by Hannah Jayne
“I didn’t feel well, so we left after, like, an hour.”
“So you spent an hour on the beach, listening to the waves. Did it bring up—”
Brynna uncrossed her legs and slumped in her chair. “I said it was like an hour. Less though.”
“So forty-five minutes?”
Brynna wouldn’t meet the doctor’s gaze, and the doctor’s eyebrows went up.
“Thirty minutes? Really, any amount of time is making progress.”
That’s good, Brynna thought. Because she was out of the car and back inside in less than fifteen minutes.
“And you said the breathing exercises have been helping you.”
Brynna nodded, and Dr. Rother gave her a tight-lipped “yay, you!” kind of smile.
They stayed that way, Brynna plain-faced and Dr. Rother giving off her good-feeling vibes. Then she opened her mouth. “Now that you’re enjoying more things at Hawthorne High, have you given any consideration to the swim team?”
Brynna felt her mouth drop open. “I practically had a panic attack at the sight of the ocean.”
“A pool isn’t the ocean, Brynna.”
She hated it when Dr. Rother used her name and hated it more when she pinned her with that psychotherapist stare. Brynna sucked in a shallow breath. “I know. I just—I’m not ready yet. And honestly, it’s not like I miss it.”
But that was a lie. Lying in bed at night, Brynna couldn’t get comfortable, missing the freedom that the water used to give her. It was in those long nights, in those desperate, confusing moments when Brynna thought about the drugs again, the way the memories—everything—hung on her periphery when she was high, the edges of her thoughts becoming soft, barely recognizable.
She’d lost count of how many beers she’d had. The keg was empty, tossed out on the grass like a giant soda can, and everyone around her seemed to have their own full cups or hidden flasks of booze. She needed something because the beer wasn’t working. She could still see Erica’s face; she could still hear her voice. She didn’t have to go upstairs, back to the party, to know they were all talking about her, pointing at her. “That’s her, that’s Brynna Chase. She kept swimming while her best friend drowned.”
She barely noticed the tears dripping over her cheeks, and she barely noticed when he sat down. She knew him from school—his name was Campbell or something—and she had steered clear of him because he was supposed to be bad. But he looked at her with a kindly smile now, with a cocked head.
“You look like you could use a pick-me-up,” he said, his friendly smile widening.
Brynna couldn’t remember if she replied or just nodded. But she remembered his hand, outstretched, palm up.
“Go ahead,” he said, gesturing toward his hand with his chin. “This one’s on me.”
Brynna almost salivated, desperate for the oblivion she got from just two of those tiny little pills. They were best when mixed with beer. They obliterated everything when she took three.
But she couldn’t tell Dr. Rother that. The doctor prodded, but Brynna wouldn’t tell her the truth. She couldn’t tell her that it was better when she smoked or drank. Not because she couldn’t feel the pain, but because she couldn’t feel anything. Then Brynna would think of her parents on the day she was released from rehab; they were smiling, her mother teary, but sadness overwhelmed them. Something worse than sadness—disappointment. The guilt still stung her.
Dr. Rother’s eyes flicked to the clock on the back wall. She closed her file and nodded, still smiling. “I really think you’re making some good progress here, Brynna. It may not seem like much, but you have gone through a significant trauma.”
Being a drunken addict or daring my best friend to die? Brynna wanted to ask.
When she left Dr. Rother’s office, her mother was waiting in the parking lot, engine running. Like she did every time Brynna left the office, she offered her a bright smile and a large mocha with extra whipped cream.
“Everything go okay, hon?”
Brynna nodded and took a large gulp, liking the feel of the liquid as it burned her throat. “Yeah, fine.”
Her mother turned the wheel, and Brynna leaned against her seat, lazy eyes scanning the tiny town of Crescent City. There really was nothing here. A half-forgotten case of urban sprawl with a spanking-new mall that hardly anyone went to and a housing development with gorgeous homes for great prices for people who wanted to live in the middle of nowhere. She sighed and was ready to close her eyes when a clutch of bright purple fabric caught her eye. It was a hooded sweatshirt in the Lincoln High colors—a shocking, unmatchable purple with a marigold trim—and it was on a girl with a waist-length, glossy black ponytail.
Erica.
She was in a crowd, wrestling her way into the coffeehouse across the street.
“Mom, stop!”
“What? My god, Brynna, what is it? I’ve got coffee all over my lap.”
But Brynna had already stopped listening. She kicked the door open and launched herself out of the car, barely feeling the hot pricks of liquid as her paper coffee cup exploded on the pavement.
“Erica!” Brynna called, running across the street and pushing her way through the crowd. “Erica!”
People turned with angry expressions as she bumped into them, elbowed at them, and tried to get through. But all she was aware of was the pounding of her heart and her need to find Erica.
“Brynna!” Her mother was behind her now, apologizing, grabbing at Brynna’s arm.
Brynna spun. “Erica’s here, Mom. She’s here. I saw her!”
The coffeehouse went dead quiet, all eyes on Brynna. Suddenly, the smell of roasting beans and burnt coffee was cloying, pressing the air out of her lungs. Where was Erica?
“I saw her come in here.” Brynna rushed to the counter where the girl behind the register took a step back. “Did you just see a girl, about my age, with a purple Lincoln High sweatshirt on?” She patted her own head. “Her hair was in a ponytail. It was black and long.”
The barista held an empty coffee bag in one hand and a silver scoop in the other.
“What?”
Brynna slapped the counter. “A girl. Just now. A teenager. In a hooded purple sweatshirt.” She turned. “Did anyone—did anyone see the girl who just came in here?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sweetheart, but no one who looks like that came in here.” A heavyset man with a bushy moustache that bled onto his lips answered Brynna.
“Bryn.” Her mother’s voice was soft, but her grip on Brynna’s arm was fierce. “You probably just thought you saw her.”
“No, Mom!” She shrugged off her mother’s hand and addressed the crowd. “No one saw her?” The desperation in Brynna’s voice was evident. Erica was here; she was alive. A tiny spark of hope—or was it fear?—dove through her as she looked at the startled faces around her. The blood rushed through her ears and then the quaking fear was back, the dark cloud that hung on her periphery: It couldn’t have been Erica because Erica is dead. Because I dared her, and she died.
The line of customers had migrated toward the counter as if Brynna was a crazy person—which was how she was beginning to feel as everyone stared, but no one spoke. Finally, the boy behind the cash register—a guy who looked about Brynna’s age, maybe a few years older, cleared his throat. “I’ve been here all morning and I didn’t see a girl like that come in here,” he said, his voice that sickening, soothing tone that Brynna had grown to loathe. “Maybe she went into the place next door.”
Brynna felt a lump grow in her throat as the hot tears pricked at the back of her eyes. “No,” she swung her head, whispering to the coffeehouse floor. “I know I saw her. She walked in here. I saw her. I know I did.”
Even as she said it, Brynna began to doubt herself.
“Sorry, everyone,” Brynna’s mother said, addressing t
he crowd. Brynna watched from the corner of her eye as her mother searched through her pocketbook, then dropped a few bills into the tip jar. “I—I—” Her mother started to stammer, and each time she tried to speak was like a stab to Brynna’s heart. “It’s just been a long morning. Come on, honey.”
The car ride to school was unbearably quiet, the miles stretching out in front of them. Finally, Brynna’s mother turned to her. “Honey—”
Brynna shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it, Mom. It was just—a mistake.” But even as she said it, she knew it was a lie.
•••
“Hey.”
Brynna started and dropped the books she was picking out of her locker. “Oh god, Teddy, you scared me.” She pressed a hand against her chest, certain her heart would eventually press right through.
“You’re really jumpy.”
Brynna felt herself flush. “Um, yeah, sorry about that.” She concentrated hard on gathering her books and closing her locker, spinning the combination lock. Part of her hoped Teddy would go away and let her be alone, but part of her was pulled into those warm, blue eyes, wanting to see his lopsided grin cross his face.
“You weren’t at the table this morning.”
Brynna waved her pink hall pass. “Appointment. Dentist. No big.”
“So hey,” Teddy started, falling into step with Brynna, “I wanted to ask you—”
“Brynna!” Evan was shooting toward them like a hurricane, kids bending back in his wake. “I’ve been looking for you, like, everywhere. Please tell me you have last night’s trig homework.”
Brynna looked apologetically at Teddy but was glad for the interruption. With Evan, everything was a screaming drama, and his loud theatrics amused Brynna, but more so, his involved stories and perceived personal tragedies stamped out any thought other than Evan.
“Yeah, no problem.” She turned to Teddy. “See you later?”
There was something in his eyes that Brynna hadn’t seen before, but he nodded and silently turned away.
The rest of the school day—only lunch and three more classes—passed uneventfully, and Brynna was happy. Or she would have been if the image of Erica disappearing into the coffeehouse—and then disappearing altogether—wasn’t still etched in her mind. Even as she was being jostled through the crowd of rushing students talking over her, slamming lockers, and the chorus of get-to-class bells, her mind rolled over and over the scene in the coffeehouse and the girl with the long, black ponytail. The second the bell rang, she snatched up her bag and made a beeline for her locker, then dug through a stash of old test papers and Chapstick tubes until she found her cell phone.
Her fingers shook as the phone downloaded her messages and email—a whole slew of messages about nothing in particular, and not a single one from Erica. Brynna’s shoulders ached as if an enormous weight had been taken off them.
“All right, Bryn, it’s homecoming season,” Evan said as he glided up behind her. “What are we going to do about it?”
Brynna blinked and blinked again, forcing her mind into the hallway, forcing herself to look at Evan. “Homecoming?”
Evan rolled his eyes. “That’s what I said.”
She started to smile. “You care about homecoming season?”
“Maybe. Got a problem with that?” Evan crossed his arms in front of his chest.
“Uh, no…”
Lauren stomped down the hall, eyes narrowed. “Brynna Chase, I hate you so much right now.”
Brynna’s stomach folded in on itself and she felt her eyes go wide. She knew that, eventually, someone at Hawthorne High would figure out what she did, who she was, but she wasn’t ready for it. Not now.
“What—what did I do?”
Lauren glared. Though Evan swore that they both had the same color hair once, Lauren’s was bright red now, with dipped black ends. They both had pale, fine-boned features, but even side-by-side, one might mistake them for distant cousins—not siblings and definitely not twins.
But with Lauren’s teeth-clenching glare, she looked more like her twin than ever. Evan had the lighter, more fun personality but eyes that could slice you with a look. Lauren tried to be as bubbly, but she had a streak of her father in her: intimidating and argumentative. He was a top-notch lawyer, and Brynna had no doubt that when Lauren grew up, she would be too. She had a way of telling jokes that were a little too serious and poking fun about things no one joked about. Basic questions sounded accusatory coming out of her mouth. Evan blamed it on the fact she never got over being the younger—by six minutes—twin.
“It’s what you didn’t do.” Lauren pushed an index finger in front of Brynna’s nose. “You never told me you were, like, a massive swimmer.”
Evan gaped. “What?”
“Oh, yeah, your Queen B here has been holding out on us.”
Brynna took a miniscule step back, heat washing over her as she crashed into the bank of lockers. “Where did you hear that?”
“Darcy works in the office third period, and your old school sent something over to you. I heard it was your varsity letter for the Lincoln swim team.”
Brynna clamped her jaws shut certain, if she didn’t, her thundering heart would burst out of her mouth.
“Okay, that has to be a mistake. Bryn hates the water. Don’t you, Bryn?”
Lauren mashed her palm against her brother’s chest. “They don’t give varsity letters to freshmen who hate the water.” She turned her eyes on Brynna. “So?”
“I, uh, I did swim—for a little bit, over at Lincoln.”
Lauren’s eyebrows went up. “Varsity?”
Brynna’s blood thundered in her ears, and a snapshot of Erica, darting through the water in her Lincoln-purple swimsuit, shot across her mind. “It was a really bad team. Everyone made varsity.”
“You must have spent an awful lot of time on the bottom of the pool ignoring, like, everything. Because (a) Lincoln High is beachside and word is that your coach actually makes his team practice in the ocean, and (b) Lincoln was division champions, like, forever.”
“Unlike our own Hawthorne Hornets,” Evan said, slinging an arm around Lauren. She glared at him. He wrinkled his nose and tossed a glance toward Brynna. “Hornets aren’t exactly water insects.”
“That’s why we totally need you! You have to try out. Hell, you probably don’t even have to try out. You own a bathing suit, you’re on the team.”
“No, no,” Brynna started, feeling a bead of sweat itch its way down her stomach. “I—I don’t swim anymore.”
Evan shrugged. “You’re going to have to swim either way.”
Brynna felt like she was underwater—drowning—the air being forced out of her lungs. “What are you talking about?”
“Swim test.”
Brynna looked from Evan to Lauren. “What swim test?”
“The one you need to graduate. Everyone has to take one. It’s so lame. Jump in, float, go to the bottom, swim across the pool, and no bikinis.”
Heat snaked up the back of Brynna’s neck. Just the thought of getting into the pool made her seize up, made her heartbeat start to race.
The pool that was once so freeing to her was like a cellblock now. And water, that moving, churning being with icy, clawing fingers, had taken Erica away, and Brynna knew that it wanted her too.
Brynna forced herself to breathe and prayed that her knees wouldn’t buckle. “Why do we need a swim test to graduate?”
This time Evan and Lauren both shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably some holdover from the olden days. Or like, ‘Send your kids to school! They might die here, but they’ll know how to swim.’”
Lauren raised her eyebrows. “Well, they’ve got something there. Bullets are crap in the water.” She swung her attention back to Brynna. “So? You’ll do it, right? If you’re on the swim team, you automatically pass the swi
m test. Unless you drown.” Lauren laughed at her own joke, a loud kind of guffaw that made Brynna want to hate her.
“Sorry, Lauren. Like I said, I don’t swim anymore.”
Lauren abruptly stopped laughing and put her fists on her hips. “Why the hell not?”
Brynna wished that Evan would say something, would drag her out of this horrible inquiry, but he did nothing, looking at her with an open face.
She snapped her locker shut and spun the dial. “I just don’t.” She slipped away from Lauren and Evan without looking back over her shoulder. She didn’t need to look to know they were staring at her.
Brynna was out past the double doors and had cleared campus in less than fifteen minutes. Hawthorne High was situated on a huge expanse of rolling green hill bisected with paved paths the students were supposed to walk on but never did. There were bald patches of grass, mostly under the craggy cypress trees from years of kids hanging out, and the usual detritus that came from high school: crushed soda cans that never quite made it into recycling, wadded up McDonald’s wrappers under a poster of a fat owl saying “Give a hoot, don’t pollute” that was tacked to a metal trash can. Everything whirled by Brynna. She was walking fast but aimlessly, just needing to move her body—to feel her legs, to propel herself somehow. If she could walk, maybe she could leave everything behind. She crossed campus then turned and started again, walking until her legs ached. Sweat was rimming her hairline and breaking out on her upper lip when her phone rang. She glanced at the number on the screen and caught her breath. Butterflies turned into bat wings and stabbed at her stomach. It wasn’t the phone number that unnerved her—she didn’t recognize that—it was the area code. Six-two-one. Point Lobos.
With a shaking hand, Brynna slid a finger across the screen and pressed the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
There was nothing but static at first, then the high-pitched screech of a girl and a round of far-off laughter.
“Brynna?”
The breathy voice that answered her made Brynna’s stomach drop into her shoes.
“Erica?” Brynna’s voice was pleading. “Erica?”
