Page 34 of The Sister's Curse

“This is L4. Victim reports there was a girl at the scene who tried to drown him. Don’t know if she’s at risk of drowning herself, but please be advised. Victim is pretty out of it, and the info may be sketchy.”

“Affirmative, L4. We’ll be on the lookout and will also relay to DNR.”

The line clicked dead, and I heard a few notes of a distantly hummed song, as if from a radio station.

“Dispatch? Is this a secure channel?” I demanded.

The line lapsed into silence.

I hung up, chewing my lip. It wasn’t unheard-of for drowning people to grab at others and take them down with them. I didn’t think that was what had happened here, but I couldn’t rule it out. From the kid’s description, it seemed like an attempted drowning. He wasn’t exactly a reliable witness, but he wasn’t with it enough to be deliberately misleading, either.

We hit a bump in the road, and a backpack rolled open at my feet. It must have belonged to Boba Fett and have been chucked into the ambulance by his friends. A Nintendo Switch, an energy drink, and a wallet rolled out. I chased the energy drink can across the floor and scraped it back into the bag with the Switch. I grabbed the wallet and opened it.

According to his school ID, Boba Fett was really Ross Lister, age fifteen, a student at St. Michael’s Prep School.

Lister.Ross was Mark Lister’s son.

First Jeff Sumner’s son nearly drowned.

Then Mark Lister’s.

Totally different scenarios, but this was still a helluva coincidence.

I scrubbed my tongue on the roof of my mouth. It tasted metallic, sharply sweet, not like the soft siltiness of river water. I asked for a bottle of water to rinse my mouth as Ross babbled about a Sith Lord borrowing his Switch and not returning it.

Not the most reliable narrator, that one.

The ambulance roared up to the hospital, and I limped out andgot the hell out of the way of the paramedics. They took Ross into the ER, and I trailed behind. I’d only taken my flip-flops and purse with me, and it was awkward, dripping in my clammy swimsuit and clutching my bag. I made squeaking noises and dripped everywhere as I walked, scars and cellulite on full display.

I got taken to the back right away, because I had bled through my towel. I sat on a bed with a paper cover on it, soaking it. It tore anytime I moved. And it was cold as fuck. I poked around the room for something to wear. I would’ve taken the world’s ugliest hospital gown at this point, but there wasn’t anything in the staging area.

A fabric curtain separated me from the rest of the emergency room, and from Nick’s voice as he worked on Ross in the area beside me. Ross sounded all right, but seemed unable to remember his parents’ phone number and what day it was. He also announced that he was the leader of a cult of death-metal robots that fed on cheeseburgers. I guess that was a step up from believing himself to be Boba Fett, bounty hunter.

Nick told one of the nurses: “He’s hypoxic, delirious. Let’s get him on oxygen, get the bleeding stopped, and then get a chest X-ray. I want to see his lungs, make sure they’re clear.”

I twiddled my thumbs until the curtain got pulled aside and Nick frowned at me.

“It’s just a scratch,” I said.

He peeled back the towel. “That’s more than a scratch. That’s about ten stitches.”

“Awesome.” I shivered.

Nick opened a drawer and handed me a hospital gown. He leaned close to me, kissed my temple, and whispered: “Stop scaring me.”

I sure wished I could. I was doing a pretty good job of scaring myself.

I waited behind the curtain for a PA to come by and sew me up, continuing to eavesdrop through the curtain. Maybe Ross had hallucinated the girl in the river, just as he was now hallucinating that he was the king of a gang of robots. That was certainly the most rational explanation.

“Where’s Ross?” a male voice demanded. I sat up a little straighter.

A nurse told him: “He’s in X-ray right now. He’ll be back soon.”

“Is he all right?”

“He’s awake and talking. You’re his father?”

“Yes.”