“Soup?”
She looked up into her mother’s eyes, her forehead creased with worry. Brynna never realized how much older her mother looked than she had just fourteen months ago, how now when her hair was wound in the messy topknot, there were streaks of gray between the auburn. Her eyes were lined and tired-looking, and although part of Brynna wanted to curl up in her mother’s arms and tell her everything—everything—she couldn’t. Her mother looked so fragile.
“You don’t have to wait on me, Mom. I’m really okay. I just…ate the cafeteria food today.” She offered a small smile. “Not going to make that mistake again. I think I just want to go to sleep.”
Her mother’s eyebrows went up. “It’s barely nine o’clock. You must be sick.”
She blew her a kiss, clicked off the overhead light, and shut the door with a soft click. Brynna stared at the ceiling for exactly five minutes before sleep hit her like a solid wall. She slept fitfully, dreaming of Ella screaming at her, her teeth jagged and blood-stained as she snapped her jaws at Brynna. Shards of black water crashed into her subconscious, and Ella’s screams were snatched away by the pounding sound of waves crashing on sand. Erica was there and then she wasn’t, and Brynna reached out to her, their fingertips brushing then separated by miles of water. Erica would come back again and the whole thing would repeat. Each time it was comforting and then terrifying, and dream Brynna screamed until her throat was raw, and then she began to sink. She felt the water lapping over her, and this time, she welcomed it. She closed her eyes and gave in to the soft lull of the ocean, to the caress of the waves. The undulating surf was like soft hands pressing her down, and as the water invaded her nose, dripped down her throat, and poured into her lungs, Brynna felt herself letting go. She didn’t struggle to breathe, and the twilight behind her eyelids grew darker and darker as the water took her over. She couldn’t hear the waves anymore. She couldn’t hear Ella’s screams. She could only feel the blissful tug of the water…
Then all at once, a hand wrapped around her arm and yanked her up until the sunlight blinded her and her wet body shivered in the chilled air. Brynna yawned then blinked.
“What?”
Her alarm clock was blaring and her sheets were rolled in a matted mess at the end of her bed.
“Holy crap.”
She raked a hand through her hair, the unsettling remnants of the dream still hanging on her periphery. She sighed and glanced around the room, her room, with all of her things lined up and set just as she had left them—but something felt off. Kicking her bare feet over the bed, Brynna stepped onto the plush carpet and immediately sat back down.
Her feet were wet.
Fire zinged through her body, but Brynna worked to shake it off. She glanced over her shoulder at herself in the mirror and started, her heart seizing in her chest.
Her biology book lay open on her desk. Perched on top of the splayed-open pages was a pair of glasses. From where she sat, Brynna could see them glitter, could see the sunlight bounce off the tiny pool of water they sat in. She made a beeline for them, snatching them up.
They were Erica’s.
Though nondescript to the casual observer, Brynna would know them anywhere. Erica had painted the inside of the plain black frames with the hottest, pinkest nail polish she could find. She used to say they represented the “diva inside.”
Brynna started to tremble. The eyeglasses were wet, the saltwater smell unmistakable. A fleck of kelp wrapped around one edge of the frame. She turned, glasses in hand, but stopped cold when she saw the footprints on the carpet: Dainty. Barefoot. Wet.
Her heart slammed against her rib cage, and she started to cry, her eyes watering acidic tears over her cheeks.
“Erica?”
She remembered the dream and stared incredulously at her arm, waiting to see a burn or bruise from where Erica’s hand had grabbed when she yanked Brynna from the water—but there was nothing there.
“Erica is dead,” Brynna started. “Erica is dead.” She rocked and chanted the sentence to herself like a mantra—or a prayer.
???
Trepidation shot through Brynna when she set foot on campus the next morning. She wasn’t sure if Teddy told anyone about what happened—if he said that he had found Brynna nearly drowned or that he found the “new girl” wrestling with an imaginary ghost from her past. Everything about her felt vulnerable, like walking through a crowded room with a tender sunburn, and Brynna didn’t want to see anyone so she skirted the main halls and walked the perimeter of the building. That was where she was when she saw the janitor outside of the poolroom’s double door. He had a pair of long-handled pipe cutters in his hands and was working at something shoved through the door handles. Brynna paused, watching.