Summer's Edge, page 4
I read every single Truth or Dare card and can’t find the suspect ones from our game. I sigh, frustrated. None of this makes sense. In the distance, I can hear the sound of tiny intermittent splashes, little plunks of water, and I crane my neck and gaze out toward the dock. A dark figure is silhouetted against the bright moonlit water. Splish. Ryan is attempting to skip stones. A faint smile touches my lips. He never could quite get it. The momentum. They always start so promising and then sink. I leave the game on the table and kick my sandals off, then head down the boardwalk leading to the dock. I like the feeling of the cool, damp wooden planks beneath my bare feet. It’s old wood, uneven, dangerous. Full of splinters. Another unapologetic fire survivor.
Ryan turns around, his face flushing. “Hello again,” he says with his endearing nervous smile.
“Brain still buzzing?”
“Endlessly.”
I take the round stone and hand him a smooth, flat one. “Try this one.”
He rears back his arm and hurls my stone. It goes straight under with a loud plop. “Do you think some people are just fated to sink? Like sad little human Titanics.”
“The Titanic wasn’t fated to sink. Icebergs are dangerous and people are careless.” I sit at the edge of the dock and dangle my legs over the edge, kicking at the dark water.
“I’m glad you came out here.” He eases himself down next to me and takes my hand almost absently, and I instantly feel guilty even though I shouldn’t. Kennedy and I aren’t together anymore, and it’s a friendly gesture, nothing more. But there’s something that unnerves me about the way our palms fit together, an unsettling urge to never let go. I never wanted to feel a thing for anyone in the world except Kennedy Ellis Hartford. And I don’t now. But the feeling of Ryan’s hand in mine, his warm skin, draws a deep, aching sadness from within me. It’s been the longest year. I miss my friend. “I wanted to tell you something,” he says softly.
I turn away so he won’t see my face flush. I badly don’t want to have this conversation. I know how he feels. It would be a terrible idea to bring it all back to the surface.
But he doesn’t say that at all. What he says is, “I believe you.”
I look up at him. “You do?”
“About Emily?” He nods. “People we love don’t disappear. They stay with us.” He looks up at the sky. “Think how lonely it would be if they just vanished.”
“But the others—”
“I think they’re too afraid. I was, at first. Fear makes people lie, even to themselves.”
“What if it’s just us? What if they can’t hear her?”
He chews his lip. “You mean the sight? That shit my mom used to talk about? I wouldn’t stress that. She was a phony. I think anyone who wants to see, can.” He stares down at the water and I kick at it. A sudden hint of bitterness has crept into his voice. He bumps his forehead against mine and rests it there, and I feel the warmth of his skin, the closeness of him, the cloud of his breath at the edge of my lips. I close my eyes, my cheeks warm. I have no reason to feel guilty. If Kennedy wanted to be sitting next to me right now, she would be. She would have stood up for me when I heard Emily calling. That’s the thing about Ryan. I never question myself when he’s around. I know no one means to make me question myself. But I do.
“That’s actually the real reason you haven’t heard from me this year.”
“How so?” I draw back and study his expression.
“What I said about people not being gone? That was the result of a year of… for lack of a better word, haunting.” He looks at me nervously.
“Haunting?” I glance back at the house. All of the lights are off; everyone is sleeping peacefully.
“I thought it was in my head, that it was wishful thinking.” He stares at me intently. “But it was Emily. Is her. Sometimes it’s just a voice, or a feeling.”
“Why didn’t you call me when all this was happening?”
“Believe me, I wanted to. But I thought it couldn’t possibly be real, and it was the last thing you needed to worry about. Honestly, part of me wanted you to tell me it was all in my head. But then at the house, you heard her too, and I knew.” He falls silent.
“Because it can’t be your mind playing tricks on you if it’s in two heads.” I hug my knees to my chest, and he puts an arm around my shoulder.
“Let’s say it’s not. What did you think of that card from the game?”
“Which one?”
“One of you killed your friend. That one stood out quite a bit.”
My heart seems to slow and grow quiet in my chest. “I’m so sorry you had to see that,” I blurt.
“Why?” He looks at me intently. “That card was a gift.” I start to shake my head, but he continues urgently. “I have a theory. Emily read tarot cards. I think she’s using cards to tell us what happened to her.”
“We know what happened,” I whisper.
“We know what they want us to think.” He nods to the house at they. “An entire house burned to the ground on a windless night because of a suspected gas leak? Chelsea. Something still had to ignite the fire. Even if it was as small as someone flicking on a light switch. And everyone claims it couldn’t have been them. A house that big doesn’t go down by accident. Someone’s lying.”
“Who?”
He hugs himself nervously. “I don’t know. The authorities will always believe people like Kennedy and Chase. The real reason I came back this weekend is to find out.” He pulls a stiff, cream-colored rectangle from his pocket. “When I woke up this morning, this was lying next to my pillow with one of Emily’s tarot decks. I swear I’ve never seen it before. I don’t think it proves anything, but it has to mean something. And I’m sure she left it for me because she wants me to find out what happened to her.” He hands it to me, and I peer down at it curiously.
Mila’s criticism crashes back to me. Ghosts don’t work with paper products. But as he presses the tarot card into my hand, a creeping chill runs through me. It’s from a deck I’ve never seen Emily use before. It’s gorgeously drawn in an eerie, vintage style, the color faded from use. The figure on the card is quirky, a little disjointed, like Emily’s own artwork. But the truly unnerving part of it isn’t the little details that feel off—the bloodred water of a lake, the odd stitches in the fabric of the sky—it’s the fact that the figure in the center of the card looks so familiar. The card depicts a young woman at the helm of a gilded sailboat, gliding over a crimson lake. She is draped in flowing blue robes, and a crown of jagged glass shards sits atop her head of long red hair. Her eyes are a piercing blue, and even the stubborn set of her chin screams Kennedy. Scrawled at the bottom of the card, in Emily’s handwriting, is Queen of Pentacles: trust at your peril.
I cover my mouth with my hand. “It looks so much like Kennedy.”
“Tarot cards were always a mode of communication for Emily,” Ryan says. “What if she never stopped?”
“How?” I turn the tarot card over in my hand.
“If I could explain it, I’d know what happened to Emily by now.”
“But you don’t think Kennedy could have had anything to do with Emily’s death?”
“I think this card came from Emily, and it’s a clue.” He takes it back. “It would feel like a betrayal if I didn’t take it seriously.” His eyes connect with mine. “What else did she tell us?”
“If cards were her language… she left us clues in the game.” My heart slows and quiets in my chest. “That one of us betrayed another, one kissed a killer, and one of us killed our best friend.” The words wrench my throat shut.
“That says it all, doesn’t it?” He catches my eye. “Chels. I know you weren’t involved.”
But I was involved. I was in the house with Emily, and now I’m here and she isn’t. I snap my head up to find Ryan looking at me carefully.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he says. But the words make me flinch.
“Why would you say that?”
He gives me an odd look. “Because you have to forgive yourself.” He points to the house. “They’re the ones I don’t trust. Especially Kennedy.” He looks at me nervously, and for a second, the world skips in time and we’re fourteen again. All-night phone calls, secret languages, inside jokes that the others rolled their eyes at. “We could leave them. Not look back.”
I laugh. Nervous laughter. Not the real kind. “In the middle of the night?”
He moves closer, and I feel the fear radiating off him. “Do you feel safe here now? Knowing what you know?”
“Ryan, we don’t know anything yet. The card could be a coincidence.” My voice seems to echo in the darkness.
“Wake up, Chelsea.” His voice is edged with agitation, and I feel his patience slipping away, the last grains of sand in a game timer. I’m not guessing the answer quickly enough. But his expression softens. “I’m just freaked out. I was so ready to be wrong about the tarot card. But then the game happened, and you heard Emily too, and I can’t believe it’s a coincidence.”
“Ryan. I believe you. But… murder?”
A shadow falls over his face. “Chelsea… I’ve never doubted you. Not once since we met. Do you trust me?” I glance back at the house uncertainly. I do trust Ryan. I trust my own senses. Emily is not gone, and maybe there was more to her death than what we think we know: an accidental fire, a blocked escape route, an unfortunate tragedy. I don’t know if I can accept that one of us could have intentionally set that fire. My friends are flawed, but none of us are monsters. Who would be capable of returning to this house with murder on their conscience?
“Of course I trust you. It’s the message I’m not sure of.”
He stares at me. “How could it be any more clear?”
“You can’t believe our friends are killers, Ryan.”
“I can’t?” He stares at me in disbelief. “A flick of a switch, a spark that raged out of control, panic, and then lies? You can’t even imagine a scenario where anyone could fuck up like that and not have the guts to come clean?”
“I guess.” Put like that, the world looks a bit darker. I don’t want to think of a mistake as murder. But then, I guess it’s not a mistake. Somewhere along the line, even in that scenario, a decision was made to let the house burn. To not save Emily. To never speak a word. I turn to Ryan. “I’m with you. But I’m not leaving. Stay. It’s the only way to find out the truth.”
He hesitates. “Fine. But if anything happens—”
“I said I’m with you, and I meant it. No matter what happens.”
“Good,” he says. “Because if I’m reading the clues right—”
I suddenly feel nauseous. “—someone in this house killed Emily.”
12
Mother always used to say Kennedy was a young soul. Born from the blue, no previous lives, everything so new. An excuse for ignorance, selfishness, the mercurial lack of focus people mistake for passion.
What’s Chelsea’s excuse?
She’s died over and over and never learned a thing.
Every time the same mistake, the cards never lie: She is the Queen of Cups. She loves a fool. She’s crossed by the Ten of Swords. And she falls from the tower.
But she is not the innocent girl my brother believed.
Why was she allowed to survive last year?
Why wasn’t she the sacrifice?
I don’t think it’s fair.
13
The words echo in my head as I make my way back to the house, pack up the game, and place it on the living room table.
Someone in this house killed Emily.
It feels impossible, but Emily’s death itself feels impossible, and the impossible fact remains: she’s gone. I have forced myself not to think about her death, because the parts I have failed to scrub from my memory are unbearable. But what if in sparing myself the pain of reliving the trauma, I’ve willingly closed my eyes to a crucial detail? I pause by the closed door to Kennedy’s bedroom, a small but beautiful room with a Juliet balcony and scenes from fairy tales carved into the walls. A sense of dread settles over me in the darkness. This is where it happened. Where the fire boxed her in, trapped in the attic, engulfed in flames. There was nothing I could do, and time had run out. Everyone else was already gone. I was forced to be the one to leave her behind, because I was the last to give up on her.
I frown.
But my memory begins with me in the bedroom, drowsy and disoriented from smoke inhalation, the fire well underway. The day up to that point is a hazy blur, blotted out with guilt. I’m a useless witness. I don’t know how the fire started. I don’t know how she got into the attic. I didn’t even know about the gas leak. I’ve been away during what might in a sense be the most crucial year of our lives, when everyone else was sifting through ash and making meaning of things, and settling on the story of what happened in this house. Healing, maybe. I missed all of it. I should start questioning. Because accidents happen, sure.
But Emily was trapped. I wasn’t. Why didn’t any of my friends come back for me?
Kennedy is in bed with the lights out when I get to her parents’ room, a gorgeous master suite overlooking the lake. We usually share a queen bed in her room. Emily used to crowd into the bed with us when we were little, until Kennedy and I started dating the summer after ninth. This year the room will remain empty. I can’t bring myself to sleep in the room where Emily died, and even though it should feel strange to share a bed with Kennedy after a year of being ignored, it doesn’t. This is the way it’s always been, since we were children. There’s a tiny bit of comfort in that. When I enter the master bedroom, I find one side of the bed turned down, duvet cover perfectly aired, sheets folded under in a triangle, smooth as the placid surface of the lake. She’s even laid a little sprig of lavender on the pillow and a sleeping mask on the nightstand, next to a glass of water and a note reading For your pills.
I strip down to my T-shirt and a pair of boxers and sit at the edge of the bed. I can’t sleep with all of the questions swirling around my head. I want to talk, but I hate to wake her. I won’t learn much with everyone fast asleep, though. I dig through my backpack for my sleeping pills. I’m going to need two tonight. I tap them into my palm and knock them back with the glass of water—still ice-cold—and snap the light off.
“Where did you go?”
I turn. My eyes haven’t had a chance to adjust, but I imagine Kennedy looming before me, and I feel her weight shift as she sits up. “Nowhere. Outside. I thought you were sleeping.”
“I was waiting for you.” I hear a clicking noise, like she’s biting her nails. Kennedy doesn’t really have any nails. She’s a biter. “Can I ask you something without you reading into it?”
Probably not. But I desperately want something, anything, to read into. “Of course.”
“Do you really hear voices?”
There it is. “I don’t hear voices, I heard a voice. Emily’s voice,” I say.
She sighs. “I didn’t.” Her faint outline is beginning to materialize in the darkness. Her shoulders are hunched, and her hair is wound into a bun and pinned atop her head.
“Well, you don’t have the sight, do you?”
She swats my knee. “You know Mrs. Joiner was full of shit.” She pauses. “I know it’s stressful being back here. Just… don’t let it get inside your head.”
“Casualty of having a heart, Kennedy.” I say it a bit more sharply than I mean to. The encounter with Ryan rattled me, and it feels a little like I’m sitting in bed with a stranger. But there’s so much I need to know, and the tarot card pointing to Kennedy is the only clue I have to go on, vague as it is. And I don’t have much time because the pills work fast. I already feel my heart beating slow and steady in my chest, anxiety seeping out of me like poison glistening on my skin. The calm comes quickly, and it brings the strange, the little lights and sounds I know are fragments of dream waiting for the fall. The lucid in-between. Little sparks of waking sleep. I can see Kennedy now in the sliver of moonlight sneaking in through the half-drawn curtains draped over the enormous windows. A radiant halo of light illuminates her, and the image from the tarot card merges with the present, the crown of glass shards glittering like knives. Outside, the full moon sinks into the lake, lighting it up like a radioactive swamp.
“We should talk about last year.” My voice sounds thin and tinny.
Kennedy walks her fingers over the sheets and weaves them through mine. “You disappeared on me.”
Even through the rapidly thickening fog of drowsiness, this gets to me. I can imagine how busy Kennedy was over the past year. Horse shows, ribbons, trophies. Clam bakes with beautiful people in the Hamptons. Visiting Princeton and Yale and Harvard with her parents, wearing cashmere and pearls, a matching mother-and-daughter set. I wonder if she was just the tiniest bit glad not to have me by her side for a year, skewing the picture like a single pulled thread. With my torn jeans and secondhand sweaters, handmade jewelry and untamable hair, I always stuck out with the Hartfords. And that’s before I opened my mouth.
I wonder if she wasn’t a little relieved.
She had to have been.
Because after the fire, Kennedy changed her number.
“I almost didn’t come this weekend,” I say finally.
“Why?”
“You know damn well why. I didn’t disappear; you know exactly where I was. Pathetically waiting for you to write or call or show up. And you never did.”
“I wanted to,” she says in a quiet voice. She strokes my hand, but I withdraw it.
“My parents shipped me off to boarding school again.”
“I’m impressed the uniform still fit.”
She casts me a withering glare. “It was a nightmare.”
I laugh. “Let’s not compare notes, then.”
“I missed you,” she says, her voice catching. She reaches out again, and this time I let her take my hand. I missed her too. But the missing is so wrapped up in hurt, it’s impossible to untangle. Every single day I waited in line in the rec room with a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. I dialed her number, whispering a prayer of please, please, please. And I listened to a prerecorded message, a hollow voice telling me that her number was no longer in service.
