Brynna stopped in the doorway, one leg twisting around the other. Her mother was sunk into the fluffy brown sectional, an afghan pulled up around her shoulders.
“Hey, Bryn.” She leaned forward and clicked on a lamp, the room filling with a soft, yellow light. Her eyes immediately darkened. “Oh, honey, why are you still in your swimsuit? You’re going to catch your death.”
Her mother rushed to her and replaced Brynna’s sopping towel with the afghan, tucking it around her shoulders and piling her wet hair on the top of her head. Brynna’s teeth chattered.
“You’re freezing. Go upstairs and take a hot shower and I’ll make you something to eat. Soup?”
But Brynna stayed rooted to her spot.
“Brynna? Did you hear me?”
Brynna swallowed, her thoughts crashing. Everything inside her pulled, but she couldn’t keep quiet anymore. She knew she was going to break. “She was there, Mom,” she said simply.
“She? She who?” Her eyebrows went up.
In her mind, Brynna said it. Erica. But in reality, she couldn’t press the word, her best friend’s name, over her teeth. As much as she wanted to, as much as she wanted to put it out there, she couldn’t say it.
Her mother stepped closer. “Who was there, Brynna?”
Brynna’s eyes looked over her mother’s head while her mother tried to catch her gaze.
“Erica,” Brynna finally whispered.
Her mother looked away, and immediately, Brynna recoiled, her whole body thrumming with the knowledge that she had done something wrong, said something wrong. Her mother wouldn’t understand. She would think Brynna was crazy.
Maybe I am crazy.
“There was no one here, Bryn.” Teddy’s words came back to her and she shuddered, pulling the afghan tighter.
“Honey.” Brynna’s mom reached out for her hand, gently pulling her toward her. “Erica is gone. She’s dead, sweetie. I know it’s hard—I know. But you have to accept that. The sooner you accept—”
The chatter of Brynna’s teeth spread through her whole body, and she was trembling now. “How do you know?”
“How do I know what?”
“That Erica is really dead.”
Her mother looked taken aback. “Honey—”
“They never found her body. They never found anything.”
There was something in Brynna’s mother’s voice—exasperation? Desperation? “Brynna, there is a riptide on Harding Beach. Everyone knows it. The fact that Erica didn’t, that her body didn’t—the fact that we didn’t find her only proves that she can’t be alive. She drowned, honey.”
“We never looked for her. No one did.”
“That’s not true, Brynna. The police did. They sent out divers and—”
“And still no one found her.”
“They could only go out so far. The riptide is that dangerous.”
Brynna shook her head. She could understand the words, and intellectually, she knew the idea that Erica could still be alive was farfetched at best. But the tweets and the sand, and now the dark figure. Her scalp started to sting where Erica had ripped out her hair.
“But what if she didn’t, Mom? Just, what if? What if she came back—and she’s mad at me?” Brynna’s lower lip started to tremble and the tears started to fall, making hot tracks down her ice-cold cheeks. “What if she wants to hurt me?”
Brynna could see her mother working out her response. Finally, “Even if that were at all possible, Bryn, Erica wouldn’t be mad at you. She wouldn’t want to hurt you. It was an accident. Erica knows that—she knew that, honey.”
An accident I caused, Brynna wanted to shout. Erica wouldn’t have jumped if it hadn’t been for Brynna’s dare. She wouldn’t have jumped and Brynna wouldn’t be standing, dripping in this strange new kitchen, certain that her best friend wanted her dead. If it hadn’t been for her, everything would have been fine.
“Are you okay, hon? Should I make another appointment with Dr.—”
“I don’t want another appointment, Mom.”
Both Brynna and her mother were silent for a long beat while something unspoken hung in the air.
“Erica’s dead, Brynna. You need to accept that. You just…do.”
Brynna thought about telling her mother about the pool, about Erica, but even with the scratches on her arms and the unrelenting fear that Erica was there, was after her, Brynna couldn’t overcome the aching fear that she was going crazy and her parents would give her a one-way ticket back to Woodbriar.
Brynna turned without speaking and started up the stairs. Her head was pounding and her eyes were dry and itchy from the chlorine, and she wanted nothing more than to peel her still-damp swimsuit off, but the second she walked into her bedroom, she paused. The feeling was overwhelming and immediate: someone was there. It was nothing obvious—she didn’t see or hear anything, but still the certainty slammed into her with all the subtlety of a brick wall.