The Girl Who Stopped Swimming - By Joshilyn Jackson Page 0,13
the girls more and more while David and Laurel sat silent. As it became obvious that Bet had not known Molly very well, Moreno zeroed in on Shelby. She pushed and bullied, asking if Molly ever talked about running away, if Molly was unhappy at home, if Molly was having trouble at school.
Shelby, shrinking into Bet Clemmens’s side as they sat on Mindy’s love seat, kept saying she didn’t know in a scared, small voice so unlike her own that it sounded borrowed. Real Shelby trilled and yawped and gabbled dramatically and waved her arms around. She didn’t fold herself up into an unhappy packet and stare at her feet. Thalia would have knocked that bitch Moreno into next week. But Laurel, shell-shocked, sat dumb and let it happen.
The police had released Laurel and David’s house at around four A.M., and now only the backyard was wound in yellow tape. It might have been more proper to go to a hotel, but both girls were nodding off, and Laurel had wanted the comfort of her own things more than she had wanted to be proper.
Back in their bed, Laurel and David lay curled into S-shapes that faced each other, listening to the clatter and the voices of policemen and techs working in the yard. The CSIs were trying to process the scene before the rain came. They’d put huge floodlights all around the pool, and a hard white slice of artificial light came through a crack in the drapes. David watched Laurel steadily, but she felt her own lids drooping. She was sinking into sleep, drifting down, almost against her will.
From the surface, she heard David say, “I can’t sleep. I’m going downstairs to do some work.”
He got up, and it was as if he took the light with him. It reflected away before it reached her, as if she were deep under dark water. Somewhere, above her, in the safe, dry place she could not reach, David walked away. Laurel’s lungs ached for breath, but she could not reach the surface. She realized she could kick only one foot. She looked down and saw her mother squatting in some water weeds, her fluffy hair waving in the currents. Mother had a calm grip on Laurel’s other ankle.
She woke up halfway out of bed, both feet on the floor, choking for the air that was all around her. She had one hand on the phone beside the bed. She jerked her hand away as if the phone were hot. The clock told her she hadn’t been asleep longer than a few minutes. She got all the way up, knowing she would not sleep again until she had checked on Shelby.
She walked to Shelby’s doorway, and again, the bed was empty. Laurel’s heart stuttered. She whirled and peered across the hall into the small guest room. Shelby was there. She’d moved to the trundle bed, one level down from Bet Clemmens. Laurel got a full breath at last.
Shelby was on her back with her arm flung up onto the daybed, her fingers loosely curled around a piece of Bet’s sleeve. The veins of Shelby’s arm glowed pale blue through her skin even in the hallway light. Freak veins, Shelby called them, and begged for tanning-bed sessions or those self-activating lotions that turned a person orange. “You’re too young,” Laurel told her, and that was true, but the secret truth beneath was that Laurel loved the prominent veins. When Shelby was a baby, Laurel would map them with her fingers, following the trail that spent blood took from Shelby’s beating heart, heading to her lungs to renew itself.
The small guest room acted as a catchall. The overspill of Laurel’s fabric collection and the stash of toys and shoes she collected all year for DeLop ended up here. Laurel navigated her way around the stockpiles and Bet Clemmens’s Hefty bag. Bet’s mouth gaped open, and her breathing sounded thick. Shelby was breathing through her nose, quick and shallow.
Laurel knelt by the trundle, taking Shelby’s arm down and tucking it under the quilt. Her daughter’s arm felt too light, as if it had a will of its own. As if Shelby were moving it with her.
“Shel?” Laurel whispered. “You awake?”
No answer.
“Shelby,” Laurel urged, her voice growing louder, and then started when she saw that Bet Clemmens’s eyes were open and glittering in the hallway light. “Sorry, Bet. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I dun care,” Bet said. After a moment she added in a