PROLOGUE
Twenty-eight … twenty-nine … thirty. Two breaths.
THE BOAT IS beautiful, covered in a pearly blue sheen that sparkles with bits of glitter under the sun. It speeds through the harbor, sending waves flying as Liddy cuts hard to the side, spraying a group of seniors in a paddleboat.
Casey topples back into her seat with a giddy grin and catches her ball cap as it tries to fly off her head. “I can’t believe that woman rented you a boat.”
“The keys were sort of sitting on the counter when I went in to inquire. So … let’s call this more of a test drive.”
“What?!”
“It’s okay!” Liddy throws her head back and laughs at the look on Casey’s face. “Live a little.”
“How about we just take it back to shore now?”
“C’mon,” Liddy says. “Exams are finished. School’s out in a few days. This is a party! Have some fun, would you?” She puckers her lips, blowing Casey a kiss. “Call Evan and tell him what he’s missing. Maybe he can ditch his parents.”
Casey rolls her eyes, tugging on the straps of her life jacket. It’s a little too big, coming loose in places. “He probably doesn’t want to add ‘boat thief’ to his résumé before senior year starts.”
“We’re only borrowing it. We’ll put it back before anyone notices it’s gone. Besides, you know what I always say—”
“‘If you’re not living, you’re dying.’ Yeah, I know. So where does prison fit into your grand scheme?”
Liddy flattens her lips into something resembling a duck bill and Casey fights a smile. “Five more minutes,” she says with a wicked look in her eye. “Then we’ll take it back.”
We are already on the water, Casey reasons, her resolve crumbling. She jumps from her seat to stand beside Liddy, whose life jacket flies open behind her like a pair of orange wings. “Does it go any faster?”
Twenty-eight … twenty-nine … thirty. Two breaths.
NIGHT DESCENDS AROUND them; bonfires on the beach turn the top of the water into glassy, liquid fire. Flickers of orange stain the surface, throwing up splashes that look like flame as Liddy cuts around the island in the middle of the harbor.
Casey laughs, holding on tighter and urging Liddy to go even faster as they stretch that five minutes into something closer to an hour.
They hit the waves they’ve created, the boat bouncing over them, each crash drowning out the sound of their giggles.
Then Casey suddenly sees the rocks rise out of the water, drawing toward them like two fists poised for impact.
A wave roars over the top of the rocks and both girls are launched from the boat, sinking beneath the strangling surf.
Casey thrashes in the water, lost in the darkness as her life jacket comes loose again, ripped away by the current that lives below the algae-covered coast. She finds Liddy by feel, a mess of hair and floating fabric. Her hand is like silk in the water, smooth and slippery. Their fingers tangle and tug, the ocean trying to rip them apart.
Another wave rolls into them, the current tugging until Casey thinks the pressure might tear her skin from her bones.
Liddy holds on.
But everything hurts in the dark and Casey can’t bear it.
She lets go.
Twenty-eight … twenty-nine … thirty. Two breaths.
SHE HEARS HER ribs crack before she feels it. They creak inside her body, echoing all the way up to her ears and playing on repeat inside her head. Like the hinge of a door that’s come loose, rubbing where it shouldn’t. Rib against sternum.
Creak. Scratch. Snap.
A mask smothers her, pushing air in, forcing it to the very bottom of her lungs, fighting against the water already taking up space there. The pressure is unbearable and she thinks she might burst open.
“Breathe!” someone says as sand molds against her shoulders and ankles, the depression sinking with every thump of hands against her chest. “Come on, kid! Stay with me.”
Where’s Liddy? she wonders, reaching out into the black void. Pressure mounts behind her eyes. Squeezing.
“I’ve got a pulse.”
Red and blue lights peek in through the slits in her eyelids, blinding and blurring. The colors bleed together, separated only by spots of inky darkness and shifting shadow as sirens scream above her: a banshee song that drags her into a dream.
And when she wakes to the din of machines, tied down by tubing to a hospital bed, the dream shatters.
Liddy is dead.
ONE
IT TAKES ABOUT six weeks for her fractured ribs to heal. And all that time, it hurts to cry.
Specifically, ugly crying hurts—the kind with gasping sobs and hiccups. The kind of crying that happens when someone dies.
She can’t even mourn her best friend properly because the paramedics who saved her life had to break her bones to do it. They probably weren’t thinking about that while trying to restart her heart.
Funnily enough, it’s all Casey can think about. Especially today.
Smoothing wrinkles from her black dress, she hurries down the porch steps of the town house and jogs across the dandelion-spotted lawn to her car. Plucked from the very back of her closet, the dress smells like stale detergent, and there’s a tiny grease spot on the skirt that didn’t come out at the dry cleaners. Casey scrubs at it with her thumb.
The last time she wore an outfit like this was when she buried her parents. She was nine, and the church smelled like barbecue coals.
Casey gives up on the spot, figuring she’s already made the appropriate kind of effort for this afternoon: nylons without runs, black flats, and a hair clip to contain the flyaways. Her aunt Karen would be proud.
She’s even put on mascara and a little bit of blush, so Liddy would be proud. A dull ache swells in her chest as she yanks on the car door; Casey takes a few gulping breaths to try to push it away. Her ribs still twinge a bit when the air fills the very bottom of her lungs. Karen says that ache will fade soon. And she’d probably say that it’s good for her to get out of the house, even if it’s just to attend Liddy’s memorial service. Truthfully, she’d be glad Casey was leaving her bedroom.
On the driver’s seat sits a bunch of wispy white feathers, maybe blown in through an open window, though Casey can’t remember the last time she’s taken a drive. Definitely before the accident.
She brushes the feathers off her seat, watching as they spiral toward the ground like autumn leaves. As if foretelling the end of one season and the beginning of another.
Is this what an existential crisis feels like? she wonders. Or maybe this is just how death operates—leaving her looking for meaning in every little thing.
Without another thought, Casey stomps on them and climbs into her car. After leaving her neighborhood, she drives down a straight stretch of road overflowing with shops. She passes Lynn’s Bakery with homemade bagels on display first; then the post office, which doubles as the pharmacy, already flashing a CLOSED sign in the window; and finally the art gallery, which boasts its new metal ocean exhibit—ironwork sea creatures twirling from strings hung along the storefront.
She turns after the hockey arena, which hosts more bingo nights than hockey games, onto the cul-de-sac where Evan lives. His truck is in the driveway when she pulls up, and the nerves in her gut calm to a gentle flutter. She does everything with Evan. She has since they were babies. Memorials for their best friend would be no different.