Page 137 of Ghosted

Voicemail.

I call again.

Nothing.

I run harder.

The campus lights smear past me. The chapel. The side path. The empty stretch of lawn near the athletic building. Everything looks normal, and that makes it worse. The world shouldn’t be allowed to look normal when something inside me already knows it’s too late.

No.

I shut that shit down before it finishes.

I can’t be too late.

No. She was mad. She said she was going to shower and go home. She’s probably at home, screening my calls cause I left her to go fight when she asked me not to.

Fucking idiot.

Shit, I’ll take her angry. I’ll take her throwing something at my head and telling me I ruined everything if it means she’s okay.

The pool building sits ahead, dark except for a few low lights glowing behind the glass.

I yank the side door open.

Unlocked.

My stomach drops.

“Alice!”

My voice slams down the hall and comes back empty so I run.

Shoes squeaking on tile. Breath ripping out of my chest. The building smells like chlorine and wet stone and something metallic under it that might be in my head, might be memory, might be the whole fucking world turning against me.

“Alice!”

No answer.

I hit the pool room doors hard enough that one swings back and crashes into the wall.

The room opens wide and blue and still.

Too still.

For half a second, I don’t see her.

My brain won’t let me.

It gives me the lane ropes first. The ceiling lights. The tile. The shadows under the bleachers.

The water moves in slow rings, like someone was just in it.

Then I see her.

Just under the surface, drifting near the lane rope in a dark hoodie and leggings, her hair moving around her face with the water.

For a second, I don’t understand what I’m looking at.