Page 68 of Serenity Falls

Hailey smiles thinly. ‘Didn’t Lockhart tell you about my family?’

It suddenly clicks. ‘Davey Junior … he was the little boy who drowned?’

Hailey nods towards the empty pool. ‘That’s where it happened. Serena was at work. Aunt May was supposed to be watching Davey. But she was distracted—’ Hailey pauses, eyes darkening. ‘Or if you want to listen to the town gossips, she was drunk.’ She glances back at the house. ‘Either way, she blames herself. I sometimes think the guilt, losing her grandson and her daughter, it drove her crazy.’

‘Well, dementia isn’t craziness. It’s just—’

‘I know what dementia is, Mr Barker,’ she snaps. ‘I’ve had to learn up on it real quick. But Aunt May was having delusions long before the diagnosis.’

‘What sort of delusions?’

Hailey sighs. ‘She thinks Davey Junior is still alive.’

‘What?’

‘Yeah. She’s convinced herself that he didn’t drown that day. She believes that someone took him.’

Serena

Every bad idea starts out as a good idea. Especially when you’re a teenager. The worst of ideas seem like brilliant plans when you’re sixteen.

Milo and I had been firm friends for around four years by then. I’d fully embraced my Emo phase and had ditched my preppy look to slouch around in baggy shorts, checked shirts over skinny vests and Converse. My hair had grown out, but I still refused to wear it long and kept it in a shaggy bob à la Debbie Harry. Mom had moaned and cajoled but eventually accepted it. Then, as was her way, she found a way to twist my teenage rebellion to her own needs.

‘We’re going to call it “the modern face of Serenity”,’ she had proclaimed when I came home from school one day to find her sitting in the living room with one of the Conservators – a large guy called Johnson Green. He often came round to talk to Mom about town events. Occasionally, I wondered if he and Mom were ‘doing it’. But then, Green usually brought his weird son, Owen, with him, so maybe not.

‘The Conservators love it,’ Green had boomed. He’d spread out his hands like he was unveiling a poster. ‘“The progressive face of a progressive town.”’

Mom had clapped. Owen had pulled a huge booger out of his nose and eaten it. I’d inwardly groaned and stomped off to my bedroom.

Milo, for his part, had shot up. He was still skinny but now towered over me at six foot three. In contrast to my shorter hair, he had let his blond crew cut grow long, almost to his shoulders. He had also finally lost his eyepatch and swapped his thick glasses for contacts. He looked good in a quirky, odd kind of way.

For me, his change in stature and appearance hadn’t changed how I saw him – he was still the weird little kid who wanted to swap sandwiches. Geeky, odd Milo.

We hung out a lot in the library after school. Most of the other kids went to the diner or the park. Also, it meant neither of us had to go home. By this point, we both knew a bit more about each other’s home lives. Milo knew my mom was overbearing and possessive (and didn’t think he was good enough for her daughter). I knew that Milo’s mom was a religious nutjob. I’d met her once and was in no hurry to repeat the experience. Although, as it turned out, I’d meet her again before everything went bad. And she was no small part of that.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. There are lots of moving parts to this story and it’s important I tell you them in order, so you can see how it all played out. How all those random conversations and decisions led me to where I am now.

We always sat in the study section, tucked in a dusty corner partially hidden behind a rack of reference books that nobody ever seemed to check out. Not many people came to the library to study or read. Not even old folk. It was usually empty except for us and the equally dusty and half-deaf librarian, Miss Gale. Occasionally, she would stop by, glasses dangling from her crinkled neck, smile and ask us how our studies were going. We answered politely and made up some shit up about English or History or something. She never noticed that we barely opened our books. Or if we did, we never turned the pages.

The day that Milo showed me the maps we were relaxed, lounging in our seats, just talking crap about this and that. The conversation ebbed and flowed in that random way it does between close friends. Maybe we did do a bit of studying in between. We had an English assignment to finish. I can’t quite remember because memory itself is fallible.

All I know is somehow the conversation turned to people at school, like it often did. Milo may have been an outsider, but, like he told me the first day we met, he was good at watching. He knew everything about everyone.

‘You know, it’s Lucy Bennett’s sweet sixteenth next month?’

Lucy Bennett was the school mean girl. Blonde – tick. Tan – tick. Cheerleader – tick. It’s funny, you think those girls don’t really exist outside of movies, but they do, or at least, here in Serenity Falls, they certainly did.

Lucy hated me, always had. Milo theorized it was because she was jealous. She would have loved to be ‘the face of Serenity’. It was one status tick box she didn’t have, and it drove her mad. That was why she and her clique had come down so hard on me. Plus, he said: ‘Objectively, you’re prettier than she is.’

‘Right.’ I had rolled my eyes.

‘It’s true. Beneath the hairspray and foundation, she’s not all that. You don’t need anything to make you beautiful.’

I think I might have blushed and then elbowed him hard in the ribs. ‘So, I guess our invites to the party got lost in the post?’

‘Yeah, ’course.’

I chewed on the lid of my pen, pondering. ‘I wonder what she’ll do. Hire a yacht and throw a bash on the lake? Maybe book the whole hotel. I mean, there’ll be a stretch limo, right?’