Page 25

Twenty-Five

Before

September 2nd

I twist around to make sure there’s nothing behind me, and back the boat to the right so I can head into deeper water. Claire tries to get her feet beneath her.

I can feel the panic radiating off her and it brings a smile to my face. If she won’t leave me the hell alone, she deserves every ounce of fear this boat ride brings her. After all, she could have been safely onshore, or stayed the fuck home tonight. But no. Once again, she stuck her nose in my business.

Sucks to suck.

Maybe a couple quick laps around the lake will scare her so badly she’ll never talk to me again. That would make my entire senior year a dream . I can’t even imagine what a life without her would look like. Utopia, probably.

I throw the boat into gear and punch it. The wind throws my hair out of my face, and I’m sprinkled with the spray of lake water. I laugh into the wind. With the wheel in my hands and the cold air biting at my cheeks, I finally feel free.

The boat hits a wave and rises. When it comes back down, it sprays the whole bow of the boat with water. Claire screams when it hits her, falling to her knees in the narrow aisle and crawling toward me.

“Slow down!” she yells.

I ignore her and push the throttle instead.

She looks at me in terror and lunges for the boat keys. I yank the wheel to the right and she falls back onto one of the seats, but she rebounds quickly. Then she’s right there beside me. She grabs at the wheel.

“Brooke, cut it out!” She tries to hip check me out of the way. “You’re going to get us killed!”

When she reaches for the throttle, I plant my feet and knock her hand away. “You’re the one grabbing for the wheel. Stop!”

She wrenches it to the left. The boat swerves in a big arc and I straighten it out again. We’re a scramble of hands and elbows trying to get purchase until I’m so fucking angry I want to scream. I just wanted to get away from her. I wanted a break. I wanted some space. Why can’t she go ? Why is she everywhere I am? I can’t even take out my own boat without her ruining it.

I plant my forearm on Claire’s chest and shove her back. “Get away from me!”

She steps one leg in front of me and uses her body to shove me back, but I don’t let go of the wheel and neither does she, each of us wrenching it in a different direction with every tug. The back-and-forth rocks us closer and closer to the shore until moonlit trees hang over the water maybe fifty feet in front of us.

I try to turn us back toward open water, but fingers sink into the back of my hair, and suddenly I’m ripped back so hard that I land flat on my back between Claire and Jena’s sleeping form with a yelp. My arm comes down hard on the fiberglass deck, and pain flares through my bones and around the back of my shoulder. My scalp scalds from hairs most certainly yanked out at their roots.

I cradle my arm against my chest and close my eyes against the pain. The boat slows. I open my eyes and find Claire in my place behind the wheel, throttle pulled all the way back. When we come to a full stop, she whips around to face me. “Are you trying to kill us?”

“ Me ? You’re the one who attacked me and almost drove us into the shore!”

“Bullshit, and you know it. I was trying to rein you in. Like fucking always.” She turns her back on me, and the boat starts moving again, much slower this time. She wheels us around until the shore is to our left and we’re headed back toward the lake house. She’s breathing heavy. I watch her shoulders rise and fall like she’s running a marathon.

I hobble up to my knees, still holding my arm to my chest, and glance back at Jena. Remarkably, she’s still in the same place—face down on the bench seat. Her braids have spilled across her face, but as I watch, she groans and rolls over.

“No more fighting,” she slurs. “Can’t we all just…?”

She doesn’t finish her sentence; it descends into mumbles as she throws her arm over her head.

“I knew you were stupid, but I didn’t know you were so reckless,” Claire continues. I glare at her. “It’s a miracle you’ve lived this long. I can’t believe you’d drink and take the boat out like this. What if you hit a sandbar? Or someone else’s dock?”

My hand balls into a fist. “Yeah, except I didn’t.”

“By sheer luck! Seriously, Brooke, what the fuck were you thinking? You have to be so fucking dramatic about everything. Claire’s the worst. I have no choice but to endanger everyone to escape her. Like, what the hell? You’re absolutely out of your fucking mind. No wonder nobody likes you.”

“Shut the fuck up, Claire.”

I can see the pinpricks of our deck lights ahead. We’re only a few minutes from the lake house but I might not make it. I’m one comment away from jumping over the side of this boat and swimming to freedom. Anything to escape her high-pitched bitchfest.

“No wonder you had to go to such great lengths to get rid of me. How pathetic is it that you have to ruin other people in order to get ahead? You Goodwins are all the same.”

“Claire. Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”

“Or what?”

The wind blows the hair from my face. Claire glances at me over her shoulder, both hands locked on the wheel. She stands so tall in my fucking boat, like she’s basking in the glow of coming out on top—again. And all I want to do is even the score.

So I do.

The fist of my good hand connects with her cheekbone, and her head snaps back. She screams and stumbles sideways into the captain’s chair, and I take control of the wheel again.

Claire is not in charge here. She doesn’t win tonight. I do.

She clutches her face with both hands. “You punched me!? You psycho bitch!”

“Just returning the favor. Now we have matching black eyes.”

Claire reaches for the wheel again, and I lock my arm around hers, meeting her glare from an inch away. I open my mouth to call her every name I can think of, but her glare shifts from me, to the front of the boat, and her eyes go wide.

Before I can turn to look, the boat jerks to a fiberglass-crunching stop.

The next thing I know, I’m in the water.