6
Late afternoon sunlight bleached Quinn’s vision as the rays beat against piles of driftwood and debris that littered the shore of Bluebonnet Creek. She looked at her watch. Four thirty, and still no sign of Reese, no text, no phone call.
Clusters of small gnats rose from the boggy shore and swarmed Quinn’s face. Waving them away, she shaded her eyes and picked her way through the piles of branches and cast-off stones until she reached the edge of a muddy cliff.
Two search and rescue boats rounded the bend, their engines chugging up the tributary from the Gulf. Grappling hooks attached to long chains dragged the bottom of the river behind them. Every few minutes a line would grow taught, and Quinn’s stomach with it. The rational part of her wanted closure, for his body to be found, but her heart wanted to hang on to hope, and every time a car tire or a tree dangled from the end of one of those hooks instead of a body, she breathed a little sigh of relief.
A branch cracked beneath a footstep, and Quinn whirled around to find Reese standing beside her, arms folded, lips turned into a frown. They didn’t say anything for a long time. Both stared at the water bubbling past and watched with bated breath as the boats inspected every tiny pull on their hooks. Hard to believe this now-quiet stream had torn apart her life and changed her forever.
“You suck.” Reese broke the silence first.
“I know.”
“You don’t deserve me.”
“I know, but I’m glad you’re here.” Quinn took Reese’s hand, and the thin layer of emotional ice that separated them started to melt.
“Have they found anything?” Reese asked.
Quinn shook her head. “But I know he’s alive. Somewhere.”
“I know you believe that, but he’s not.” Reese’s words were weary, not cruel.
“Is having hope such a bad thing?”
“No, not when there’s something to hope for, but Quinn, he’s gone.”
“If he’s really dead, then why can’t I shake this feeling?”
“Because you miss him, because you don’t want it to be true.” Reese leaned her head on Quinn’s shoulder, and Quinn leaned her cheek against Reese’s hair. It was the closest she’d felt to her best friend in months.
They stood like that until the sun dipped beneath the horizon, and the drag boats sped back down the river, hooks gathered high out of the water, empty.
Quinn held her breath at the buzz of Reese’s phone. A rising tide of panic surged inside her. Reese chewed her bottom lip, her eyebrows knitting together. She looked up from the text and held Quinn’s gaze. A single tear and a shake of the head was all it took for the dam inside to break. Grabbing the phone from Reese, she read the message over and over. The words “officially presumed dead” pulsed in and out of focus with the beat of her heart.
“This can’t be it.” The trickle of tears grew to a flood. But this was it, the inevitable moment where everyone gave up and buried, if not his body, his memory, forever.
Reese placed a hand on her shoulder. “You knew the dragging was nothing more than a formality. It’s officially over.”
“Don’t say that.” Quinn’s voice cracked. She couldn’t stop herself. Everything inside her screamed that he was near. Any minute they would find him weak, hungry, shivering in a cave or a hole somewhere in the woods. “They can’t give up yet, Reese.” Quinn paced the shore. “What if he’s washed up somewhere, starving, hurt? Something’s not right. I can’t explain it, but I have this feeling in my gut. Please, Reese, you have to make them keep searching. Your dad …”
“Has done everything he can, and more. It’s not his fault Mother Nature decided to throw a hurricane at the Gulf a few days after the accident.” Reese pushed her hands into the pockets of her jeans and kicked a loose stone. “All the flooding made it almost impossible to search right away. We all did the best we could under the circumstance.” Reese’s breath sounded strained. “His family already planned a memorial. At St. Angeles. Friday.”
“Friday?” Quinn couldn’t quite wrap her brain around it. “So, they already arranged it before they finished searching, while there was still hope?”
“Hope was lost weeks ago, Quinn, for everyone but you. Nobody could have survived out there for that long, Quinn.”
“Wait. You knew? This whole time?” Nails dug into her palm; teeth ripped at her bottom lip. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“You didn’t want to hear it.” Reese wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Aaron’s gone. We need to move on. You need to move on. Please let him go.” Reese pushed a strand of hair behind Quinn’s ear. “I’m tired of being reminded of it day after day. I’m tired of grieving, aren’t you?” Reese’s tears mirrored her own. “I love you, but you have to let this go. Your obsession won’t let any of us move on, to heal. The sadness is eating away at all of us, and I can’t take it. We all have to face it. You have to face it. He’s gone.” Reese choked on the word “gone.”
Aaron. Gone. Returning to a world where he didn’t exist meant she would never be whole again. She wanted the chance to tell him the truth, to admit that the idea of loving him and him loving her back frightened her, that she was a coward.
The silence between them lasted an eternity. Reese looked frozen staring at her feet, jaw clenched.
“Please don’t make this harder than it already is.”
“What do you want me to say?” Quinn asked.
“I don’t want you to say anything.” Reese threw up her hands. Coal eyes full of hurt and love stared into Quinn’s. Hands on her hips, Reese glared. “I want you to start acting normal again. Come back to school. Obsess about your SAT scores and what college we’ll attend together. And stop chasing ghosts.”
Quinn shrugged and picked imaginary lint from her shirt. “I need time to process.”
Reese shook her head. “Yeah, you keep saying. The whole school misses you. I miss you.” Reese touched her arm. “I want my best friend back. I want to be the friend you go to with every little secret, big and small. Remember when you used to trust me?”
Quinn stared at her hands, afraid to look her best friend, afraid her secret would explode from her lips with just one glance. She couldn’t handle the look Reese would give her.
“I do trust you.” Quinn rubbed the back of her neck.
“Do you? It feels as if the last few months have been nothing but secrets and lies.”
Trusting Reese used to be so easy, before the demons invaded her life and changed the very core of her being. She was so far away from the popular, straight-A, carefree cheerleader she once was that she didn’t even recognize herself anymore.
That Quinn drowned in the swirling flood, never to return. This new Quinn couldn’t go back to normal. For good or ill, she’d accepted a destiny that would never quite fit in with Reese’s future of frat parties and all-night cram sessions for finals. Quinn might not be able to live an ordinary life, but Reese could. If she brought her into this secret, that might change everything.
“You wouldn’t understand.” Twisting the edge of her shirt in her fist, she looked sideways at Reese. If Reese couldn’t believe that Aaron was still alive, something that was plausible, how would she believe Quinn was the reincarnation of Eve sent to save the world? She barely believed it herself.