Summer's Edge, page 21
But I’m getting distracted.
Clear my mind. Clear as crystal. I picture running water. Pure, untainted, fresh water. It pools and stills and I see Ryan reflected in it, underneath the surface. Eyes open, mouth open, smiling. Speaking.
“Come out,” I whisper.
He looks at me, then looks away. The moonlight washes over him. He begins to fade.
“No,” I say sharply. I feel Chelsea squeezing my hand.
“He’s so close,” she says in a breathy voice. Bitch. Bitch. She’s faking. Taking him. Even now.
“Shut up.” I yank my hand out of hers and squeeze my eyes tighter, trying to conjure him back. His image slowly reappears beneath the water, and I float to him until I’m hovering just above, gazing at him like he’s on the other side of a mirror. Where are you? I ask him silently.
“He’s here,” Chelsea says. “Kennedy, do you feel it?”
“No,” Kennedy says softly. With pity.
Ryan shakes his head and I understand.
She doesn’t see him because he doesn’t want her to.
“Do this for me.” Chelsea’s voice is distant. Barely a whisper. Not meant for my ears. But I don’t have time for her pity or Kennedy’s stubbornness. Because it is real. He is here. And I don’t need my friends to play along anymore. We’re not reading cards for luck or romance. I’m tracking my brother’s killer.
Ryan just gazes at me. What happened to you? I ask in my mind, my lips forming the words soundlessly.
“We should stop,” Chelsea says. I feel her climbing to her feet, and I grab her hand and yank her back down.
Ryan points to the side. To Chelsea.
“Chelsea?” I say aloud.
“What?”
Careful. No sound. Lips motionless. Chelsea did this? Chelsea killed you?
He shrugs and grins.
“I don’t want to do this anymore.” Chelsea rushes past me and down the attic stairs.
I open an eye. Kennedy, Chase, and Mila are still sitting, looking uncomfortable.
“Is that enough?” Kennedy asks.
“Almost.” I take Mila’s hand reluctantly. Chelsea killed you?
He waves his hand around the circle.
Mila, Chase, Kennedy?
He nods at every name. All of them. He continues nodding, his head bobbing all the way back and all the way down, unnaturally far. Smooth, current-like motion.
Where is your body?
He spreads his arms wide.
What am I supposed to do?
He points to me. It’s your turn. Bubbles erupt out of his mouth, and his voice echoes in my ears, snapping and popping like lava.
A chill runs down my spine. My turn?
You’re next. They know you know. That’s why you’re here. You’re a goner, Emily.
I look around the circle. Kennedy is watching me carefully, her expression unreadable. Chase is digging his fingernails into his palms. Mila is biting her lips, suppressing a yawn. She winks and I turn away. She’s at the heart of it too. She and Chelsea. Mila was the instigator. The new element. She fell into our happy little family like a lit match onto a short fuse. You can’t blame the match entirely, but that fuse would have been fine for a long time.
* * *
“We’re done,” I say abruptly.
Kennedy blinks. “Are you sure? No rush. We have all day.”
“Nonsense.” I blow the candles out, leaving only the dim light from the single window on the other side of the ladder. “I have to clean up, you have to make dinner, Chase and Mila probably want to spend some time alone together.”
Chase clears his throat, but Mila grabs his hand and pulls him up.
“She has a point. Sorry Ryan didn’t show up. Well. Not sorry.” Mila squints for a moment, as if there’s something in her eye. “I mean because he’s going to be okay, Emily,” she says quickly. “Just try not to think about it too much.”
“Yeah. Good advice.”
She shakes her head and climbs down the stairs. Chase jumps down after her without a word to me.
Kennedy begins to pick up the candles.
“Leave them.”
She hesitates, her fingers wrapped around one. “It gets so hot up here.”
“I know. I’ll get them later. I just—I’m not completely sure I’m done. Can we leave them up for now?”
She raises her eyebrows. “Around the entire house? Until when?”
I sigh. “I just don’t feel like this was the right time. It doesn’t work if there’s a single nonbeliever in the group.”
Her gaze doesn’t waver. “Who’s the nonbeliever?”
“All of you.”
She laughs. Actually laughs. At me. Nervous laughter, maybe, laughter of disbelief, but it slices through me just the same. “Because we choose to hold on to hope?”
I feel the last remnants of friendliness slide off my face. “No. I don’t think you do. I think you know just as well as I do that he’s dead. But you won’t admit it. That’s the difference.”
Kennedy’s hand goes right to her mouth, like I knew it would. She has no more nails to bite. That’s how I know she did it. Every one of them has a sign, a tell. It’s like playing poker with the devil.
It suddenly occurs to me that I must have a tell too. That every moment I spend with them, they’re figuring out what I know. That maybe I did reach Ryan. Maybe it wasn’t wishful thinking. A warning. A sign. Don’t let them know you see. You’re next. A goner.
“Do you really think he’s dead?” Kennedy says. Her eyes cut through me.
“You know what I know,” I say.
“I know that the dead don’t wait for rituals and they don’t care about believers,” she says. “If he was gone, and he wanted you to know, he’d have done it by now.” Kennedy closes her eyes. “Sorry. Emily, I’m so sorry.”
I stare at her, speechless, then escape down the stairs, my heart pounding.
Kennedy. Chelsea. Chase. Mila. It’s not that I blame one more than the others.
All of them are at fault. They share the blame.
Perhaps if any of them had stayed home last year, it would never have happened.
But no one ever stays home. They always come.
Nothing keeps them away.
Not even an inconvenient little death.
I creep down the hallway to the master bedroom and push the door gently open. Chelsea is lying on the bed with the lights off and the shades drawn, a damp washcloth over her eyes. She gets migraines now. It’s one of her vague, unspecific symptoms. Migraines, nausea, insomnia. Exhaustion, paranoia, depression.
“What did you see?” she asks in a dull voice.
I step softly into the room. “What did you see?”
She presses her palms into the cloth, but she doesn’t answer me.
“I don’t have the sight,” I remind her. The words sting my throat, my tongue, my lips.
She slowly peels the washcloth off her face, but her eyes remain closed. “I saw myself.”
“Bullshit.”
Chelsea opens her eyes. Bloodshot, rimmed with red. “When you do a tarot reading, you tell us that we see a reflection of what’s inside us. I think this is the same. We see what we believe. That’s why it doesn’t work for nonbelievers. They don’t expect to see anything, so they don’t.”
No. “He was here.”
“He’s still out there, Em.”
I feel uncertain for a moment. Just a split second. Because she looks like she believes it. “Not like us.”
Chelsea hugs her knees to her chest. “Well, what do we know? Maybe no one ever does leave. Every night we go to sleep and dream. Our minds untangle the parts of our waking lives our brains can’t make sense of. Maybe that’s the part that goes on when we die. Or maybe some people get caught in the transition, like the falling between wake and sleep. The lucid in-between. Maybe they stay forever where—”
“Where they died?”
She’s silent for a moment. “I was going to say where they were happiest. But I do believe he’s still out there, Emily. We will see him again.”
Liar. I turn to leave, and she collapses back onto the bed.
The waiting.
The waiting is the trick.
I waited a year for this moment.
I waited to gather with my friends, murderers all.
The awful thing about waiting is that if you wait too long, you start to disappear.
I thought if I waited long enough, there would be some dramatic moment when one of them would scream, “I can’t take it anymore! I killed Ryan!” A telltale-heart type of revelation. I was almost certain it would be Chelsea. But it never happened. There was just the phantom illness and the vague little hint in the note, and now she’s kind of semi-Chelsea. I still keep thinking if I do or say the right thing to freak her out, I’ll get some kind of confession. Chelsea plays the best innocence game, but she knows.
If she didn’t kill him herself, she watched him die, and she didn’t lift a finger to save him.
I won’t let them do it twice.
45
I paint some more while Kennedy makes dinner. My last memory of Mila on the night of the murder, her standing on the dock, beckoning for the others to follow her out to the starlit lake. It was such a small, meaningless moment at the time. Now it feels like a puzzle piece, one I just can’t place. Ominous, foreboding. Only hours left until they came back without him.
Chelsea lies upstairs in her little make-believe headache cocoon. Go ahead, get your rest. Close your eyes and drift away. I’ll be right here beside you. After everything you’ve done, I’m still here. Chase and Mila are outside at the dock, but I don’t hear splashing. Instead, their voices rise and lower sharply. It rather sounds like they’re fighting. It lightens my mood considerably. But the sound of Kennedy in the kitchen unnerves me. A thick, sharp knife; precise, staccato beats on a chopping block. Ryan’s warning hovers over me. You’re next. A goner. She dices tomatoes, cuts thick slices of buffalo mozzarella, and soon the house is filled with the aroma of sizzling garlic cooking in rosemary-infused olive oil, but all I can think of is the blood red of the sauce she’s making, the gleaming edge of the blade. She’s really gone all out this weekend with five individual flatbreads, each with different toppings, and there’s something about the extravagance that makes me feel uneasy. No one plans a feast for an ordinary gathering of friends. Feasts are for weddings and funerals, greetings and goodbyes.
I’m packing my paints away when Kennedy asks for a hand bringing the flatbreads outside to the grill, and I rise reluctantly to help.
“How do you feel?” Kennedy asks as we balance the flatbreads between us on a baking sheet and attempt to fit it through the back door.
“About?” I try to kick the door open with my foot, but it’s stuck. I balance the pan precariously on my shoulder and run my hand over the door behind me, finding the heavy lock bolted. I turn it. “Door was locked.” I push the door open and carefully pick up the flatbreads again.
Kennedy frowns. “It shouldn’t be. I didn’t lock it. We never lock it. Chase and Mila are outside…” She trails off and her eyes float up toward the attic as she steps out onto the grass.
And Chelsea’s upstairs. Which means she’s implying that I lied. Or she’s lying to me and playing mind games. I eye the flatbreads. There’s something about them that just doesn’t sit right. This was my favorite food, back when I had an appetite, but Kennedy hated the messiness. Maybe the food is an apology. But maybe it’s an expression of guilt. What did we eat at Ryan’s last supper? Did Kennedy know that’s what it was?
“I’m lactose intolerant,” I say.
“Since when?” She pauses for a second, bent over the grill, like a weird, modern-day Hansel and Gretel witch, and a little voice in the back of my mind says, Push her and eat the house. But that would only result in Kennedy having striped grill burns on her hands and me getting sent to juvie with splinters in my gums.
“Trauma-induced,” I lie.
The back door swings shut and Chelsea steps out, shielding her eyes from the sun. “I’m starving.”
Kennedy stretches her lips into a smile. “Fifteen minutes.” I can see her brain basically hovering on the edge of explosion.
Chase returns from the dock, Mila trailing behind him, an unlit cigarette dangling between her lips.
“Chelsea, do you mind eating the chicken flatbread? Emily’s lactose intolerant, and yours is the only one without cheese.”
Chelsea hugs her stomach and makes a face. “I’m not eating meat these days. I can’t take a bite without picturing the slaughterhouse.”
You don’t belong here. I stare at Mila, willing the words from my brain to hers. Nobody wants you. She casually leans her head to the grill, lighting her cigarette. The sun is beginning to set, and a sudden chill settles over us. I shiver, my eyes trained on the warm glow of the fire as Mila tilts her face close to the flames.
“Please be careful,” Kennedy says, pulling her back.
Mila rolls her eyes. “It’s not a volcano.” We all stand there uncomfortably for a moment. “Jesus Christ. You people got a lot less fun in the past year.”
“Maybe you just got a lot more fun, and we seem less fun in comparison,” Chelsea says, deadpan. It sounds like the old Chelsea, and it stings me to hear for some reason. I like the drifting Chelsea better. She deserves to be lost. And never return.
Mila makes a face at her. “I’ve always been fun.”
“Eh. Fun is subjective.” Again, old Chelsea seems to be making an appearance. Out of nowhere. For the first time in forever. I don’t like it. She slides into her seat, across from Mila.
Chase grins at Chelsea over the table, then sits down beside Mila. “She’s just being difficult. Let’s all agree that we’ve never been any fun and that Mila needs a new lighter. That grill thing? Lose your eyebrows that way. And your eyebrows are exactly right.” He puts his arm around her, and she reluctantly smiles.
“I’m fun.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “You’re calculus.”
“I saw myself as more like anatomy,” she says, snuggling up against him. He looks uncomfortable.
Kennedy slides the flatbreads out of the grill and arranges them on the table. “Mila, yours is the tomato and cheese.”
Mila makes a face. “I don’t like—”
“They’re flatbreads, not trading cards,” Kennedy snaps wearily.
“I’ll take that one,” Chelsea says.
Kennedy smiles tautly and hands her the plate. I glare at Chelsea. What the hell is going on? An hour ago she was freaking out in the attic. Now everything is fine? We’re back to the good old days, minus Ryan?
“I’ll get drinks,” I volunteer. “Kennedy, please. Sit.”
“Chianti on the counter,” she instructs. “Right next to the basil plant. Not the one by the spice rack.”
“I got it.” I go inside and grab the bottle, then hesitate. Why was she so insistent that I take the one by the basil plant? I examine the two bottles side by side. The one Kennedy wants is a twist cap. I turn it and it opens easily. Did she specify this one because she was sipping from it all afternoon? Or did she request it specifically for me because there’s something wrong with it? I stare at the bottles for another minute and decide that I can’t take chances. I have to switch the bottles. She’ll look, so I pour the wine into a decanter before bringing it out. The slow, steady stream of crimson into the smooth, serene glass is mesmerizing, and the sound of the wine flowing, swishing, dripping, calms my nerves. The cold seems to have followed me inside, and little crystals bloom on the surface, like snowflakes falling in pools of blood. I stir them with my pinkie and they vanish. The moment they’re gone, I’m sure I imagined them. But it is cold, almost unbearably. The Hartfords must have had central air installed. Just as I’m funneling the second bottle of chianti into the first, the door swings open and Chelsea leans back against it.
“What are you doing?”
I stand there for a moment shivering violently, a decanter of wine next to me on the counter, a half-empty bottle in one hand, the damning funnel swirling the contents away into the other.
An expression of disbelief crosses her face. “Did you do something to the wine?”
“It’s a joke. You know how Kennedy is. I’m switching the bottles. To see if she notices. Two chiantis.” I show her the labels. “No poison.” I take a sip from each. “See?” It is a joke. I’m not the one who makes people disappear.
She gives me an odd look but nods. “Okay. Do you want to talk, Em?”
I shake my head. “Starving.” But I couldn’t eat if it were my last meal. I imagine the two sips trailing down my throat, one innocent and one wicked, and I feel the vomit rising.
“All right. I’m going to run to the bathroom.” Chelsea jogs upstairs, and I immediately throw up into the sink. I have to stand there for a moment to allow my heart to stop racing. Why did her mind immediately go there? As if she knew there was something in one of the bottles that shouldn’t be there? Her sudden change of mood. I tiptoe up the stairs and into the master bedroom and unzip her bag. She packs light; there are only a couple of T-shirts, a dress, a light sweater, and some toiletries, including—bingo—an orange bottle filled to the brim with little pills, plastered with warning stickers. Controlled substance. Do not mix with alcohol. A dozen other warnings. The temperature is even colder in the bedroom than in the kitchen, and I grab a sweater from my suitcase after pocketing the pills. Then I head back downstairs and carry the decanter outside.
