Dead Silence

by Kimberly Derting

  Yet it didn’t stop people from fishing, swimming, rafting, and tubing this very same river. The shore where she and Jay stood now stretched into a long sandy beach along the water’s edge, and still had the charred remnants of summer bonfires.

  “Beer Bottle Beach . . . don’t you remember? Your mom used to drop us off here? We used to go inner tubing in the summer.” The beach probably had an official name given to it by the county or the parks department, but everyone called it Beer Bottle Beach . . . a name it had had for as long as Violet could remember.

  His voice was low and husky. “Of course I remember. What I meant was, why are we here?”

  Her feet sunk into the sand as she faced him, tears stinging her eyes. “Jay.” She hated that she sounded like she was pleading now, and she wished that she could be tougher . . . stronger. “I told Chelsea everything.” She wanted to tell him the rest, to explain what she meant by that, but already her voice was wobbling, on the verge of breaking. She took a breath, trying to collect herself.

  A soft breeze spilled over her skin, and above them headlights shone down on them as a car crossed the bridge. Just for a moment, she could see him clearer, and she knew that he could see her too as the tears she’d fought against spilled onto her cheeks.

  He looked stupefied. “What . . . what do you mean, you told Chelsea?” His voice no longer sounded husky or quiet. “What are you talking about, Violet? You didn’t tell her what you could do? Not about . . .” He frowned, as if just saying it, even here, while they were all alone, was too much to share. “Not about the bodies?”

  But already she was nodding, and even in the faded lights, she knew he understood. He raked his hand through his hair. “Are you crazy? That’s not what I wanted. That was never what I wanted. I want you to be honest with me. With me, Vi. Not to put yourself in danger by telling other people.”

  He took a single step away from her, and then seemed to think better of it and came back, positioning himself directly in front of her. If he’d had any notions about being aloof and cool, they were gone now, vanished with the admission of what she’d done.

  “Dammit,” he cursed.

  “Jay . . .” She closed the distance as she reached for him. When her fingertips brushed the coarse hairs on his arm, heat flushed her face, rushing all the way to her belly. Suddenly she wanted to rip his shirt off, regardless of how inappropriate the timing seemed. “It’s just Chelsea. I trust her.” She let her fingers move down, feeling their way along the sinewy muscles of his forearm, letting her thumb trace a circle around his wrist bone, moving until her hand was beneath his, their palms touching. “We can trust her.”

  He moved then too, his fingers snapping closed around her hand in a sudden, swift movement that startled her, making her breath catch. Her pulse hammered against the base of her throat. “It’s not that you told Chelsea that bothers me,” he said warningly. “It’s that the more people who know—no matter who they are, no matter how trustworthy they are—the more likely it is to get out. Don’t you get it?” His grip lessened as he tugged her, so softly she didn’t even realize at first that she was being tugged. She was standing so close to him that she could practically feel his heartbeat across the distance. His eyes, normally playful and gentle and ready to smile, were on hers, brimming now with something intense and urgent as he willed her to understand.

  Violet held her breath as she frowned. “I didn’t want to lie anymore,” she tried again.

  But Jay was shaking his head. “No, Vi. You’re wrong. You’ve got this all wrong.” And suddenly they were no longer standing apart; they were no longer separated by the breadth of their heartbeats. Jay was squeezing her against him, crushing her. Not hugging or stroking her, but crushing her. She felt his fingers clawing at the back of her shirt, balling the thin fabric in his fists as he clutched her to him, and she could feel the days and weeks and months of frustration and fear and whatever else he’d been holding back come pouring out of him as he groaned achingly into her curls . . .

  . . . And he crushed her.

  She might have complained—needing to breathe and all—but instead she remained still, and silent, waiting for him to regain himself as he rocked and squeezed her. She concentrated on the fact that he was touching her at long last, and that through the small gasps she was able to take, his T-shirt smelled of car grease and Irish Spring soap, exactly like it should smell. Like him. And that she’d missed that smell more than she’d ever thought possible.

  After a few agonizing minutes, he exhaled, dropping his chin against the top of her head. “I want you to lie. You need to lie, Violet. Just not to me.”

  She wanted to nod and tell him she would, that she would lie her ass off . . . whatever he wanted her to do as long as he’d keep holding her like this. And maybe if he’d take his shirt off too. But she knew that wasn’t an option. “I can’t. No more lies. No more secrets, Jay. Besides, Chelsea already knows. There’s no going back now.”

  He shook his head, but didn’t let go. “Fine,” he said, and she swore his grip tightened again when he said it. “But that’s it. Swear to me that Chelsea’s the last one, you won’t tell anyone else.”

  “I can’t do that either. I might have to tell someone else,” she said, but she was grinning now because it was hard to take him seriously when he’d let go of her shirt and his hand was moving low across the base of her spine. He was making it hard to think about anything but the path his hand was taking. She wiggled against him, and he groaned again, but this time for an entirely different reason than he had before.

  She stopped then, realizing that she still had things she needed to tell him, and if she didn’t tell him now, she’d feel like she was still keeping secrets from him. “Wait,” she said, taking the barest step back and reaching for his hand, forcing him to pay attention. “I need you to know something. My imprint . . . it’s gone.”

  It was his turn to go motionless, his hand falling away from hers. “Gone? How is that . . . ? How?”

  Without waiting, Violet told him, before she could change her mind. “It was Rafe. Rafe got rid of it for me.” She explained to him about her grandmother’s journals, about the way the echoes and imprints vanished when the heart was separated from the body. She described what Rafe had done to Caine’s body for her.

  She told him, too, about Dr. Lee, his involvement in the Circle of Seven, the sleeping pills he’d been giving her. Everything.

  And Jay listened. Wordlessly.

  When she was finished, she reached up and absently smoothed a stray hair away from his forehead. He stopped her, catching her hand and her awareness. “Why do you think he did it?” he asked, and Violet strained to see him better in the dull light.

  “Dr. Lee?” she asked back, being intentionally obtuse. She knew exactly who he meant.

  “Rafe.” He said the name with obvious distaste. “Why do you think he would risk so much for you? He’d get in a lot of trouble if he got caught.”

  Violet shrugged, still warring with that part of herself that wanted to avoid the truth. But she couldn’t be that girl anymore, not with Jay. Shaking her head, as if her internal struggle had reached the surface, she said, “For a lot of reasons, I guess. Because he’s my teammate. Because he’s my friend.” She shrugged again as she glanced away from him. “But mostly because he likes me. I think he’s always liked me.” Her voice had gone soft, and was muffled by the river behind them.

  Shame filled her like the icy waters beyond.

  She remembered once, when she and Jay had come to the river on a clear May day—far too early in the year for the sun to have warmed the waters that were just beginning to melt off the glaciers, trickling down from the mountains. But they’d decided it was warm enough to go swimming, and they’d searched the shoreline for a good spot, finally finding a place where the water pooled away from the rocks, where it was still and deep and calm.

  They’d stripped down to their underwear under the late spring sun, and had climbed up into a
tree that hung over the spot. Without so much as testing the water with their toes, they’d clutched each other’s hands, and on the count of three, they had jumped.

  If their parents had known what they’d done that day, they’d have been grounded for life.

  But Violet could still remember how the too-cold water had felt when they’d plunged into it. The way a million frost-tipped needles had skewered her skin all at once, making her want to gasp even as water filled her nose and mouth. The way her lungs had compressed in on themselves, feeling as if they would shut down and might never breathe air again. The way every muscle in her body had felt paralyzed and her legs had refused to kick even when she’d started sinking toward the bottom.

  She felt that way now. That’s how the shame of not telling Jay about Rafe’s feelings sooner felt . . . like needles and squeezed lungs and useless muscles.

  And just like that day in the bitter waters of the river, it was Jay who saved her, who dragged her to the surface as he held on to her.

  His hand on hers was safe and solid . . . and lifesaving. “And what about you, Vi?” he questioned, pulling her gaze back to his just like that. “Who do you like?”

  She would have come up coughing and sputtering, the same way she had when he’d pulled her out of the river, but this answer was easy and came to her lips without a second thought. “You, Jay. It’s always been you. It always will be you.”

  He reached for her then, and she was off her feet in an instant, giggling breathlessly as they landed in the sand beneath them. “I knew you’d say that,” he told her as he buried his face in the hair that curled wildly around the side of her face.

  The sand was still warm from the late summer day, and it molded around them, cradling them. “Then why’d you ask?” she insisted, already breathless and surrendering to his touch.

  She could feel him grinning as his lips brushed over hers. “Because I wanted to hear you say it.” And then he kissed her, his tongue slipping past her lips, and the sounds of the river faded, along with the light of the bridge and the worry of secrets kept and those revealed.

  “Wait,” she gasped, whispering as she reached up and pushed him away from her. She tried to sound serious as her heart hammered painfully inside her chest, but it was so terribly hard with him watching her like that, his eyes wide and expectant.

  “What is it?” he asked, his breath hot against her own.

  She grinned back at him, feeling devious and wanton. “I’m gonna need you to take off your shirt now.”

  CHAPTER 13

  “GRADY! GRADY, WAIT UP!” VIOLET SHOVED HER way through the crowded hallway, hoping he could hear her above the ruckus. Hoping he’d care enough that it was her calling for him to stop.

  She doubted he really wanted to talk to anyone at the moment. He hadn’t exactly received a warm “Welcome back!” from the student body. It was more like the cold shoulder with a side of “What are you looking at, creep?”

  It didn’t matter that the police had exonerated him, and that no charges had actually been filed against him. The damage had already been done. In the eyes of the White River student body—maybe in those of everyone in Buckley—Grady was a murderer. Or at least close enough.

  Violet was panting after chasing him up a second flight of stairs, weaving her way in and around students in her path. When she heard Grady’s name being passed between two girls who weren’t even trying to keep their voices down, Violet glared at them.

  “Get a good earful?” one of the girls sneered at Violet. “This is a private conversation, why don’t you mind your own beeswax?”

  Violet thought about stopping, about confronting the two of them right there in the hallway, but she hesitated on the words beeswax, giving them each a second glance. They were young . . . freshmen probably. Ninth graders. What kind of bully would that make her if she lit into them, even if they deserved to be set straight?

  She shot them an impatient glare, deciding to ignore their ignorance. “Grady,” she called again, when she saw him lingering in front of a bank of lockers.

  He glanced up when he heard her, and she saw the look in his eyes—the one that said he wasn’t sure whether to stand there and wait for her, or to dart away. To disappear into the crowd and avoid her—and everyone else—altogether.

  She couldn’t blame him really. She was sure it had been rough so far . . . and it was only halfway through his first day back.

  Opening his locker, he shuffled through papers and books as she approached.

  “I was starting to wonder if you were ever coming back,” she said, suddenly feeling awkward and unsure. She wanted him to know he had an ally, but she also remembered that not so long ago she’d wanted nothing more than to avoid him. The same way everyone else was doing now.

  “Me too,” he said, digging a book out of his backpack and shoving it in his locker. “I probably wouldn’t have if my parents hadn’t’a gotten sick of watching me play Call of Duty all day. But, hey, lucky for me everyone’s excited to see me.” His voice sounded flat . . . empty. “Look at them. I’m, like, some sorta pariah.” He nodded down the hallway, and almost all the kids in the vicinity pretended they hadn’t just been watching him seconds before as all eyes shot in different directions. “They won’t even look at me.”

  “That’s not true.” Violet touched his arm. “I’m glad you’re back.”

  “Yeah, well, you might be the only one. No one’ll even talk to me.” He rummaged around in his locker some more. “I might as well have done it.”

  Violet tried to imagine being in his shoes, to have everyone talking about you, wondering what kind of person you are. Wondering whether or not you really were a killer.

  She watched as he pulled out the same book he’d just put into his locker. He held it in his hands, looking at it as if it were foreign, as if trying to remember what he’d come there for.

  “Come on,” she told him, reaching out and slamming his locker door shut. “Come have lunch with me. With us,” she insisted. Jay would have to accept Grady’s presence. At least until some newer, better, juicier bit of gossip came along and bumped Grady back out of the limelight.

  She thought he might argue with her; in fact she’d expected it. Instead, he looked down at her gratefully. “Are you sure?” he asked, and she just nodded.

  She chatted the entire way, mostly to draw his attention away from the fact that everyone was staring.

  But even more unsettling were the gapes and stares they got from the people at her own table when she and Grady sat down. Together.

  “Really?” Gemma leaned in, getting close enough to her ear that Grady couldn’t hear her. “Now the two of you are BFFs?”

  Violet shrugged the other girl off, the way she’d tried to do with everyone else all day. She didn’t need her own friends making things worse. She didn’t need their judge-y attitudes too.

  She leveled her gaze on Claire and Jules and Chelsea, daring each of them, as pointedly as she could, to say something. Anything. And then Jay joined them, and she directed it at him too.

  Not a word, she hoped the look conveyed, in no uncertain terms.

  But Rafe didn’t get the memo, and he was right at Jay’s heels. “Killer jacket, man,” he told Grady as he dropped down next to Chelsea, directly across from Violet.

  Chelsea choked on the chocolate milk she’d been chugging, and came up sputtering. Jules reached over and patted her on the back, entirely too hard to be any kind of serious attempt to help her friend.

  “Oh my god, Rafe, did you have to go there?” Violet admonished.

  Rafe shrugged. “What? It’s a nice jacket.”

  Violet glanced at the letterman’s jacket Grady was wearing and tried to imagine a world in which Rafe might actually envy it. This certainly wasn’t that place.

  “It’s okay, Vi,” Grady said, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. “Might as well get it over with. I figured I’d get some crap about what happened. But being back here was way worse than I
expected. At least he’s talking to me.”

  Rafe lifted his brows at Violet as if to say, See?

  “A little warning, next time? I think some of that milk went up my nose,” Chelsea complained, pretending to scowl at Rafe. But she wasn’t fooling anyone. A scowl from Chelsea was as good as an eye-bat from any other girl. She was definitely flirting.

  “Must suck to be back,” Rafe offered Grady. “This isn’t exactly the most open-minded place I’ve ever been.”

  Grady shrugged, taking a bite of his sandwich. “It beats the hell outta going to juvie, I guess.”

  Rafe half shrugged, half nodded. It probably was better than juvie, the gesture said, but also, whatever. Rafe’s usual response to just about everything.

  Gemma caught Rafe’s attention then, from the other side of the table, and whatever message she was trying to convey to him, Rafe seemed to understand. He nodded and reached into his pocket. Violet watched as his hand dropped to his lap, his focus directed downward. He was checking his phone.

  Gemma elbowed her too, a quick, discreet nudge that no one else should’ve noticed.

  Except that someone had. Someone who’d been watching Violet a little too closely all day. Someone who was a little too fascinated by her, and what she could do.

  Chelsea.

  “What the frik was that all about?” Chelsea asked, falling into step beside Violet.

  Violet glanced up at Jay, who was on the other side of her, and he looked back at her, puzzled. “What was what, Chels?” he asked.

  “Okay, one,” she started, ticking off her list of complaints, “I wasn’t talking to you. And two,” she continued, looking meaningfully at Violet now, “I’m talking about that weirdness between you and Rafe and Blondie. That’s what.”

  Inwardly, Violet sighed. Outwardly, she braced herself. This was exactly the part of her ability she’d avoided discussing with Chelsea: her team.