one cell, and then I want to smack my forehead because there’s no service at the spring.
Rusty vanishes too. He and Josh are diving for the girl. And I think, What is she doing down there? A split second later, I dive also.
I swim blind, the surface gone too dim to illuminate below. I wriggle through the black, my chest squeezing with the increased pressure. My hands jab the bottom. It’s soundless as death, and I wonder if Ben can hear anything where he is. Stupid to believe he could be anywhere, dead is dead. And I’m not dead, even if sometimes I wonder if we’d be together if I were. That’s a nightmare thought, the kind that filled the first month after we buried Ben’s empty coffin.
There’s a ripple in the water to my right—Josh or Rusty scouring the spring for the girl. The girl. I was below a minute ago and there was no one except loneliness and memories of Ben—but aren’t those two actually the same? My arms sweep back and forth, legs propelling me forward. Pressure behind my eyeballs. Too long since the surface. And that must be the case, because I have the inkling that I’m an astronaut in space and I’m only dreaming that I’m in water.
My arms close around something—no, someone—waxy and firm. I take hold and yank and yank, ripping the form free from an invisible grip. She’s slender in my arms, all sharp angles and poking bones. I wonder if she’s a kid as we surface, and I gasp so hard it’s a punch in the lungs.
“Help,” I sputter. Everything is silver edged. Rusty’s arms windmill toward me. His hands skate over mine to get a grip on the girl, which is good because she’s slipping, her breasts smushed against my arms as I try to keep hold. Breasts, so she’s not a kid. Rusty floats her on her back, and with an arm hooked under hers, he cuts through the water.
“Over here, man,” Duncan calls, crouched on the shore, blood smeared across his face. Josh jerks his head to the ladder, and we swim for it. Rusty must have reached the shore, because Duncan adds, “Lift her. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a bit higher.”
My arms go shaky and dumb as I climb from one rung to the next. I’m at the top, swinging a leg over a boulder, when Duncan shouts, “Holy shit, I know her.” Becca cries out from where she’s curled on her towel, the skipper hat and her face ducking intermittently behind her knees. “It’s Maggie Lewis,” Duncan says.
I scramble for a handhold on the slick rock, anything to sink my nails into before I fall. Maggie. Maggie Lewis. The name is a fist around my heart, giving it an extra pump. Like a gossamer screen overlaying the here and now, I see Maggie in the halls at school, the hearts and quotes she doodled in Sharpie standing out against the washed-out denim of her jeans. I see Maggie on the field through the rear library windows. She’s sitting cross-legged with the hippie-wanna-be, hemp-wearing, political kids, and she’s tossing chunks of her sandwich to a scraggly seagull. It was the nicest thing I’d ever seen her do.
I walk haltingly toward the huddle. I want to collapse. Becca’s already on the ground, arms latching her knees as she rocks, her wavy hair a mane she’s retreating into. I decide I don’t like the way completely-freaking-out looks, so I stay standing.
“Is she breathing? Is she?” Becca asks.
Josh kneels next to Maggie. He throws her pale arms to the sides and places the heels of his hands, one on top of the other, at her sternum, over her transparent white shirt. Her body jolts as he pumps. Josh’s mom is a firefighter; he knows what to do. He’ll save Maggie. Except that doesn’t ease the fist’s grip on my heart. It wouldn’t. I hate Maggie Lewis. Maggie is the reason Ben was driving the night he died. He was taking her home.
Willa’s arms go around my shoulders, and I angle against her like a kickstand.
Carolynn trips from the shadows between the trees and braces her hands on her knees. “I . . . called . . . for help,” she wheezes. A cell falls to the towel at her feet. The flashlight app’s white glow washes us colorless as snow. The chill of the fast approaching night pinpricks me everywhere, filling me with every bit of cold in the whole state