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But I can’t help thinking how weird the timing is. Just as I wonder what Phoenix thinks about this development in Hollow Bridge. He has to care, right? After all, he knows as well as I do that she’s one quarter of the reason that his sister is dead, instead of being in college with me.
“Would you let me know if you hear anything else?” The coldness of my voice is worse than I’d hoped it would be. My detachment has to be evident. “I’m going to see if I can find any other stories about it. I’d like to know if they find out who pushed her.”
To thank them.
Well, no. That would be wrong of me. Butstill.
“Sure, Bailey,” Nic says after a moment. “We’re going to a party later tonight at Tasha’s, though. It’s a costume party.”Of course it is. Those are Hollow Bridge’s favorite kind, and the ones Nic and Nolan love the most. She salivates all year long until this time of year pops up, and hunts down any costume party she can in order to show off her sewing and design skills. “Do you want to come?”The invitation is an afterthought, though I’m not offended. She just knows I don’t share her love of parties, costumed or otherwise.
“No, no no,” I assure her. “Not in the least. Seriously.” As if to prove a point to myself, I flop back down and wish my thoughts weren’t racing like thoroughbreds. “Like I said. I just want to watch the news. At least for a little while. Just to see if…”
To see if there’s a reason for Emily’s death, or if Nic’s mom’s theory makes it on the eleven o’clock news. “Have a good time, Nic. Send me a picture of your costume.”
She hangs up a second later, after a quick farewell and plea for me to do something of the self care variety, like drinking hot chocolate in the hot tub. It’s not the best idea I’ve ever heard from her.
But it’s certainly not the worst, either.
Chapter4
Ican hear the ice crack moments before my foot falls. Thin, almost crystalline sounds that trickle into my ears, and when I look down, I know what I’ll see.
And yet, I’m still too surprised to move.
Spiderweb cracks spin out from the ice under my sneaker, getting bigger and branching off in a myriad of directions against the mostly opaque ice. It’s beautiful, in the most terrifying way, and when I look up a little, I see that I’m not the only one with cracks under them.
Daisy, who stands closer to the flag planted in the ice of the lake, stares at me with abject horror on her face, having picked up our danger mere microseconds before me. Or maybe it’s that I don’t want to believe it.
That I want to spend my last few seconds in wonderful, ignorant bliss.
“Bailey…” My name is a whisper on her full, chapped lips, and she lifts a shaking hand toward me, her mitten bright against the gray and white of the snow and ice around us. In that moment I see the regret, the guilt, and I know she wishes she’d stopped when I’d begged her to. Or not have done this at all.
They were never worth this, and I think she knows it in the last few seconds we’ll ever look at each other.
But whatever else she’s going to say is lost when she falls. With a dreadful sound like a gunshot, the ice beneath her breaks a second before the ice under me does as well. It’s a strange sensation, like the earth getting yanked out from under me, and I hit the freezing water with a scream as my lungs seize up in my chest, protesting everything about the situation.
For precious, terrifying moments, I struggle. My eyes are wide in the water, and freezing. It feels like frozen fingers are trying to claw them out every moment they’re open, but if I close them, I won’t know where to go.
Fear and ice close in around my chest, and mercifully, my mind plays the memory like a bad projection. One moment I’m sinking, the next my freezing, burning fingers are clawing at the ice to pull myself up. In the dream, I don’t feel the pain in my knee where it’s sliced open on the ice. Nor do I feel anything past dull discomfort in my hands, though I know that in reality, they’d burned worse than anything I’d ever felt.
In the next moment, I’m crawling towards the shallow edge of the lake, where Daisy lays half in, half out of the water. My heart soars, and I tremble with relief that she’s made it out of the lake as well, since she would’ve had to swim to get this far and not sink straight to the bottom.
At least, until I turn her over, my hands on her shoulders as I try with freezing, bruised lips to say her name.
Daisy.
Daisy.
Dai…sy.
……Daisy.
I shake her once. Then again. A third time, as the syllables of her name become a strange, slurred cry on my lips. Daisydaisydaisydai…sy…
Remembering the others my head jerks up, but when my gaze scans the far shore where Emily, Ava, and Jayden had been standing, all I see is the snowy, frozen shore and the trees beyond.
The flag from the middle of the lake, having fallen along with us, bumps against her shoe with the movement of the water, but Daisy doesn’t move.
She’ll never move or open her eyes again.
