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Chapter 1

Psst! Snobbins!" Lily Robbins didn't have to look up from the pizza boxes she was carrying to know that voice. It was Shad Shifferdecker the most obnoxious kid in the entire sixth grade. She tossed her mane of red hair and, as usual, ignored him.

And, as usual, he persisted. That was one of the things that made him so obnoxious.

"Snobbins!" he hissed again. "Are you gonna eat all that pizza yourself? Dude!"

Lily just kept moving toward the door out of Little Caesar's. Just a couple more steps and I'll be away from the absurd little creep, she told herself. And the sooner the better.

She leaned against the glass door and pushed herself out into the January-freezing air.

"See ya tomorrow," Shad said behind her. "If you can get through the classroom door"

The door slapped shut, and Lily hurried toward the maroon van where her mom was waiting with the motor running and the heater blasting. But even though Lily couldn't hear him anymore, she knew Shad wasn't finished with her. He never was.

Don't look back, she warned herself. Or you'll see something gross.

Still, just as she reached the van she caught a glimpse of her mom's face. It was twisted up into a question mark as she stared inside Little Caesar's. Lily couldn't help it. She took a glance over her shoulder and immediately wished she hadn't.

There was Shad at the door, his whole jacket crammed inside his T-shirt and his cheeks puffed out to three times their normal size so that he looked like a demented version of the Pillsbury doughboy.

You are so not funny! Lily wanted to shout at him.

Instead she flipped her head around and stomped toward the van. Or, at least she tried to. On her second step, her heel slid on the ice, and she careened crazily forward, juggling pizza boxes and heading for a collision with the frozen ground.

The pizzas hit first with Lily right on top of them. She could feel the warmth of the grease through the box against her cheek. The smell of pepperoni went right up her nose.

Above her she could hear the van window on the passenger side going down.

"You all right, Lil?" Mom said.

"Yeah," Lily answered through her teeth.

"Is the pizza all right?"

Lily moaned and peeled herself off the pile of slightly flattened boxes. "I bet all the topping is stuck to the cardboard now," she said.

"Don't worry about it," Mom said. "Just get in the van before you freeze your buns off and our dinner gets cold."

Lily did, although she wasn't as worried about her buns or the pizza as she was about the story Shad Shifferdecker was going to spread to their whole class tomorrow. But she didn't even risk a glance inside Little Caesar's as she climbed into the van and examined the top pizza.

"I think it's okay," she said while Mom was backing out of the parking place and mercifully leaving Shad behind. "Just some pepperoni stuck to the lid, but I can peel that off."

"And I would if I were you," Mom said dryly, "before your brothers get a look at it and want to know what happened."

"Mom, please don't"

"How much is it worth to you for me to keep my mouth shut?"

Mom's mouth was twitching the way it always did when she was teasing. She never smiled that much, although the twinkle in her big brown doe-eyes usually gave her away.

"You're not gonna tell," Lily said.

"Who was that delightful child in the pizza place?" Mom said, lips still twitching. "Friend of yours?"

"No, he is NOT! Gross!"

"Come on, now, Lil, don't hold back. Tell me how you really feel."

"I can't stand Shad Shifferdecker," Lily said, inspecting pizza #2. "He cannot leave me alone he's in my face all the time, telling me my hair looks like it's on fire or my mouth looks like Mick Jagger's or my skin's so white it blinds him out in the sun."

"Charming," Mom said. "How's the one with the works? Art will go ballistic if his sausage is mixed up with his Canadian bacon."

Lily pried open the lid to the pizza on the bottom and wrinkled her nose. "How do you know whether it's messed up or not?" she said. "It always looks like somebody already ate it to me, with all that stuff on the"

"Lily, hold on!"

Mom's arm came out and flattened against Lily's chest. The van swerved sharply, and suddenly felt as if it were out of control. Lily looked up just in time to see a pair of taillights in front of them disappear as the car spun around. Headlights glared in their faces.

"Mom!" Lily screamed.

She squeezed her eyes shut and, for some reason she could never figure out, clutched the pizza boxes against her. She felt the van lurch to a stop, and she waited for the crash that was surely going to kill them both. But all she heard was her mother's gasp.

"Oh, dear Lord!"

Lily opened her eyes again. The other car had spun once more and was sailing across the road, straight toward a pickup truck coming from the other direction. As Lily and her mother watched, the two vehicles slammed together and crumpled like two pizza boxes. Metal smashed. Glass broke. And then it was as quiet as snow itself.

"Dear Lord," Mom said again. Only this time her voice was quiet and grim as she reached for the car phone and punched in three numbers.

"Do you think anybody got hurt?" Lily said.

She knew the answer was obvious, but it was the only thing that came into her head.

"There's been an accident on Route 130," Mom was saying into the phone.

How could somebody not get hurt in that? Lily thought. She shuddered and tried not to think of what the people inside must look like.

Mom hung up the phone and grabbed her gloves. "I'm going to go see if I can do anything before the paramedics get here."