Chapter 15

I wake up soaking weton 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."

I grit my teeth to ratchet the line. "Someone moved me. I woke on the dock, soaking wet."

She barely flinches. "Don't those heavy-duty sleeping pills cause sleepwalking? Even sleep driving and sleep murdering and all kinds of messed-up shit?"

"I just sleep." I love how one sleeping pill makes me an unreliable witness, and their hours of drinking doesn't factor into the equation.

The sail catches wind, and she jumps behind the steering wheel. "They cause hallucinations, though. Don't they?" She says it lightly, but the implication is clear. I didn't see anything from the dock. It was exhaustion, it was a trick of the light, it was my pills. Kennedy will always find a reason not to believe. I study her silhouette, standing at the bow of the boat, hair tossed by the breeze. The resemblance to the tarot card gives me goose bumps.

"You know what? I think it's your fault Ryan left. He lost his sister and you were horrible to him. And I don't know how to get through this weekend without him."

Kennedy's expression tightens. "Well, I'm sorry for your loss."

"It is a loss! He's the only one who didn't laugh in my face about hearing Emily."

"Because he always says whatever you want to hear."

"No, because he hears her too. And not just whispers. Clues. About what happened to her. Like the cards in that game. Don't you see it?"

I don't like the way she's looking at me. A little bit of pity, but a little bit afraid.

"Don't look at me like that. Emily left Ryan…" I stop short of telling her about the tarot card warning not to trust her. "You're proving my point. He believes me, and you're condescending as fuck."

She presses her hands against her lips and screams into them silently. "There is no more Emily! I don't know what Ryan's going through, and I'm sorry, but it's no excuse to drag you into it, and turn you against us again. Against me. He is always getting between us."

"I can't believe you're making this about you." I wrench my arm away. "It's about Emily and what really happened last year. Maybe if you were honest with me, I wouldn't need Ryan."

"Wow." She stares at me. "Well, I feel a little better about the fact that you think it's remotely possible that one of us killed Emily. Because now I know who brainwashed you."

"I don't think it. I just… have questions. Don't you?"

"Fine," she says as we drift up to the dock. "I'll prove he's lying. If that's what it takes for you to finally trust me."

We dock and Kennedy moors the boat and stalks back to the house. I climb down into the cabin and find a couple of towels. I dry myself off with one and smack Chase with the other.

He startles awake. "What did I do?"

"Have you been asleep this whole time?"

"I mean, not since birth. I dozed off at some point when we lost the wind. Does that mean I deserve to be towel-smacked awake? Reasonable minds may disagree."

I sit down next to him with a sinking feeling. "Chase, something weird is going on. I saw someone go overboard, and they never resurfaced."

His eyes widen. "Did you send out a mayday?"

I shake my head. "I don't even know how to do that."

"Kennedy does."

"I'm the only one who saw it."

His expression changes. "Oh."

It suddenly clicks, and I can't even begin to describe how furious it makes me. These are supposed to be my best friends. "You think I'm imagining it. Like hearing Emily in the house. You think I hallucinated a person falling into the lake and disappearing under the water."

"I mean… How well did you see it?" He looks like he wants so hard for it not to be true, and for me not to be having some kind of breakdown. Why can't he just take me at my word?

"I was on the dock, and it was dark. But I saw it, damn it. You know how I feel about water, and I dove in and swam all the way to the boat. That's how sure I was."

"Hey." He puts a hand on my arm. "If you're that sure, we can go to the cell spot right now and call 911." The cell spot is the one place nearby with reliable cell service—a secluded spot in the woods, about a fifteen-minute hike. A drive to town would take five minutes longer. But I hesitate. I feel sure. But sure enough to attach my name to a police report? Something about the thought sets off alarm bells. I can't put my finger on exactly why it feels like such a bad idea. But it does. I wish I didn't always second-guess myself. I wish Ryan were here.

I sigh. "I could be wrong." My eyes fall on Mila, still sleeping. "Chase," I say quietly. "What can you tell me about the fire? I'm trying to piece together what happened. I figure all of us saw things the others missed." Better not to mention Ryan's suspicions. It probably wouldn't be the smartest way to get honest answers, anyway. It backfired with Kennedy—she shut down the second I even mentioned the possibility that one of us could have been at fault.

Chase frowns. "Why?"

Mila yawns and stretches. "Why are you like this, Chelsea?" She turns to Chase. "She legitimately gives me nightmares."

"She's one of my best friends," Chase says with a warning look.

"I'll tell you what happened last year if you vow not to mention ghosts again," Mila says.

"Fine," I say. We'll see. "I know about the gas leak… not so much about the spark."

She relaxes. "I was asleep when the fire started. Sorry I can't help you there. Chase carried me outside to safety." She nestles her head into his shoulder.

Chase pulls away slightly, giving her a puzzled look. "No I didn't."

She gazes up at him. "Yeah, you did."

He shakes his head slowly. "I went to try to stop the fire. By the time I gave up, there was no way to get upstairs."

Mila sits up straighter, looking alarmed. "Oh my god. Someone did. Some guy carried me out of the house and laid me down on the grass. I thought you saved my life, Chase."

He shrugs helplessly. "I had no idea. I'm glad they did it. Can we pretend it was me?"

"No, seriously—if you didn't, who did?" She looks at me.

"It had to be Ryan," I say.

"Ew." She shudders.

Chase casts her a sidelong glance. "What's wrong with Ryan?"

"Nothing," she says. "It just feels wrong. It should have been you."

Chase looks uncomfortable. There's always that unspoken rivalry between him and Ryan. But it also does feel wrong in a way I can't articulate. It's not because she was Chase's girlfriend. And I wish I could say that none of us needed saving. But that's not the truth. Emily needed saving. I guess the unsettling part is that Ryan came back for Mila, but left Emily behind.

"I guess I have some questions for Ryan now," Chase says, ruffling Mila's hair.

I sigh. "Me too. I wish he'd stuck around."

Chase looks at me in surprise. "What?"

"Kennedy told me he packed his bags and left a note. I guess things got a little too intense. I know he was having a hard time."

Chase looks crestfallen. "He should have woken us to say goodbye." He chews the side of his cheek thoughtfully. "I wish you wouldn't worry about whatever you saw. It was just us three on the boat—kind of hard to board without anyone noticing. You were asleep on the couch. We came out here and…" He starts to drift, and I wave a hand in front of his face. "Clearly drank too much," he finishes, rubbing his eyes. "Jesus, I haven't blacked out since freshman year."

Mila looks thoughtful. "Did you actually see Ryan leave?"

"No."

"Then he's probably still here."

Chase and I both turn to her. "Why?"

"I heard him, up in the attic." She eyes me. "I figured it was you at first. Insomnia and all. I couldn't sleep with the footsteps pacing back and forth all night." Mila turns to Chase. "That's why I woke you and suggested a moonlight sail. It's quiet on the water." She looks at me. "When we found you on the couch, I realized it couldn't have been you in the attic. Kennedy was with us—so it had to be Ryan. Probably creeping around, basking in the death sparkles of his sister."

I make a face and she returns it. It's comforting, in a way. It makes it feel like things are still sort of cosmically balanced. No one believes in anything, and Mila thinks I'm a loser.

"Kennedy said she found his note just before you went out," I offer.

Mila shakes her head. "I was the last to leave, and I heard the footsteps again as I left."

"But why would Kennedy lie about Ryan leaving?" I say.

Mila shrugs. "Maybe she didn't. Maybe he lied to her." That gets my attention. He could have left the note to fake Kennedy out and then stuck around to investigate unseen. But why wouldn't he tell me?

"I'm sure it's all a misunderstanding." Chase takes off his T-shirt and hands it to me. "You must be freezing." I strip off my soaking T-shirt and pull his on. It's like wearing a dress. It's strange how the temperature drops so quickly from day to night. The chill of the lake air hangs on your bones, seeps into you. It sucks the heat right out of every cell in your body. Chase and Mila seem calmer now, the odd events of this evening forgotten. But then, they didn't see that figure disappear under the water. They didn't wake up on the dock, soaking wet in the dark. For all they know, I'm lying about everything. It must be nice to be believed. By the time I reach the dock, Kennedy is gone. Up ahead, the lights in the house seem to glow brighter, the kind of unnatural brightness that hurts to look at, and suddenly blink off all at once.

"Did you see that?" I whisper.

"Seriously?" Mila groans.

"Blackout," Chase says with a hint of uneasiness.

My eyes travel up to the attic. I could have sworn that before the lights snapped off, I did see something. A shadow, a blur. I take a careful step onto the dock and begin to walk quickly toward the house. If Ryan is still there, I want to get to him before Kennedy does.