The Undrowned

by K. R. Alexander

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  0

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The Fear Zone teaser

  Copyright

  The dead don’t come back.

  When I was a little girl, maybe four or five, I remember my mom patiently explaining this to me as we buried my pet hamster in the backyard. I was crying, because I was confused. Why was NomNom sleeping for so long? Why wasn’t he waking up? Why had my mom insisted we make him a cute bed of paper towels and spare fabric and flowers and bury him in a shoebox by the daffodils? How could he see? How could he breathe?

  “You see, Samantha,” Mom said, “sometimes when animals get very sick or very old, they go to sleep and never wake up again.”

  “Never?” I asked, sniffling.

  “Never.” She took my hand, and together we said goodbye to NomNom and began to shovel dirt on top of him. I still didn’t know why we were saying goodbye. I still didn’t understand how something could sleep forever. Even when I was really tired, I woke up eventually.

  “But what if he’s different?” I asked. “What if he’s really just sleeping?”

  “He’s not coming back, pumpkin. He’s dead now. The dead don’t come back.”

  I swallowed, and things clicked far too quickly in my too-young brain.

  “Do people die, too?” I asked.

  She paused. I remember the way she looked at me, like she was trying to figure out whether or not to tell me the truth. I could feel myself teetering on the edge of something vast and terrifying in that moment, and her answer would either pull me back to safety or push me over the edge.

  “Yes,” she finally said. “People die, too. And just like NomNom, they don’t come back.”

  I thought for years that she’d decided to tell me the truth.

  Only now am I realizing that it was a lie.

  Because when I pushed Rachel into the lake and she didn’t come back up, I knew she was dead. She wasn’t coming back.

  Except, the next day, she did.

  Wednesday is not going my way, and I know just who is going to pay for it.

  I still have my parents’ argument ringing in my ears when I get to school. All morning they’ve been fighting. Not just about each other and how they both work too much, which is what they usually spend breakfast fighting about, but because I failed a spelling test.

  One stupid spelling test.

  Now they’re refusing to take me on a day trip to Rocky River Adventure Park this Saturday like they promised, all because I misspelled a few words like possessed and allegory. (Who needs to know how to spell those, anyway? I always have my phone, and that can fix spelling for me. As if I’d ever even use any of the spelling words in the first place.)

  So, no theme park for me. My so-called friends will still be going, because their parents aren’t jerks like mine. And I’m sure I’ll hear all about how amazing it was on Monday.

  All I get to look forward to is a weekend of doing homework while my parents continue to argue downstairs and my sister plays video games with her friends, and none of it’s fair because it’s not really my fault that I didn’t have time to study for the spelling test. I’d been too busy writing the essay that Rachel was supposed to do for me. She let me down. Again.

  It’s her fault.

  All of this is her fault.

  And I’m going to make sure it’s the last time.

  * * *

  I stomp through the school’s front doors and down the hallway, and it must be pretty clear that I’m angry—kids actually step away from me, parting and going quiet so I can pass, hoping they won’t be the latest victims of my wrath. I shove past a few of them. Knock books out of a nerd’s hands, slam another kid into his friend. No different from my normal entrance.

  But the truth is, I barely even see them. They’re not worth my time, let alone my anger.

  Rachel is.

  I see her at her locker before she ever sees me. Short and pretty, with long black hair and perfect skin and big blue eyes. I’m tall and have the same black hair, but my skin is far from perfect, which some kids used to make fun of me for, until I started pushing back and proving I wasn’t someone you could make fun of. Now the only bully in this school is me.

  “You,” I growl when I reach her locker. I slam it shut to emphasize my point.

  She jumps back with a yelp and clutches her sketchbook to her chest with both hands, eyes wide and lip already quivering like a baby’s. She knows when I’m in a bad mood, and it’s clear she knows this is worse than all the rest.

  “I—”

  “Shut up,” I say. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

  “I—I—” she stutters.

  “Because of you and your stupid little pea-brain, my parents aren’t taking me to the adventure park this weekend. You were supposed to write my essay, but you didn’t, and because of that I couldn’t study for the spelling test. It’s your fault I failed. And you’re going to pay for it.”

  I want to shove her against the locker, but I hold myself back. Partly because I know she’d just start crying and partly because I see our principal, Mr. Detmer, out of the corner of my eye. He’s watching us. I don’t need to get detention again—the last thing I need is to be grounded.

  I lower my voice.

  “I’m going to get you back for this.” I look into her eyes, and she looks to her feet. “If I have to suffer, so will you. Now, hand it over.”

  She nods. She doesn’t ask what I want or what I mean. She already knows.

  We have this down to an art. Almost a symbiotic relationship—a situation where both parties benefit from the other’s skills. I learned that term in science.

  In this case, it means I don’t beat her up, and she does my homework and pays for my lunch.

  It wasn’t always like this with us.

  We used to be friends. Best friends.

  Used to.

  I can’t even really imagine it anymore. I guess we were friends when we were both younger. Weaker.

  Now I’m no longer weak; she taught me that friendship is the ultimate weakness. Friends can hurt you. Friends can make your whole life miserable if they know everything about you. And from her betrayal, I grew strong. I used that lesson against her, because she deserved all that and more.

  Am I using her?

  Sure.

  But it’s the only use she has in our school. Otherwise, she’s nothing. I make sure of it.

  She opens her locker again—which takes a second, since she has to reenter her code—and pulls out a folder. I flip it open and check, but she hasn’t disappointed me on this, at least. She knows not to let me down again. The social studies homework we got yesterday is done, along with the ma
th practice sheets. And there, in the front pocket, is the five dollars she gives me every day for lunch.

  I’ve never asked where she gets the money. Probably her parents. They’re loaded. They even have a pool in their backyard. Perfect Rachel and her perfect life. Her perfectly useless life.

  She could give me a million dollars, and she’d still owe me.

  I snap the folder shut and slam her locker closed again.

  I miss her fingers. Barely.

  Gotta keep her a little scared. Tears well in her eyes.

  I don’t say anything when I turn and stomp down the hall to my locker. I shove into another kid on the way, making her drop her bag, her books and homework scattering all over the floor. Mr. Detmer calls out to me, but I’m already around the corner, and I know he won’t follow.

  He’s a little scared of me, too.

  He should be.

  They all should be.

  I manage to get through all my classes without getting a detention, even though a part of me really just wants to explode. It doesn’t help that at lunch, the few friends I keep around spend the whole time talking about the rides they’re excited to go on this weekend. Neither Felicia nor Sarah asks why I don’t say anything. When I finally blurt out that I’m not going, and could they just shut up about it, I think they honestly look relieved that I won’t be there. It definitely doesn’t improve my mood, but whatever.

  I don’t need them.

  I don’t need any of them.

  Friendship. Is. Weakness.

  It makes me glance over to Rachel, who sits on her own at the far end of a corner table, face down in her sketchbook like usual. Years ago, we would be going to the adventure park together, no questions asked. We had many times before. Until she ruined everything by betraying me.

  A small part of me wonders what she’s writing in her journal—wonders if she’s writing about me—but I don’t think she’d do that again.

  She learned the hard way what happens when she writes mean things behind my back.

  I push her out of my mind. She could disappear for all I care.

  I wish I could make her disappear.

  * * *

  At the end of the day we have a pop quiz in science class that I’m pretty certain I fail because I’m too angry at Sarah and Felicia to focus. By the end of lunch, they hadn’t even asked why I wasn’t going to the park. It’s like they didn’t even care!

  Whatever. I don’t care about them, either. I only have a year left at this boring middle school, and then I can make new friends. Better friends.

  No, friends just leave or hurt you in the end. I need to get to a point where I don’t need anybody.

  The only person I’ll keep around is Rachel. So I can keep making her life miserable, and so she can do my homework for me.

  But when I leave my last class to give my homework to Rachel, she isn’t at her locker.

  That, more than anything, makes me angry.

  She knows she’s supposed to wait for me.

  She knows her place.

  I slam my fist against her locker and storm off.

  I don’t go home.

  Lately I want to spend less and less time there. My parents are always busy, and although my dad works in an office, Mom works from home. When they are home together, they basically yell at each other about always being too busy for quality time, whatever that means. And sometimes they turn their anger at each other toward me. I might have everyone at school—including the teachers—scared of me (last year I even managed to get a lunch lady fired by hiding thumbtacks in my lasagna and saying I’d overheard her muttering that she hated my guts). But home is a different story. The complete opposite.

  They yell at me for every bad grade.

  Ground me for every detention.

  Take away my desserts, my TV time, my phone. Once, they even tried sending me to a counselor for anger management, until I threw a hunger strike and they caved.

  And honestly, I might not even mind all that, because whatever, I get over it—but every time I do something that makes my parents say they’re ashamed of me, they compare me to my sister.

  My perfect, stupid little sister and her perfect grades and perfect attitude. A constant reminder that I’m not good enough.

  Just like Rachel.

  My sister, Jessica, is too much of a goody-two-shoes to do anything wrong, which means everyone always trusts and believes her; if I break a single rule at home or try to hide something I did at school, she finds out and tells Mom or Dad. And Mom is always on the edge of a screaming fit. Jessica knows it. She’s basically the only person in the world I can’t bully, because all I have to do is look at her funny and she cries to our parents and I get grounded or worse. No doubt she’d try to get me in trouble if I came home and did anything besides my homework, and right now, homework is the last thing I want to do.

  All I want to do is yell at someone or punch something or run around because this isn’t fair.

  It’s not fair, and about the only thing I can do about it is try to avoid going home like the plague. So I wander.

  Roseboro is small and boring and I hate it. As I storm down the sidewalk, past the houses I’ve seen literally every day of my entire life, my anger builds. Not just because of Rachel or my parents or missing the theme park, but because I am bored. There’s nothing to do around here. About the only fun thing is Rocky River Adventure Park, and even that’s mostly for little kids and half an hour away. It’s not fair. I’m going to be bored all weekend, just like I’m bored every other day.

  Why couldn’t we live somewhere cool, like Seattle or New York or LA? A place where things actually happen and there’s more to do than go to the diner for milkshakes after school or stay at home and stream countless shows and movies. Somewhere with cool people who do cool things. That’s where I belong. Among movie stars and popular kids who know that the only way to get to the top is to beat your way there.

  Yeah. I’d fit in perfectly somewhere like that.

  I’m so wrapped up in my head that I don’t even realize I’ve taken the really long way home. Past the main streets, around all the suburbs, and out into the woods and fields that stretch out on all sides of our town, ensuring that nothing cool or urban ever makes its way here. It would have to push through too much corn.

  For a split second I consider turning around. Even though it’s sunny and a while until sunset, I know better than to be alone in the woods. I’m not worried about monsters or anything childish like that. I just know that sometimes creepy people prowl the forest. Or at least that’s what my mom said when I’d been out playing in a park by myself after dark. Later that week, as if to emphasize her point, the news reported that a little kid had gone missing, presumably drowned in Lake Lamont.

  They never caught a killer.

  Not that I’m scared in the slightest. A small part of me wants to run into a creepy stranger. At least then I’ll have someone to vent all my anger toward. Then the police would be totally okay with me beating someone up. I might even get a medal.

  That would show everyone.

  The path through the woods twists and turns, finally coming to a fork. One way leads back to town, the other to Lake Lamont.

  I’ve heard so many stories about the lake, and even though I’ve been there many times, a part of me always wonders if the stories are true.

  Kids drowning,

  bodies going missing,

  strange sounds or lights at night.

  It’s probably just rumors told by teens to scare off younger kids so they can have the lake to themselves.

  Still, there’s a voice inside me that whispers not to go there, a voice that sounds a lot like my mom’s.

  That’s what does it. If she doesn’t want me to go there, then I do.

  I head toward the lake.

  And surprise, surprise, when the lake comes into view, I realize I’m not the only one there.

  I can’t tell if my luck is improving or taking a downturn. />
  There, sitting at the far end of a dock that juts into the middle of the large lake, drawing in her stupid sketchbook, is Rachel.

  My veins turn to acid at the sight of her. My vision narrows.

  Everything wrong in my life feels like it’s her fault.

  My parents fighting.

  My bad grades.

  My bad mood.

  Being stuck in this tiny town with no one to turn to, no one to help make the dullness manageable. Once I see her, all the anger and rage that had been building over the day boil up to the surface.

  “What the heck are you doing here?” I yell out.

  My voice echoes across the lake, causing a flock of birds to scream out and fly away. Rachel startles and drops her pen in the water. When she sees me, she grabs her sketchbook and holds it tight to her chest, staring at me with her eyes wide, like a cornered rabbit looking for escape.

  But it’s easy to see there is no escape. The lake is the size of five city blocks and trees tower up on all sides. There are docks on the far side where rich people keep their boats. But here, on our side, we are alone. Completely alone.

  Since she is out on the pier, the only way past me would be to swim.

  And we both know she never learned how to swim.

  Every time she tried, she failed.

  Every time she tried, she had to be saved. By me.

  And I’m definitely not saving her this time.

  “Samantha,” she says. Her voice quavers. She doesn’t say anything else, but the question is there in her tone: What are you doing here?

  Or, most likely: What are you going to do to me?

  It’s a good thing she doesn’t actually ask, because I don’t have an answer.

  And if I had to come up with one, I’m sure she wouldn’t like it.

  I drop my backpack on the grass and stomp toward her. My feet echo on the wooden planks when I reach the docks—a battle march. Rachel sets down her sketchbook and stands up, stepping in front of the book like she’s trying to protect it from me. I don’t care what she’s writing in there. Probably some stupid poems or sad drawings.

  It must suck to be her.

  But I

  don’t

  care.

  I want to curse at her, but I can’t find the words. Rage has formed a knot in my throat. But that’s okay, because we are far past talking.