An arm around my shoulder, except it’s too tall and thick to belong to Cass. My father. “How’re you doing, kiddo?”
That’s when I know. Dad knows better than to acknowledge that we’re related in the hallway. He knows that I would only allow this under the most extenuating circumstances. And here are the circumstances: the near-death of my best friend.
“Fine.” I move away before he can feel me shaking. “I gotta get to class.”
JULIANA DIDN’T KNOW, either. That’s what I keep telling myself.
Her car was still running. She didn’t mean it, I decide in AP Lit. Mr. Raia talks about the multiple choice section of the AP test with more gesticulating than usual. He keeps looking to me like he expects me to flee the room in hysterics. No, not I.
Maybe she was photographing something, slipped, hit her head. By precalc, I’m so certain that my hypothesis is correct that I don’t understand why Cassie hasn’t waltzed back in and given me a wink, prepared to tell me all of her stories.
I call Cassie’s house during lunch. The phone rings and rings. I imagine the sound echoing against the twisted animals with their frightening faces and the orange-red pottery. Surely Mrs. Hopeswell, freshly relaxed from yoga, will answer with, “Cassie? She’s right here.”
No answer.
In Spanish, the lyrics to “Stairway to Heaven” won’t stop replaying. 3:03 a.m. and no voicemail. Why did you call, Cassie? Why didn’t I answer?
After the last bell, everyone flees. I walk toward Dad’s car in the too-sunny afternoon, and a beaten-down boy with hair swept to one side like a wave steps in front of me.
“Marcos?” The blood rushes through my veins at hyper speed. Where’s Cassie, how’d you find her, how is she now?
“I’m sorry.” His brown eyes are nearly squinted shut with exhaustion. “It wasn’t good.” Instead of coconuts and laundry, he smells like sweat and saltwater. The bottom of his jeans bleed a deeper blue than the top, hours after–
I fight down the rising panic. I have to hear it from Marcos. I have to know the official narrative. “Do you know what her status is now?” Calm as a journalist.
He shakes his head. “They took her in a helicopter.” I imagine the chopper landing on the small outcropping of rocks beside the bay, sand flying everywhere, Cassie’s curls flowing like she’s facing the ocean instead of lying there–
“It was an accident.” I ignore my shaking legs, the waver in my voice.
Marcos looks at me sadly. Sympathetically. “I found a note on the passenger’s seat.”
The panic rises higher. I can handle it. I repeat the mantra as I would before competing on beam. “She has Post-Its everywhere. Stuff for her essays. Hell, I’ve left notes in there.” I’m rambling. I don’t recognize this high-pitched stranger speaking in a rush.
“There was only one.” Marcos sounds too tired to fight me on this. “It said, ‘Till human voices wake us and we drown.’”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CARS, SCHOOL BUSES, trucks seem determined to push us back as Dad and I inch up Nicolls Road. At every red light, my hand clamps down on the door handle. Go, go, go. I can see the hospital’s towers above the trees, the dying sunlight catching the windows, and I’m staring at them as hard as I can, as though I’ll be able to see Cassie from here.
When he finally pulls up to the curb of Stony Brook Hospital, I’m out of the car before it comes to a complete stop. I run through the sliding doors and almost barrel into an elderly lady in a wheelchair. “Cascade Hopeswell,” I say to the nurse at the desk, voice trembling.
The nurse eyes me critically. “Relation to the patient?”
“Sister. Savannah, Savannah Hopeswell.” Shut up, I can’t stop, am I too late?
She scans the paper in front of her. “She already has two visitors. I’m sorry.”
Has. Present tense. Still breathing.
“But–”
“I’m sorry,” she says firmly. “Come back tomorrow.”
I SLEEP WITH my phone clenched in my palm. Every hour between midnight and six a.m., I wake up, certain that it’s the vibration of a text message. It never is. It’s just my mind.
“My mom works on the neonatal floor at Stony Brook, and she says that Cassie’s out of critical condition,” Jacki Guzman tells me at our lockers, wiping away a tear in relief. “She’s stable now. It was, like, a miracle recovery. Aren’t you so glad? I am so, so glad.”
Out of critical condition. While I don’t know how accurate secondhand information from a neonatal nurse is and I’m pretty sure that all sorts of laws are being violated by these details being shared, it’s enough to fill me with hope.
Word catches that Cassie is out of danger, and high tide returns. When she comes back to school, there will be whispers. Right now, though, everyone is as jovial or annoyed as they’d be on any other day.
How are you? I text her.
An instant later, the response: Got a hot doctor.
Finally.
I’m shaking and laughing a little because of course that would be Cassie’s response–flippant and irreverent–and when Jacki shuts her locker and watches me with concern, I ignore it. Who cares?
My fingers rush to reply, hitting all the wrong letters and forcing me to retype. The same panic from yesterday rushes through me, as though if I don’t reply fast enough, she’ll vanish. They wouldn’t let me in yesterday.
Yeah, I don’t remember much of yesterday. So casual, as if she’s telling me about a night of drinking.
The next message arrives just as briskly. Please visit? I miss you. All I do here is sleep.
Whatever led her to the water, she’s back again, away from rock bottom and swimming back to the surface. She’ll be back, she’ll get through this, and I won’t let her fall again.
Clutching the phone so that those precious words don’t slip away (she’s alive, she’s okay), I find Juliana in the cafeteria next to Andreas, who’s in the midst of illustrating on his napkin with a ketchup-dipped French fry. When she looks up and sees me, she seems almost grateful for the interruption. “Cassie texted me,” I tell her. “She’s okay.”