Summer's Edge, page 5
Kennedy had left me.
And that was her goodbye.
I stare at her in the darkness. “I missed you too. I guess I’m just used to losing you by now.”
“That hurts.”
“I’m sorry. It’s not true. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. It just seems like you could have called if you wanted to.”
“I’m here now. Isn’t that what matters?” She tilts her chin up and I stare down. Her hair is damp, and she smells like lavender and honeysuckle. This is where we kiss. It is written in the history books.
But I turn away.
“What’s wrong?” She sits up.
“Everything. You. You’re acting like nothing happened.” The drowsiness is starting to set in again. My body wants to drift away, but I can’t.
She sighs heavily and snaps on the light, temporarily blinding me. “What do you want me to say?”
“That our best friend is dead, Kennedy.” My words feel slow, and through the fog, I’m so frustrated I want to scream. “And maybe the fire wasn’t an accident.”
She stares at me, aghast. “Wasn’t an accident?”
“As in, what if that game wasn’t just a harmless prank?”
“The game?” Kennedy laughs, an ocean of relief in her voice. “You almost had me worried.” Her face looks pale, though, and there are shadows under her eyes.
“Why?” I challenge. “Why would me suggesting that it wasn’t an accident worry you?”
She pauses, seeming at a loss for words. “Because. You’re talking about arson.”
“I’m talking about murder.” The word hangs in the air between us. Speaking it out loud feels like opening a door to a very dangerous place.
She looks up suddenly, past me, into the hallway, and places a finger over her lips.
I turn my head and stare down the dark hallway, and again I strain to hear a noise that shouldn’t be there, to see a face emerging from the darkness. A long, low-pitched creak echoes down the hall, and I feel Kennedy’s hand on my arm. I pull away gently, pressing my feet slowly onto the cold hardwood floor, and take a cautious step toward the door. A second creak freezes me in place, and the hair on the back of my neck stands up.
“Chelsea!” Kennedy hisses.
“There’s something out there!”
“It’s just Chase.”
I look back over my shoulder in disbelief. “If it’s just Chase, why do you care if I go after him?” I flick on the light switch. The hallway is empty. I turn back to Kennedy. “Must have been the wind.”
She scoots to the edge of the bed. “You have me hearing things.” She reaches for my hand, but I keep it by my side. “Look. We’ll hike to the cell spot tomorrow and call my mom. I’ll find out who sold her the game, track them down, and prove it was a prank. Then will you let this go?”
“It’s not just the game!” I force myself to look at her. She looks concerned, but she can lie as well as anyone. “The game just reminded me that the circumstances were suspicious in the first place. But you’ve all avoided me so well, I’ve never had the opportunity to question them.”
Her eyes widen. “You make it sound like we conspired against you.”
“I just want to fill in the blanks about what happened.”
“You don’t remember?”
I hesitate. “Not everything. But even if I did, I wouldn’t know the whole story. I’m just one witness out of five, and I don’t know what the rest of you know. What you saw, heard… Any evidence that came out while I was away.”
“You didn’t think to ask until now? Your parents, your doctors, pick up a newspaper maybe? Did you try to find out what happened all of this time?”
I shrink from her accusing gaze. Of course I didn’t. I didn’t want to think about it. In a haze of grief and sedatives, it isn’t hard to set bad memories afloat, and in the wake of the tragedy I pushed those details as far away as I could. Because thinking about it meant images and sounds like a newsreel, occupying every moment, every space in my head. No sleep. No peace. Just the attic door stuck shut, billows of smoke pouring in from the hallway, the sound of screaming, and then, almost the worst, the moment my gaze swung away from the fog of smoke and toward the open balcony doors. The terrible moment my eyes zeroed in on the sky, the lake beyond, all of the little living things outside, and I knew I was going to leave her behind. And I was never going to forgive myself.
“Why do you want to revisit that night?” Kennedy says.
“I need to in order to make peace with it, Kennedy! You weren’t the one who abandoned her. Can you for once please think of what it feels like to be someone other than you?”
She’s quiet for a moment. “What do you want to know?”
“How did the fire start?”
She shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know. I was outside when Emily went in. Something must have happened while I was out in the yard. You were the last one to see her alive, Chelsea. If anyone saw anything, it would be you. But I accept that you didn’t because it was an accident.”
“But why was I the last? No one thought I was worth saving either?”
She flinches. “That’s not fair. The doors were locked.” Were they? I frown. I couldn’t have known—my escape route was Kennedy’s balcony. “I pounded and shouted until my voice was shot,” Kennedy continues. “And no one would ever say you didn’t think Emily was worth saving, because everyone understands that you had to let her go.”
“Are you sure about that?” I try to ignore the guilty feeling that overwhelms me whenever I start to think too hard about last summer. I bet a lot of people would say that about me. I bet the Joiners would. How do you forgive your daughter’s friend for letting her die?
“Everyone who matters, anyway.”
“If you were outside…” The tarot card comes back to me. “Did you take the boat out?” I picture her on the bloodred water, radiant in the moonlight. There has to be some significance to the tarot card. Unless Kennedy is right, and Ryan and I are grasping at straws, searching for meaning that doesn’t exist.
She looks at me oddly. “Why?”
“Just… I want to know.”
She starts biting her nails again. “I don’t recall.”
“That’s convenient. Is that what your dad told you to say?”
“I don’t recall,” she snaps.
I stare at her. That’s coached speech. It’s what lawyers tell guilty clients to say to avoid admitting something that could lead to their guilt, without telling an outright lie. It’s a very specific phrase. Who says I don’t recall in everyday conversation?
“Look, Chels. If you need to process your grief with this… game? Go for it. But I don’t want to be part of it. It’s not funny to me.”
“Does it look like I’m joking?”
“It looks like you think one of us could have actually killed Emily. Why would I kill one of my best friends?”
“I don’t know why you do a lot of things you do, Kennedy. Or don’t do.”
She stares at me. “If that’s true, either you really have changed or you never knew me as well as I thought you did.”
I stand unsteadily, grabbing a pillow and throw blanket. “Maybe I didn’t.” My head is swimming now. The images are floating before me, blinking in and out of dreams, the jagged crown, the golden sails, the lake of blood.
She looks at me, perplexed. “Where are you going?”
“I’m sleeping on the couch.”
I stumble downstairs, and when I sink onto the couch, I feel like I’m sinking down and down and down through layers of soft, soft, earth, an endless descent, as if the world is bending inward and changing shape, all time and space destabilizing to open an eye for sleep. But I immediately regret my decision. This is where I heard Emily speak. I glance up the stairs and consider apologizing. But I’m so tired I can’t think without glittering crowns, or breathe without gallons of blood, or dream without yards of golden silk, billowing in the lavender wind, carrying me through the in-between. I sink my head into the deep, downy pillow and close my eyes.
A voice whispers in my ear, “Don’t think you’re going to get away—”
Darkness falls.
14
Close your eyes and drift away.
I’ll be right here beside you.
After everything you’ve done, I’m still here.
15
I wake up soaking wet on the dock.
The moon is still high in the sky, and an unnerving thought flits through my brain like a buzzing fly: I don’t know how I got here. I sit, shivering and disoriented, a prickly, electric sensation humming through my body. I climb to my feet slowly, like in nightmares. The cue is run; you turn to stone. My clothes hang off me, drenched, and I hug myself, self-conscious and terrified. Because I’ve never sleepwalked in my life. So then how did I get here? No one at this house would do this as a prank because they know I’m deathly afraid of entering the water.
It isn’t the lake itself—I love the lake. But I don’t swim in it because I have an irrational fear of sharks. It’s rational to fear sharks if you find yourself face-to-face with one. Maybe even if you swim in water where you might conceivably encounter one. But after watching Jaws as a kid, I’ve been terrified to go in any body of water where I could imagine a shark. I can dip my foot in for a bit, but if I leave it too long, the image of a shark grabbing me and dragging me under eventually becomes so intense I have to take it out. I can’t even swim in the deep end of pools. I get fixated on the thought of being bumped on one side. Then the other. Then jaws, razor-sharp, folding around me. Like I said, irrational. But no less real.
This was no prank. And whoever did it is still here.
I glance back at the house. All of the lights are on, and the house stares at me unnervingly with rows of bright yellow eyes and teeth, a bizarre wooden jack-o’-lantern. My eyes travel from window to window, but I don’t see any movement. Every room is empty, silent, still. The night is eerily quiet. No crickets. No frogs. No hush of wind through the pines. The night of the fire was windless. It saved the woods, the neighboring houses. It didn’t save Emily.
“Guys?” My voice reverberates. “Hello?”
I know they haven’t driven anywhere—Kennedy is strict about drinking and driving—and there’s nothing within walking distance. A few other houses, but no neighbors we know. I turn back to the lake, a chill settling over me. That’s the only other place to go.
The mooring line lies loose in the water. A mix of relief and annoyance washes over me. They’ve taken the boat out, that’s all. There’s a small sailboat not too far away, swimming distance for a skilled swimmer, dead on the water. It could be the Hartfords’ boat, Summer’s Edge. But although the moon is bright, I can’t see anyone on deck. I gaze into the water, imagining the one rogue shark that would be lurking beneath, a leftover from prehistoric times, waiting, biding his time. For me.
I cup my hand around my mouth. “Kennedy!” My voice is swallowed up by the night. I try again, shouting for Chase, Ryan, Mila. No one answers. A slight breeze lifts my hair from the back of my neck, and I raise my head to gather it into a ponytail. I glance back at the boat just as a stiffer breeze picks up and swings the sail, changing the boat’s direction. I catch sight of a shadowy figure propped up against the mast. I squint. The figure sways, steps forward, and stills.
“Kennedy?” I try again, louder. It stands in the darkness for a moment, then slowly turns its head toward shore. An odd sensation vibrates through me like electricity, suspending me in silence. My arms float uselessly at my sides; my vocal cords slacken and sink in my throat. My legs are melting into the dock, and my eyes are shadows, spilling into the shadow person’s gaze. Though I cannot see its face, I feel its unspeakable dread as it creeps to the edge of the boat, hovers for a moment as if suspended in time, and plunges into the inky water with the sudden violence of someone who has been pushed or pulled with incredible, almost supernatural force.
I startle out of my trance with one terrifying, heart-stopping thought in my mind: It was too dark to make out a face. But I didn’t see the silhouette of a life jacket.
“Hello?” I call, heart pounding, eyes frantically searching the surface of the water.
No answer. The wind continues to pick up and the boat rocks. There’s some bulkiness on one side, maybe someone asleep on the deck, but no one rises to help. I shout, “Man overboard!” but no one responds. It’s an ambitious swim to the sailboat—I can’t be sure it even is the Hartfords’ boat—and my fear of sharks is no joke. If it gets in my head, it takes over. But someone is in trouble and everyone seems to have vanished. It could be one of my friends out there in the water, and I will not abandon them. Never again. So I make the split-second decision to dive in after the figure that hasn’t resurfaced.
A deep breath.
Don’t think.
Two.
It’s only water.
Three.
Nothing lies beneath.
One last breath, and down into darkness.
The water is bath warm, unseasonable for New York in early summer, and I have to push every thought out of my head to keep moving forward. I repeat man overboard to myself over and over, because if I don’t think man, I will think shark. Man overboard, man overboard, man, man, man, over, over, over. Light as a feather. Stiff as a board. I glance up at the boat every few breaths, but the distance doesn’t seem to be closing.
Man overboard. Girl overboard. Over, over, board, board. Breathe. Kick. Breathe. Kick. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
As I near the boat, I search for a dark shape bobbing on the surface, and my heart sinks when I don’t see one. No life jacket means they’ve been under for a few minutes, and it may be impossible to find them. Or revive them. I grasp the side of the boat and see the familiar block letters: SUMMER’S EDGE. The water is almost black. And when I look down, fear rushes up and strangles me. Something is under there. Something big. Big enough to tear into me.
My throat closes up and I gulp at the air. My legs are numb from kicking. I can’t see. My heart hammers in my chest. I have to go under, because if I don’t, I’m a murderer for abandoning the person I saw fall in. At the same time, it’s been minutes already, and my chances of finding them are slim. Every moment I spend deliberating makes me more of a killer, but my fear of submersion eats at me like acid. I have to try. Have to.
I strangle a scream, thrash with my legs, and dive down, grasping in every direction. I have never felt so isolated as I do in this moment. And then the fear clicks in and adrenaline surges through my body. I imagine it like a comic-book transformation, boiling my blood from red to green, altering my DNA. I am not the same Chelsea. I am not a rational thinker. I am prey. I am the hunted. And the only thought I can process is escape. I kick for the surface, lungs bursting, chest on fire, my heart ten times the strength and speed of a human specimen.
I break through the water to the air, and still I do not breathe. My numb, tingling fingers somehow find the ladder at the back of the boat, and I claw my way up and over and collapse onto the deck, sobbing, defeated. Beneath the surface of the lake, a body lies. Someone who walked down the boardwalk of the Hartford Cabin, climbed aboard Summer’s Edge, sailed out on the lake, and plunged into the water while I watched. And as I flailed and panicked, maybe a foot or two, maybe inches, over them, they drew their last breath and died.
“Chelsea.”
I remove my hands from my face, wiping away warm tears with lake water. Kennedy is staring down at me drowsily. Drunkenly? Her starlit eyes are heavy-lidded, and her breath smells sweet, sugary, like white wine and lemon sorbet. What did they do after I went to sleep? An image of tarot Kennedy with the jagged crown flashes through my head. Trust at your peril.
“I had the most messed-up dream,” she says.
I sit abruptly. “Someone’s in the water. They went overboard.”
She scrambles to her feet and searches the water anxiously, then looks down at me with relief. “You scared the shit out of me.” She sinks back to the deck. “Did you swim out here?” She’s wearing the dress she had on earlier, and there’s a bottle of wine at her feet. Empty.
“Did you hear me? Someone fell overboard and went under.”
“That’s not possible.” She crouches down and attempts to open the shutter to the cabin.
I bend down and yank it open. Beneath, Chase and Mila are snuggled under a fleece blanket. “Where’s Ryan?”
Kennedy assumes an angelic expression, the one she wears when she doesn’t want me to get upset but knows I have a damn good reason to be. “He left.”
I stare at her incredulously. “He just got up in the middle of the night and took off?” It’s not like he was enthusiastic about staying. But he did give me his word.
“I checked the loft before we left and found the sheets folded up along with a note from Ryan thanking me for a lovely weekend.” She frowns. “Sarcastic and rude.”
“You were rude to him.” I look to the boat’s edge. “I’m telling you, I saw someone fall.”
“Then I am telling you, you’re seeing things,” she says sharply.
I suck in a gulp of air. That stung. “I know the difference between real and imagined.”
She looks embarrassed. “I know. I just meant I would have seen if someone else got on the boat. It didn’t happen, I promise.” But I know Kennedy, and she isn’t telling the truth. At least she’s not sure she is. A sudden breeze skims over the lake and I shiver. I’m still soaking wet.
Kennedy gazes up at the telltale, the little ribbon atop the mast that monitors the wind and indicates how to navigate the boat to take advantage of it. “Now, will you stop trying to freak me out and give me a hand?”
I reluctantly help her with the sail. “Why did you come out here so late? Without me?”
“Mila wanted to see the stars, and Chase wouldn’t take no for an answer. I wasn’t about to let them take the boat out alone. And you were dead to the world. Those pills are no joke.”
