Dare Page 13

  “I—I didn’t mean—I just meant girl, who’s a friend…”

  Teddy held up a hand stop-sign style. “Nope. Stop there. I like girlfriend.”

  Now Brynna’s heart sped up for a different reason, and she felt the grin spread across her face, pushing up her earlobes.

  “I like you,” Teddy said.

  “I like you too.”

  He slung an arm around her. “So we’re in agreement.”

  “Yeah, but about last night—”

  Teddy pressed his index finger to his pursed lips. “Shh. Your less-than-stellar swimming abilities can be our little secret.”

  Brynna fell into step with Teddy. Their hands hung by their sides but close enough so that their fingers brushed. The feeling of Teddy so close trumped all the negative feelings Brynna was having, and she reveled in the few minutes of between-class happiness.

  Teddy yanked open the door for her. “After you.”

  She smiled, warmth climbing up the back of her neck. When Brynna stepped into the room, her eyes cut across the chalkboard. She found her seat, pulling her Mr. Fallbrook-mandated “journal” out of her bag.

  Fallbrook’s AP English class was required to “loosen up” with a daily writing prompt. He would write a statement or a topic on the board, and before anything happened—before papers got turned in or excuses were given for papers not being turned in—students had to write at least a full two pages in their black-speckled comp books on the topic. He checked them once a week and actually read what they wrote, so giant handwriting or a series of “I feel very, very, very, very strongly about this topic” wouldn’t fly.

  Brynna actually liked the routine, and the prompts gave her a way to throw all her thoughts and energy into something other than what was going on in her head. Today, however, was an exception.

  In Fallbrook’s blocky writing was the daily writing prompt: Write about a time you were really scared.

  Brynna opened her notebook, her pen sliding through palms that were already clammy.

  How about now? She wanted to write.

  I was really afraid that night when I came out of the water.

  She felt the water breaking over her face, the choppy waves at her shoulders, sinking into the loose-weave fabric of her summer T-shirt. She could taste the salt water on her lips.

  Her lungs were burning, pulling. It didn’t seem that far out when they walked the pier, but swimming back to shore was another thing entirely. Brynna stopped kicking and started to tread, her legs working as she spun in a circle, searching the slick top of the black water for Erica.

  “Erica…” she sang.

  But there was no Erica.

  “Come on.” Brynna slapped at the water, cold droplets landing on her eyelashes and lips. “Fine, be that way.” She turned and started to swim toward shore again, certain that Erica, the stronger swimmer of the two, was already padding through the wet sand at the water’s edge, cursing Brynna’s name.

  Brynna pounded through the water, feeling the slight tug of the surf pulling her backward. But she cupped her hands and stroked until her shoulders ached and her knees banked against wet sand close to shore then stood up, letting the weight of the water drip off her as she reached the pillowy dry sand. Her heart was thundering, and she was breathing hard but smiling, tasting the salt on her lips.

  “Whew!” She threw her hands up in a victory V and danced around the beach, wriggling her butt and shaking her head. “That was awesome!”

  Michael, Ella, and Jay were jogging toward her, hooting and whistling. “Nice job!” Ella crowed.

  “Weren’t you supposed to be naked?” Michael said, that sly grin not skipping a beat. He hiccupped softly, a burst of sugar-sweet, alcohol-scented breath commingling with the salty beach breeze.

  “I took my top off. You must have blinked and missed it. Your loss.” Brynna stopped dancing and wrung the water out of her hair. “Okay, where’s the big cry baby? Is she hiding because she doesn’t want to admit that that was totally unreal?”

  Michael tossed Brynna a towel and jutted his chin toward the water. “She’s still out there.”

  Brynna pulled the towel around her and turned to look. “Really? I thought for sure she’d beat me in.”

  “Well…there you go. She’s faster in the lanes and you’re faster in open water. ’Cuz you’re like a shark!” Michael snapped his jaws before planting a smacking kiss on her cheek.

  Ella scratched her head, squinting. “I don’t even see her.”

  “Erica’s like a snake in the water. You don’t even see her coming and then bam! There she is.”

  “Okay,” Jay said, “then where is she?”

  Brynna walked down the beach, letting the water crash over her ankles. “Erica?” She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Erica!”

  The only answer was the sound of the waves smacking the wet sand.

  Brynna turned and glared at her friends. “You guys are so stupid. Where is she? She came in way before me, didn’t she? Is she trying to make me think she’s dead? Trying to prove some kind of Erica-point?”

  Ella’s face was wan. “No, really, Bryn. She didn’t come in.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Now Michael shook his head, and the action shook something loose in Brynna. “Really?”

  “Seriously. Didn’t you see her when you guys came up the first time?”

  Brynna’s chest started to tighten. Sweat beaded along her hairline and upper lip, even as she shivered in the night air. “I—I think so.”

  “How could you think so? That was five minutes ago,” Jay said.

  Brynna looked at her trio of friends and the hard, worried looks on their faces. “I know but I—I mean, I’m sure I did.” She spun back to the surf. “Erica!”

  Jay was stripping off his shirt and Michael kicked off his flip-flops. The sound of their bare feet slapping the sand reverberated through Brynna’s head. She took one look at Ella, chewing on her bottom lip, and dropped her towel, cutting ahead of the boys and diving into the foam-covered waves.

  Brynna plunged under the water, feeling the sting of the salt water as she opened her eyes. The water at Harding Beach was murky even in sunlight, and at night, she was met with a wall of blackness. Her feet hit the sandy bottom, and Brynna launched herself, head and shoulders breaking water. “Erica?”

  Her voice joined the chorus of Michael and Jay’s. Brynna spun in time to see Ella running up the beach, her figure becoming smaller as she broke the wall of swaying kids on Jay’s back patio.

  Brynna dipped back under the water, groping blindly, her fingers sifting through sand, her arms being slapped by kelp as she swam. Underwater, she started to cry.

  Erica is playing a trick, she told herself. Erica is trying to teach me a lesson.

  It seemed like hours passed, and every muscle in Brynna’s body was screaming in exhaustion, rallying against the pain of pushing against another crashing wave, another swell of surf.

  Then she felt the hand on her shoulder.

  “Erica!”

  Brynna opened her mouth and grinned, feeling the cold water slide through her teeth. The hand tightened on Brynna’s shoulder, pulling her back toward shore. Brynna pushed off and broke the surface, gulping in a deep breath of salt-tinged air in time to see Michael in front of her, dragging her behind him.

  Brynna looked around for Erica and felt her heart swell with relief when she stepped onto shore and spotted Jay swimming in.

  A thousand feet seemed to pound the beach, and Brynna spun back to the beach house, seeing half the party vaulting toward her, led by Ella. Her cheeks were red and her lips drawn.

  “Come in!” someone called. “Get out of the water and come in!”

  “What’s going on?” Brynna asked. “Where’s Erica?”

  “You can’t swim there at night,” th
e same voice said. “There’s a goddamn riptide. Get out of the water!”

  Brynna blinked. “A riptide?”

  Jay trudged out of the water, eyes darting across the sand and slicing through the group of kids. “Where’s Erica?” he said.

  “I couldn’t find her, man,” Michael answered.

  Heat raced up the back of Brynna’s neck, and her stomach started to churn.

  “Brynna?” Ella asked.

  Bile itched at the back of Brynna’s throat, and the world dropped into slow motion. The waves took their time swelling and curling; their crash was gentle and calm as fingers of frothy water crawled toward her feet before being sucked out again by the tide.

  Somehow, Brynna knew someone was talking to her. She could vaguely hear the sound of her name, could vaguely feel people touching her, but she felt like everything was encased in cotton. Cotton stuffing her ears and muffling sound, cotton keeping her a thousand miles from the arms that reached for her.

  “No.” She was finally able to push the word over her teeth. “No!” The towel that someone had slipped over her shoulders flopped into the sand, and Brynna was pushing forward, pushing through the crowd. “I have to get Erica. Erica!”

  She barely felt the water as her feet plunged into it, as it slapped against her calves. “Erica!” she was calling, straining to be heard over the surf. “Erica!”

  She was waist-deep before Michael grabbed her, bear-hugging her around the waist and yanking her backward. But Brynna fought back, clawing for the water, trying to dive out of his arms.

  “My best friend is out there! Let me go! You have to let me go!”

  She dug her toes into the wet sand, praying for some traction, but Michael just hauled her backward as if she weighed nothing.

  “Erica!”

  Terror like an icy hand gripped at Brynna’s heart, and she struggled to breathe, her eyes darting across the undulating water. Every swell was Erica breaking through; every crash was Erica kicking her legs.

  “She’s out there,” Brynna whispered, the tears burning over her chapped cheeks. “I have to find her.”

  Somehow, the paramedics made it down the beach with flashing lights and wailing sirens that Brynna didn’t hear. A medic asked her some questions; she jostled out of the blood pressure cuff he tried to slap on her.

  “No,” she mumbled.

  This isn’t happening.

  Fear like a lead weight settled in her gut. Her skin felt too tight. Erica was here. She was here.

  Brynna turned out toward the water again, breaking away and darting for the crashing black waves, but someone was gripping her, the pain of their hands at the crook of her elbow surging up to her shoulder.

  “Brynna—don’t.” It was Michael, his eyes a flat black.

  Brynna looked over him and saw two police officers stepping out of a squad car parked on the sand. They looked so out of place with their drawn faces and pristine black uniforms, pant cuffs clouded with sand, but Brynna beelined for them anyway.

  “Have you found Erica?”

  The younger of the two officers, with a buzz cut and thick, black slashes for eyebrows, scratched his head. “Ma’am?”

  The other officer pushed in front of the first and looked down at his phone. “Are you Brynna Chase?”

  Hot tears clouded Brynna’s vision. “Yes, but it’s Erica. Erica is the one who’s missing. She’s—” Brynna turned toward the water, something breaking inside of her.

  Erica was gone.

  Past the breakers, the ocean was glass-topped and flat. The red and blue flashing police lights reflected off the water, a terrifying stained glass window, the image searing itself into Brynna’s mind forever.

  TEN

  “All right, guys.” Mr. Fallbrook began erasing the prompt on the board, looking over one shoulder to address the students. “Close your journals and pass them to the right. You know the drill.”

  Brynna felt her breath catch as the corner of the first journal was nudged against her arm. She looked down at the blank page in her own journal and back up again, feeling her cheeks redden. A blank journal entry resulted in an automatic zero for the day, regardless of how dazzling a student was in the hour that followed. With Brynna’s mind splintering in so many different directions lately, her grade was already suffering.

  She printed the prompt on the top of the page and then hastily wrote the words, “I don’t remember ever really being afraid.”

  It was a flaming lie, of course, but Brynna wasn’t ready for the kind of attention “I don’t remember the last time I felt safe” would draw. She glanced up at Mr. Fallbrook who raised his eyebrows at her. He was one of the younger teachers on the faculty and certainly one of the most handsome, with an easygoing personality and a quick wit. He was the kind of teacher a student could talk to.

  But not Brynna.

  She gathered her classmates’ journals from her right and shoved hers under the stack. Although the daily writing prompts required far more than she had given, she hoped at the very least Fallbrook would give her partial credit for writing something.

  The class passed uneventfully while Brynna held her pen poised, ballpoint tip pressed against her paper. When the bell rang, she looked around with a start as kids around her started gathering up their things. She did the same thing, but the motion was rote, done out of memory rather than necessity.

  “Uh, Brynna, wait.”

  Mr. Fallbrook shimmied his way through the students to reach Brynna’s desk.

  She sank back into her seat. “Yeah?”

  “Is everything okay with you?”

  Cold broke in her chest. “Wha—what do you mean?”

  Fallbrook shrugged. “I don’t know. You just seem kind of off lately.”

  Brynna looked at her hands in her lap. “Oh. That. Just studying a lot. There’s so much, you know, homework.”

  “And you’ve been working really hard.”

  Brynna pumped her head, sensing a quick getaway. “Transcripts. College and all.”

  Mr. Fallbrook pressed a finger against the notebook Brynna was about to leave behind. “These today’s notes?”

  She felt the heat rise again as she glanced at the notebook, the page completely blank except for the date written in the top left-hand corner. Brynna smacked the notebook shut and stood quickly. “I’m sorry, Mr. Fallbrook. It’s just been a rough day. I promise I’ll do better tomorrow.” She edged backward down the aisle, bumping her hips and bag as she went.

  “If anything’s wrong, you can talk—”

  But Brynna was out the door and into the hall before he had a chance to finish.

  •••

  Brynna squinted through the passenger-side window as her father pulled the car up into the school driveway. She opened the door when he stopped, engine idling, and scooched into the front seat.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Her father’s eyebrows went up. “You’re not happy to see me?”

  “It’s not that. It’s just that Mom usually picks me up. Did you get back early or something?”

  “Yeah.” He pushed the car into drive, and they made the right onto Blackwood Highway. “I finished up earlier than expected and hopped the first flight out.”

  Brynna’s hackles went up. Her father was too casual in his explanation, too buttoned-up to jump an earlier flight. He wasn’t the “surprise” kind of father who showed up at swim meets or soccer games, and even if he was changing, was ready to pay attention to his family, he wasn’t the car-pooler type.

  “Your mother actually had an errand to run, so I volunteered to pick you up. Besides, don’t you think it’s about time your old dad saw his kid’s new school?”

  Brynna glanced back over her shoulder, feeling her lip snarling. “And how did you find the Hawthorne High parking lot, Dad?”

  He s
hot her an icy look. “I’m trying, Bryn.”

  They drove the rest of the way in awkward silence, her father cutting glances at her every few miles or so, Brynna with her arms crossed in front of her chest, consumed by fury. When they crossed through the heavy wrought-iron gates of Blackwood Hills, she turned to him.

  “Why now, Dad? Why are you ‘trying’ now?”

  He was silent until they pulled into the driveway of their house, and Brynna was sure he wasn’t going to answer her. Then he let out a low sigh as if he were the one being haunted. “Can we talk about this inside, Bryn? Your mother is in there. We should talk as a family.”

  He got out of the car, and Brynna followed. Her stomach twisted, and the few bites of lunch she had managed expanded in her belly, shooting a heavy wave of nausea through her. “We really don’t need a family meeting for you to tell me you’re getting a divorce.”

  Brynna’s father snapped around so quickly she ran into him. His eyes were glittering pinpoints, and from their close proximity, she could smell the faint odor of scotch on his breath. It made her stomach tighten even more. He glared at her for a beat but then closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. When he opened his eyes, there was true sadness in them, and something inside Brynna’s chest broke. This was her family; these were her parents. Her life was already fragmented and upended, and her parents’ divorce would only guarantee more of the same. She felt a lump grow in her throat, sudden dread growing in her belly. Her eyes went around her father to the closed interior door where Brynna knew her mother was sitting beyond. She didn’t want to go inside. She wanted to get back in the car and reverse all the way back to Point Lobos, to before the dare, even before she’d ever met Erica. This was all her fault. A simmering anger swallowed up the cancerous guilt, and she felt vaguely relieved, having someone to be mad at. If it weren’t for Erica, Brynna’s parents might have learned to be happy. Brynna might still be happy.

  She followed her father through the door and into the kitchen where her mother was seated at the kitchen table, her hands wrapped around a steaming mug of tea. She wasn’t wearing her painting smock, but Brynna could see chips of paint around her fingernails, a fading white streak down the length of her jaw. She looked as though she had been interrupted while working, and now she sat, stone still, her watery eyes red-lined and unfocused.