The Wish (Nightmare Hall) Read Free Page B

happened?
    Was anyone dead?
    “Is anyone dead?” Alex said aloud, and then laughed, because of course if someone were dead, they wouldn’t be answering her, would they?
    The boy who had tried to open the window was looking at her funny.
    She probably shouldn’t be laughing when they’d just had an accident.
    The black and orange spots disappeared. They were immediately replaced by a blinding headache. Alex closed her eyes. The gasoline smell made her stomach churn.
    The loud wail of approaching sirens seemed as if it would split her skull in two. But she knew it was a good sound, a sound they’d been waiting for.
    It took firemen in yellow slickers, shiny as patent-leather, ten long, agonizing minutes to remove the seriously wounded passengers from the front seat, clearing a path for the three in the back seat to fumble their way to freedom and fresh air.
    The cool, clean air cleared Alex’s head a little. They’d had an accident. A bad one. Julie, her roommate, was hurt. Gabe, Julie’s boyfriend, was hurt, too. And the boy who had tried to open the front window was Marty, and the twin in the back seat was Jenny, another roommate. Alex didn’t think she had more than two roommates, but she wasn’t sure.
    There were many cars parked along the roadway, and people, most of them students, stood on the grass watching the firemen hose away the gasoline.
    They’re glad they weren’t in this car, Alex thought. They’re sorry for us, but they’re glad it wasn’t them.
    She didn’t blame them.
    Although she insisted repeatedly that she was fine, just fine, Alex was loaded into an ambulance with Marty and Jenny. Julie and Gabe were placed in another ambulance. Sirens screamed again as both vehicles spun around and headed back toward the community hospital in Twin Falls.
    The doctor in the emergency room found nothing more than a bruise on Alex’s forehead and a deep scratch on her neck from flying glass.
    “I didn’t know what was happening,” she admitted with some embarrassment. “I mean, I was really out of it back there. I thought maybe it meant that something had happened to my head.”
    “That was your mind protecting you from the knowledge that something terrible had happened,” he explained. “Perfectly normal. Too bad we can’t escape like that all the time, right?”
    Alex didn’t agree. It had been awful not knowing what was going on.
    She came out of the emergency room just as Marty did.
    “You okay?” he asked, taking her elbow.
    Alex winced. Another bruise. “I’m fine. Are you?”
    He nodded. But she noticed he was limping slightly.
    Together, they walked to the waiting room, anxious for word of Julie and Gabe. The stuffy little room was crowded.
    “Where’s Jenny?” Alex asked Kyle, who met them at the door, two cups of hot coffee in hand. He handed a cup to each of them.
    “Still in the emergency room with Julie. No one’s told us a thing about Julie. But Gabe’s already on his way to surgery. His legs are a mess.”
    Feeling suddenly faint, Alex sank into an orange plastic chair. “But Julie’s okay, right?”
    “Don’t know yet.” Kyle leaned his bulk against the wall. “It’s Jenny I’m really worried about. She wouldn’t even let a doctor look at her. She didn’t want to leave Julie. I guess they let her stay in there, because she never came back out.”
    Then Kyle told her that Bennett had broken one of his crutches trying to break a window to get them out of the car.
    For a moment, Alex couldn’t remember who Bennett was, and worried again that her brain had been dislodged when her head slammed into the back of the front seat. But then her eyes focused on a big, blond guy in jeans and a Salem U sweatshirt, standing beside Marty. He was leaning casually on one crutch as if he’d brought it because he liked the way it looked, not because he needed it.
    Catching her eye, Bennett hip-hopped on his crutch over to stand by her chair. “Gabe won’t be playing football for