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And then someone shouted. One of the guys standing by the shore. He was pointing.
Something was floating down the river into the pond.
A body.
“Oh, Jesus . . .” McCrae ran splashing into the water, Quin right behind him.
Carmen.
Bailey stood up as if electrified. No! She threw off the blanket and ran forward. Her knee collapsed as she slipped on the round stones beneath her bare feet, and she fell forward, scraping her hands.
She’s all right. She’s all right.
I saw something . . .
No, she’s all right. She’s . . .
McCrae got hold of Carmen’s arm and gently pulled her toward him before she could get sucked into the main body of the pond. Her skin was blue. Her eyes open.
She’s okay . . . she’s really all right . . .
“Bailey, get back,” her dad said, his voice raspy with emotion.
“ No . . . no . . . no . . .”
It was McCrae who got between Bailey and the body while Quin and Coach collected Carmen. Bailey tried to get around him, using all her force to scramble away from McCrae’s grip.
“She’s gone, Bailey,” he said. “She’s gone.”
“No, no. That’s not true. She’s—”
“She’s gone,” he said solemnly.
Some rational part of her mind heard him, but she completely shut it down.
I saw something . . .
“What did you see?”
“What?” Quin asked. He was beside her now, and she was shaking, quaking, and cold, so cold.
“She saw something, Dad. Something she shouldn’t have. And it killed her.”
He regarded her with real alarm. “Sweetheart, this was a tragic accident.”
They were all looking at her now. Miss Billings’s face was drawn and ravaged. McCrae was assessing her as if she’d grown another head. Penske came her way, frowning. Coach Sutton looked like he wanted to say something, but he just ran his hand over his face.
“I’m going to take you home,” Quin said.
Later, much later, when she surfaced painfully from the numb horror of seeing her best friend’s lifeless form and staring eyes, Bailey pulled out her journal, a book she’d barely written two words in since she’d gotten it as a gift from her wayward mother at the beginning of the school year.
What had Carmen said?
I saw something . . . I saw them . . . they didn’t know I was there . . .
She’d mentioned Tanner, too.
Tanner was with . . .
