But then where did she go? And who had been waiting for her there?
CHAPTER FORTY-ONESARAH LYNN
Kayden came back with the liquor and everyone is a few steps past tipsy. We have our bathing suits back on, but our exhibition show worked, because Billy and Hannah are making out on the rocks near the mouth of the cave. Sabrina is off somewhere pouting about it, I’m sure. I’m floating on my back on the surface of the water, hand interlaced with Olivia’s, and we’re both feeling the effects of a few more puffs of pot. When I first waded back into the water, she asked me where I’d been.
Nowhere, I told her, sliding my hand into hers.
I was looking for you, she said.
Our bodies have adjusted to the freezing cold spring-fed water, and now it’s the air we’re breathing that stings.
“Do you ever think the stars are, like, talking to you?” she asks.
I laugh, because that’s the highest question I’ve ever heard. But the stars do look beautiful. The night, inky black and pinpricked with light. My body feels numb, but the numbness feels nice, like I’m just a beam of moonlight. I turn my head to check on Hannah just as she’s pulling Billy into the cave. Good for her.
The stars do kind of talk to us, though. Don’t they? Destiny, and all that. Mom would say nothing’s written in the sky.If you want something in this life, you make it happen, Sarah Lynn.
Olivia squeezes my hand. “Thanks for being here with me,” she says.
I close my eyes and feel the bobbing sensation of floating, the night sky and the black water melding, so that I am suspended in nothing. I hear the laughter and the conversations and the music, the wind through leaves and the water lapping against stone.
And then, so sharp it splits the night:
A scream.
My heart rockets to my throat.
It’s coming from the cave. It’s Hannah.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWOCAT
I’m sleeping with earbuds again, the sound of the ocean overlapping my dreams. My mother picking seashells from the sand in Galveston.
Dad skipped out on us when I was three, and Mom worked two jobs most of the time. I hardly ever saw her. I was a latchkey kid, making ramen or microwave nachos for dinner, falling asleep in front of the TV. Looking back, she was trying her best, but at the time I was angry—angry she couldn’t make it to the play, or the awards ceremony, or anything that felt important to me. So I acted out. I snuck cigarettes and alcohol. I got into fights at school. I think I just wanted her to notice.
But the summer I was twelve, we rented a house within walking distance of the beach, and for three days I had all her attention.
In my dream, a wave rolls in, then out, the sand slipping from beneath our bare feet. Mom bends down, scoops a handful of wet sand, holds it out to me. A tiny clam wriggles down, burrowing into hiding in her palm. She smiles at me.
But when her mouth opens, it’s a black hole.
And from that darkness, a scream emerges.
It sounds far away. Then another. The third rips me awake, and I realize it isn’t a dream. It’s cutting through the tranquil ocean in my earbuds.
I slide on my slippers. I race down the stairs, out the door, toward the screaming. It’s coming from The Hollow. My blood is fire. My feet barely touch the ground.
And I run.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREESARAH LYNN
Everyone is scrambling, knocking into one another as we claw our way out of the well. We run along the bank, up the rocks, toward the sound that keeps coming.
The cave looms ahead. Jagged stalactites hang like teeth. Its entrance is a locked jaw, forever opened. The scream is its own.
Our feet slip on wet stone as we slosh forward into pitch-blackness. Hannah’s sobs echo from deep within, bouncing off the walls, pulling us farther in.
Finally, our phone lights catch them. Hannah is curled against the rock, knees to her chest, shaking. Billy stands a few feet away, arm stretched, pointing deeper into the dark.