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Zora tiptoed into the bowels of the house, and Delta limped to an outdoor chair. Her body was buzzing, and she was aware of time passing in a visceral way. Her fear grew as a real crisis loomed. Was Tanner okay? Why had he done that? It was like he’d lifted his middle finger at all of them.
“Delta.”
She gasped in surprise when the voice sounded from the darkness.
Ellie O’Brien emerged into the squares of light blasting from the house onto the patio. She was wet and shaking uncontrollably.
Delta immediately felt a surge of rage. “You jumped in the water, too!”
“Where is everybody?”
“What happened down there? Why did you do that?” Delta asked at the same time. “You got out? Where’s Tanner? And the rest of them.”
“They went down the rapids. I . . . pulled myself out before that. Miss Billings helped me. Freddie jumped in, though, and he went down the rapids. Bailey was running after Carmen, and she slipped . . .”
“What? It’s freaking dark,” Delta yelled. “McCrae said to call the police.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Do you think that’s where Coach Sutton is? At Grimm’s Pond? Waiting for them?”
Grimm’s Pond. Delta thought of the deceptively calm waters after the rapids.
“Is that blood?” Ellie asked. Between words, her teeth chattered.
“Go inside and warm up.”
“What happened to your foot?”
What do you care? “I cut it.” Delta’s responses were shorter and shorter. If she didn’t get answers soon, she would start screaming and never be able to stop.
‘Where’s Amanda?”
“I don’t know! Zora’s inside, trying to find out. I think they’re all gone. Probably at Grimm’s Pond. Oh, God . . . oh, God . . .”
“Coach has a cell phone. He’s bound to be calling someone.”
At that moment, the phone inside the Forsythe home began ringing. “Get . . . get that,” Delta stuttered, but Ellie was already running inside. Her clothes were stuck to her, and her hair was lank and wet. Like Zora, she disappeared, and then the ringing stopped. Delta’s ears roared in the silence that followed. She couldn’t think.
She held her breath, heart pounding. It was all a bad dream. Had to be.
Nothing really terrible was going to happen. It couldn’t. Terrible things happened to other people, not the Five Firsts and not their friends.
Delta heard a desperate shriek from inside the house, and her blood chilled. Zora. What?
Now Zora was screaming and crying, and Delta stumbled to the door, uncaring about the blood smearing on the floor or the pain as she stepped inside, her heart nearly shattering her rib cage. She staggered forward through the house. Zora was clinging to a stunned and frozen Ellie, who was holding the Forsythes’ handheld receiver to the landline at the end of her limp arm.
“What?” Delta cried. “What?”
The receiver slipped from Ellie’s hand.
“Is it Tanner?” Delta shrieked. “It’s Tanner? Oh, God! God!”
“It’s Carmen. Amanda said . . .” Ellie broke off, gulped.
“What?”
Zora’s crying intensified.
“She’s dead. Drowned . . . ,” said Ellie.
