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The last thing I want to do is ruin tonight for them. I don’t want them to lose the night they definitely deserve to have. I can survive being here on my own, with my eyes and ears riveted on the news anchor who’s still discussing Emily’s death while I sit on my couch, numb to everything as my fingers curl and uncurl around the remote.
Where was this attention when it was Daisy getting pulled out of the snow after drowning in the river? Where was this attention when I’d told everyone what had happened to us, and the doctors had said I was lucky I hadn’t lost my fingers to frostbite?
My phone rings, vibrating against my arm from its spot under me so hard that I nearly levitate. I’m surprised my heart doesn’t slam out of my chest at the sound or the shock of it, and I barely check the name on the screen before I put it to my ear, a deep breath sinking into my lungs as I do.
“Nic,” I sigh, greeting my best friend without a bit of surprise. “You saw, huh?”
“Yeah,I was sort of hoping you hadn’t,”she admits, her voice hesitant. I believe her. I can imagine the speech she had planned out for me, and wonder if she would’ve demanded to use Facetime, though she knows how much I despise it.
Meeting her eyes is hard at the best of times. I don’t need a weird, bad phone connection making it worse.
“Yeah.” I lick my lip, eyes still on the television and the crowd they’re showing around Keuka Lake. It’s the closest of the finger lakes to Hollow Bridge, though most people go to Canandaigua if they want to have a day on the water. At least, people from here who are tired of Keuka, anyway. But I’d know the shoreline anywhere, having grown up here. Even without the label on the bottom of the screen.
“So. No more Emily, huh?” I murmur, sinking down onto the sofa. “They’re saying it’s an accident, then? She fell in the lake and drowned? That’s ironic, poetic justice, don’t you think? After what happened to—”
“She didn’t fall in.”Nic’s voice is tight, her tone clipped. I can imagine the dancing worry in her eyes, and the way she can’t help but pick at her nail polish when she’s upset. Is she doing it now? Or is Nolan holding her hands, not letting her, as the two of them watch the same news broadcast as me?
“What do you mean?” Her words finally make it through the fog of my brain, and I realize that I’m working at less than one hundred percent processing capacity. Well, I can’t exactly be surprised.
Not when seeing Emily’s pretty face brings bubbles of nausea to my stomach, even if she’s dead.
This time, I don’t try to push away the memories that she brings to the surface. It’s no use. I know for a fact they’ll be living in my head more than normal for the next few days, and I hope toGodI don’t dream of her dying now, too.
I can’t take that.
“I overheard my mom…”she trails off, and I wonder if she’s regretting saying that much. With her mom as the chief of police of Hollow Bridge, she’s good at knowing things before the rest of the town knows them. Whether she eavesdropped or heard the rumors naturally. I have a feeling that tonight, it’s a case of the former. I can’t imagine her mother would talk about something like this in front of her.
“Come on. You’ve started, you have to finish,” I cajole, trying to sound like none of this is of any consequence to me.
It’s a lie, of course. My heart beats in my throat, making my discomfort known. I’m sure if I look at my hand that’s clenched around my phone, it’s shaking. But if I don’t look at it, then it’s not happening.
None of this is happening.
But it is, unfortunately. And when Nic starts talking once more, she cements that fact loud and clear.
“Mom says…well there’s evidence that she was pushed. She said it happened early this afternoon, at that part of the shore you can only get to through the park. You know, no one goes there anymore since it’s behind all those briars and huge ass trees.”I know exactly where she means. Daisy and I had spent hours and hours there as kids and then Phoenix started going with us or staying near so we wouldn’t get lost. According to him, it was so he wouldn’t get in trouble when we’d escaped the house from under his nose.
Even though we’d tried to rope him into our games, he’d always insisted he wasn’t interested, of course. Even when hewouldsurrender and play with us, he promised it was just so we would stop screaming at him.
My heart twists at the memory of a time that seems too long ago. It’s surreal to remember it now, when Emily had met her death in the same place we’d played.
“Ironic,” I murmured, knowing I should care more. It’s hard to push my emotions up that high, especially for someone I don’t really like. “Do they know who did it?” My mind flashes to the man at the fairgrounds, the one who’d looked at me with panic and violence in his eyes as he’d just kept walking. Is it coincidence that my brain conjures up the weirdest man I’ve seen in, well,ever? We don’t get a lot of strangers in Hollow Bridge. Especially ones that look crazy.
Thankfully, Nic is more than used to my weirdness, and knows that just because I don’t seem to care doesn’t mean I’m falling apart or hiding something.
This just isn’t something worth crying over. If anything…though, it’s mean to even think, it’s the opposite.
Emily had been awful.
“Not a clue.”
“Then why does she think Emily was pushed?”
Nic hesitates, and that alone tells me it must be bad. “Her fingers,” she whispers finally. “Her fingers were broken, and it looks like someone stepped on them hard. Mom thinks she was trying to hold on and someone, uh, helped her off her handhold.”
That’s brutal. I don’t say the words out loud, but I do sit up, still cocooned in my comforter. There’s nothing in me capable of being sad for Emily. I don’t even feel mildly inconvenienced. Actually, I’m irritated that she’s brought up all the shitty memories inside me that I’ve worked to beat back with a stick.
Thanks a lot for dying, Emily,I mutter internally, conveniently forgetting that Phoenix’s arrival in town had done the same to my brain.
