We had a chance. Prairie increased the distance between us and the other car as they struggled for control, plants and clumps of dirt spinning up into the car’s wheel wells and axles. I leaned forward to say something, I don’t know what exactly, and the words died on my lips as I saw that Prairie was steering us straight toward a leaning structure silhouetted against the inky night, a big, old barn with a sloped roof.
“Prairie-” I managed to get out, terrified. I reached for her-to do what, I’m not sure, push the wheel away maybe, out of the path of the collision that would kill us-but Prairie spoke first, just as a cloud scudded in front of the weak moon and everything went even darker, leaving only our headlights cutting into the field ahead:
“Trust me, Hailey.”
CHAPTER 13
I GUESS I DIDN’T TRUST HER. I squeezed my eyes shut and groped for Chub’s hand. If we were going to die, I wanted to be holding on to him when it happened.
I pitched forward again as Prairie slammed on the brakes before we reached the barn.
And then we hit. The Volvo took the impact in its solid metal frame, and even though the jolt slammed me hard against the seat belt, I knew right away that the barn hadn’t stopped the car. We’d hit it going about thirty, I guessed, and the big flat-sided wood doors splintered and went flying inward. Prairie pumped the brakes a couple more times, and I had the impression of a dark tunnel, the insides of the barn full of crazy angles and hanging rafters and spinning bits of hay in the headlights’ beams. I could make out empty stalls on either side, and then we drove through the other side of the barn and it was like the first time, a thudding crash and wood flying everywhere-
I had time to scream “Prairie what are you-”
– before she yanked the steering wheel one last time, sharp to the left. The wheels bounced over ruts and rocks and spun, engine screaming, for a second, another, a third before they caught and the car jerked ahead. Suddenly everything went dark as Prairie cut the lights and ignition and the car shuddered to a stop next to the ruined barn.
“What are you-” I tried again, but Prairie clapped a hand over my mouth and twisted around in her seat to look out the back. As I did the same, I heard the roar of the black car and it came bursting through the hole we had made in the barn, faster than we had, hurtling past us, and then suddenly tilting up, its front wheels lifting off the ground. For a moment it looked as though it was going to go airborne, and then it made a sickening lurch and the back of the car rose up in the air.
It seemed to go in slow motion, the back end flipping over the front in a crazy somersault before it disappeared down, down and there was a horrible crash and a bright flash, sparks orange in the night, and then a series of smaller echoes.
“Where’d it go?” I asked, forgetting to keep my voice down. I think I might have screamed it. Chub started to wail.
But Prairie was already undoing her seat belt.
“Out of the car,” she said. “Now. Get Chub.”
I didn’t have to be told twice. But when I turned to him, I saw that he’d somehow been thrown clear of the seat belt onto the floor of the car next to Rascal. He was making short choked sounds, as though he was trying to cry but couldn’t. I grabbed for him, but when I touched his arm, my fingers brushed against sharp bone poking from the skin and he screamed.
Terrified, I carried Chub from the car as carefully as I could. In the moonlight I could see that his arm was broken above the elbow. As my heart plummeted, his cries became even sharper with pain.
“He’s hurt, he’s hurt,” I shrieked at Prairie. She ran to my side and stretched out her arms to take him, but I held him even tighter.
“I can fix him,” Prairie said.
“No. I’ll do it.”
“But you’re just starting, you’re not ready yet-”
“I need to do it,” I insisted. My fingers were already closing around the injury, carefully avoiding the protruding bone, gently finding their place on Chub’s fevered skin.
For a moment Prairie said nothing, but our eyes met and there was almost a glow around us, an energy that bound the three of us. “All right,” Prairie finally said.
I closed my eyes for a moment and willed my thoughts to slow down, my mind to empty, and soon I could feel the energy begin to flow from me to Chub.
“Tá mé mol seo…,” Prairie murmured, and I joined in, my lips forming the words that seemed as familiar as if I’d been saying them forever. Our voices blended and twined together until they were almost one. I felt Chub’s pulse go slow and steady, and then his whimpers eased and he was quiet.
The torn flesh met and closed beneath my touch, and I felt the shift of his arm bones as the broken place mended. I brushed my fingertips along his skin and found the ridge where it had split, but even that seemed to smooth out as the seconds passed.
“I healed him,” I said in wonder.
“Yes.” There was something like awe in Prairie’s voice. “You are a true Healer, Hailey, a natural. Even your mother had to work hard at it, and she was twice the Healer I’ll ever be. But you… you’re something even more rare.”
Through the haze of my focus on Chub, I heard the black car sparking and sputtering in what I could now see was a dry creek bed. The land behind the barn led to the creek bank and stopped abruptly. The banks had been carved by the rushing waters of years of spring floods, leaving behind craggy dirt walls that dropped several feet in places.
“We have to go,” Prairie said, taking my arm and pulling me away from the Volvo and the barn and the wreck of the black car. “Tell Rascal to come.”
Only then did I notice him sitting by the car. He didn’t look frightened or even particularly interested in the commotion.
“Come on, boy,” I said, and he got to his feet without hesitation and trotted to catch up with us. I looked past him at the wreck and wondered if the men inside had survived. “Shouldn’t we see if-I mean, what if they need help?”
“They were trying to run us off the road, Hailey. Do you really want to give them a chance to catch up with us?”
“No.” I quickened my pace to keep up with her, glancing back to see if our pursuers were clambering out of the car.
“Someone’s bound to call this in soon,” Prairie added. “The smoke’s got to be visible for miles.”
She was right; the smoke pouring from the wreck was an ugly cloud spreading across the pristine, starry sky. I forced myself to look at the ground in front of us; it wouldn’t do to trip over something and drop Chub. He’d already been hurt and healed twice in one evening; I figured that was plenty.
“Where are we going?”
We were on a faint path, a trail of flattened weeds running parallel to the creek bed. Far off to the left, up a hill and past a neat vegetable patch surrounded by chicken wire, was a square farmhouse. The trail was narrow enough that we went single file, Prairie leading, then me and Chub, with Rascal taking up the rear.
“We’re nearly to Tipton,” Prairie said softly. “This is the Burnetts’ place.”
“Old Man Burnett?”
“Well, he wasn’t that old, back when I knew him. I knew his youngest. Claude.”
I recognized that name. Claude Burnett was a man in his late thirties, and people said he wasn’t quite right. He came to Gypsum some Saturdays in a clean shirt tucked into pants pulled up too high, his father leaning on him and leading him at the same time.
With a flash of regret I remembered I’d once teased Claude. I’d offered him half of a Milky Way bar I’d been saving. He was waiting in the shade outside the drugstore while his dad picked up a prescription or something. I showed him the candy bar, and when he put out his thick hand for it, I whipped it around behind my back.