “She should be back in under an hour if you’re looking for her.”

  “No. It’s okay. I was just wondering.” I glanced over at Diane, who was helping a young boy pick out costume makeup. My heart sank. If something was going to happen, I still had to say goodbye to Sophie and Diane, but I didn�
��t know how. I turned back to Sophie. “I still don’t have a costume.”

  “Oh, that’s no problem. Let’s see what we have.” She came around the side of the counter.

  There weren’t many costumes left on the racks since the Halloween festival was tomorrow, but the costume I had my eye on yesterday was still there.

  “Let’s see,” Sophie mused. “What do we have that will fit you? I think there’s still a pumpkin costume.”

  I wrinkled my nose as she held it up. “Do I have to stuff it?”

  She laughed back at me. “I suppose you could. Balled up newspaper works well, and there’s a string at the bottom where you can pull it tight so the stuffing doesn’t fall out.”

  I reached for the costume. It might at least be fun to try it on, even if I didn’t want it. “Well, let’s see what it looks like.”

  I hurried into a dressing room and pulled it on over my head. When I emerged, Diane was done attending to the customer, and I had both of their attention. When they spotted me, they both burst out laughing.

  “This is why it’s still on the rack,” Diane joked. “No one wants to be caught dead in that thing.”

  “So, why’d you stock it?” I teased back.

  “You’ll have to ask your mother,” she responded. “That one was her idea.”

  I twirled around, showing off the awful costume. “Let’s try the next one.”

  Diane and Sophie put me in a banana costume next, followed by a dress designed to look like a Skittles bag.

  “What’s with all the food?” I asked with a laugh.

  “That’s all we have left!” Sophie defended. “All the good ones are gone.”

  I knew that wasn’t true, but I was enjoying dressing up for them. We made it through another half dozen costumes and another half hour of laughing together before I finally mentioned the costume I had my eye on.