Reunion by Meg Cabot

“That’s what happened, um, on Saturday night.”
    I sat up straighter in my seat.
    “This —” I swallowed. “— is where it happened?”
    “Yeah,” Michael said. There was no change in the inflection of his voice at all. “This is it.”
    And indeed it was. Now that I knew to look for them, I could plainly see the black skid marks the wheels of Josh’s car had left as he’d tried to keep from going over. A large section of the guardrail had already been replaced, the metal shiny and new just where the skid marks ended.
    I asked, in a quiet voice, “Can we stop?”
    “Sure,” Michael said.
    There was a scenic overlook around the corner, not a hundred yards away from where the cars had narrowly missed each other. Michael pulled into it and turned off the engine.
    “Observation point,” he said, pointing to the wooden sign in front of us that said, OBSERVATION POINT. NO LITTERING . “A lot of kids come here on Saturday night.” Michael cleared his throat and looked at me meaningfully. “And park.”
    I have to say, up until that moment I really had no idea I was capable of moving as fast as I did getting out of that car. But I was unbuckled and out of that seat quicker than you could say
ectoplasm.
    The sun had almost completely set now, and it was already growing chilly. I hugged myself as I stood on tiptoe to look over the edge of the cliff, my hair whipping my face in the wind off the sea, which was much wilder and cooler up here than it had been back down on the beach. The rhythmic pulse of the sea below us was loud, much louder than the engines of the cars going by on Highway 1.
    There were, I noticed, no gulls. No birds of any kind.
    That should, of course, have been my first clue. But as usual, I missed it.
    Instead, all I could concentrate on was how sheer the drop was. Hundreds of feet, straight down, into waves churning against giant boulders knocked down from the cliffsides during various earthquakes. Not exactly the kind of cliff you’d catch anyone — not even Elvis back in his Acapulco prime — diving off.
    Strangely, at the bottom of the place where Josh’s car had gone off of the road was a small, sandy beach. Not the kind you’d go to sunbathe, but a nice picnic area, if you were willing to risk your neck climbing down to get there.
    Michael must have noticed my gaze, since he said, “Yeah, that’s where they landed. Not in the water. Well, at least, not right away. Then high tide came in, and —”
    I shuddered and looked away.
    “Is there some way,” I wondered aloud, “to get down there?”
    “Sure,” he said, and pointed at an open section of the guardrail. “Over there. It’s a trail. Hikers are the only ones who use it, mostly. But sometimes tourists try it. The beach down there is amazing. You never saw such huge waves. Only it’s too dangerous to surf. Too many riptides.”
    I looked at him curiously in the purpling twilight. “You’ve been down there?” I asked. The surprise in my voice must have been evident.
    “Sure,” he said with a smile. “I’ve lived here all my life. There aren’t a whole lot of beaches I haven’t been to.”
    I nodded, and pulled at a strand of hair that had found its way into my mouth thanks to the wind. “So, what,” I asked him, “happened, exactly, that night?”
    He squinted at the road. It was dark enough now that the cars traveling on it had switched on their lights. Occasionally, the glow of one swept his face as he spoke. Again, it was difficult to see his eyes behind the reflection of the light against the lenses of his glasses.
    “I was coming home,” he said, “from a workshop at Esalen —”
    “Esalen?”
    “Yeah. The Esalen Institute. You’ve never heard of it?” He shook his head. “My God, I thought it was known worldwide.” My expression must have been pretty blank, since he said, “Well, anyway, I was at a lecture there. ‘Colonization of Other Worlds, and What It Means for Extraterrestrials Here on