Page 23

Water lapped at their windows. Jodi sat facing forward, feeling the seat belt dig into her collar and breathing hard.

They were in the river.

They were going to drown. Emily would win.

“Shut the fuck up!” Lucy yelled, and only then did Jodi realize Paige was still screaming.

She blinked away her fear and saw Lucy pressing her airbag away from her.

“We have to—to get out!” Paige shrieked. “We have to open the doors—”

“Don’t!” Lucy twisted, reaching out for Paige’s knee as she grabbed the door handle. “Wait. We have to… we have to do it together.”

Jodi’s voice was hollow to her ears when she said, “The water can slosh you around, move you away from the doors. We should wear our seatbelts.”

It was only then that she looked up and found Lucy pressing her fingers to Kiera’s neck, holding her palm under her nose. She was slumped forward in the driver’s seat, head pressed against the steering wheel and blood sliding down the curve of it onto her knees. Lucy shook her softly. She didn’t move.

“Is she dead? Is she fucking dead?” Paige said, breath thin.

“She’s breathing,” Lucy said, but she didn’t sound confident.

Jodi looked out her window. A line like the horizon split the view from water to sky.

“We have to wait,” Lucy whispered. “We have to submerge.”

Jodi didn’t think that was right.

“We can’t wait! We have to get out! We can’t just sit here!”

“Paige, this river isn’t deep. It’s fine. We just—we just need to wait for the car to go under—”

“What the fuck are you talking about! I can’t wait! I can’t sit here! Right, Jodi?”

Paige turned wild eyes on Jodi, and she saw the red blot of blood on Paige’s window and the blood staining her blond hair pink.

Jodi turned forward to Lucy and saw her eyes catch on it.

“Paige, it’s going to be okay,” Lucy said. “I’m going to take care of you. I always take care of you.”

Paige seemed to breathe.

The sky was getting darker. Jodi watched the sun disappear in the water.

Water.

Drowning.

The water lapped against the top of the window, and then there was only bubbles.

“Okay, listen to me. Make sure your seatbelts aren’t locked.” Lucy unbuckled and then re-buckled. Paige did it three times. “Do you see my bag back there, Jodi?”

Jodi looked on the floor. Phones, wallets, receipts, lip gloss. She couldn’t even pick out which were hers.

“I need my bag,” Lucy repeated.

“You don’t need it. We have to get out. We need to just get out—”

“I need my inhaler unless either of you are going to haul her body.” Lucy’s voice broke on the last word, and Jodi listened to it crack like dirt in the desert.

Paige reached down and scrambled through the stuff on the floor. Her aim was odd, reaching for things twice, fingers not grabbing zippers until the third try. She was concussed.

Jodi stared at the back of Lucy’s seat, ignoring the gray water to her right. One of them couldn’t breathe, one of them couldn’t think, and one of them couldn’t swim.

The sound of the inhaler puff broke into Jodi’s thoughts. As Lucy held the Albuterol in her lungs, she reached over and made sure Kiera’s seat belt wasn’t jammed. She exhaled and said, “Okay, we roll down the windows. Take a deep breath at the last moment, and then unbuckle and swim up.”

Jodi stared at the blood on Kiera’s knee. Lucy had said body .

“Jodi!”

She snapped her eyes to Lucy’s, intent on hers.

“Roll it all the way down. Don’t stop. Then just kick. Head for the sun, okay?”

Jodi stared at her. Paige was hyperventilating again, but Lucy was watching her like she’d just remembered why Jodi never got in the pool.

Nodding her head, Jodi grabbed the manual window handle. She wondered if Kiera had been awake, or if Paige had been in control of herself, if maybe Jodi could have asked to be carried out instead. If maybe Lucy would have crawled into the back seat and helped her through the window first.

But maybe not. Maybe that was too much to ask.

“One, two, three!”

Paige screamed. Jodi pushed her handle down and the barely open crack burst with water like a dam. Her air rushed out of her as water smacked her in the face, soaking the back seat. She couldn’t breathe in.

Weakly, she turned her window down a full rotation. The water was splashing in at their waists. A cell phone floated up.

And within seconds it was at her neck, like a heavy collar, pressing in. Jodi was choking, sputtering.

The last thing she saw before her eyes shut tight was Lucy’s fingers holding Kiera’s head up above water. Jodi breathed deep.

A hollow echo of the world was in her ears. She felt her arms floating. Her lips pressed closed tightly, barricading her last breath of air inside of her.

Her eyes opened to a fuzzy gray world so like her own. The back of Lucy’s seat. Two bodies flailing near the passenger side.

Jodi turned to find her seat belt, and blinding pain lanced through her jaw. Bubbles escaped her lips as she blinked, finding Paige’s shoes inches from her face as she kicked her way out the window.

She’d kicked her. Jodi had lost air. She’d lost time.

Lucy had gotten out, reaching back inside for Kiera’s arm.

She watched as the body was dragged out, like a doll slipping through dirt and grass as it trailed behind a child.

And then she was alone.

Jodi looked left and right. Her window was only halfway down. She pushed against the handle, rotating it lower and lower.

I can’t die. I can’t drown like my mother .

The thoughts came furious into her mind as her arm moved against the water to open the window.

It must have been very traumatic… You’ve been told that you were in the tub with her?

But maybe that’s what she’d wanted. If the cops were right… If her mother wanted to kill herself that day…

Why was Jodi in the tub?

She watched her hair float forward around her face.

Maybe she wasn’t meant to survive this. She couldn’t swim. Maybe she should have died sixteen years ago, and now death had come to collect.

It was quiet underwater. Her head was getting fuzzy. She’d need to breathe soon, but there was nothing to do.

She tried turning to the open window, but her body was heavy, pulled back to the seat.

Like an arm on her shoulder, pushing her down.

Jodi turned to the left.

Her eyes were blurry and her head spun, but there was something there. A person sitting there. Blond hair and blue eyes and wide teeth smiling at her.

Emily reached out her hand. Jodi stared at the fingertips, painted orange.

Maybe there was a place she belonged. And maybe she didn’t have to fight to get there.

She reached for Emily’s hand, laced their fingers together, and closed her eyes.