Final Destination 3, page 9
part #1 of Final Destination Series
Kevin's brow scrunched up. For a second he looked almost crushed, but then he laughed and shrugged it off. "Yeah," he said. "I guess you're right."
Wendy nodded, but she could see that he didn't mean it, that he really did seem to care for her in his own strange way. She also saw how deeply Jason's death had hurt him, almost more so than Carrie's. They had been best friends since they were little kids.
"Look," she said. "I appreciate the gesture, Kevin, really I do. But I'm telling you I'll be fine. I've moved on and I suggest you do the same."
She turned and started for the parking lot again. Kevin sighed and started after her.
From the knot of students at the covered table, Julie called out to Wendy.
"That was pretty harsh there, Wendy," she said. "Why are you acting like you're blowing him off when the only reason you came down here is 'cause you were looking for someone to talk to? Now Kevin wants to talk and you just want to blow him off."
Wendy turned, angry. She held up her envelope. "I just came to get my diploma," she said. "That's all."
The survivors looked at her, wary but respectful. She had saved their lives, after all, but it was still really weird and creepy.
"Uh-huh," said Julie. "And yesterday you asked me to pick it up so you wouldn't have to. And I said I would, and your stuff. Now you're here, when you knew a bunch of us would be. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out."
Wendy froze. She flushed, feeling everyone's eyes on her. She hadn't thought of it that way. She wasn't really sure why she had decided to come down, instead of waiting for her sister to bring her stuff and her diploma home. There was something about not wanting to bring all that stuff, especially that last photo of Jason, into the house. But maybe it had just been a lame excuse. Maybe she really did want to talk.
"So why are you chickening out now that you've come all the way down here?" asked Julie, unwilling to back down. "Are you afraid to deal?"
"Can you blame her?" asked Frank Cheek, with what, for him, sounded almost like real concern and sympathy. "I mean, the only answer for what happened to her has got to be some fucked up demonic shit."
Wendy tensed, her fists clenching, as the others erupted in laughter and protest. Kevin looked like he wanted to come to Wendy's defense and kill them all, but he said nothing.
"Shut up, freak," said Ashlyn, shoving Frank.
"Yeah, loser," said Ashley.
"You know you're like, not even supposed to be on campus," Ashlyn said.
"I'm a part of this too," Frank said.
"Whatever…" Ashley said.
Ashley leaned in to Ashlyn and the two of them began whispering excitedly.
"What happened to Wendy was purely psychological," Erin said, looking up from her yearbook.
Ian nodded. "Exactly," he replied. "It's got absolutely nothing to do with the paranormal or occult practices of any kind."
Lewis laughed and shook his head. "That's pretty funny coming from a couple of devil worshipers," he said.
"It's all so black and white with you sheep," Ian sneered. "Satanism is nothing but dyslexic Christianity. We are not devil worshipers. We are atheist rationalists who practice wiccan rituals for the clarity of mind and purpose the ceremonies bring."
"Whatever," Lewis said. "You guys are messing with stuff that isn't right. That's a fact. For all we know your evil, idol worshiping rituals are what caused the accident."
"Fuck you, Jock-For-Jesus!" Ian said. "We don't need that kind of superstitious bullshit right now."
"Maybe he's right," Frank said.
"Oh great," Erin said. "What? Do you guys want to burn us at the stake now? Don't you see how crazy this is?"
"Hey listen," said Kevin, trying to talk over the clamor. "There's something I think you all should hear. I went online and came across a… a story about a situation a lot like ours that we all should know about."
No one listened to him. They were too busy shouting at Erin and Ian, who were too busy shouting back.
"Can I say something?" Wendy asked.
Nobody was listening to her either. Her jaw clenched. She was seriously beginning to regret coming into school at all. Kevin stepped toward her, but before he could reach her, Ashlyn and Ashley stood up and cut him off.
"Um, Wendy," Ashley said. "Uh, we wanted to ask you…"
"Um," Ashlyn continued. "After this, we're going to get ready for graduation tonight at the tanning salon, you know, 'cause we want to look our best, and stuff, and…"
"And, we just wanted you to know," said Ashley, "that we are, like, hang out and talk about, you know, stuff. So…"
"So, anyway," finished Ashlyn, handing Wendy a piece of paper. "Here's my cell number. We're going to be there around five."
Wendy nodded absently. She hadn't really heard them at all, and she crumpled the number in her fist as she listened to the others. They seemed to have dropped the Satanism argument and were now discussing her as if she wasn't standing right there.
"Can I say something?" she repeated. No one was listening.
"It's called pareidol," Ian said, sounding like a snooty professor. "A vague stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct."
Kevin turned, sucked into the conversation again. "I don't see what…" he began.
Lewis cut him off. "Vague?" he said. "Before the ride, the bitch was sayin' the roller coaster would crash, and it did. She said the hydraulics would go, and they did. She said the track would break, and it did. How is that shit vague?"
"Look," Frank said. "I'm not saying she meant to do it. I'm not saying that she's demonic or anything, but maybe she…"
Erin laughed. "Please," she said. "Tell me he's not about to say that she was possessed."
Frank's face fell, embarrassed, as if that was exactly what he was going to say. He shrugged. "Yeah, well, whatever," he said. "It was out of her control, is all I'm saying."
Wendy twitched when Frank said the word control. Jason had been talking about her control issues right before they had gotten on the ride. He had said that she didn't want to ride the roller coaster because she had a fear of losing control, and now Frank was saying that she seemed to be out of control of her own mind. Had something else invaded her mind? Had something outside herself given her the warning? Had something forced her to see those things, to try to get everybody off the coaster? She had certainly never felt anything like it before. She had never had premonitions or any unexplainable feelings of wrongness before. She was a normal girl, with a normal brain. Wasn't she?
Suddenly she couldn't stand to be in the presence of the others. She turned and started for the parking lot again. The survivors were bringing up all the questions and worries she had successfully tamped down and locked away behind her armor of ice. Maybe Julie was right. Maybe she had come to talk it out, but now that she was faced with the reality of the situation, it was too much. She was overwhelmed. She had to bail.
She reached in her pocket, fishing for her keys as she approached her Ford Ranger half ton. Footsteps were coming up behind her. She didn't look around.
"Wendy."
It was Kevin. She opened the door of the truck and got in. Her hand trembled as she stuck the key in the ignition. She reached out to pull the door closed, but Kevin's hand stopped it and held it open. She flushed, angry, and turned to look at him, about to tell him to get away from her.
He looked into her eyes, intense. "Wendy. Listen to me," he said. "You are not alone."
Wendy slumped back in her seat, too weary to fight him. She turned the key and started the engine. "Kevin, I know you're trying to be nice, and I appreciate everybody trying to help, I totally do, but…"
"No," he said, cutting her off. "Listen to me. I'm not talking about us. I'm talking about other people who had the same experience you had."
She frowned. "What are you talking about?"
Now he seemed hesitant, as if embarrassed by what he wanted to say. "It…" He looked down and hunched his shoulders, hands stuffed deep in his pockets. "It's happened before."
"What's happened before?" Wendy asked.
Kevin raked nervous fingers through his hair and looked back over his shoulder at the arguing survivors.
"I… well…" He looked down at his sneakers. "I went online, looking for an explanation for what happened to you, 'cause it freaked me out and I just couldn't get it out of my head."
"It freaked you out?" Wendy said, dryly.
Kevin continued as if she hadn't spoken. "I found out about this high school French class in New York that was taking a plane trip to Paris, six years ago," he said. "When they were getting on the plane, this one kid had a vision that the plane was going to blow up. Exactly the same sort of thing that happened to you the night of the roller coaster crash. He freaked out, just like you, and seven people were taken off the plane. Just like us."
Wendy listened, staring blankly at the steering wheel.
"On take off," Kevin said, "Flight 180 blew up."
Wendy bit her lip. She wasn't sure she wanted to hear this after all.
"Okay, that's freaky and all, Kevin," she said. "But what does it matter if somebody else saw some big accident was going to happen? Knowing this isn't going to change anything. I can't go back and stop the crash, can I?"
"I'm not done," Kevin said. "There's more."
"Okay, fine," sighed Wendy. "I guess I'm not getting out of here until you finish."
Kevin leaned in, lowering his voice. "This is the freaky part," he said. "Over the next few months, everyone who got off the plane and escaped the crash died in weird accidents. And not just that, they died in the exact order they would have if they had stayed on the plane. And there was another situation, a few years later…"
Wendy's heart lurched. She had almost been taken in. Kevin seemed so serious. What was she thinking? Why would she imagine he had changed?
"Fuck you, Kevin," she said, putting the truck in gear. "Always got to be the joker. Well, it's not funny."
She reached out and slammed the door shut. Kevin jumped back as Wendy peeled the car backwards out of its space, then jammed it into drive and roared out of the lot. Kevin stared after her, a look of worry and fear on his face. Behind him, lightning crashed, and the light rain became a torrential downpour. Kevin hunched his shoulders and ran for the sheltered table.
8
Ashley & Ashlyn
Ashlyn was at Ashley's house, getting ready for their trip to the tanning salon. Ashley's dad, Fredrick Freund, was a fitness guru with a whole set of workout tapes, patented devices to blast the fat off your butt, tummy or thighs, and special shakes and supplements to help you get all ripped and hot. Her mom, Tawny, was a retired fitness model who had made green posting in athletic shoes, artificial sweat and little else.
At forty-two, Tawny still looked amazingly flawless, more taut and toned than most of the girls at McKinley High. Whenever she went shopping with Ashley, men would ask if they were sisters. She and Ashley's father met when she got hired to demonstrate the Glute-Sculptor 2000 in one of his infomercials. It was love at first squat-thrust and they had been together ever since.
Ashlyn had always been just a little jealous of Ashley's idyllic home life. Her parents were loaded; her house was practically a mansion, everything straight out of some all American TV fairy tale. Ashlyn, on the other hand, was not so lucky.
It was not like she was poor or anything. Her dad didn't beat her or try to touch her boobs. He was just never around. He was some sort of businessman, working for a company that did mysterious computer stuff, and he worked late all the time. Ashlyn's mom had died giving birth to her, so she was nothing but a glassed-in photo on the mantle, a gorgeous, smiling woman, unknowable and lost in the past. Ashlyn's stepmom, Deirdre, was nice enough, but she had two little girls of her own to worry about, and somehow Ashlyn always got lost in the shuffle.
Ever since they'd met in their freshman year at McKinley High, Ashley and Ashlyn had spent nearly every waking hour together. Ashley's mom and dad treated Ashlyn like a second daughter and would joking refer to the girls as "the twins." They even went so far as to designate one of the guest bedrooms as Ashlyn's, a spacious, sunny room with chic, designer furnishings and her very own bathroom. She had more of her stuff over there than she did back at her own house. After all, back home she had to share a room and a single closet with her sister Tyler. At the Freund house, she had plenty of space to stretch out. Sometimes, Ashlyn would fantasize about her whole family dying in some quick, painless accident, and being officially adopted by the Freunds.
"What are you gonna wear to graduation, Lyn?" Ashley asked, pawing through the colorful chaos of her closet.
"Dunno, Lee," Ashlyn replied. "How about you?"
"Well, the gowns are that totally dull, boring, hunter green, preppy dog bed color," Ashley said, making a sour face. "So I'd say red would be out of the question."
"Too Christmassy," Ashlyn agreed. "How about that cute, sheer, mint green, kind of retro, Stevie Nicks dress with the plunging neck and the handkerchief hemline? Kind of breezy, bohemian sexy, but still dressy enough for a formal graduation."
Ashley took out the dress Ashlyn mentioned and held it up to her boy. "Nah," she said. "Too flower child. I want to look put together. Classy, but still hot."
"Basic black?" Ashlyn asked, thumbing casually through an issue of Vogue. "You can't go wrong with basic black."
"You're a fashion genius, Lyn," Ashley said, pulling out a scrap of a little black dress and holding it up in triumphant victory. "Little black dress and a tan. Perfect."
"Speaking of tans," Ashlyn said, looking at her trendy little watch. "We better get going or we'll be late for our appointment."
"Yeah," Ashley replied, pulling her skirt up over her long, sleek thighs. "My legs are so white I look like a total dead person."
"You don't want to be mistaken for that freaky Erin Ulmer," Ashlyn said.
"Yeah, right," Ashley said. "Only if I gained a million pounds and had, like, a total fashion lobotomy."
Ashlyn giggled at the thought of a fashion lobotomy. It seemed like so many of the girls at McKinley High had been given that treatment. Take that Wendy Christensen. She was a pretty girl, but she didn't take any time to fix herself up. Ashlyn was glad they had invited her to join them in the tanning salon. Wendy would look so much prettier with a little color, and she might even be willing to accept some tips on her overall look. Ashlyn always worked very hard to keep up with all the latest styles, though truth be told, she knew that she and Ashley could show up in burlap sacks with brown paper bags over their heads and the boys would still be all over them. Still, not everyone was so lucky, and she had to make an effort to help those who were less fortunate. Not to mention the whole creepy thing with Devil's Flight and all.
Ashlyn had to put that thought right out of her mind. There was no point in dwelling on bad things and getting all negative. They had their graduation to think of. It was important for them to look as good as possible, in honor of the students who would not be graduating.
"Earth to Lyn," Ashley was saying. "Come in, space cadet."
"Sorry, Lee," Ashlyn said. "I was just wondering if Wendy would call us." She checked her cell. No messages.
"Don't worry, Lyn," Ashley said. "It was the thought that counts, right?"
Ashlyn nodded. "Right, sure," she said. "Let's go."
-----
Ashley and Ashlyn pulled into the mini-mall parking lot in Ashley's lowered and modded out Acura RSX, and parked in front of the bright windows of the California Sun Tanning Salon. On such a gloomy, rain soaked day, the bright photo mural of crashing waves on a golden, palm tree dotted beach looked like an oasis of warmth and cheer. The girls got out of the RSX and slouched to the door of the tanning salon. They were wearing matching, pink, see-through raincoats and had sporty backpacks slung over their shoulders. They were both sipping on 7-11 Big Gulps, though Ashley was drinking Diet Coke, while Ashlyn favored Diet Sprite.
As Ashley pushed open the door, an obnoxious, electronic bell sounded, beeee-bong, beeee-bong. There was no one at the front desk, which had lengths of bamboo nailed to it and a fake palm frond thatched roof, to suggest some kind of beach side shack, A fire door at the end of a narrow corridor beside the mural was propped open with soda can, and a wet wind and a flurry of angry Russian blew in from the back alley. Ashley looked at Ashlyn and rolled her eyes. "Not again," she said.
"Do you doubt?" Ashyn asked, eyebrows raised.
"EV-ery time we come here," Ashley said. "It's the same old, same old."
She rang the bell on the counter. After a second, Yuri Yershov, the tanning salon manager, popped his close-shaved, sad-eyed head in the door and looked around. A cigarette dangled from his downturned mouth. He was pasty pale, a running joke between the girls. How could you work in a tanning salon and be so white? He had a cell phone pressed against his ear and, even from the counter, Ashley and Ashlyn could hear a shrill woman's voice screeching in Russian.
Yuri waved at the girls and shrugged apologetically. He held up a finger. "One minute, okay?" he mouthed, then turned his head and spoke into the phone. "Tanyosha, détka, I have to go. Nyet… no I am not blowing you. I'm at work. We can talk about this later."
Ashley and Ashlyn giggled at the incorrect phrase, "I am not blowing you."
"It's off, Yuri," Ashley said in a fake stage whisper. "Blowing you off."
He waved his hand to shush Ashley, uttered another string of Russian and snapped his phone shut, ducking into the store and brushing the water from his bristly head.
"Sorry, sorry," he said. "Cell phone signal is shit in here. I think the tanning beds do it. I think they mess up the signal. I must go outside."
