That day after school, Trey's mother gave him the keys to her gray Civic. She looked reluctant to trust him, but pleased that he was volunteering to get back behind the wheel. I buckled into the passenger seat as he fired up the engine, kind of hoping that he'd miraculously overcome his fear of driving and get us all the way to Green Bay. But instead, he drove around the block and then pulled over. He took a deep breath as the engine idled, and wiped sweat from his brow.

"Enough?" I asked gently, seeing how hard it was for him to steer the car.

Without saying a word, he unbuckled his belt and threw it off of himself. He jerked the parking brake and climbed out of the driver's side door. I took a deep breath and prepared myself for a first in my own life: driving in a car all alone. I stepped out of the car, prepared to walk around its back to take my seat behind the wheel. Surprising me, Trey sat down again in the passenger seat, and suggested, "Maybe you could just drop me at the Starbucks in Silver Springs, and pick me up on your way back from the mall."

Without him saying so, I inferred that he really did not want to be in the mall parking lot again so soon after finding Olivia there on the night she died. I agreed, and ran through my checklist of tasks before pulling away from the curb. Engine on? Check. I peeked in my rearview mirror and my side mirror, and then eased onto the gas pedal. Oddly, the car didn't move.

"You might want to release the parking brake," Trey gently reminded me.

It had been over two months since Dad had taken me for my license in Florida, and another three months before that since I'd driven regularly when I was practicing during my sophomore year Driver's Ed class. I was shamefully out of practice at driving, and feeling very unqualified to transport myself all the way to Green Bay and back in a car that was a lot fancier than any I'd ever driven before. But Trey and I had agreed: we needed that Ouija board. It was our best shot at contacting Jennie or any other spirit who might be cooperating with Violet. There was simply no other way we were going to obtain one. Buying one online would have required me not only to ask my mom for permission to use her credit card, but also to deal with her insatiable curiosity when the box arrived at the house. I was going to have to drive to Green Bay alone, whether I liked it or not.

I abandoned Trey at the Starbucks as he had requested, and pulled out of the parking lot, back onto the rural highway. Fortunately there was a lull in the slow, dreary rain that had fallen all day, but even that did little to ease my fears about the wet leaves everywhere on the flat stretch of highway ahead as I drove, other than relieve me of the need to locate the windshield wiper controls on the dashboard of Mrs. Emory's car. The drive to Green Bay was a boring, unremarkable journey punctuated by few things more exciting than barns painted dreary colors, and out-of-date billboards marketing morning radio shows and local car dealerships. I was thankful that at least it was still light out, but knew that the drive back to Willow would be infinitely more difficult for me in the dark no matter how quickly I shopped. Nervously, I tinkered with the car's satellite radio, and succeeded in filling the car's interior with Mrs. Emory's preferred honky-tonk country western music. I was too anxious about keeping my eyes on the road to bother trying to find a more appealing station.

Parking was tricky, and to avoid a collision due to my sloppy turning, I parked further away from the mall's entrance than I probably needed to, in a space fairly far from other cars. Once I stepped outside Mrs. Emory's car and clicked the doors locked with the automated key chain, I breathed a sigh of relief, and then looked around. I was standing at the very place where Olivia must have realized that Violet's prediction was coming true. For a minute, I stood in the lot hugging my purse to my chest, wondering why in the world Olivia hadn't just waited out the storm at the mall. She must have sensed when her car wouldn't start that she was in danger.

Inside the mall, I checked the illuminated interior map because I couldn't remember where the toy store was located, and entered the store walking briskly, on a mission. I walked down the board game aisle feeling like a total creep, trying to ignore the mothers shopping with young children for games like Connect Four and Chutes & Ladders. My eyes reviewed the stacked board games for sale on the shelves, and I began to wonder if I had just forced myself to drive all the way to Green Bay in vain, when I should have been at home getting ready for the dance the next day. But then, on the top shelf, at the bottom of a stack of boxes of Stratego, I saw a cream-colored box with the word OUIJA printed in brown script along its side. It appeared to be the only one in stock.

"That'll be twenty-three dollars and fifty-four cents," the teenage girl behind the cash register told me, snapping her gum and smirking.

I hated that girl immediately for her knowing smirk, and I fumbled around in my wallet to hand her exact change. It was annoying that she would dare to assume why I was buying such a silly toy. I was eager for her to just put the box into an opaque white plastic bag and let me be on my way as mothers with quarreling children were lining up behind me, impatiently waiting to pay for their Barbies and Tonka trucks.

"Here you go," I said quickly, handing her cash and a handful of coins.

"We sell a lot of those this time of year," she informed me, handing over my receipt.

Of course— Halloween! Buying a Ouija board in early October wasn't so odd, after all. I rushed back to the parking lot with my purchase under one arm, and tossed it in the back seat before I strapped myself in with the seat belt. In the split second after I inserted the key into the car to start its engine, I became highly freaked out that the sun was setting and I had an occult communication tool for talking with the dead in the car with me.

Get it together, McKenna. There's no other way to get home but to drive there.

I took my time switching music channels until I found a station playing pop music that I knew by heart, and carefully maneuvered my way out of the parking lot. I fumbled with the headlights, putting on the high beams even though it wasn't completely dark yet, and turned them back down to low beams after someone angrily honked at me out on the highway. All the way back to Silver Springs, I drove slowly, terrified of missing a turn or street light and getting lost in the woods, feeling the weight of Mrs. Emory's car anchoring me to the road. As I pulled into the lot at Starbucks, Trey waved at me through the window holding a large white paper cup, and met me in the lot so that I wouldn't have to suffer through the ordeal of trying to park in a tightly jammed space.

"You got it," he said, sounding relieving upon seeing the bag in the back seat.

"I got it," I confirmed.

He reached into the back seat and pulled the bagged game into his lap to examine it. "So, where should we test this thing out?"

"Hey, could you put that thing away? It's freaking me out," I said, feeling a surge of relief pass through me as we drove past the familiar sign along the highway which read:

WILLOW

POPULATION 4,218

 In my head, I subtracted one from that number of residents.

"Seriously, McKenna. Now that we have it, where should we see if it works? We can't try it in your room. If by some incredible long shot, this piece of junk, manufactured by..." he examined the box again, reading the logo on the box, "Lomax and Company, is actually able to channel communication from paranormal spirits, and those spirits happen to be loud, we'd better not be under your mom's roof."

"Where, then? Your basement?" I asked, braking at a traffic light. There was a little more traffic now that we were within town boundaries.

"Possibly," Trey considered the option. "Although getting you down there might be tricky unless you come over after dinner and we say we're going to do homework."

I eased on the gas again as the light turned green, and we drove without talking until I turned left onto Carroll Road, the block before ours. It was already after six o'clock, and it would be close to eight by the time I finished dinner at home and helped to load the dishwasher. "Okay. Homework at your place it is. But can you do me a favor? Take this thing inside with you. If my mom finds it, the questions will never end." I pulled over to the curb so that we could switch seats to prevent Trey's mom from suspecting that I had been the one driving all the way to Green Bay and back.

Throughout dinner, Mom attacked me with questions about whether or not I had tried on my dress for Homecoming recently to make sure it still fit, which earrings I'd be wearing, if Trey would be driving me to the dance, and what time I expected to be home. It was kind of baffling that she was putting so much more consideration into my attendance at the Homecoming dance than I was; I didn't have the right answer to any of her questions because Trey and I hadn't really made an action plan for getting to the dance yet.

After I cleared my place, rinsed dishes, loaded the dishwasher and set it to run, I threw my backpack over one shoulder without even peeking inside of it to see which books I'd carried home. At the front door of our house, I called over my shoulder, "I'm going over to Trey's to do homework!"

The Emorys' basement was nothing like the one at the Richmonds' house. It was one giant unfinished construction project, with wiring peeking through drywall, and a toilet balanced in a corner on the cement floor that had been intended for a bathroom renovation that Mr. Emory had never completed. A bare light bulb hung from a wire that dangled from the ceiling, and a stained plaid couch had been pressed up against the wall near the stairs. Mildewing board games were stacked on a utility shelf. The entire basement smelled like decay and the air was damp against my face. I suspected there were way more spiders down there than I wanted to know about.

Trey and I plunked ourselves down on an old rag rug with our legs outstretched, our backs pressed against the plaid couch.  He opened the game board between us. The sight of it made me shiver. The word Yes was printed in its upper left corner, and No was printed in its upper right corner. The letters of the alphabet were printed in two orderly arcs, and numbers were assembled below them. Beneath the numbers, the word goodbye was printed in capital letters.

Trey placed the metal planchette on which we would rest our fingers in the center of the board over the word Ouija, which appeared in between the Yes and No in opposite corners. "Kind of cheaply made, right?" he asked me shyly. "This thing might only be capable of contacting extremely tacky spirits."

"Ha ha," I replied dryly.

We could hear his parents watching television in the living room upstairs, but it seemed as if they were in another dimension. I couldn't say why, but that Ouija board on the floor terrified me. I was afraid to place my fingertip on the metal guide; a sense of doom was washing over me, as if we were about to throw open a gate to allow terrible things from another world into our neighborhood.  "I don't know about this," I admitted quietly. "It seemed like a good idea yesterday, but what happens if we contact something and we don't know how to control it?"

Trey leaned over and planted a soft kiss on my cheek. "The book says that this is our world, and we have more power than they do here. Truly evil spirits might resort to crazy tactics to try to scare us, but we have to remember that we belong here, and they don't. James W. Listerman wrote that we have to be very authoritative when we're communicating with them. Tell them who's boss."

Telling spirits capable of nearly tossing me out of my bed with sheer force that we were in charge seemed ridiculous. I wished there was a fireplace in the Emorys' basement like the one at the Richmonds,' so that if things got out of control, we could toss the game into the flames, which seemed to be a viable method of disposal in horror movies. I followed Trey's lead by placing my own freezing fingertip alongside his. "We should warm it up first," he instructed, and used his own force to gently move the planchette around the board in circles. After a minute or so of this, I looked over to him to suggest that he should take the lead.

Trey nodded at me and cleared his throat nervously. "We are trying to reach the spirit that is visiting McKenna's bedroom on Martha Road," Trey said in a firm voice. "But only kind, well-meaning spirits are welcome here."

I felt a very subtle vibrating sensation beneath my fingertip and I couldn't be certain if Trey was trying to scare me or not, but the planchette seemed to be channeling some kind of faint energy. It circled the board in a wide arc, coming to rest over the word Ouija at the bottom. "We're supposed to start with easy yes-and-no questions," Trey informed me.  "Is there someone here with us?" he asked the board.

The planchette, in a slow and wobbly trajectory, made its way toward the upper left corner and stopped with its pointer touching the Y in Yes. I shivered. Trey looked over at me for permission to continue, and I reluctantly nodded, sensing that the tip of my nose and my lips were freezing cold. The temperature in the basement seemed to have dropped at least twenty degrees during the last minute.

"Are you the spirit who has been trying to make contact with McKenna Brady?" Trey asked carefully.

My heart skipped a beat as the planchette trembled but didn't move. "It's already on yes," I whispered. "Ask it something else."

"What can you tell us about Violet Simmons?"

The planchette dragged our fingertips toward the center of the board, hesitated, and then moved upward toward the No in the upper right corner.

"What does that mean?" Trey asked me under his breath, not directing his question to the board. "No?"

"Maybe it's too complicated to answer this way," I suggested, but then the planchette began moving again. First it slowly dragged its way over to the F in the top arc of letters. Then it shifted a little more over to the E and came to a rest.

"E," Trey said. "I think I might know where this is going."

The planchette, as expected, then moved its way down to the second arc of letters, and hovered with its pointer touching the "V."

"Evil. We've got it," Trey assured the spirit. He looked at me and nudged me with his elbow. "Ask it something."

There was one question on my mind, but it was too terrible to ask. If the answer was what I feared it would be, there could be no turning back time to a place when I believed Jennie was at peace, wherever she was. There would only be the knowledge that her existence persisted past the point at which her body died in the fire, and that she was still trailing me through my life, I feared, with jealousy.  I really did not like the notion of leaving Trey's basement and walking back to my house knowing that Jennie was around me, watching me, after me. After a moment's hesitation I realized that Trey was studying me, waiting for me to speak, and surely he knew the question on the tip of my tongue.

"I'll ask," he assured me. "Are you Jennie?"

The planchette rocketed up to the right corner of the board, and landed on the No.

I breathed a deep sigh of relief, and the air in my lungs rushed out of me with a giant whoosh. It was both an enormous relief and a heart-breaking tragedy that my twin, my other half, wasn't the spirit trying so hard to reach me.

Which left really only one relevant question: who was trying to reach me?

Reading my mind, Trey asked, "Okay... who are you?"

The planchette slowly, steadily, led our fingers across the board until it came to rest pointing at the letter O.

Trey's finger flew off of the planchette and he shook his head. "No way. No way," he muttered.

To remove any possibility that we were misinterpreting the board, the planchette began moving with only my fingertip on it toward the board's L.

"Let go of it," Trey commanded.

I raised my fingertip and as soon as I did, the planchette moved rapidly all on its own to the letters L-I-V-I-A. I gasped in horror. How was it moving on its own? I felt like I couldn't even believe what I was seeing to be real.

"The Lite Brite," I asked hoarsely, "was that you?" The planchette slid upward and landed on the No.

We both watched the planchette where it had come to rest on the board for a moment, holding our breath for another sign of motion. "Maybe it's gone," I suggested. At the sound of my voice, the planchette slid over at the S. I clung to Trey's left arm, barely breathing, as the planchette spelled out:

S-H-E-K-N-E-W-E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G.

"Jesus," I murmured.

"Will more people die?" Trey finally asked. I could see steam escape through his lips in the frosty air that surrounded us.

The planchette delivered our gaze to the response we both feared most.

Yes.

Goodbye.

That night, hours after I had said goodnight in a stiff voice to Trey's parents and  walked across our yards back to my house, and Trey had crept through the window, I rested my head on his chest and stared at the wall.

"What do we do about Violet?" I asked, knowing that Trey wouldn't have an answer. "How do we stop her?"

"I don't know," Trey said, holding me protectively close with a grip like an iron clamp.

"How could it all be Olivia? Is she trying to protect us? Is she just out for revenge against Violet?"

The answers that Olivia had provided to us created even more questions. One thing was certain: Olivia wasn't going to visit us in my room that night, but even knowing that we wouldn't be troubled by her interruptions wasn't enough to put either of us in a romantic mood. It seemed to be more and more the case that we were going to have to bring an end to Violet's plans before another one of us died. And this time, because Trey and I knew it was coming, if we couldn't prevent it from happening... we'd be partly responsible.

 The staff at the Ortonville Lodge outdid themselves, lavishly decorating their grand ballroom, usually used for hosting sales conference banquets for realtors and lawn equipment retail executives. Flowers had been donated by the same florist in Willow who had supplied most of the arrangements at Olivia's wake, and they had placed clusters of orchids and carnations dyed blue throughout the ballroom, filling the entire space with fragrance. A tacky disco ball dangled overhead, hung from a crystal chandelier, and streamers criss-crossed from one corner of the ceiling to the other. An enormous table had been set up for the DJ, with speakers tucked into all four corners of the room.  A photographer had decorated a corner of the hallway leading to the ballroom with a gazebo and backdrop of clouds, and couples posed for pictures, choosing fun props from a box offering flower leis and grass skirts. The theme for the dance, chosen by the senior class, was Tropical Paradise. Given that we were dancing in a ballroom in central Wisconsin to Top 40 hits, hearing the cold autumn wind whistle through the hotel windows, the theme was a bit irreverent. But high school is completely irreverent anyway, so no one seemed to care how absurd it was that we were pretending to hold our school dance in Fiji.

"How authentically Tahitian," Trey quipped at a snack buffet offering popcorn balls dyed lavender with food coloring, and water chestnuts wrapped in bacon, served on little toothpicks.

The usual suspects were all in attendance at the dance. Coach Stirling surprisingly wore a tea-length gray dress and shoes that were not sneakers. Mr. Dean wore a brown suit with a paisley tie. Principal Nylander brought his wife as his date, as he usually did, and our town was so small that everyone knew she was a pharmacist at Rennicker's Drugs and that Katie Wayne from the freshman class was babysitting the Nylanders' two kids that night. I felt a twinge of embarrassment for my old, former friends, Cheryl, Kelly, and Erica, who had intentionally bought identical dresses. They'd come to the dance together, dateless, as a threesome. I would have been with them, sitting at their table in the far corner giggling over cups of punch in a matching forest green dress, a year earlier.

Mischa wore her hair up and looked like a tiny fairy in her hot pink strapless gown when she entered the ballroom on Matt's arm, with Candace and Isaac right behind them. Candace looked sedate and serene in a teal gown with spaghetti straps, her hair curled like a movie star's around her shoulders. The moment I saw them, I felt a twinge of resentment toward Violet, because I knew they had probably all driven to the dance together with Amanda and Brian. I had to remind myself that I had volunteered to be the one who remained close to Violet, even if it meant missing out on group fun.

Trey and I lingered to the side of the ballroom, silently watching everyone with our hands locked together tightly beneath the table, where no one could see. A few chaperones had questioned me with their eyes when we entered, clearly indicating that they considered us to be somewhat of an odd pairing. Trey had surprised me with a white rose corsage; I had no idea when he had the time to choose it or pick it up at the florist since we'd walked home from school together, but I suspected his mom had something to do with it. All day long, I'd had a throbbing headache and a suspicion that something significant was going to happen at the dance. Everyone had been rowdy in classes all day in anticipation of the night's big event, but I'd been lost in day dreams, caught off-guard when I'd been called on to describe the weather using the future tense in Spanish. When I'd arrived home from school, I was annoyed rather than happy to find my mom home from work early, eager to help me to prepare for the big night. I'd snapped at her when she suggested that I curl my hair and allow her to do my makeup, and then had ultimately given in. After all, she had agreed to drive me and Trey to the dance, and to pick us up.

"That's her?" Trey asked me, trying to be discreet, as he nodded in the direction of the ballroom entrance.

Violet, looking downright gorgeous, stood nervously in the wide doorway to the ballroom, lit from the bright hallway behind her. Her hair was loose and wavy, and her light blue mini dress fit her perfectly. More than one guy turned his head to check her out, and a moment later she was joined by Tracy and Michael, who looked more handsome than usual. Tracy and Michael had struck up a rather unsurprising partnership since the student election had begun, and they actually looked kind of cute together as a couple, despite their combined annoyingness. Tracy had made an impressive effort with her hair pulled back tightly in a French twist, showing off her long neck. But it was Violet who, without any real competition, stole the show.

"Yep, that's her," I confirmed.

Eventually, after fetching cups of punch and saying hello to other students, both girls made their way over to the table where Trey and I sat, and I did my best to greet them cheerfully.

"Oh my god, McKenna! You look so pretty!"

I blushed, mostly because the lavender dress I'd bought over a month ago hardly seemed suitable now that the night of the dance had finally arrived. I felt like I'd been a different person completely when I'd bought it, and I had cringed at home when I looked in the mirror. Mom had insisted on my wearing her amethyst earrings to match, and while the dangling gems felt extravagant for me, they were nothing in comparison to the excessive jewelry Tracy had piled on. She had jewel encrusted combs in her hair, chandelier earrings almost reaching her shoulders, and an enormous cocktail ring on her left hand. Violet wore her gold locket, as always, but with a dainty pair of diamond earrings.

We exchanged compliments on each others' dresses, and gossiped half-heartedly about the dresses worn by some of the more popular senior girls. I nodded but didn't contribute to the conversation when nasty comments were made about Cheryl, Kelly, and Erica. Amanda Portnoy looked phenomenal in a gold sequined dress that definitely had not been bought at any of the stores near Willow. I couldn't help but wonder how magnificent Olivia would have looked, had she lived to attend the dance.

It took a while for people to loosen up enough to venture out onto the dance floor, but once they did, they were ready to party hard. Isaac challenged Coach Highland, the boys' football coach, to a dance-off, and everyone was clutching their guts with laughter. The DJ played Kool & the Gang's "Celebration," which no one could resist, other than me and Trey. We remained fixed in our seats, communicating entirely with expressions, watching. Waiting.

"Guys, come on and dance! It's a party!" Tracy yelled at us, red in the face from jumping up and down during "Rapper's Delight." She grabbed me by the hands and attempted to drag me off my chair onto the dance floor.

"Nah, I'm not a good dancer," I refused.

"Come on, Trey! Tell your girl to get on her feet!" Tracy encouraged Trey, as if they were friends.

Trey was not the kind of guy to welcome false friendliness, even if he looked far less intimidating that night in a suit than he normally did in his plaid shirts and army jacket. "McKenna doesn't want to dance," he stated firmly.

"Well, you're missing out!" Tracy cautioned us, ignoring his bitterness, trotting back out onto the dance floor with a smile, where Michael, clapping his hands, was waiting for her.

Trey nudged me and nodded his head in the direction of where Pete and Violet had struck up what appeared to be a friendly conversation near the punch bowl. Pete appeared to be telling her that she looked nice, and she was shrugging her bare shoulders bashfully and flirtatiously placing one hand on his forearm. Pete looked handsome as always, wearing a different suit than the one he'd worn to Olivia's wake. He'd left his jacket on the back of a chair somewhere, and had a pink carnation tucked into the breast pocket of his white button-down shirt. My heart was pounding with fury as I looked around to see if Mischa and Candace were witnessing what I saw; but when my eyes found them in the crowd, they were oblivious, dancing together.

Pete. So maybe snaring Pete was part of Violet's motive. Trey raised one eyebrow at me. He was thinking the same thing.

At nearly 10 P.M., Principal Nylander stepped up to a podium carrying two envelopes, and the DJ cut the music after a slow dance ended.

"Attention, everyone! Attention!" Principal Nylander said, tapping the microphone to make sure it was working. The crowd on the dance floor calmed down, and Trey and I shifted our chairs so that we could watch the principal's speech. He cleared his throat. "I'd like to thank all of you for joining us tonight and showing some admirable school spirit. Now, I know our school year has already been marred by tragedy, but tonight the good time we're having in each other's company shows that the students of Weeping Willow High School have the strength to celebrate the life of our lost friend, Olivia Richmond, and move forward with positivity."

There was light applause; people were a little surprised that he had chosen to mention Olivia by name.

"After a lot of discussion, the high school faculty decided that it was the right thing for us to do to name a Homecoming King and Queen tonight. All of you cast votes a few weeks ago, and it should come as no surprise to any of us that the junior class voted Olivia Richmond as their queen."

Whispers filled the ballroom. No one knew exactly what to expect next.

"Now while we all acknowledge that Olivia was very much a beloved member of our high school community, in the interest of moving forward into the future, we'd like to announce this year's runner up as the Homecoming Queen, and crown her king."

Now excitement was building. Chatter in the ballroom swelled in volume, and Trey and I exchanged confused looks. How could there be a runner-up?  I wondered. Everyone in the junior class would have voted for Olivia. Amanda, who had been the previous year's Homecoming Queen when she was a junior, looked outraged where she stood across the ballroom, saying something directly to Mischa.

Principal Nylander tugged the first envelope open, flanked by Coach Stirling to his left, and Mr. Paulson, the wood shop teacher, to his right. He leaned forward to speak into the microphone again, reading off of the piece of paper that he had removed from the envelope. "This year's Homecoming Queen is... Violet Simmons."

I couldn't control my reaction, I lurched forward to my feet and my jaw dropped open. Trey stood behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders to keep me from leaving our table. The crowd erupted into jubilant applause, and I had to remind myself that no one but me, Trey, Mischa, Amanda, and Candace really had reason to be upset by Violet's win. To everyone else in the junior class, Violet was just the mysterious new girl who had been close friends with Olivia. For them, it was probably perfectly natural that she had received the most votes after Olivia.

But for us, it was plainly obvious that Violet might have been the only person in the entire junior class who had voted for herself, and that one vote had probably been enough to earn her the title of Queen. In disbelief, I watched as the crowd of students closed in on Violet. Girls with happy tears in their eyes patted her on the back and urged her toward the front of the ballroom toward the podium. Violet had covered her mouth with her hands in surprise and was shaking her head as if she just couldn't believe that her name had been called. It was impressive acting, indeed, since it was unlikely that she was truly surprised.

"Congratulations, Violet. And next, our Homecoming King is... Peter Nicholson. Congratulations, Pete!"

Principal Nylander was beaming proudly at the crowd as Pete rose to his feet from the chair on which he was sitting, urged by the other guys on the basketball team. He, unlike Violet, appeared to be embarrassed to have won anything, and impishly took his place standing next to her. After greeting her with a shy smile, he looked down at the ground, his hands fidgeting nervously.

"Way to go, man!" a male voice yelled from the crowd, causing Pete to reluctantly nod in acknowledgement.

"Something's going to happen," Trey said, grabbing my arm. "Do you feel it?"

I did feel that something was about to occur, but I couldn't explain how. The room still felt warm, but the hairs on my forearms were standing on end. Something about the whole experience of standing next to Trey and hearing applause felt like déjà vu. Then, a nauseating feeling washed over me as I heard the first chords of a song I never expected to hear that night. Trey reached for my hand and squeezed, realizing in unison with me what was happening. "Soul Meets Body," by Death Cab for Cutie filled the ballroom of the Ortonville Lodge as Pete put one arm loosely around Violet and they bowed to be crowned. After Principal Nylander placed gaudy plastic crowns on both of their heads, they looked up to face the applauding crowd, and tears of joy were falling from Violet's eyes, stained purple from her eyeliner, glistening beneath the spotlight shining down on the Homecoming court. I felt like I was in a dream, where everything that was happening was wrong, and all I could do was watch.

Through the crowd, I saw Mischa and Matt. Our eyes met, and she looked furious, angry enough to cry. Matt had his arm around her shoulders and was stroking her cheek, whispering in her ear, trying to calm her. The boys in the senior class, in their Sunday best suits, were chanting and hollering with their fists in the air, "Kiss her! Kiss her!" Pete turned to Violet, smiling uncertainly, not wanting to disappoint the crowd. I tried desperately to remember how much of our suspicions about Violet we had shared with Pete after the accident and realized that we might not have told him anything at all, wanting to spare him from more emotional anguish. It was very possible that he just thought Candace's rambling was an effect of her own grief over Olivia's death. 

Trey shook his head slowly as Coach Stirling and the wood shop teacher placed sashes over Pete and Violet's shoulders.  Only as Pete took Violet's hand in his and raised her arm over their heads in victory did I notice Isaac struggling to hold Candace back. She was writhing with anger and yelling toward the back of the crowd, but I couldn't hear what she was saying over the volume of the music. All of the care she had put into her appearance was overpowered by her animalistic rage. She looked monstrous, clawing at Isaac to release her, her face red. He lost his grip on her arms and she rushed for the podium, moving so quickly that she nearly tripped over her own heels. As she tumbled toward the front of the ballroom, shoving anyone standing in her way off to the side, she looked like a roaring blond cannonball, ripping through the crowd too fast for anyone to really put together was happening. She barreled into Violet, knocking the podium over on its side as she and Violet both hit the floor. Violet hadn't even seen her coming; she'd been too busy waving dreamily to the rest of the students at the dance. 

"Holy..." Trey trailed off.

The dance immediately turned into a scene of chaos. Teachers swept in, pulling rabid Candace off of Violet. Pete and Coach Stirling helped Violet back up to her feet and as she regained her balance she realized that her nose was dripping blood all over the front of her baby blue dress. Her crown had been knocked to the ground in the tussle, forgotten behind the podium. Melissa, the girl who had been along for the drive with us to Kenosha the night of Olivia's accident, dashed to the banquet table and returned with a stack of soft white napkins to press against Violet's face. Pete concerned himself with Violet and cast an angry glance at Candace as Mr. Paulson dragged her away. Several teachers called for ambulances and police, so within minutes, sirens could be heard outside. No one within the ballroom knew quite what to do; everyone was looking around in helpless surprise. The music had been silenced, and the entire grand ballroom was filled with the curious murmurs of confused teenagers.

"Let's go," Trey motioned for me to follow him, and then led me by the elbow through the double doors which returned us to the hotel's lobby. Hotel guests looked in wonderment at all of the baffled teenagers spilling out of the ballroom in their evening attire. Candace had been dragged out to the front of the hotel and was being held back by Mr. Paulson and one of the physics teachers. Through the hotel lobby's floor-to-ceiling windows, we could see the two of them, grown men, struggling to restrain her as she tirelessly, maniacally thrashed in an attempt to break free of them. We watched, stunned, at her behavior.

"She definitely doesn't seem like she's under hypnosis," Trey observed.

It was true; Candace seemed more possessed than hypnotized. A paramedic gave her an injection of something, presumably a sedative, and she fell slack about four seconds later, her knees buckling beneath her. The paramedics caught her before she hit the sidewalk, and gently positioned her on a rolling gurney before sliding it into the back of the ambulance.

"Somebody, call an exorcist," grumbled a senior girl passing behind us, returning to the dance from the ladies' bathroom down the hall.

We were lucky to have made our way to the front lobby quickly, because behind us, other chaperones and hotel administrators were preventing other students from leaving the ballroom, urging them to stay calm until the medical professionals had an opportunity to attend to Candace. Isaac was among them, and his attempts to explain that Candace was his girlfriend and his date didn't gain him access to the lobby.

"Stay calm, everyone," we heard Principal Nylander commanding everyone over the microphone in the ballroom. "The night is still young."

Trey and I watched as the ambulance carried Candace away, trailed closely by two police cars. Behind us, we heard the music resume, and Homecoming continued on as if nothing had happened. As far as our classmates were concerned, all they had witnessed was an explosive cat fight, one started by a girl who was off her rocker. I was stunned. I felt positive that Olivia had brought that song to my attention so that I would realize something important about that moment, and I was furious with myself for not understanding the clue.

"I just don't get it," I complained to Trey after we were herded back into the ballroom by Coach Stirling. "What comes next?"

"Candace's death in the game. How did Violet describe it? Is there any chance she's going to die on the way to the hospital, or at the hospital?" Trey asked me.

I had to think back to remember the details of the story that Violet had concocted for Candace.

"It was drowning. On a beach. In deep water."

Trey put his arm around me and pinched my shoulder tenderly. "There aren't really any beaches in Wisconsin, silly, other than rock beaches around the lakes. Olivia must have wanted us to take notice of something else. Maybe just that Violet wants Pete? That much is pretty obvious."

Violet and Pete were slow dancing at that very minute. They weren't dancing very closely together, but they did appear to be having a friendly conversation, which was reason enough for us to be curious. Violet still looked pretty even despite the blood stains down the front of her dress, which club soda had done little to remove. I wondered if Violet had ever originally made plans to go to Homecoming with Mark Regan, or if her mention of that had been part of her longer term plan to kill Olivia and steal Pete.

"See that?" I heard a voice behind me and turned to find Mischa taking the seat next to mine, glaring across the ballroom at Violet. She was risking the credibility of our fake fight by speaking to me, but she was in no mood to care. "It's Pete. She wants Pete. I think she killed Olivia just to go out with him."

As if her head was guided by a mystical power, Violet looked directly over at us at that moment and made eye contact with me. Her expression toward me was one that suggested I was in trouble rather than one of curiosity as to why I would be conversing with my alleged adversary at the dance. Whether she instantly was able to discern that my entire fight with Mischa had been phony, or assumed that we were in the process of restoring our friendship, I couldn't tell. It was just clear that she wasn't happy to see us together.

Mischa glared back at her and snarled, "Oh, look at that! Someone's not happy that we're still friends. Too bad. No more sneaking around, McKenna. I want that girl to know that you're my friend, too. It's too dangerous for you to get close to her."

I had to agree with Mischa. Violet was quite obviously outsmarting us all. But I was pretty sure that it wasn't just Pete that Violet had wanted to take from Olivia. It was everything: the popularity, the Student Government victory, the boyfriend... all of it. I just needed some kind of a breakthrough to better understand why Olivia had needed to die to make it all possible.