voice booms in my ear as if through a megaphone.
“Not so loud,” I mumble. I peel my eyes open and wait for the world to come into focus. I’m on Kaylee’s blanket, sprawled on my stomach. For a moment, it’s a magic carpet, and we’re soaring high up in the clouds. I try to concentrate. That joint was laced with something. I don’t know what I’m on.
I get my elbows under me and push myself up halfway. Kaylee’s gone. I look around until I find her, running out along the pier. “Starr!” she yells. “Holy fuck, guys!”
I shove myself to a sitting position, then to my knees. Someone’s pulling me to my feet. Ian. His eyes drill holes into mine.
“Hello, Anna? You are deep in a K-hole or something.”
“Am I?” I mumble. Special K. Ketamine. Maybe that’s what cute guy’s joint was cut with.
Kaylee’s voice floats down the pier, across the sand. “ This is her coat. Her dress, oh my god!”
In a minute, Mike’s next to her. “Calm the fuck down, Kay.”
I force myself to start walking. The ocean gleams with the dull grays of storm clouds or car doors below me as I stumble down the pier, Ian trailing behind.
When we get to the end, it all snaps into focus. Starr’s coat, dress, and shoes lie discarded on the boards. Her giant satchel bag is nowhere to be found. Kaylee has her phone pressed to her ear with one hand, the other dancing nervously against her thigh. “She’s not picking up. God damnit, Starr.”
“She’s fine,” Mike insists. “She’s messing with us.”
“How do you figure?” Ian asks.
Mike shrugs. “Her bag’s gone, right? Either she went swimming with her purse, or she brought a change of clothes. Wouldn’t be the first time Starr’s pulled some stunt.”
We’re all silent for a moment. Mike’s not wrong about the satchel bag. Unless of course someone stole it. But did any of us actually see her go in the water? My legs buckle, and then I’m kneeling at the edge of the pier, staring out. The water is cloudy and impervious. It’s easy to believe Mike. To believe Starr’s fine, standing on the boardwalk at our backs, laughing at us. Because if he’s wrong, we’re all to blame. We all heard her say she was going in, and none of us checked on her, even once. I stare hard at the water until I think I see the flash of a girl’s hand break the surface, and I gasp.
“Starr!” I scream, and then Kaylee’s hands are clasped tight around my wrists, and she’s pulling me back from the edge.
Because there’s nothing. Just greedy, murky water that foams and froths like a hungry wild thing when it hits the legs of the pier below.
* * *
“You passed out in the Lyft,” Kaylee is saying. Her chin is trembling, but her voice is steady. “On the way to the club. Mike insisted we all still go, even with Starr missing. That we should all just act normal. He’d convinced us, mostly, I guess. That it was probably a joke. And if it wasn’t, that calling nine-one-one would only get us in trouble. If she was out there, it was too late to save her.”
She takes another slow pull from her thermos. “I called anyway, from the club bathroom. Told the dispatcher I’d seen a woman swimming off the pier. Hung up without giving her a name.” She turns, looks me in the eye. “Even then, I knew. Too little, too late.”
“Where was I? Where the hell was I?”
“You never made it inside the club, babe. You passed out completely in the Lyft, and then I got you into a green cab headed home.”
I close my eyes again.
The cab smelled like Indian spices and old leather.
I think I remember that, but I can’t be sure.
I lean my head back against the brick wall behind us. Kaylee’s words swirl all around me, inside me, cutting deep. Starr. And I let myself remember. I remember the water, the wind slicing across my cheeks. I remember the darkness. The wet mist in the air. I remember staring out across the water, knowing deep in my bones that this was no joke, that my friend was out there somewhere. A girl’s body lost beneath the waves. I remember the guilt. Because we didn’t even try to help. We wanted to believe that what Mike said was true. Because the alternative was too horrible to consider.
And so I didn’t consider it. I let