Page 5

Five Weeks Before the Abduction

T hey sat on the edge of the pool, feet bathed in the cool water and the high summer sun on their shoulders.

Emerson Bay was in the distance, just down the flight of stairs carved into the hillside and which ran down from the pool to the water’s edge.

A pontoon and speedboat floated next to the dock, and two umbrella bays were vacant of the Jet Skis they stored.

Rachel’s brother and a friend were streaking the bay on the Yamahas, hopping waves made by the wake of powerboats, the screaming engines audible from the poolside patio where the girls sat.

It was Friday afternoon and Emerson Bay was busy.

Already, there were boats pulling water skiers and tubers, sailboats angled from the wind, and music blaring from pontoons anchored out by Steamboat Eddie’s.

The three of them—Jessica Tanner, Rachel Ryan, and Nicole Cutty—had been friends since freshman year.

At first a reluctant friendship, formed when previous friends from middle school splintered off into various factions created by sports or neighborhoods or popularity or the hundreds of other categories that separated high school girls.

Jessica, Rachel, and Nicole—along with handfuls of other girls—were left to fend for themselves at the beginning of freshman year.

A lesson learned in high school, just as in the wild: There was strength in numbers.

These three found one another and stuck together.

As the other cliques grew, from the cheer team to the scholars, the chemistry geeks to the beauty queens, Nicole and her friends formed their own inseparable union.

Only recently, as summer wound down and college beckoned, had things begun to change.

Rachel’s home was where the three had spent each summer since freshman year, lounging poolside or cruising the lake on Rachel’s ArrowCat.

It was where they had become friends. Rachel’s house and the pool and the bay and the summers all held their secrets.

The pool house was where Jessica had hooked up with Dave Schneider.

The boat garage was where Rachel puked the first time she’d gotten drunk.

And on the Ryans’ docked pontoon was where Nicole claimed to have lost her virginity during a party last summer, although the story had changed so many times no one knew the truth any longer.

“What’s up with you lately?” Jessica asked.

“What do you mean?” Nicole said.

“You’ve been MIA. You don’t post anything. You barely return texts. So what’s up with you? I know you’re not hooking up with anyone.”

Nicole smiled and splashed the water with her feet. Shrugged.

“Get. Out! Who?”

“Yeah,” Rachel said, forehead wrinkled. “Who?”

“You guys don’t know him.”

“A Chapel Hill guy?”

“God no! He doesn’t go to school.”

“Doesn’t go to college? How old is he?”

“I don’t know. Like, twenty-five?”

Jessica stared at her. “What the hell, Nicole?”

“What? I’m seventeen. It’s not illegal. Gotta be fifteen or younger.”

“I don’t care if it’s legal. What’s a twenty-five-year-old doing with us?”

“He’s not doing anything with us . Just me.”

“Whatever,” Jessica said. “Does he have a job?”

Another shrug. “I don’t really know. Construction, or something.”

“So what, he holds the stop sign at construction sites?”

“I don’t know what he does.”

“Sounds serious,” Rachel said.

“Screw you guys. I’m so sick of Emerson Bay boys. And high school boys, in general. Totally predictable. Totally boring.”

“When do we get to meet him?”

Nicole made an ugly face. “Great idea. I’ll suffocate him with neediness. Please meet my friends so they can love, love, love you! ”

“Tell him to come to Matt’s party next Saturday,” Jessica said, almost a challenge.

“Right. Like he wants to go to a high school party.”

“You’re still going, aren’t you?”

Nicole shrugged again. She could have yawned to get her point across. “Yeah, I guess. The bitches will be there, so I might not stay long.”

“Come on,” Jessica said. “They’re not bitches, they’re just . . .”

“Perfect. Little. Bitches,” Nicole said. “And so fake it makes me want to puke.”

“Megan McDonald? She is always super nice to you.”

“Yeah, in a super-fake way. Like: I’m so much smarter than you and prettier than you and more popular than you, I think I’ll act really nice to you so you don’t feel so sorry for yourself.

And if I could find a way to document my charity to you on my résumé, I’d do it because it might get me into a better school. ”

Jessica and Rachel laughed at the mimic.

“That’s not Megan at all,” Jessica said.

“If anything,” Rachel said, “she comes off as too nice. So I can see why you think she’s fake. But it’s real. It’s the way she is. And she created the summer retreat, so you can’t make the argument that she’s dumb. Girl’s smart-smart. Like thirty-six-on-her-ACT-smart. ”

“Exactly. She created a retreat to help incoming freshman, yet during our freshman year she was the one who was bitchy and cliquey and made people feel like shit.” Nicole stood from the pool and moved to a lounge chair. “She bothers me.”

“She bothers you lately because she’s hooking up with Matt. I thought you were ‘so over’ him,” Jessica said, making air quotes.

“I am. But Megan McDonald? Really? I mean, after me, he gets with her? He’ll need a crowbar to get in her pants, so what’s the point?”

“You’re disgusting,” Jessica said.

Nicole unhooked her bikini top and lay bare-chested on the lounge chair, closing her eyes and absorbing the sun. “Tell me when your brother comes back with his perv friend. I don’t need them drooling when they see me topless.”

Jessica and Rachel looked at each other with quizzical stares and suppressed smiles as they watched their friend lay half naked by the pool.

They had both discussed Nicole’s transformation this summer.

They defined it as rebellion before heading off to college.

A severing of ties, perhaps, to make the process of leaving her family and friends easier.

“Megan’s off to Duke next year,” Jessica finally said. “And I’m sure she’ll be in Ethiopia or somewhere next summer saving sick kids, so you won’t have to worry about her for long.”

With closed eyes, Nicole raised her hand in a thumbs-up gesture. “You know what? I am going to Matt’s this weekend. Think I’ll start a little summer fling with him. See what the little prude does when she sees her boyfriend all over me. ”

The rev of Jet Skis filled the summer air and Rachel looked down at the bay. “My brother and his friend are back.”

Nicole kept her eyes closed as she lay on the patio chair, her breasts glistening with tanning oil and perspiration. She didn’t move. “Let ’em drool.”