Summer's Edge, page 3
“Fine, but you have to answer this one.” Kennedy draws the next card. “Chelsea, on penalty of permanent banishment, who was your first crush? Wow, they really went all in on crushing.”
“Crushing it with crushing.” Chase looks pleased with himself.
I bite my lip. We all know the answer to this one, and it’s only going to make it awkward to say it out loud. “Um, obviously it was Ryan.”
Mila raises an eyebrow as a tight-lipped Kennedy folds the card in half and reinforces the crease several times. “That explains a bit.”
“Read the next question,” Kennedy says.
Ryan flushes uncomfortably, then picks up a card without looking at me. “Chase, what would you do if—”
“Dare!” Chase interrupts with a look of indignation. “You didn’t even ask.”
“Whatever,” Ryan says.
“We don’t have to play.” Kennedy gathers her cards and reaches for mine, but I fold my hands around them protectively and hug them to my chest. She shoots me one of her Whose side are you on? looks, but I sort of want to see where this goes. I’ve been humiliated, and it kind of feels like everyone should have a turn in the hot seat before we give up. We all know exactly who feels what about who, the good, the bad, and the ugly. But no one ever says anything out loud. That might have been our downfall. I wonder now if it might save us. What’s left of us.
“Let me do my dare,” Chase pleads. “Ryan, I will make you laugh during the course of this game. I will make you crush on me.”
Ryan forces a pained smile. “One more round. That’s all I have in me.” He looks down at the card. “Hold your breath for one minute without laughing.”
Chase gives him a puzzled look. “Really?”
Ryan shows him the card. “It’s your genius game.”
“Okay. Here goes.” Chase draws a deep breath and holds it as the rest of us count to sixty together. He maintains a studied Gaston-like expression of exaggerated ease throughout, flexing his muscles and spinning the game box on his fingertip like a basketball. All he needs is a set of muddy boots and a deer’s head mounted on the wall behind him. “Didn’t laugh,” he says when the minute is up. “As hilarious as that was.” He turns to Mila.
“Truth,” she says immediately.
“Who’s the cutest person in the room?”
Mila smirks. “You think I’m going to say you, but I’m bound by the rules to tell the truth. You’re cute, but I’m cuter and everyone here can vouch for it. Sorry.” She blows him a kiss, selects a card, and looks to Kennedy. “Pick your poison.”
“Truth.”
“Who is the last person in this room you betrayed?” Mila asks in a low, dramatic voice.
“Read the card,” Kennedy says, annoyed.
“I did,” Mila protests, tossing the card into her lap.
Kennedy shakes her head. “I’ve never betrayed anyone in this room.” It’s the strangest thing, but just after she says it, there’s a gust of wind outside and one of the candles flickers out. It’s coincidence, but it doesn’t feel like coincidence. Nothing feels like coincidence anymore. Partly because I don’t want it to. I don’t want anything to mean nothing. I don’t want there to be a meaningless void out there that Emily got sucked into, and that we’ll get sucked into someday too, and just vanish. Not become part of or anything, just evaporate. I don’t want that. I’d rather believe in vengeful spirits than emptiness that stretches on for eternity.
Kennedy kicks my sneaker. “Your turn.”
I kick her back. “You ask.”
“Right.” She shuffles through the cards. “Truth or dare.”
“Truth.”
“Who did you last say you loved?”
I think for a moment. “My mom. Before I left.”
She nods. “The exciting life you do lead.”
It stings. She knows how isolated I’ve been. I turn to Ryan. “Truth or—”
“Dare.”
I sneak a look at Chase. He looks as surprised as I am. Ryan isn’t exactly a daredevil. With only one candle now, the room has gone even dimmer, and all of us have taken on the washed-out yellow cast of the inadequate lights, our faces flickering flames in a darkening room. “Hold your breath for two minutes without laughing.”
Chase raises an eyebrow. “They really got creative with these.”
Ryan draws a deep breath. Chase begins counting and Mila hesitantly joins in.
I look to Kennedy a little uncertainly. “Isn’t two minutes kind of a long time?”
She shrugs but peers over to look at the card. “They probably intentionally designed it so you’d fail and be forced to answer the truth question.” But when we flip the card over, there’s just another dare.
Dare: Hold your breath for three minutes.
Kennedy takes the next card.
Dare: Hold your breath for four minutes.
On the reverse side.
Dare: Hold your breath for six minutes.
My heart begins to pound. We flip through the rest of the cards in my stack one by one, but the dares are the same, escalating only the amount of time without oxygen. Then, I reach for Kennedy’s cards and read the one on top.
Truth: How does it feel to kiss a killer?
8
It’s not that I blame one more than the others.
All of them are at fault.
They share the blame.
Perhaps if any one 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.
9
I grab the card and stuff it into my pocket before Kennedy has a chance to read it, then turn my attention back toward Chase, who’s still counting.
129. 130. 131. 132.
“Chase, make him stop.” Mila swats Chase’s arm. Her usually bored, languid tone has turned tense, with an undercurrent of anxiety. Kennedy has taken up the counting in a breathless voice. I wish she would stop.
Ryan is still holding his breath, sitting stubbornly on the couch, arms and legs crossed tightly, his lips sealed, his face bright red. He stares straight up at the ceiling, concentrating, maybe counting in his head.
“You okay, Ry?” I tap his shoulder, but he doesn’t break focus.
145. 146. 147.
“You win,” Mila says. “You have all the penises. And then some.”
152. 153. 154.
His face is growing purple. It’s uncomfortable to watch. It makes me feel like I can’t breathe. I punch his arm. “Enough, Ryan.”
But Chase keeps counting, and as long as he does, Ryan will never back down. It’s a game to them. Ryan won’t fold while Chase is timing him, and Chase won’t stop timing him while Ryan can still make it further. And I know what comes next because I know them. Next, Chase is going to be obligated to try to beat Ryan’s record.
179. 180. 181. 182. 183.
Kennedy gets up, marches over, and pinches Ryan’s nose. He gasps and collapses onto the sofa on his back, gulping in air. “Are you trying to kill me?” he wheezes.
“You need to breathe, asshole,” she says. “No more games.”
Mila looks down curiously at a card sitting in the middle of the table. “Truth,” she reads. “Which one of you is going to hell for killing your best friend?” She looks up, her face pale.
Chase takes the card from her. He is quiet for a long moment. “Obviously someone tampered with the cards.”
Ryan yawns elaborately, extending an arm toward Kennedy. Not subtly.
“Please let’s not get into this again.” Kennedy raises a hand to massage her temples. “I didn’t send the postcards, and I didn’t tamper with this stupid game.”
“So I did this?” Ryan’s face is still tinged with pink, just a shade lighter than the salmon-colored polo he’s wearing.
“Chase is the one who insisted we play the game,” I say hesitantly. “Sorry, Chase. I’m not accusing, I’m just saying it’s a weird game, and you’ve been bizarrely enthusiastic about it.”
“Don’t look at me,” Chase says. “Ryan is the one pointing fingers.”
Ryan balks. He stands abruptly and paces out of the room, then back again. “I didn’t tamper with the goddamn game,” he says flatly. “And I didn’t invite myself or any of you, and honestly, I’m starting to wonder if any of you even want me here.”
“No one does.”
“Kennedy.” I look at her sharply, but she continues to clean up the game, tight-lipped.
“What?” She looks up innocently.
“I—” I falter. I can’t tell if she just said what I think I heard her say. I’m not sure it was her voice. Sometimes I think I hear things. Specific things. Sounds that can’t possibly have been made here or now. Distant explosions and rapid gunfire, the tinny kind you hear on TV, except not on TV. Animal sounds I can’t identify. Voices speaking in languages I don’t know, footsteps passing over my head, little hands tapping in the walls. It’s usually just in the window between the time I take my sleeping pill and the time I fall asleep. Nurse Pamela warned me about it. The lucid in-between, she called it. She was one of the good ones. “I think we should give Ryan a break,” I say. Ryan touches my elbow with his and taps his palm twice with two fingers. It’s the secret language we made up in fifth grade to make the others flip out. The secret is that none of the gestures actually mean anything. But it infuriated Chase, Kennedy, and especially Emily.
“A dead sister isn’t an excuse to be an asshole,” Kennedy bursts out.
We all stare at her. She claps her hand over her mouth, looking mortified.
Chase looks pointedly at Kennedy. “I think we should all go sleep this off while we still have no regrets.” He storms away to his room, and Mila chases after him.
Ryan sighs. “I’m going to get some air.”
Kennedy shakes her head wordlessly and heads up the stairs.
I start to follow her, then decide that I need air too. But in the one brief moment that I’m alone in the living room, just me and the expensive scrap-wood furniture and the pile of ancient board games, with the lights off, and only sharp slivers of moonlight slicing in through the windows, I hear it.
A voice whispers into my ear, so close and so tangible I can feel a wisp of breath traveling down my neck, freezing me in place, turning me to stone.
It says, “I’m still here.”
I scream. Ryan bolts back into the house breathlessly. Kennedy rushes down the stairs. A moment later, Chase and Mila follow, Mila wearing Chase’s T-shirt, Chase in his swimsuit.
“I’m still here.”
This time the voice is so loud, so unmistakable, and so insistent, that I whip my head to the side, half-certain I’ll see Emily standing beside me, that the last year has been one long nightmare. Because this time the voice was clear as my own heartbeat. And it belonged to Emily.
“Are you okay?” Kennedy asks, taking my arm and brushing the hair away from my face. “You sounded like you stepped on a scorpion or something.”
I look from face to face. They all look expectant. Concerned. But not scared. That’s not reassuring. It just makes my anxiety rise. “I’m still here,” I whisper.
Chase looks to Kennedy. “We all are. And none of us are going anywhere. Can we all agree to take it down a notch? Hit the reset button and start over? I’m really glad we’re back together. All of us.” All but one.
Kennedy nods. “Of course. I love you guys.” She looks to Ryan. It’s the closest she’ll get to an apology.
“No!” I interrupt. “Someone said ‘I’m still here.’ Just now. And before that when I was alone in the room.” I feel Ryan’s eyes on me. I can’t stand the idea of even him not believing me.
“Okay, Chelsea,” Chase says. “It’s late, you’re tired, everyone is a little shaken up. Imaginations run wild when emotions are high. I get it. We’re cool.”
“No. We are not cool. Someone tampered with the game, and everyone claims it wasn’t them.” I rip the top off the game box and tear through the stack of cards, but I can’t find a single one that includes a dare related to holding your breath without laughing. Or a truth about going to hell or betraying your friends. It’s crush, crush, crush. I slam it back down on the table, frustrated.
Kennedy places her cool hands on my cheeks and looks into my eyes. “Chelsea. Everything’s fine. This is an emotional situation for all of us. We have to be here for each other. I’m sorry I was distant. I just don’t know how to handle being back together.”
The words sting. The multiple meanings. I step back away from her. “We’re all witnesses. She spoke, and we heard.”
Chase gives me an odd look. “Who spoke?”
“Emily.”
Kennedy and Chase exchange a look. “There are a lot of memories in this house,” Kennedy says carefully. “Of course it feels like she’s still with us in a way.”
“Or maybe she’s really still with us.” My words hang in the air like a dare. I hate being put on the stand like this. Being forced to testify. “We were all here,” I say, my eyes stinging, beginning to fill. “We all heard her.”
Kennedy gathers me into a hug and strokes my back. “Of course we did. Right, Chase?”
Chase is silent.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mila says. “No. I’m not humoring her.”
“Mila, please,” Chase says quietly.
“No. That’s not helpful. I’m not being a bitch, I’m just being honest. None of us heard shit. It was a bad idea to come back here. We watched a person die. I didn’t even care about Emily. I barely knew her. But I still have nightmares, and this is like living through them all over again. Also, what ghost sends out printed invitations? Do they like materialize in Staples or possess a printing press? Come on. No ghost. Emily’s gone, and we’re freaking ourselves out.”
“What about the game?” Ryan circles it suspiciously.
“Kennedy said it herself. Her mother dug it up somewhere. Probably at a yard sale or used on Amazon or something,” Mila says. “You don’t think in forty years no one had the opportunity to mess with it? None of the questions or answers are specific to us. Someone wanted to mess with their friends, and it eventually ended up in our hands.”
No one speaks for a while.
“I’m going back upstairs. Chase, you can come with or spend the night telling ghost stories with your friends and sleep on the sofa.” Mila looks at Chase, who avoids Kennedy’s pointed stare. A challenge. Choose sides, Chase.
“We’ll talk tomorrow.” Chase surveys the rest of us. “Try to get some rest, Chels. Everything will look different in the morning. It always does.” He flashes his signature team-captain smile and heads upstairs after Mila. Chase is the one who’s always shined the brightest among us. Valedictorian, second team all-American. Nothing ever slowed Chase down. I wonder if Emily’s death has. He doesn’t seem drastically altered. There’s something a little disquieting about that, but grief hits people in different ways, and Chase plays his cards close to his chest. Still, Ryan will be hurt by Chase’s act.
Ryan glances at me and edges toward the back door again. “I need a breather. My brain is on overload.”
I bite my lip and smile. “I know the feeling.”
Kennedy turns back to me. “Are you going to be okay? Do you want me to make you some tea, or draw you a bath, or…” She gives me an impish smile, but it’s half-hearted. She’s as exhausted as the rest of us, the hint of a shadow forming underneath each luminous eye.
“Nope. If I don’t take a sleeping pill now, I may never get to sleep.”
Her smile falters and my heart aches. “I thought we could share my parents’ room,” she says hesitantly. “I feel like my room should stay empty this year.”
I nod. “Of course. I’ll see you later.” The words feel awkward and wrong. Splitting up, even briefly, shouldn’t feel new after a year of living entirely separate lives. But back here, in the place where we fell in love, it does. She kisses me on the cheek and hugs me a couple of seconds longer than she did this afternoon, and I smell the whole day in her hair. The lake breeze, lemonade, basil, the pines. The lake house. Cedar and wool. Cotton and beeswax. Organic. Those beautiful paper postcards. Everything that went up so very quickly in a swirl of fire and smoke.
10
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.
11
I don’t take my pill and I don’t go to bed. Instead I take the game outside, where the whispers can’t reach me. I sit on the patio in the moonlight and spread the Truth or Dare cards on the stone table and read them one by one, discarding each one back into the box after I’ve read both sides. The patio and table are probably the only parts of the original house that didn’t have to be replaced. They’re all stone, with a fire pit on one end and a cute little rock wall lining the path down to the dock. Looking at the cards spread on the table in the moonlight reminds me of Emily. Her mother does tarot readings at the mall. Emily did them too, just for us, but she didn’t have “the sight.” According to her mother, anyway. Mrs. Joiner used to say I was an old soul and all old souls could see a little if they opened their minds.
When I told my parents that, they told me not to accept any special teas or baked goods from Mrs. Joiner. In hindsight, I find that both hilarious and sad. Emily and Ryan were always embarrassed that their mother was the mall psychic lady. I think it’s kind of neat. My father is a grief counselor and my mother is the office administrative assistant, so everyone hates and fears them.
Anyway. Emily couldn’t have thought the cards were actually bullshit, because she read them too. Maybe she was just pissed that her mom thought I had the sight and she didn’t. And maybe her mom was just pissed that Emily was embarrassed of her.
