by Eden Beck
I grimace. “Do … do they know you’re watching?”
I sneak another glance in their direction.
“I don’t know about before,” Aimee says, her voice suddenly dropping a note. “But they certainly do now.”
“Sabrina!”
This time, the voice comes from down below by the base of the rock.
I lean forward a bit until Kaleb’s bobbing head and shoulders come into view.
“I knew you would come,” he says with a bit of a lilt in his voice. Damn, even his voice oozes with sex appeal today. “Come swim with us.”
I feel my face grow hot.
Beside me, both Aimee and Jess start nudging me with their elbows. I can practically hear the breath trapped in their lungs as neither of them allows themselves to breathe. I have to answer, or else they’re both going to pass out from lack of oxygen.
“You’re insane,” I say, leaning just far enough out that Kaleb can hear my voice. “That water is freezing.”
Kaleb just grins wider. “Aw, come on. It’s not that bad.”
I shake my head, but I can’t help matching a little bit of his smile. It’s infectious.
“Sabrina …” Jess hisses. “What are you doing?”
Aimee still looks like she’s going to pass out. “Go on. If one of them asked me, I’d already be in there with them.”
I nudge both of them with my foot, but from the look on Kaleb’s face, he overheard at least some of that.
“Sorry!” I call down. “I didn’t bring a bathing suit.”
Kaleb laughs and mutters something under his breath about skinny-dipping, but he must be good at knowing when he’s beat. He gives me a wink before swimming back over to the opposite side of the water where Marlowe and Rory are sitting along the edge of the water.
The three of them look like shaggy dogs as they shake the water from their long, dark hair, so soaked that it’s matted to their necks and faces.
Even from here, I catch sight of a scar on Marlowe’s collarbone while I watch that I hadn’t noticed before. It’s pretty decently sized, but his shirt must cover it up at school. Kaleb’s hair is an umber color that seems to change shades depending on how the light catches it, not unlike the specks in his eyes. His hair is so long that he could tie it back in a braid or ponytail that would probably reach the center of his back. Rory has the shortest hair out of the three of them. It’s the darkest too, more black than brown.
He looks a lot more like Romulus than the other two boys do. Adopted, Tom said.
“Look who’s staring now,” Aimee says … and this time, she doesn’t bother dropping her voice.
“Shut up,” I mutter. But she has a point. Now that I’ve been caught, I guess there’s no harm in taking a little look. Just for a minute. Just long enough to make out identical tattoos on the left side of each of the boy’s torsos.
They each have a circle of ink with a triangle inside of it just below their ribcage on the same side. The marks are rough looking, almost like the lines were scratched on instead of drawn, and each has a slightly difficult detail in the center. There’s something about the placement and the shape of the ink against the curvature of their torsos that makes me transfixed on them for a minute.
So transfixed that I don’t hear Tom coming up behind me.
“Come on now, Sabrina, you know you want to join them.”
There’s a hint of something in his voice that I don’t like. Something that makes my stomach sour and panic rise in my chest, even before I realize what he’s doing.
Before I have the chance to turn, Tom’s hands slam into my upper back and shove me off the edge of the rock and into the cold water. The last thing I hear before I’m enveloped in the deafening, blinding roar of freezing water is the sound of his half-choked laugh.
18
Sabrina
Even during the best of circumstances, I’m not a good swimmer.
And here, plunging unexpectedly into ice-cold water in jeans, heavy boots, and an oversized sweater is far from best of circumstances.
There’s a moment where I hang beneath the surface, shock disorienting my brain as I try to figure out what just happened. By the time I’ve begun to realize what I need to do next—swim to the surface—I suddenly find I can’t.
I can’t move at all.
My hoodie somehow managed to get caught on the rocks just below the surface of the water and must have halfway pulled off my body in the plunge, leaving my arms and upper body tangled inside it.
For a second, I panic. My body writhes uncontrollably against the restraints, but they won’t loosen. Finally, I’m able to get ahold of myself just enough to wiggle my hand out from between the mangled strings at the top to unzip the hoodie and slide free of it.
The brief moment of relief that floods through me comes too soon.
The second I’m free of the garment, I drift down into a strong undertow and am swept away. It’s like the ground drops out beneath me. One moment, I’m trapped and tangled in the darkness, the next I’m thrust into a spinning current that moves so quickly, I immediately lose track of which way is up, and which way is death.
I shoot my arms out, trying to stop my spin. I manage to gouge one hand on a sharp rock outcropping, and though it’s too slippery to get a grip, it does help me get my bearings.
Just for a second.
By the time I surface and am able to take a heaving gulp of air, I see that I’ve already been carried to the bend in the river. I surface just in time to avoid bashing my head on a rock before I’m pulled under a second time.
This part of the river is not like the part we were sitting by. Here, the river narrows into rapids with white-capped water and steep, rocky banks. Each time I’m able to stay afloat just long enough to take in a half lungful of air. Never enough to stem the feeling that I am steadily, surely, drowning.
This is it.
Everything I’ve worried about, everything I’ve done to try to keep myself safe, it’s all for nothing if I end up drowning in this river, right now. It’s all pointless if it ends here.
More importantly, however, I realize that I don’t want it to end here.
I don’t want it to end like this—the pointless end to a long line of pointless self-torture. Because that’s what it’s been, hasn’t it? All the running. The hiding. The keeping people away, never letting anyone in.
It’s all just been leading up to … to … this?
No.
This can’t be it.
The next time I surface, I try to scream. I prepare to lose my last chance at breath, just for a shot at being heard, but as soon as I open my mouth water crashes against me and fills my throat with water.
I’m not able to make a single sound.
I’ve watched drowning scenes in the movies before. They always make it seem so peaceful, like all of a sudden you just stop breathing and you’re dead … peacefully, open-eyed, and motionless. But that is not at all the way it feels in real life. My lungs burn, my limbs are flailing around me, and terror grips at every corner of my mind.
It’s not at all like the movies.
All I can keep thinking over and over and over inside my head, is how pointless it all was. That this is it. After everything I tried, this is the end of me.
Maybe this is what I deserve. This deep, dark water. The sharp sting of rocks. The sweeping undertow dragging me—like life—beneath the surface.
I’m so sure that this is the end, that when I do feel something hook underneath my arm and start pulling me upward, I’m not even sure if it’s real or not. At this point, I think I’m too delirious and numb to understand what’s happening anymore.
This must be what it is to be dragged to the underworld.
No angels beckoning. No welcoming trumpets.
Just more sharp, jagged rocks across my back.
Darkness closes around my vision as if I’m entering a subway tunnel, and then just as quickly I blink my eyes and I can kind of see blocky shapes fo
rming in front of my eyes.
Slowly, the forms begin taking shape. Even in my delirious state, I recognize Rory’s face materialize above me.
But how could that be?
He was way back with the others and I’m too far down river for anyone to have caught up with me. I lose my thoughts again as the darkness closes in. When I open my eyes again, Rory is still there. His face looks blurred as it pulls away from my own face.
Am I breathing?
I can’t tell. I can’t even tell if I’m on land, or still in the water. All I can hear is the rush of rapids in my ears. All I can feel is the rocking motion of my body.
I think I must be sleeping, because I hear the sound of wolves in my dreams. They sound louder and more agitated than when I’ve heard them in the forest before.
My eyes open again, and even the overcast light seems painfully bright. I turn my head away from it and see trees, lots and lots of trees; and something looks at me between their trunks.
Actually, several somethings look at me through the trees.
I think they’re wolves, but then again, it’s all just a dream so who knows. The darkness swims back.
This time when I pull my eyelids open, I’m keenly aware of the fact that I am, in fact, breathing.
It hurts, beyond anything I’ve felt before. My lungs feel like they’re trying to pass gravel through my airways and my throat stings as if I’ve swallowed knives, not water. I see Rory above me still.
He’s sitting above me, thighs straddling either side of my body with his weight lifted off of me so that I can try to breathe. This god-damned painful breath.
Each inhale is torture. The most wonderful torture I could ever hope for. Each breath, as painful as it is, clears some of the fog from my brain.
The light is definitely playing tricks with my eyes, or maybe it’s because I’ve smashed my head, but Rory looks odd His eyes look particularly strange as I try to focus on them. They’re a shining yellow, like the kind of reflective yellow city workers use to paint the traffic lane stripes on the highway.
Why are his eyes yellow?
I wish the darkness would stop coming. It makes it so hard to tell what’s real, and what’s not. Part of me still wonders if I’m already dead.
My next dream feels more like a memory. I remember Rory grabbing me as we surface from the water. I remember the feeling of his strong, super-warm arms around me. Why is his body so hot? Not the cute kind of hot, but the temperature-inducing kind that makes me wonder if I am feverish.
The contrast of his body heat against the frigid water almost snaps me back into consciousness. He whispers something in my ear, and I can feel his mouth close to the side of my neck as he does.
How can you expect me to let you drown? He says in my dream-memory. How could I ignore your scent carried out to us across the water? Forgive me, Sabrina. What was I supposed to do?
19
Sabrina
When I finally wake up, I mean really wake up, Rory has just finished giving me CPR, I think. But since I’m breathing now, and awake, I’m not quite sure why his mouth is still on top of mine. I can feel the words that he’s uttering under his breath against my lips.
My voice comes out like a croak.
“What are you saying?”
It sounds like he’s speaking in an entirely different language. Before I get any kind of answer from him, I hear more voices coming from the trees behind us.
“So, this is what the whole thing has been about,” Kaleb’s voice shouts from a near distance away. “You just wanted her for yourself. You’re so completely full of shit.”
Kaleb and Marlowe come into view and I try to make sense of what they’re arguing about.
“It’s not my fault that we’re all drawn to her. I’ve tried to stay away from her, trust me. What was I supposed to do, let her drown?” Rory’s voice is sharp and less restrained than usual.
“Maybe you could have just stopped with saving her after you plucked her from the water, instead of making out with her while she’s still half-unconscious,” Kaleb says.
Rory looks stricken—like he can’t decide whether to be furious or ashamed.
I must have hit my head harder than I thought, because whatever I think is going on here, definitely can’t really be happening. First, I hear the howl of wolves all around me as I’m getting ready to drown, then I see Rory’s eyes look like they’re glowing as if they’re backlit, and now it sounds like all three of these brothers are fighting over me. Three very unavailable brothers mind you. There’s no way this is real, so I’m either unconscious still, or dead.
Dead seems a lot more likely as the moments drag on.
Marlowe is hovering over me and holding out his arm for me to take. Why does he look even more attractive right now than normal?
Yeah, I’ve definitely hit my head too hard.
He helps me gingerly get to my feet and holds onto my waist as I try to look around. Everything in my head feels dizzying. With each motion, my vision swims as wildly as the river.
Rory stops his argument with Kaleb for just long enough to shout at me.
“Get out of your clothes!”
“What?” I ask, even more confused than a moment earlier. But Rory has already diverted his attention back to his heated argument with Kaleb.
“He’s right,” Marlowe says to me, while the other two bicker a couple paces away about something I only half understand. “Your clothes are cold and wet, and it’s freezing out here. You need to take them off.”
“But you’re not cold,” I say. My voice feels as though I am trying to speak and swallow honey at the same time. “All you have on is a pair of wet swim trunks.”
“That’s because he’s a hypocrite too,” Kaleb calls over his shoulder at us.
“What are you talking about?” Marlowe hollers back at him. “Rory is right, she needs to get the wet clothes off or she’s going to catch pneumonia.”
“Oh please, don’t even try siding with Rory,” Kaleb says, rolling his eyes.
“I’m not siding with anyone. I’m just using common sense,” Marlowe says. “Maybe if you’d used common sense from the beginning, none of this would have happened.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Kaleb is getting visibly agitated now.
“She shouldn’t have come here,” Rory interjects. “It’s too dangerous. You shouldn’t have invited her.”
When I hear Rory’s voice this time, something suddenly registers. Something that just happened, and I hadn’t even thought twice about it.
He kissed me.
There, at the end, it wasn’t about saving me anymore. His lips lingered on mine a moment too long. He must have known what he was doing.
I … I don’t know how I should feel about it. I’ve just nearly drowned to death and now I’m standing among three, albeit incredibly attractive, boys who are fighting with each other and trying to get me to take my clothes off.
I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be here. I can’t see where Jess and the others are, but they must be freaking out. For all I know, the sheriff’s department is already gearing up to drag the river.
I need to go home. That much is certain. Once it’s in my mind, the thought won’t go away. Just like the spinning water, it turns over and over in my head.
I need to go home. I need to go home.
I need to go home, now.
When Marlowe walks over to join in the shouting match with his brothers, I quietly slip into the thicket of trees and try to calm my head enough to figure out the way back. I can hear the echoing sound of the boys still arguing behind me as I pick a direction and start walking. It’s difficult to navigate the woods on a good day, and today has not been good.
As I trudge through the forest shivering from my wet clothes meeting with the cold air, I hear the boys’ conversation stop. Everything becomes eerily quiet until the only thing I can hear is my own harsh breathing.
“Jesus!” I scream, catching sight of Kaleb walking right up behind me. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Home,” I answer.
“Let us take you home,” he says.
“No thanks, I’m good.”
“You’re not good, you’ve just been through something traumatic,” Rory says from my other side, his figure practically melting from the trees.
“Which part?” I ask sarcastically. “Nearly drowning, or waking up to you kissing me?”
Kaleb howls with laugher and Rory shoots him a look that could kill. I immediately feel bad about the snide remark. It was just a kiss. A kiss that, under normal circumstances, might leave me wanting more.
And still might, if I can just get out of this damn river.
I’m already out of the river. Even if it doesn’t feel like it. Even if my breath still hitches, my heart won’t stop racing, and I feel at any moment I’m about to vomit or scream—dealer’s choice.
“Seriously, Sabrina,” Marlowe says as he catches up to walk next to Kaleb. “Let us take you home before you get lost in the woods. You’re in shock.”
“I’m not lost. I think I saw a bridge across the river up that way,” I say, pointing as if I have any idea where I’m going.
Kaleb walks in front of me to block my path and look me in the eye. “You can’t go that way, it’s not safe.”
I laugh. “Please, as if I haven’t already been in danger today.”
I can see a look of frustration grow over his face as Kaleb refuses to move out of my way. “You haven’t been in this kind of danger today,” he says. “That’s Free Territory, it’s not safe for you there.”
Free Territory.
Ever since I hit my head in that river, nothing they say makes any sense.
I can see that he’s serious. Rory and Marlowe look serious too. They seem to be waiting to see if Kaleb is able to convince me to stop walking before they get involved as well. Whatever that means.
