**This blog contains adult language.**
Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!! This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself. Please do not continue to read if you don't want to know who the “bad guy” is.
From the Back of the Book: Kristen’s a dreadful driver. And the driving lessons just aren’t helping. No matter how hard she tries, she can’t seem to get the hang of being behind the wheel. Rob’s an excellent driver. And he’s determined to give Kristen a few tips on how to improve her driving. But then Rob has a terrible accident, and Kristen becomes involved in something creepy and dangerous, something that’s going to drive her...to death…
📢TRIGGER WARNING📢: Someone is groped and kissed without consent in this book. I will not describe it in detail but if that is something that will cause you distress, please skip this recap. Also, the driver’s ed teacher drives under the influence and there's some racism directed toward Asian people. Skip if this will trigger you in any way.
This book was published in 1994 and this is my first time reading it. The cover is pretty typical of this time period. Books just looked more interesting back then. Although, I will say that the "Student Driver" tag on the car makes ZERO sense story wise. I often think the cover artists aren't given very complete information when it comes to what's actually IN the book.
We begin with a prologue.
{{{Note from future me: Because of the way the characters were described and the way the dialogue was written, I assumed we were in the past. Like the 50’s. It wasn’t until chapter one that I realized we weren’t. I’m not sure why Rob was written like someone from Grease but we’ll move on.}}}
We start out with Nguyen who seems to have some kind of magical powers or something. He’s looking at a photo tacked to his wall (between posters of luxury sports cars) of a girl who is in profile. He wants to see her smile so he concentrates on the image and somehow makes it turn toward him.
Neat trick.
{{{Note from future me: It never gets explained, by the way. That's all we get.}}}
We immediately switch over to someone named Virgil. He and Rob are waiting for Nguyen to show up. Rob told him that he had a Lamborghini to lure him out since Nguyen is such a car freak. Rob sounds like your typical 50’s thug with his greasy nails, slicked back hair and perpetual cigarette hanging from his mouth. Virgil seems a little afraid of him. The plan is for Rob to scare Nguyen into breaking up with Gwen. He’s volunteered to do this both to help his friend out and because he’s racist toward Vietnamese people.
So it seems like we’ve got a bit of a love rectangle here. Gwen used to date Rob but they broke up. She started dating Nguyen to make Rob jealous but he couldn’t care less. Virgil is the one who is in love with Gwen so Rob agreed to put pressure on Nguyen in hopes that Virgil could swoop in and get the girl. Gwen, however, is still in love with Rob.
Nguyen shows up and is disappointed that the Lamborghini isn’t there. Rob tells him they have to drive to another location to see it and they all get into the car that Rob has brought with him. It’s heavily implied that he stole it. In the car, Rob starts to interrogate Nguyen about Gwen. I think it’s supposed to come off as intimidating but it reads more like a slumber party gossip shesh. He starts to drive erratically to make Nguyen nervous but I think he’s mostly scaring Virgil.
Headlights appear in front of them and it’s clear that the other car is driving on the wrong side of the road. Rob swerves to miss it and ends up crashing into the guardrail. The prologue ends without telling us what happened to anyone in the car.
Chapter one picks up with our protagonist Kirsten. We learn two main things about her: she’s a terrible driver and she used to live in New York City but her family moved to the suburbs. It sounds like they moved into Nguyen’s old house. This is when I figured out that the prologue wasn’t way in the past. Kirsten tells us that Nguyen’s family (the Trangs) moved out after his death. Another family lived there before Kirsten’s but they only lasted two months before they moved back out. Her brother Nat thinks the house is haunted.
Since starting at her new school, Kirsten has made one friend. Her name is Maria and she’s dating Virgil so I guess he survived the crash.
We skip ahead an indeterminate amount of time. Kirsten is taking driver’s ed through the school and she’s partnered up with Maria, Gwen and someone named Sara. They’re all pretty good drivers but Kirsten is awful. During her turn behind the wheel, she runs a red light for no reason whatsoever and then almost runs over a couple of pedestrians because she hits the gas instead of the brake when they’re crossing in front of her. The instructor has her drive back to the school and park in the back lot. The auto shop is back there as well and a group of boys are working on a car. Kirsten is going super slow so she doesn’t run any of them over. One of them steps in front of the car and allows it to gently tap him. He falls over and pretends to be dead. Panic ensues.
Eventually the boy laughs and stands back up. It’s Rob so he survived too. I guess Nguyen was somehow the only casualty. Kirsten thinks Rob is super cute in his 50’s thug way. She’s particularly smitten with his green eyes.
I swear Lerangis makes it sound like no one in the world has ever had green eyes before. Literally everyone goes on and on about his green eyes and about how all the girls love him despite the fact he's an asshole strictly because of his green eyes.
Maria sees Kirsten staring at Rob and warns her that he’s BAD NEWS. Maria fills her in on the lore.
*Rob broke Gwen’s heart so she started dating Nguyen to make him jealous.
*Nguyen found out and was so distraught that he stole a car and drove into a ravine.
*Nguyen’s death was ruled a suicide.
None of that really explains how Rob is BAD NEWS but whatever. Kirsten can’t stop thinking about him and his green eyes.
We get this weird subplot where the school is running a driver’s ed contest sponsored by one of the local car lots. The student who has the highest combined score on the written and driving exams will win a new car. Every driver’s ed student received a flyer about the contest featuring a picture of an Escort in profile. {{{I mention this because it becomes important later.}}}
After school, Kirsten collects the mail. She notices a torn up envelope among the junk and gets some tape to piece it back together. It was mailed from Vietnam and addressed to the Trangs. She puts the letter together and realizes it was from some kind of refugee organization that reunites people in America with people they left behind in Vietnam. The letter states that they located the records of Nguyen’s biological parents but they both died recently from “natural causes”. Apparently the Trangs were Nguyen’s aunt and uncle but he had their last name instead of his parents’. There is a dark stain on the letter that she assumes is blood for some reason.
Kirsten calls Maria to ask if she knows where the Trangs moved. Maria has no idea. She says they went a little “crazy” after Nguyen’s death because they insisted he never would have stolen a car and he never would have killed himself. They believed he was kidnapped and killed by someone who hated Asians.
I mean, they weren’t far off really.
She mentions that they thought Nguyen’s diary would prove what really happened but it was never found.
We skip ahead to Wednesday. While Kirsten and Maria wait for the others to arrive for driver’s ed, they watch the boys in auto shop work on that car. Kirsten catches Rob’s eye and he smiles at her. She’s further smitten because his green eyes are ever so dreamy.
Seriously, Lerangis. Do you have a green eye fetish we should know about?
During class she only runs one stop sign and hits a curb instead of a human so that’s an improvement I guess. Gwen is clearly the best driver of the group and the instructor says she’s the front runner for the car contest. Kirsten is bitter even though she never had a fucking chance.
While she’s walking home after class, a car pulls up and Rob leans over asking her if she wants a ride. The car is full of trash and the seat is ripped but he covers it with a t-shirt for her. She thinks it’s gallant. Rob apologizes for pretending to be hit by the car the day before. He says he’s a little impulsive and he can be a dick sometimes. She’s impressed that he knows how to apologize because “most boys don’t”.
The bar is truly in hell.
Rob drives right to her house which confuses her a little since she didn’t tell him where she lived. He says he saw her mowing the lawn one day so that's why he knew which house was hers. She knows it’s a lie because she never mows the lawn but she doesn’t call him on it. She doesn’t press him to find out how he actually knew where she lived either.
{{{It's never explained.}}}
Kirsten says she can’t invite him in because her parents aren’t home. He looks excited by the idea of them being alone but she stands her ground on this house rule. He asks her if she wants a driving lesson. When she agrees, he asks her to take off her jacket and hand it to him. He says she’ll be more comfortable without it but it feels sketchy to me.
Rob turns out to be a very patient teacher and Kirsten does well for once. When she’s done, he invites her to dinner and a movie. She calls home from a payphone………
……...and leaves a message on the machine telling her parents she’s out with friends and she’ll be home later. She knows they’ll be pissed, but she figures that’s future Kirsten’s problem. Rob insists on paying for everything. He uses a credit card that he says belongs to his mother.
Odds the card is stolen: 95%
Kirsten notices on the ride home that Rob hasn’t really told her anything about himself. She asks him to tell her about his family and he says his mom has “problems” and his dad ran off. She feels sorry for him.
Bitches love a tragic backstory.
Kirsten notices a flyer for the driver’s ed contest among the trash in Rob’s car. She picks it up and looks at it. The Escort in the photo seems to be facing more towards the front. Her flyer clearly showed the Escort completely in profile but his is turned more three-quarters.
Why does Rob have a flyer? I thought only the people in driver's ed got one? Does that mean he actually doesn't have a license and both he and Kirsten are driving very illegally right now??
I'm sure it won't matter. If they get pulled over, the cop will be so taken with Rob's green eyes that they'll get off with a warning.
So here’s where the Trigger Warning comes in. If you want to skip this section, look for the “Safe Ahead” graphic.
.
.
.
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Rob drives to a local park that Kirsten knows is a makeout spot. She tells him she’s not interested in making out but he says he just wants to take a walk. She agrees to this. They walk along the pond but then he sits down on a bench. She sits with him. He sees this as some kind of invitation. He grabs her and starts to kiss her as he’s pushing her down on the bench. She bites him hard enough to draw blood. Rob is pissed, saying she was “asking for it” by sitting on the bench with him and she “owes” him for buying her dinner.
.
.
.
.
For some reason she has the flyer from Rob's car in her pocket. She pulls it out and briefly notices that the Escort is now fully facing front. She crumples it up and throws it at him before stomping away. She expects him to come after her but he doesn’t.
WHY WOULD YOU WANT HIM TO?
She ends up walking the mile back to her house. It’s eleven by the time she gets home and her parents are equal parts relieved she’s alive and furious. They yell at her for quite awhile.
She also notices her keys are missing from her jacket pocket. I knew it was sketchy when he took her jacket from her.
Why did he want her keys?
Do you think he wanted to get into the house to look for that diary? Maybe he’s afraid Nguyen mentioned he was meeting Rob and Virgil the day he died.
Kirsten lays awake for awhile, trying to make sense of what happened that night. Rob was really sweet and gentle while teaching her to drive and she can’t reconcile that with the creep he turned into by the pond. She decides he probably just got a little swept away in the moment.
Girl, you are NOT about to defend this asshole. Those two things he said that I quoted up there in the not safe section are massive red flags. They come right out of the predator handbook. No good person has EVER said them.
She remembers the weird thing with the picture of the Escort and gets up to look at her flyer. The car on hers is definitely completely in profile. She rationalizes this by saying there must have been two versions.
That doesn't explain the change between three-quarters facing and fully facing, Kirsten.
I fear we have a dim one on our hands.
She finally gets to sleep but then she’s woken up by moaning sounds coming from her closet. She sits up and sees blood seeping out from under the closed door. She runs into the hall, waking up her parents and brother. She tells them about the blood, but when they check, it’s not there. They assume she had a nightmare.
We skip to the next morning. When Kirsten gets to school she sees that there’s an ambulance and a couple of police cars in the park around the area where she left Rob the night before. I guess the park is next to the school? As she watches, they wheel a body covered in a sheet into the ambulance.
She sees Maria and Virgil standing nearby and goes over to see what’s happening. Maria tearfully informs her that Rob was run over by a car in the park. Gwen rocks up and hands Kirsten her keys. (Her name is on the keychain so it’s obvious who they belong to.) Kirsten asks where she got them and Gwen says Rob had them. Her exact words were: “I found them. When I found him.”
What does that sound like to you? Because to me, it sounds like she found the body and then rifled through the pockets for some reason. Oh, and then she took something from what was clearly a crime scene.
I ask because, for some reason, Kirsten, Virgil and Maria all interpreted this to mean Gwen had killed him. She did not say “I found them when I killed him”. She said “I found them when I found him”. I have no idea if these three idiots didn’t understand her or if Lerangis made a mistake in Gwen’s dialogue and didn’t catch it.
Gwen runs off and Virgil chases after her for reasons I don’t understand. Kirsten wants to tell the police about what Gwen said but Maria points out that if they hear Rob had Kirsten’s keys, she might end up being a suspect. She was probably the last one other than the murderer to see him alive.
The entire school is weeping and wailing over Rob. It’s weird considering most of them thought he was an asshole. I guess it's because of his green eyes. The school holds an assembly and offers counseling to anyone who needs it. After classes are done, Kirsten wanders over to the park. She can’t get close to the bench because of the police tape but she sees the tire tracks in the mud. It looks like they came out of the pond which is odd. She also notices a crushed trash can that’s outside of the tape for some reason. She goes to investigate and finds the flyer that she threw at Rob. When she flattens it back out she realizes the Escort is completely gone. There’s no car at all on the flyer.
Kirsten heads home. Her house smells like a decomposing animal. She’s not as alarmed by this as she should be. She gets her flyer out again and notices that car has turned a little. She worries that it’s going to come out of the flyer and run her over next.
Ordinarily I would think that was ridiculous but it does seem to be possible here.
Although I have no idea why Nguyen would be pissed at Kirsten. She's dumb but she didn't kill him.
Kirsten hears moaning again and the flyer turns burning hot in her hand. This makes her think of the letter she pieced together and she gets it out of her desk and writes ‘not at this address’ on it before popping it back in the mailbox. As soon as she does, the moaning stops.
How on earth did she connect those two things, Lerangis. If a flyer turned burning hot in my hands it wouldn't make me think of some mail I should post.
Virgil shows up. He says he’s there to apologize for something that happened after school that I didn’t bother to recap because it was completely unimportant. Kirsten also thought it was unimportant and wonders why he’s really there. He says he didn’t want to be alone and Maria isn't home. Kirsten feels bad that he’s so upset and she invites him in. She asks if he thinks Gwen really killed Rob and he says “Well, she kind of admitted it.”.
When?
Show me.
I’ll wait.
That’s right. IT NEVER HAPPENED.
Kirsten asks him if he got one of the driver’s ed flyers. He conveniently has it in his pocket for some reason. She’s shocked to see the Escort on his is nearly facing completely head on. She gets her flyer and shows him that the car on hers is turned more to the side. He laughs and says they must have printed several versions.
I mean, this is the rational response to that.
Virgil suddenly asks to use the bathroom and she directs him to the one attached to her parents’ room for some reason. She goes into the kitchen to make a snack. He hasn’t appeared by the time she’s done but she doesn’t think much of it. Her dad and her brother both spend eons in the bathroom so she chalks it up to being a “boy thing”.
Girl, he’s clearly searching your house for that diary. I need you to catch up.
The wind starts wailing outside but when she looks out the window, none of the leaves on the trees are moving. The back door opens and slams into the wall and a huge decorative plate falls to the floor and breaks.
Virgil appears, summoned by the commotion. He asks what happened and Kirsten says the house is strange. He laughs at her but helps her clean up the mess. He tells her she’s just anxious about the murder and not to worry so much because Gwen will get what she deserves. Kirsten tells him about the tire tracks coming from the pond and not from the road. He says “that would be easy for a good driver” and Gwen has been driving since she was 12.
I’m sorry, what? Driving a car out of a pond would be easy for a good driver? What kind of idiot universe are we in right now? Make it make sense, Lerangis. I’m begging you.
Virgil takes her hand and tells her that he’s there if she ever needs anything and then he leaves. She wonders if he was flirting with her. Kirsten goes back inside and notices that the door to the basement is open. She decides to go investigate.
Protagonist has clearly never watched a horror movie? Check.
She sees a bunch of junk but no ghost so she goes back upstairs. She eats her bagel and thinks about how awful it is that Gwen is going to get away with murder.
I can’t with this. These people are insane.
She runs upstairs to get the phone book out of her parents’ room so she can look up Gwen’s address and that’s when she notices the attic door is open. She figures Virgil opened it by mistake thinking it was the bathroom.
Girl, you told him to use your parents' en suite. Stop being so clueless. It's painful.
Kirsten doesn't bother to check the attic. She gets her bike out of the garage and heads for Gwen's house.
Wait.
Let me get this straight. She thinks Gwen MURDERED someone and she’s just casually biking over there for a chat?
She ends up riding out in front of a jeep. It honks, startling her, and she falls off her bike into the street. The jeep ends up running over her hair and yanking a handful out but she’s alive. A little road rashy but fine. It turns out the jeep was driven by her driver’s ed instructor and he says: “You’re worse on a bike than in a car!”
Okay, that was funny.
She apologizes for riding out in front of him. He tells her that she still has to look both ways before riding into an intersection. She can smell alcohol on his breath. He gets back into his jeep and drives off leaving her fuming. She thinks he would have seen her biking without a care in the world into an intersection that she didn’t check if he wasn’t drunk. Maybe.
But also, Kirsten is a road hazard no matter what kind of vehicle she's operating.
She retrieves her bike, wraps a bandana around her scraped up palm and resumes her ride to Gwen’s house. She’s surprised to find that Gwen lives in a normal house. She was expecting something extravagant for some reason.
As Kirsten is approaching, Gwen appears on her own bike wearing a black backpack. She rides away in the opposite direction. Kirsten follows. She loses Gwen for a bit but later finds the bike chained up outside of a building on Main Street. It’s called Something Old, Something New and appears to be a pawn shop.
Kirsten hides until Gwen leaves. She approaches the shop and sees a piece of paper rolled up and perched on the door handle. She opens it to find this:
“Hi Kirsten! No, I haven’t gone to the police yet, but don’t worry, I will. By the way, Kirsten. How did your parents’ car get that dent in the front bumper? I’ll visit you in prison. Love, Gwen.”
I didn't blog the part about Kirsten hitting a tree in her parents' car because it didn't seem important at the time. I now acknowledge my error.
Kirsten goes inside the store. On the counter is a small pile of clothes and jewelry. Kirsten is sure that’s what Gwen brought in. In the pile is a ring with a pale purple stone. It’s engraved with GM&RM inside the band.
What highschooler is out there engraving rings, Lerangis?
Sigh.
She also finds a locket that she remembers Gwen wearing.
As she rides home, Kirsten thinks about Nguyen and the stolen car. She wonders if he really stole it or if his family was right about him being kidnapped. Her dad works at the ER so she asks him if he can get the sign in sheet from the night Nguyen died. She’s wondering if anyone came to the ER with injuries. He asks her why she wants it and she says she’s doing a report on “statistical randomness in community institutions”. He buys it despite the words meaning absolutely nothing and says he’ll see what he can do.
This would be SO illegal now.
Was it illegal then?
Okay, I checked. HIPPA wasn’t signed into law until 1996 which was two years after this book was published. I still think it’s probably violating some guidelines somewhere.
Kirsten goes upstairs and opens her digital journal. On the screen she sees: “Kirsten beware! I know where you live. I know where you sleep. You may think you are safe but that is part of the plan. When you least expect it, you will say goodbye to the world. And you will be unprepared. Kirsten Wilkes, you can ignore the blood on the floor. But you cannot escape the blood to come. Your own.”
Odds her brother wrote the entry: 80%
The entry goes on talking about mucus below her windows, puke from the shower head and boogers in her soap dish. Now I’m 100% sure her brother wrote it.
Sure enough, she hears him giggling outside her door and realizes he wrote the entire thing.
What was the point of that, Lerangis? It didn't build any tension because it was clearly a fake out.
Kirsten erases her brother’s fuckery and then writes an entry that basically summarizes the entire book. Then she pretends to be Nguyen for a few minutes and writes an entry from his point of view. It’s dumb and it goes absolutely nowhere. I’m not sure why Lerangis included it.
Kirsten doesn’t like the idea that her journal is so easily accessible so she saves it on a floppy disc…..
….and then erases the document on her computer. She tries to find a place to hide the disc that her brother won’t look. Near her bedroom door, she notices some loose paneling and pries it open a little. When she tries to shove the disc in there, she realizes there’s already something there. She pulls out a plastic baggie with a floppy disc inside. It’s labeled N. Trang. Excited, she runs to her computer and tries to boot it up but it just gives her a data error. She calls Maria who is better with computers than she is. Maria asks some questions and figures out that the disc is for a Mac but Kirsten has a PC. She suggests that Kirsten call Virgil because he has a Mac.
Virgil is the last person she should call.
Kirsten calls Virgil and explains that she found a disc that she needs a Mac to open. He tells her to come right over and he’ll help her. When she tries to leave, however, her mom says she can’t go. Kirsten throws a fit but her mom doesn’t budge. Kirsten calls Virgil back to explain she’s not allowed to leave the house unsupervised. Virgil tells her to just bring the disc to school because there are Macs in the computer lab.
Kirsten’s dad shows up with the sign in sheet for the night Nguyen died. Three people signed in after the accident would have occurred: J. Smith (17), R. Jones (18), P. Johnson (43). Kirsten recognizes that they were probably fake names but she has no idea who they could be.
Well, clearly Smith and Jones are Virgil and Rob. I wonder if Johnson is related to the accident or a coincidence?
Kirsten goes to bed and gets woken up in the middle of the night by moaning again. She opens her eyes and sees Nguyen leaning over her, gesturing toward his neck.
He’s all burned and gross and she freaks out because duh. There’s a struggle and she ends up falling out of bed. Suddenly Nguyen is gone and her parents are rushing into the room. They think she had another nightmare but when Kirsten gets back into bed, she finds a burned piece of denim on her blanket that came from Nguyen’s jacket.
Rob’s funeral is the next day. The only interesting thing is that the driver’s ed teacher is Rob’s uncle or something. Driver’s Ed’s sister also happens to be the nurse that was working the night of the accident. So she’s the one who allowed the people with the fake names to sign in.
So was Driver’s Ed the older one then? Did he get hurt helping Rob and Virgil after the car went off the road?
Or was he the one driving the other car?
The students head back to the school after the funeral. Maria and Kirsten have a free period or something, so Virgil offers to help them with the disc. They put it into a computer but then Virgil starts acting like the mouse won’t work. He asks the girls to go to the cabinet across the room to get another mouse.
This is clearly a diversion but they don’t clock it.
When they get back, they see that he somehow managed to open the disc anyway. He tells them it’s completely blank. Then he ejects it and puts it into his jacket pocket. Kirsten doesn’t find this weird at all.
They all go to class but Kirsten can’t stop thinking about the disc. She wonders if the computer teacher could help her recover the data. Luckily Virgil put his jacket in his locker and Maria knows the combination, so they retrieve the disc out of his pocket and take it back to the computer lab. They make up a story about getting an error on this disc they need for a class project. The teacher takes a look and is able to recover the data. Unfortunately it’s password protected and it takes forever for Kirsten to figure out that the password is Nguyen’s real last name.
Kirsten opens the journal and starts to read. Suddenly Virgil appears and literally shoves her out of the chair. He frantically tries to erase the disc but the teacher yanks him away from the computer. Kirsten reads enough to know that Nguyen was meeting Rob on the night he died. Virgil offers to “explain”.
As they leave the room, Kirsten sees Driver’s Ed hurrying away from the computer lab. Clearly he knows the journal has been discovered.
{{{In case you’re wondering why I’m calling him Driver’s Ed, I never bothered to write down his name. Not once. I think it might have been Busk but I don’t remember and I already returned the book. He’s just going to remain Driver’s Ed for this blog. Fight me.}}}
Virgil clearly noticed that his name was never mentioned in the entry so he takes the tactic of pretending he wasn’t there. He says that Rob told him all about it though. Virgil tells her that Rob and Nguyen stole the car and went for a joyride. They were arguing about Gwen when Rob lost control of the car. It went down into the ravine and Rob was luckily thrown free. Nguyen died instantly. Kirsten buys this even though she knows two teenagers and an adult came into the ER together.
Later, Driver’s Ed offers her a private driving lesson. He wants to help her do well on the test.
Kirsten accepts. He tells her that he doesn’t want to take the regular car. You know, the one equipped with safety features so the passenger can hit the brake if the driver fails to do so? The boys in shop class have just finished getting the clunker operational and he needs to take it for a test drive to see how they did. He says he wants to kill two birds with one stone by having Kirsten practice in the shop car. She doesn’t see anything weird about any of this because she’s missing most of her brain cells.
The car has this weird security system where if you engage the anti-theft feature (by pushing a button inconveniently located under the glove box), the car won’t start and you can’t unlock the doors or roll down the windows unless you stick the key in the ignition. I guess it keeps it from being hot-wired. Clearly I wouldn’t be mentioning this if it didn’t come back up later, so remember I said it.
Driver’s Ed directs her to the train tracks. She hears a train but he says it’s not as close as it sounds and the bars haven’t come down yet. He tells her to drive across the tracks but slowly to ensure that she’s safe. This doesn’t make any fucking sense but Kirsten follows directions. As soon as she gets on the tracks, the car stalls. Driver’s Ed opens his door, takes the keys from the ignition, locks the doors and then gets out of the car and makes a run for it. Because the anti-theft system has been engaged, Kirsten can’t unlock the doors or roll down the windows.
So, is Lerangis trying to imply that he pushed the anti-theft button and it make the car stall? Would that be possible? You’d think it would be a huge liability to have something like that in a spot that could get bumped by a knee. What if you’re on the highway and your passenger bumps it and your car just quits? This sounds like a very stupid feature to have on a car.
Anyway, the train is getting close and Kirsten panics. Luckily there’s a club in the car and she uses it to break the window and escape.
There’s another dinosaur for you. Do they still make those?
Do you even know what I’m talking about?
It was another anti-theft device. I looked it up and you can still get them on Amazon.
Kirsten runs home. She calls Maria to tell her about Driver’s Ed’s attempted murder but her call waiting beeps. Virgil is on the other line and he begs Kirsten to meet him in some remote location without telling anyone where she’s going or that she talked to him.
So…...surely she’s smart enough not to do this.
Right?
RIGHT?
Sigh.
No. No, she is not.
Kirsten takes her bike to meet him. As she’s approaching, she can see him pacing back and forth but he doesn’t notice her for some reason. A Jeep drives up and Driver’s Ed gets out of it. He and Virgil have some kind of altercation. Kirsten realizes they must be in on all this together and she rides away. The next part is super unclear. Kirsten stops to rest and she hears a car engine nearby trying to start. When she goes to investigate, she sees that Driver’s Ed’s Jeep has gone off the road and hit a tree. He’s trying to restart it but it’s flooded.
Was he following her? Did he just happen to take a route that got in front of her somehow? We may never know.
Driver’s Ed gets out of the car and sees her. He’s shocked that she’s still alive.
Wait.
Didn’t he have Virgil set up the meeting with her? I’m so confused.
Driver’s Ed starts approaching her in a sinister fashion. Virgil pops up from the backseat of the Jeep with blood all over his face. He shoves the car door open and knocks Driver’s Ed off his feet. He yells at Kirsten to get in the Jeep.
She does.
I wouldn’t have but whatever.
Virgil is still in the backseat so he yells at Kirsten to drive. Driver’s Ed smashes out the window with a rock as they take off. Kirsten yells at Virgil for lying to her. She’s finally figured out that the three people who went to the ER were Rob, Virgil and Driver’s Ed. We finally get the real story from Virgil. He says Rob planned to intimidate Nguyen and then leave him out in the woods in his underwear or something. How he was going to get Nguyen's clothes off is unclear. A drunk driver (Driver’s Ed) ran them off the road and Nguyen died in the process. Driver’s Ed threatened to blame the whole thing on Rob so he and Virgil helped Driver’s Ed cover up the crime. The nurse sister also assisted in the cover up.
Kirsten tells Virgil about Nguyen’s ghost and the Escort disappearing from the flyers. Virgil theorizes that Nguyen is a revenant and he’s stuck in this realm until he locates something he needs to move on. This feels like quite a leap to make but we'll move on. Kirsten remembers the ghost pointing to his neck and asks Virgil if Nguyen wore a necklace or something. Virgil says he had a locket but he gave it to Gwen to impress her. Kirsten remembers the locket from the pawn shop and she drives that way.
If this locket was so fucking important to Nguyen that he can't move on, why would he give it to Gwen? This makes no sense. None.
The pawn shop is closed but Kirsten figures Driver’s Ed has probably already reported them for Grand Theft Auto so she smashes the front window with a rock and steals the locket. I guess she thinks one more crime isn't going to matter much. She isn’t sure how to get it to Nguyen and asks Virgil to direct her to the spot where Nguyen died. As they approach the ravine, a loud moaning sound fills the Jeep. They get out and approach a burned tree where the car came to rest. Virgil says that the Trangs sprinkled his ashes there for some reason. Wind starts to roar and the ghostly form of Nguyen begins to take shape. Before Kirsten can give him the locket, police show up and try to arrest them.
As soon as the officer touches Kirsten, an invisible force picks him up and throws him ten feet away. Kirsten holds out the locket for Nguyen and he takes it. Lightning flashes and then Nguyen and the picture inside the locket (I assume it was a picture of his parents) disappear. The police are stunned and don’t seem to know what to do.
He gave Gwen a locket with his parents' picture in it? Seriously, Lerangis. Even if he would give the locket away, he would have removed the picture first. Or Gwen would have removed it and replaced it with one of her own. THIS MAKES NO SENSE!
We end with an epilogue. Kirsten and Virgil are still trying to explain everything to the cops. As they’re being driven back into town, they come across an accident scene. Driver’s Ed’s jeep is down in a ditch and it’s heavily implied that he died a gruesome death. Kirsten seems multiple flyers on the ground. The Escort is missing on all of them.
So did twenty Escorts run him over? That seems excessive.
That one was….interesting. I prefer the non-supernatural books but I can get behind a supernatural one if it’s well written. This one wasn't. There were a lot of holes in the story and several things that were just completely illogical. Also, I don’t understand Nguyen’s power at all. It's never explained. This wasn't the worst book I've read for this blog but it's not making me anxious to pick up another Lerangis.
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