“You don’t want to know the details, honey. They’re not important.”
Brynna pressed the pads of her fingers against the cool wood grain of the kitchen table. Connecting with something—anything—made her feel real, even as everything inside of her wanted this moment to be fake.
“I want to know, Dad.” Her heart was a steady drumbeat. “I need to know.”
He cleared his throat and shifted his weight in his chair then tossed a glance at Brynna’s mother who nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Erica had been in the—”
“Erica’s body,” Brynna’s mother corrected, her eyes fierce and fixed.
“Right, sorry. Erica’s body had been in the water a long time, Brynna. The water, the animals… Honey, they had done a lot of damage to Er—the body. She wasn’t found all at once. It took them some time to identify and confirm the remains that they did have.”
Brynna’s stomach heaved and she was at the sink, gripping the tiles as she vomited. Her stomach doubled in on itself and then revolted, and tears were sliding down her cheeks as her body convulsed. Vaguely, she could feel her mother stroking her hair and telling her things would be okay. She could hear her father’s heavy footfalls as he paced behind her, clearing his throat the way he always did in a weird attempt to convey concern.
When her stomach calmed or there was nothing left inside her, an icy chill shot through Brynna, even as her body broke out in a sweat. Her teeth were chattering, and all her muscles were spent as though she had just run a marathon. She fell back against her mother and let her hold her; she didn’t react when her father wrapped his arms around them both. Her mother cried, stifling little mewling sounds while her father cried silently. Brynna just stared at the grain of the hardwood floor, eyes itchy and dry.
???
Brynna lay in her bed, staring up at the ceiling, watching the shadows swirl in the dark. Knowing that Erica was found wasn’t the relief she thought it was going to be. As long as Erica was out there, she could have been out there, alive. As terrifying as the recent taunts and messages had been, there was a sliver of hope, somewhere deep down, that Erica was responsible. Erica could be mad at Brynna—hell, she could want Brynna dead—but Erica would be alive. And, Brynna believed, if Erica was taking out her anger on Brynna, it was fine because she deserved it.
But now…
Erica was dead. It was that simple and that horrifying. Brynna’s best friend was dead, and in a matter of days, they were going to dump her in a box and bury her under six feet of earth. Her fingertips burned, knowing that the last time she touched Erica, as their fingers pulled apart in the cold water, was the last time Erica touched anyone. Brynna didn’t push Erica, she didn’t hold her under the water, but she was just as guilty as if she had.
Brynna stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling, for two full days. When she slept, it was fitful and unsettling, and when she left her room, she was a walking corpse, expressionless, emotionless, dragging her feet toward the refrigerator or the kitchen sink. Her parents gave her a wide berth, but between her restless catnaps, Brynna began to notice that things were missing in her bedroom or bathroom: the nail polish remover that was there yesterday was gone. The three tabs of baby aspirin she was allowed to have, gone. A metal nail file, an ancient jump rope, her Daisy razors. Even the glass was gone from her picture frames.
My parents think I’m going to kill myself, Brynna thought, pushing her head into her pillow that was already beginning to smell sour and old. The thought brought no great emotion to her; she couldn’t decide whether she was angry or intrigued, horrified or warmed. She simply rolled over again and squeezed her eyes shut against the few bars of diffused light that still found their way through the blinds and did her best not to think about Erica.
When she opened her eyes on Sunday morning, she was able to shower and head down the stairs. She was even able to push around her half-mushy cereal and swallow a few bites. Erica’s body—her remains, she kept correcting herself—still weighed heavy on her mind, but there was something else there too, something she was missing. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was until late in the day when she crawled back in bed and pulled her tablet to her lap.
She had an inbox full of emails from Evan and Teddy and Lauren—there was even one or two from Darcy asking why she wasn’t in school on Friday or why she wasn’t answering their calls. It wasn’t until a tweet from Evan popped up that Brynna realized what was eluding her: “Erica” had left her alone for three whole days.
Since the day Brynna had learned that Erica really was dead.