My mind rejected it, but my body knew. I was in motion before my tattered thoughts could stitch themselves together.
Ethan’s hand scraped against my arm once more, but I plunged past. I ran straight into the water, thrashing my way through to her. I clawed my way past cattails, feet sinking into silty mud. Hold on, hold on, I thought, logic left behind me on the shore. She couldn’t be alive and it didn’t matter because I had to get to her. I was eleven years old and she was in the water and I couldn’t find her, the silt too thick, my hands groping at nothing, nothing, nothing.
And then she was in my arms, and I was dragging her up. And she had coughed and sputtered and fought me, and breathed, and lived. She had lived, and she would live now, if I could only get to her.
Her face was swollen and gray when I turned her over. “It’s okay,” I murmured inanely. I pulled her against me. Her eyes were shut, her mouth slack. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” I bent over her, my breath knotted in my throat.
You promised, I shouted, but the words lodged in silence. I’m here. You said you would be, too.
“Naomi. There’s nothing you can do. You shouldn’t touch the body,” Ethan said. He stood in the water beside me, his hand outstretched toward my shoulder, not quite touching me. “We need to call the police.”
I shook my head, on my knees in the muck. “I’m not leaving her here.” I tried to lift her. She was so thin. Like she was worried that if there were any more of her, she’d only be in the way. But I couldn’t get my arms under her, couldn’t find my footing. I slipped, struggling under her weight. I couldn’t leave her in the water. She was so cold. She hated the cold.
“She’s dead, Naomi. She’s gone,” he said. I shook my head. She couldn’t be. She couldn’t be, because she’d promised she wouldn’t try again. Because she knew I would be there and I would help and we would fix it, together.
But I breathed in the scent of rain and old growth and tipped my head back, let the cold water patter over my eyelids, and I made myself stop. Be still.
Let go, I thought.
Let go, a girl thought twenty years ago, rain pattering against her cheek, the scent of rotting wood and blood in her nose. Let go.
“Breathe,” Schreiber said.
“I’m breathing,” I told him, though I wasn’t sure it was true. I didn’t see how it could be. I was supposed to be dead. Olivia was supposed to be alive. I looked at Schreiber. “I’m not leaving her here,” I said again, firmly.
He stepped forward, and for a moment I thought he meant to pull me away from her, but instead he slid his arms beneath Olivia’s body. “I’ve got her,” he said. He lifted her from me slowly, gently, angling her so that her head rested in the crook of his arm. The tips of her fingers trailed in the water as he waded back to shore, as I followed shuddering in his wake.
He set her down there and placed his coat over her face like a shroud. I sank to my knees beside her. My mind was empty. I couldn’t think. Didn’t want to.
“I don’t have signal here. We have to go back to the trailhead and call the police,” Ethan said.
“I’m staying here,” I said. I pressed a fist against my stomach.
Ethan nodded. “Okay. I’ll be right back. Don’t … don’t go anywhere.”
There wasn’t anywhere for me to go. I was where I was supposed to be: with Olivia. In the woods.
“Why did you do it?” I asked her now. Asked her then, lying in her bed together, the blanket up over our heads as Cass snored on the floor. Silt from the pond still in our hair, the taste of it still on our tongues. “You didn’t have to stay under that long.”
“Yes I did. The goddesses were watching,” Liv said.
“Do you really believe in them?” I asked.
“Don’t you?”
“Of course,” I said, pretending it was true. “Of course I do.”
“I can feel them sometimes,” she whispered, and burrowed against me. I put my arms around her, her head tucked under my chin. I held her until she went slack with sleep, but my eyes never closed.
“Of course I believe,” I whispered to the dark, but there was no one to answer.
The summer we found Persephone, Dad’s drinking spiraled out of control. He’d been seeing a woman, but when she realized he wasn’t the fixer-upper she thought, just a money pit, she bailed. Up until then, he’d held down a part-time job tending bar and kept food in the cupboards, but he lost interest in both. I spent most meals with Cass’s family or Liv’s. Found five dollars tucked in my coat pocket more often than not. Got invited for sleepovers even on school nights. That’s how Chester took care of its own: quietly, so you wouldn’t seem to be interfering.
The weight of all that pity was almost unbearable, but Liv never once made me feel lesser. We’d been outsiders together. We were all friends, and I’d never have said I loved one more than the other, but I’d harbored the secret truth that Liv was my best friend, the one who understood me.
And now she was dead.
My coffee cup had gone cold in my hand. A fleck of grit floated slowly over its surface, finally clinging to the waxed cardboard rim. I tipped the cup, dislodging the fleck, and watched it drift away again.
“Ms. Cunningham?”
It was the third time Bishop had said it. I looked up through bleary eyes. I sat in a conference room at the Chester police station, a gray blanket wrapped around me, wearing borrowed sweats and a department T-shirt. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been there. I couldn’t seem to anchor myself in time. I kept slipping back to the pond, to that summer, to a hundred days in between. Anything but now.
“I’m going to ask you a few questions,” Bishop said. No if that’s all right or other niceties that might imply I had a choice.
I nodded like I didn’t have anything to hide. Bishop took the next seat over from me, setting a folder on the table in front of her. I stared at it, trying to guess what was inside. Information about me? About Liv?
“When is the last time you spoke to Ms. Barnes?” Bishop asked.
“Yesterday. We met up at Cassidy’s house and then I dropped her off at home afterward.”
“Did she seem agitated?”
“Did you know Olivia?” I asked, head tilted. Bishop’s lips thinned. “Olivia being agitated doesn’t mean much. She gets anxious a lot.”
“More agitated than usual, then.”
Agitated, like she’d ripped open a poorly healed wound we’d been ignoring for twenty years. Agitated, like she was dragging our secrets out into the light. “I’m not sure.”
I wanted Bishop to stop talking, but her questions kept coming, relentless, leaving my thoughts no time to find solid ground before they were sent skidding away again.
“Why were you meeting up?”
“Stahl died. We wanted to see each other. You know. Survivors’ club.” My voice sounded distant. I hadn’t made the active choice to lie. It was just habit. Easier than telling the truth. The lies let me stay numb.
“Did Olivia own a gun?” Bishop asked.
That jerked me out of the haze momentarily. “What? No,” I said. “She hates guns. They scare her.” Growing up in a logging town, you’d have thought she would grow out of it, but she never stopped getting antsy around them.