Chapter 39

I link my arm aroundChase's. No one is going swimming tonight, regardless of how many people it pisses off. Not after the dripping man's appearance on the dock this afternoon. And the girl on the stairs in my bedroom. And the glass shattering in Mila's hand has me nervous too. And the cellar door slamming. Something is wrong. "Help me in the kitchen, Chay. I need your strong man arms."

Resentment flashes in Mila's eyes, but she holds her tongue and Chase allows me to guide him through the French doors. I shut them behind him and lean against the cool metal of the refrigerator.

He hops onto the counter and looks at me expectantly. "I assume it's my strong man ears you're really interested in."

I hedge for a moment, absently tapping an empty glass with my fingertips. Glasses don't just shatter. It's the sort of thing the dead do when they're upset. It's very hard to dismiss it as an accident. "I'm sorry about what Emily said. It was out of context."

"I figured."

"But you can't go swimming tonight. Or ever without me. I have to be there."

He rolls his eyes. "Yes, Mommy dearest."

"I mean it. No waiting until I'm asleep and sneaking out. It's dangerous." An unsettling feeling creeps over me, and I place the glass quickly back on the drying rack.

Chase sighs heavily. "You used to be fun, Kennedy."

That one hurts. "You used to be nice."

We look at each other awkwardly for a moment.

"I didn't mean that," he says finally.

I should echo him. But I don't. I don't believe him. And I don't believe he's going to listen to me. That scares me more than anything else right now. This secret is wearing me down. It's exhausting. I feel like a hypocrite keeping anything from Chelsea while holding a grudge against her for keeping things from me. She should be the first to know. But at the same time, that's the reason I can't tell her. She won't come clean about Ryan. If only she would just tell me the truth.

But Chase. Chase is my oldest friend. Chase has always had my back. I would trust Chase with my life.

And if I keep this secret any longer, I will break.

I take a deep breath. "How do you feel about ghosts?"

Chase bursts out laughing. "Is my ghost story freaking you out? It was a joke. Dead is dead." He reaches for Mila's purse sitting out on the counter and pulls out a clove cigarette. I shake my head at him, and he shrugs and places the cigarette between his lips without lighting it. "Life is short and then you die."

This is going to be harder than I thought. I close the kitchen window. It's getting cooler outside, and the cold is slowly seeping into the house. "Sure. But after that. More things in heaven and earth. Et cetera."

He flicks his imaginary ash on my nose. "There's a difference between what has yet to be discovered—like the universe beyond what technology allows us to explore—and fairy tales. Infinite things that we can't imagine exist because they're beyond the scope of what we know. But ghosts aren't. We can imagine them. We made them up. They are dreamt of in our philosophy. That's all they are. A dream."

"Cool speech."

"But?"

"What if they're more than that?" I feel a warmth surrounding me, their warmth. And for a moment I'm filled with hope. They aren't always angry or upset. They used to be my friends. "You're looking at ‘your philosophy' as all of human knowledge. But all you really know is what you've seen for yourself. People have witnessed things. You know I'm an evidence girl. But there are studies documenting cases of people showing cognition while their hearts are stopped, for example. Some scientists theorize our minds live hours after our hearts stop. They used to believe it was seconds. What if the line keeps moving? Science is a process of discovery."

"You know better than to take anecdotes as global fact. And there are scientific explanations for the phenomenon of walking toward the light, life flashing before your eyes—it's the process of the brain dying."

"Well, what about the cross-dimensional theory? Ghosts could be a time-space glitch," I say desperately.

"Maybe if string theory actually held up," he says condescendingly. Then he eyes me curiously. "You've put way too much thought into this." I have. I've spent years of my life researching every possible way to scientifically justify my experiences. But nothing can explain the unexplainable. You can't experience the brain death of another human being. If it were simply a phenomenal crossroads of remarkably similar coexistent universes, why do they look dead? How can there simply be a universe identical to our own in which the dead live? It sounds too similar to traditional notions of the afterlife. A story I'm telling myself to explain the unexplainable. To comfort myself about something truly unsettling. The fact is that I see things that are not there. There is no evidence that what I see and feel is real. People like me are placed in hospitals, given pills, and treated as defective. But I am not defective. I just can't prove what I know to be true.

I draw a deep, shaky breath. It's now or never. "If someone experiences something you can't explain, you have three choices. You can take it on faith, rule it out definitively, or just accept that your reality isn't theirs, and you might not know everything there is to know."

He stares at me. "Okay. What is there to know? What can you personally vouch for? Because I don't buy into stories, but I'll believe anything that comes from you. I trust you, Ken."

Say it.My grandmother's cuckoo clock ticks in the hall. Say it. A moth circles the ceiling lamp. Say. Time slows down. Say. The air in the room grows warm and thick. Say.

He's lying. It's the same line my parents and the doctors and the social workers fed me to get me to talk in order to draw their various conclusions. Imaginary friends. Suppressed anxiety. Projections of trauma, the root of which couldn't be weeded out. Everything but the truth. Chase doesn't know what to do with the truth.

The truth is, there's a place at the lake house only two of us know.

Under the boardwalk, in the deep, dark dirt. We dug a little grave, Chase and I, and laid the bones of the rabbit to rest. It didn't seem right to tell Chelsea. She had been so incredibly upset by the discovery of its tiny body in the cellar. I'm not sure whether Emily was actually upset or just mirroring Chelsea. We did that sometimes. It was how we learned to relate. I understand that now. There is so little that we genuinely share anymore.

Anyway.

Something had to be done. I couldn't let my father drop the body into a dumpster or toss it in the woods to be picked over by owls and coyotes. I know that's how nature operates. But people don't. We bury our beloved.

Every year I plant white roses along the path. Every year they die. The ground is much too soft for roses; the shade too gentle.

I hope that's the reason.

Chase has been a good friend. He didn't hesitate when I asked for his help, and he's never spoken a word. He never knew who the rabbit was, only that I felt it deserved a final resting place. And he knew how to dig a grave. Even as a child, his arms were strong. We snuck out after dark and retrieved two spades from the shed, then the body from the trash can. We dug on our hands and knees in the dirt, a deep hole, deep enough that storms wouldn't bring it back to surface. There wasn't much moon that night, and it misted periodically, and by the time we were done, we were covered in mud.

We tucked the garbage bag around the body like a shroud, to protect her for a while, then lowered her carefully, and whispered the Gettysburg Address, which we agreed was the best non-religious text to recite at a funeral and was fresh in our minds from Mrs. Oglebie's class. We washed the mud off ourselves at the edge of the dock and headed back to the house when they finally arrived.

They didn't show themselves; that time was over.

Instead, there was the sound of feet, light, quick, beginning from the far end of the boardwalk, by the stone table, gathering speed in the darkness. My heart raced as I stared down the planks, empty and bare. The footsteps grew louder, nearer, as the sound rushed straight through me. It was the oddest feeling, like having an X-ray taken. You search your body for a sensation, and even though you find none, you know something has made contact. The footsteps continued down toward the dock, and my throat squeezed as I realized they were heading toward the lake, toward the dripping man, but before I could cry out, there was a sudden, chilling silence, and then a tremendous splash.

Chase turned toward the water, looking startled. It's the only time he's ever witnessed them, or their wake, anyway, and he hasn't spoken a word about it since.

"Stay away from my house," I whispered.

But it wasn't my house. It's never been my house. The dead always have the upper hand. They see every move we make. They know our darkest secrets.

We buried a body under those boards.

That cannot be undone.

"It's just an old family legend," I say now. I can't tell Chase my secret. What I've seen; what I know. I'll never say it. What's the point? He won't hear me.

He grins, but there's annoyance underneath. "What does that have to do with night swimming? Which, may I add, we do every year?"

"Not without a Hartford. And I'm not going this year." I take his cigarette and toss it into the trash. "Legend or no legend, rules are rules." I look him in the eye. "Right?"

His grin doesn't fade. Neither does the resentment beneath the surface. "You got it."

Back in the living room, Emily is sunk even deeper into the couch. I want to say something comforting, but I don't feel like speaking to her yet. She hasn't apologized, and it strikes me that she never apologizes for anything. I apologize when I mess up, and I do mess up. Chelsea apologizes. Chase, even Ryan. But Emily. Somehow, whenever we fight, it is someone else's fault. She is always the victim, no matter how deeply twisted things get. Like her half-truth to Mila earlier, or to Chelsea about the heirloom. I never told her to insinuate that Chelsea stole anything. What I said was that she should throw my mother under the bus. No one would get mad at my mom for banning me from having friends over the way they would hate me for ending our long-standing tradition. Emily twisted that, and I honestly don't know if Chelsea has ever forgiven me. Emily should have apologized then. And she should apologize now. Any real friend would feel horrible for what she did.

Ryan barely glances up when I walk into the room. He tosses a pack of cards to Chelsea. "Texas Hold'em?"

Chelsea looks to me. "What do you want to do?"

I shrug. "Poker sounds fine."

Emily stands abruptly and stalks upstairs. In a moment I can hear stomping footsteps in the attic.

"I think she's waiting for you to apologize," Ryan says as he deals, without meeting my eyes.

"You've got to be kidding me." I snatch my cards off the table. "You saw—" Then I realize that he doesn't know what actually happened. Only Chelsea and Emily know. It's best that way. Contain. Defuse.

"You really hurt her." He darts his eyes to Chelsea as if looking for backup.

Chelsea clears her throat. "Actually, the thing is, maybe we've all been hurting her. By encouraging this thing with Chase that doesn't exist. Or even not actively discouraging it. You know what I mean?"

He looks taken aback. "I would never hurt my sister on purpose."

"Right, not on purpose. But maybe by not being completely clear about how it is." Chelsea places her cards down. "I fold."

"You don't want any cards?" Ryan taps the deck a few times.

"Fine."

Ryan deals her a card.

"I call," she says.

He hands me a card. "Kennedy?"

"Raise." I place a chip down, and Chelsea reluctantly matches it. Crap hand.

"We all pretty much agree Chase isn't interested, right? I mean, Emily is so special. She's smart, she's pretty, she's unique, she's talented. Chase appreciates that. There's just no spark on his end. It's no one's fault." It suddenly occurs to me that what Chelsea is saying sounds suspiciously like a breakup speech. And I'm sitting in the middle of it. I try to catch her eye to signal bad idea, but she's focused intently on Ryan. I love her to death, but reading the room is not among her strengths.

"Yeah," Ryan says. "I guess that's true."

"False hope is painful," Chelsea says.

Ryan deals her another card, slowly this time, his eyes trained on the deck. "It is."

"Shit. I mean, hmm." She assumes her best poker face, which is terrible. "I call."

I take my next card. Pair of queens. It isn't great, but it doesn't look like she has anything. "Raise you twenty."

"Twenty? I'm out." She tosses her cards down, and I show my hand. "Oh, come on. I had three twos."

Ryan picks up her cards to verify. "Then why did you fold?"

She shrugs. "Kennedy always wins."

Ryan drops his head into his forearm and laughs, and when he raises his head, his face is flushed. "When did you start thinking you were better than me?" His eyes are bright, almost feverish, as he stares desperately at Chelsea. I feel like I've evaporated, an invisible witness.

Chelsea's mouth drops open in dismay. "I never thought that."

I scramble to my feet and make a dash for the kitchen. "The dishes," I mumble incoherently, slamming the doors behind me and collapsing against them, my heart tumbling in my chest. There can't be another fight now, but I'm human and weak, and I need this to end. I need Ryan and Chelsea to be definitively over, and I need to know it for sure. I press my head against the wall, straining to hear over the sound of my racing heart in my ears.

"We used to laugh at them. Golden boy and gossip girl." Ryan's voice is low and difficult to make out. "They have it so easy. They have everything and they still want. I've only ever wanted one thing, you know this." I feel dizzy, like I'm having an out-of-body experience. This is a scene from a movie, but in the movies, it's a romance, and the guy gets the girl. In real life, it's horrific. He doesn't deserve her just because he wants her. She doesn't want him. It hits me so hard then, how much I've tortured myself pointlessly with questions. Whatever happened in the past, she doesn't want him, she never did—not while we were together. The only time that matters.

"Everyone wants," she says softly. "It's human."

"I love you, Chelsea." His voice cracks and I close my eyes. This is not happening. Not here. Not now. "You know Kennedy doesn't get you the way I do. You don't have to lie to me, because I know you and I love every bit of who you are. You don't have to live up to any bullshit standard. You're perfect to me, Chelsea. And you know I would do anything for you. I would. You know all of this is true. And I would never, never let you go."

"You have to," she snaps. There's an awful, gaping silence.

"Please, Chelsea." His voice goes whisper soft; the house is silent. "You're the only thing that makes sense anymore."

"I know it feels that way." Chelsea's voice is muffled, and I force myself not to look through the glass pane of the door, but I know his arms are around her, her face pressed into his shoulder. I know she's holding on to her friendship, afraid that saying the wrong thing will shatter it, and he's desperate to cling to something else. It hurts to hear.

"Then there's nothing left for me here," he says, bitterness saturating every word.

"I'm still here," she says.

"You are so long gone." He laughs dully. "I've been holding on to a fucking ghost."

I hear the door slam and peek my head back into the room. Chelsea is still sitting cross-legged on the floor, sobbing into her hands.

"I said nothing to make him believe—"

"I know." I put an arm around her.

She leans into me. "It was only a few months." Her voice hitches as she presses her face into my shoulder, and I feel her sob into me, the energy of her sorrow flowing through me like an electric current. "I was sad," she says, sounding so worn down I want to wrap her in layers of blankets and let her sleep for a week. "And I missed you so much." Her body relaxes as if the hurt is flowing out. "And he loved me. I still care about him. I should have told you, shouldn't I? I was so afraid. I couldn't bury the hope that you and I might get back together."

"Neither could I." I kiss her hand. It feels warm and feverish.

"Everyone said if you ever found out, you wouldn't forgive me."

I pull back and look at her. "Everyone said that?"

Chelsea pauses for a moment. "Emily."

Emily.

"Well, she was wrong. I broke up with you. You're allowed to fall for someone else. If you'd just been honest… I was afraid it wasn't completely over between you and Ryan."

"It was. It is. He just can't let it go." Her expression darkens.

But before I can answer, there's a huge splash outside.

The wave of cold crashes over me so quickly, so violently, that for a second I'm stunned speechless.

I close my eyes. "Son of a mother."