Page 18 of Skalterra By Nightmare (The Skalterra Duology #1)

The paddle dipped into the water beside me, and I took Liam’s silence to be an invitation. Now that I’d committed to telling the story, it demanded to be told. It pressed against my chest, weighing on my lungs, heart, and stomach, and I knew if I could just get the words out, the pain would subside.

“I already told you I got my friend Linsey expelled from Von Leer before she’d even started.”

I stared at the bow of the board

“She got herself expelled by cheating on a test,”

Liam said.

“But I’m the one who snitched, and everyone knew it. They said I did it because I was mad Linsey got accepted to Von Leer when I was waitlisted.”

“You did it to get the grade you deserved.”

“I did. But that doesn’t mean they were completely wrong either. It felt good to snitch on her. She’d been insufferable ever since getting in, and maybe my physics grade will help me get into Von Leer in a couple weeks, but if not, I got the consolation prize of watching Linsey get humbled.”

“And what does this have to do with the woods?”

I scratched listlessly at the paddleboard.

“One of our classmates threw a party at his parents’ summer cabin after the graduation ceremony. I don’t usually get invited to those sorts of things, but when Linsey said I should come, I figured it was an olive branch. I didn’t want to go, but I wanted things to get better between us, so I said sure.”

“You didn’t,”

Liam groaned. I hated that he could already see what a terrible idea it had been. I hated that I had no way to go back and tell myself not to go.

The summer cabin in the mountains, Linsey, and all her friends felt so far away as I floated on the ocean with Liam, but the memory of that night churned in my stomach. My heart hammered at the thought of Linsey’s friends gathered on the front porch as I pulled up the gravel drive.

“When I showed up, her friends were upset. Linsey had sent them a text about how embarrassed she was about Von Leer, how her life was over, and that she’d gone into the woods to…”

I swallowed the end of the sentence, but Liam could tell where it was headed. I’d already told him, after all, that this was the story of how I thought I’d killed her.

“Did she—”

“It was a trick,”

I spat.

“but obviously I didn’t know that. I told her friends to call the police, and then I ran after her. There was an overgrown trail behind the cabin. I didn’t know where it went, but I figured it was better than sitting around and waiting for cops and paramedics.”

“And she wasn’t in there.”

“No.”

A sea star stretched out beneath our board, but neither of us pointed it out.

“But there was a mannequin in a tree.”

“Wren.”

“It wasn’t her.”

I forced levity into my voice.

“Of course, I couldn’t tell that at first. The sun had set by the time I found it, so it looked like her. They’d put a wig on it and some old clothes. I didn’t realize it was fake until I was right under it. They’d painted the word ‘snitch’ on its chest. I think it was supposed to be me.”

“What did you do?”

“I cried,”

I admitted. Liam had already seen me blow up at him and Sabrina. It wasn’t so embarrassing to admit to crying in the woods.

“It was out of relief at first. Linsey wasn’t dead. Then, I cried out of anger. And then I realized I didn’t know the way back to the cabin and that it had gotten very dark very fast.”

“But the trail—”

“It was overgrown, it forked a lot, and I hadn’t paid attention to the way I’d come. Plus, it all looked different at night. I walked for hours with no cell service and only the flashlight on my phone to light the way. When my phone died, I gave up and curled against a big tree.”

“Were you scared?”

“Yeah,”

I whispered.

“I could hear coyotes nearby, and there’s cougars and bears in those woods too. I kept waiting for someone to show up. They had to be looking for me. Except that they weren’t, so no one ever came.”

The paddle dipped back into the water, and Liam sighed as he pulled us forward.

“I hate them,”

Liam said so matter-of-factly that he might have been pointing out another sea star.

“Wren, I hate every single person who was at the party that night.”

“Eventually, the sun came up, and I was able to find my way out,”

I explained.

“There were still a few people awake at the cabin. They didn’t say anything. They just watched me get in my car and drive away. Linsey was one of them.”

A wry smile tugged at my lips. Mom had been up all night too, waiting for me to get back. At first, she’d looked so angry with me, waiting on the porch in her robe, thinking I’d deliberately stayed out so late without texting or calling, but she’d been able to tell something was wrong before I’d even put the car in park. She was there at the door to catch me when I stumbled out from behind the wheel, sobbing and covered in dirt and sticks.

She’d made sure I was okay, then had driven off in her own car, still in her slippers and robes. I still wasn’t sure where she’d gone, but she returned a short twenty minutes later, drenched in water and promising Linsey would never bother me again.

The paddleboard lurched, and I stiffened as arms wrapped around my shoulders from behind.

“What are you doing?”

I asked Liam as his dark blond curls pressed into my cheek. He smelled like sandalwood deodorant and sea spray.

“I’m hugging you.”

“Yeah, I gathered that much. Why?”

“Because you didn’t deserve any of that. You deserve someone who would go into the woods for you.”

I bit back the impulse to tell him to get off of me. As much as I wanted to snap at him, I didn’t actually want him to move. I relaxed, one timid muscle at a time, and leaned into the embrace.

“It could’ve been worse.”

I reached up to place a hand on his where it rested on my shoulder.

“They could’ve given me a really embarrassing haircut instead.”

Liam’s hair tickled my face as he laughed.

“Your hair is fine,”

he promised.

“I’m just an idiot with a knack for putting my foot in my mouth.”

We sat still for a moment, feeling the board roll with the tide beneath us. A gull cried, waves lapped at the rocky shore, and for the first time since graduation, some hidden knot inside me loosened.

Liam was annoying and perfect, but it was nice to have a friend.

“Also,”

he whispered.

“there was a starfish back there—”

I leaned hard to one side, and the ocean rushed up to swallow us.

My attack did not go without reward, and by the time we finally paddled into the cove, we’d pushed each other into the water a fair number of times. We’d stripped to our swimsuits, and our wet clothes sat in sopping wads at the bow of the board as I paddled us towards the beach.

Riley’s friends had already started the bonfire, and my face warmed in embarrassment at the sight of Sabrina watching us get closer. I focused on my grip on the paddle, watching where I dipped it into the water to pull us forward rather than meet her narrowed gaze.

Liam jumped into the water to pull us ashore the rest of the way, and I dropped to my knees to keep from losing my balance.

“I thought you were taking her to Ethel’s.”

Sabrina made no effort to mask her irritation.

“We worked it out,”

Liam said. Sabrina must’ve trusted him a great deal, because she fixed a strained smile on her face and waded into the water to offer me a hand off the board.

“I’m sorry,”

I mumbled.

“For earlier.”

“Liam seems to have forgotten already,”

she said.

“so I guess I will too. Don’t worry about it.”

Her shoulders still seemed tense, however, and her smile refused to relax, but she was at least trying.

If she’d mentioned my parking lot blow-up to Riley’s friends, they didn’t act like it. One of them pulled Liam into a bear hug and they stood in the water, both in their swim trunks.

“He’s going to come back,”

Liam promised. The other young man finally pulled away and pushed curly brown hair back from watering eyes.

“Yeah.”

He nodded, but the tight press of his lips told me he’d likely already given up on his missing friend. He caught me staring and quickly composed himself.

“Sorry, I’m Xander.”

Riley’s other friends introduced themselves as well, but I forgot their names as quickly as they said them. They knew me, however, as they’d all grown up in Keel Watch Harbor and all knew Gams.

The sun sank, but not before drying mine and Liam’s clothes. I huddled in my salt-crusted t-shirt by the bonfire as the others recounted their favorite Riley memories.

He sounded like a good guy, despite a mischievous streak. Sabrina laughed through a story about Riley trying to steal a vat of lemonade from the storeroom of her mother’s tavern to take to a child’s birthday party down the street. Another friend talked about a time he’d dared Riley to sneak into Gams’s workshop after she’d made it clear no one was to ever disturb her there. Riley had been caught, of course, and sentenced to cleaning Jonquil’s litter-box for a week. However, after the week of kitty litter finished, he continued to come back to the shop each day for the rest of the summer to clean Jonquil’s messes.

I laughed along with the stories, feeling like I’d known Riley. And maybe I had. I had a few fuzzy memories of visiting Gams as a little girl and playing with the Keel Watch Harbor kids, but their faces were blurred, and I couldn’t remember their names. I liked the idea that maybe one of them had been Riley. I couldn’t bear the thought that maybe it was too late to meet the guy starring in the stories around the bonfire.

Everyone had something to say about Riley except for Liam.

He sat on the same driftwood log as me, staring into the flames of the fire with the smallest crease to his brow. The hard lines of his neat frown would crack the tiniest of smiles when the stories warranted it, but the smiles never quite reached his eyes. The serious set of his jaw reminded me of Tiernan in a way, and Orla’s chiding voice echoed in the back of my mind.

He’s mourning Caitria.

But where Tiernan’s grief had made him rude, Liam’s had only made him kind, even when I’d given him no reason to be. Even when I’d been what I would’ve described to Orla as .

“garbage friend”.

I thought about him kneeling down on the paddleboard to comfort me.

Not everyone was as unpleasant as Tiernan. Not everyone was as cruel as Linsey.

I slid down the driftwood log. Liam kept his eyes on the fire, but he shifted his leg so that our knees touched. I stared at the fire too, and lifted a careful arm. I hovered it over Liam’s shoulders for an awkward moment, and then lowered it to hold him at my side.

He remained silent, but leaned into me, and we stared into the fire together.

When the bonfire fizzled into dying embers and the inky dark of night had fallen overhead, spotted in an array of stars that made me dizzy if I stared upwards too long, Riley’s friends and Sabrina grabbed their things.

I stared at the mouth of the wooded path that wound its way back up to the parking lot, and when Xander told us there would be room in his car for us, Sabrina, and the boards if we wanted a ride to Liam’s car, I held my breath.

“That’s okay,”

Liam insisted.

“You guys head back. Wren and I will go back the way we came.”

He waved them away as he dragged our paddleboard back to the water.

“Are you sure?”

I whispered.

“It’s late, and you’re tired.”

He looked up at me from where he bent over to fasten the velcro leash of the board around his ankle.

“Are you okay with the woods?”

he asked seriously. When I couldn’t bring myself to answer, he smiled.

“The water is beautiful at night. You’re going to love it.”

And he was right.