I turn away as Harper makes a thin, keening noise that cuts right through me.

“Oh God,” Kayla says, sounding vaguely shocked.

“What did you do?” Brecken screams. His foot must slip off the brake, because the car lurches backward again. Josh grabs the door handle and I gasp. Brecken finally stops the car near the park exit. We’re maybe twenty yards away. Far enough that I can’t see that shoe anymore, but it doesn’t matter. I can see enough. I see a father curled over his son protectively. I see a boy—because he doesn’t look like a man now—thin and writhing in a way that will be printed on the back of my eyelids for the rest of my life.

“What did you do?” Brecken screams again, pounding the steering wheel. Harper’s sobs are steady and muffled. Her hand is over her mouth. She’s shaking.

“What are you talking about?” Josh asks, looking genuinely confused.

The pieces come together over the backdrop of Harper’s screams and Kayla’s soft swearing. Brecken is somehow blaming Josh for this.

“You hit him!” Brecken says. “I was trying to get away and you grabbed the wheel.”

“Brecken, I tried to steer away! You pulled it back!”

Brecken sputters. “No! I was trying to get away! You hit him! You jerked the wheel.”

Josh raises both hands like he’s dealing with an armed man in the midst of an angry breakdown. His voice is calm and soft. “Brecken, I know this is scary—”

“It’s not scary! I know what you did!”

He sounds hysterical. Frantic. In contrast, Josh moves slower and speaks more softly.

“Brecken, you jerked the wheel to the left,” Josh says. “I thought you saw him. I thought you were trying to—” He stops himself. “Look, it was an accident. But it happened.”

“No,” Brecken says, sounding sick. “No. No, this isn’t happening. It isn’t.”

“It happened,” Josh repeats. “It was… You didn’t mean to.”

He doesn’t sound like he believes it. Cold slithers up my spine as I watch Corey in the headlights, his body convulsing in pain. Even over the engine, I can hear his screams, thin and childlike and terrible. Harper clamps her hands over her ears, sobbing.

“Help him!” she cries.

“We have to help him,” I say, my voice cracked and weak on my lips.

“They have guns,” Kayla says simply. She sounds numb. Distant.

“What?” Brecken turns.

Outside the window, I see the father has a phone to his ear. He looks up at us and I can’t read his expression, but I don’t need to. He was angry before. He was ready to hurt us before.

He’ll kill us now.