Vee lets out a whoop and turns back toward me. Throws her arms out and collapses against me. She’s sweaty and gasping, and I feel every inch of her. “Holy shit,” she says. “You are fast.”
“When I need to be,” I say. My urge to yell at her melts away. “Vee, you really need to stop taking that shit. Do you even know what it was?”
“That’s half the fun,” Vee says, a rough purr in the back of her throat, and I feel that vibrate inside me. Heat blooms deep. “Want to know what the other half is?”
“No,” I lie.
“You’re no fun, Lanta Proctor,” she says, and before I can think about it, before I can even start to number off why this is a terrible idea, we’re kissing, and oh my God. I forget about why I shouldn’t be here and that Vee is a bad idea walking, because this kiss is the best I’ve ever had, and I just want more.
Vee pulls back with a gasp and says, “What the hell was that?” And I think she’s joking until I hear it too. I’d been so surprised and focused that I didn’t hear the rustling under the tree, and the moan. Or maybe I thought we were making that noise. But we weren’t.
My eyes have adjusted to the dark now, and I see Vee’s face clearly, and beyond her, someone else lying on the ground. A pale stretch of legs.
I fumble for my phone and key on the light. It illuminates everything with brutal detail. It glistens on the pale skin of a girl’s thigh, blonde hair tangled in tree roots. She’s crumpled like a broken doll.
My heart races so hard it hurts. For a few seconds I freeze, and then I squeeze in behind the boulders and crouch down next to her. She isn’t dead. She’s moaning.
Vee says from behind me, “Jesus, what the hell is wrong with her? Don’t touch her!”
“She’s alive,” I say. The girl’s facedown, shrouded in her loose blonde hair, and I can’t tell who she is, but I don’t want to move her either. I’m shaking with the fear boiling inside, but at the same time, I need to see what’s wrong with her. Something is. I freeze when my light catches a red streak of blood on a thick piece of rock lying next to her. There’s blood in her hair. Oh God.
“We should go,” Vee says. “Right now! Come on, Lanta!” She sounds panicked.
“I can’t just leave her!” What’s happened to her? Did she just fall down? Or did someone take that rock and bash her in the head? I can’t think straight, and I don’t want to make the wrong choice here.
I lift my phone and start pressing numbers.
“What the hell you doin’?” Vee’s voice is sharp. Angry. “Lanta! Oh hell no, you ain’t callin’ the cops!” Her accent’s getting stronger.
I don’t answer her. I dial.
“Norton 911, what’s your emergency?” asks a voice that sounds about as lazy as summer on the lake. Smooth and calm and weirdly reassuring.
“There’s a girl here. I think . . . she’s hurt.” I turn to Vee. She gives me a cold look. Then she’s gone, heading for the path down the cliff. Taking her chances, I guess. I’m shattered. I’ve gone from the best kiss I’ve ever had to being left behind so fast, and it crashes in on me that I’m all alone.
Again. I feel short of breath now, and I’m trembling. I stand up and look around, and for a second the lure of that pathway seems so strong. I turn away from it, and look out toward the lake.
I can see my house, a pretty little beacon in the darkness lit by security lamps on the corners. I think about Mom, asleep in her bed. Trusting me to do the right thing. The 911 lady is telling me I need to check the girl to see where she’s hurt. I don’t want to, but I know I have to. I’m all she’s got. I try a couple of times before I can swallow my fear and actually do it. I carefully touch her head, and I can’t find anything but blood. “I don’t know where she’s hurt,” I tell the lady on the phone. “She’s lying facedown.”
“Okay, I need you to roll her on her side, gently. I’m here with you.” The operator sounds warm and calm, and that gives me the strength to put the phone down and press the speaker function. I don’t want to do this, some part of me wails. But I carefully roll the girl over. From this side I see that the whole left of her head looks . . . wrong. Flattened. Her sleek blonde hair is matted down in one spot, and part of her scalp is hanging loose. Oh God. I have to fight not to scuttle backward, and I squeeze my eyes tight shut but I can’t not see it, it’s right there like it’s been branded into my eyelids. I want to throw up. Scream. But the lady on the phone is talking to me, and I cling to that hard. “Yeah,” I say, though I don’t really know what she’s just said. “Uh, her head’s injured. I think—I think she’s hit it on a rock or something. It looks real bad.”
It takes me a second to realize that I know the girl. She’s Candy Clark, one of the popular kids. A senior, I think; she just turned eighteen. She has on glittery eye shadow. Just like I do. And that hurts. I feel tears running down my cheeks—shock, I think. I’m shivering in the chilly wind, but when I touch Candy she feels even colder. I take off the jacket I’m wearing and put it over her, in case that helps.
Vee left. She just left me here.
The voice on the phone tells me to stay calm, she’s sending an ambulance and the police and that I should keep monitoring Candy’s pulse. I try. But my fingers feel cold, and I’m not really sure if I’m feeling her pulse at all, or just imagining it. I’m shaking so hard my teeth are chattering.
I want my mom. Mom would know what to do.
Down on the beach, the music’s still blasting, but I can hear the sirens now far in the distance. I hear people shouting, “Cops!” I can’t go look, but I imagine everybody who isn’t passed out is running for it. I try to stay calm and count the pulse beats I can barely feel struggling against my fingers.
“Hey,” I say. “Candy? Can you hear me?” I don’t think she can. I’m crying, and my voice is weird, and I have to wipe my nose and swallow hard before I try again. “Candy, it’s Lanny Proctor. I’m here. I’m not going to leave you, okay? It’s going to be all right. I promise.”
Down around the lake, I hear engines starting up. People are getting the hell out.
That leaves me even more alone.
The operator’s busy telling me help is coming. She sounds professional and calm, and that helps some, but I still feel so isolated up here, like I’m the only thing alive except for Candy. I wish someone else were here. Anyone else.
And it’s like I wish it into existence when I hear footsteps coming up the path. Maybe it’s Vee, coming back? But no.
It’s Bon. What’s Bon doing here?
In the moonlight he looks pale and sweaty.
I instinctively put the 911 call on mute.
“Hey,” he says. “Saw your friend take off. You okay?”
I want to throw myself into his arms and cry, but I don’t. Barely. I just point toward the girl. In the glare of my phone’s light she looks pale and dead, but I can see the pulse still beating at her throat. Bon’s eyes widen.
“Is she alive?” he asks. I nod. I don’t think I can form whole sentences right now. It’s okay. Bon’s here. He’s older. He’ll know what to do.
The operator asks me if I’m by myself again, and I hold a finger up to my lips to warn Bon before I unmute it and say, “Just me. I’m alone with her.” Bon’s brave for coming up here after me, but he’s probably got half a dozen drugs on him that could get him in big trouble. He could have run away. Everybody else did. I don’t want to get him arrested.
“Have you seen anybody else up there?” the operator asks.
“No,” I tell her. “Well, yeah. People have been doing cannonballs off the cliff. But I don’t know who.” That’s a direct lie. I should mention Lottie. But I don’t, because I don’t want to get her in trouble either.
Bon is gesturing at me, and I realize he’s asking for the phone. I instantly give him the phone, and transferring that responsibility feels so good it makes me shudder with relief. I mouth thank you to him.
But instead of talking to the operator, Bon just ends the call
and turns it off. What the hell?
Then he says, “I’m sorry you had to find her, Lanny.”
I don’t get it for a long few seconds. I really, really don’t.
Then I realize just how dangerous this is, and it feels like electricity crawling all over my skin. The jolt of fear feels like lightning striking, but I push that away. I need to be smart now if I want to get through this, but my brain is racing, babbling, wondering what Bon is doing, why he could have done this to Candy, when . . . so many questions. But I don’t ask them. I just breathe, and watch. As Bon pockets my phone, I slowly get up off my knees and back away from Candy. I never take my eyes off him.
“Cops are coming,” I say, which seems dumb even as I say it. We can both hear the sirens in the distance. But that doesn’t mean they’re really close, either, not out in the country like this.
“Just means we have to do this fast,” he says, and he gets a knife out of the sheath at his belt. “Sorry, Lanny. Nothing personal.”
Oh shit.
9
LANNY
“You did this?” I choke on that, because I don’t want to think that, to realize that I had a nice, comfortable time sitting next to a man who’d bashed one of my classmates in the head.
He shrugs. “Look, she ripped me off. She knew better. Things got out of hand. Besides, I got a partner, and he don’t play.”
The cops are coming, but I have no idea when they’ll get here. Minutes? I might not have minutes. He’s between me and the path down to the beach. So I stall, because my only real hope is that the cops come fast, and maybe he’ll decide to run instead. But I know he won’t.
He can’t.
“Maybe—” My voice sounds small and weak, and I’m shaking all over now. Can’t get my breath. “Maybe it was an accident. She fell and hit her head. I could tell them she said that.”
“What if she gets better and says different?” He shakes his head. “Look, I didn’t mean to hurt her. I shook her and pushed her, and she fell on the rock.” I’m not sure that’s true. But I just nod. He’s turning the knife over and over, and I can tell he doesn’t want to do this. Not really.
I hear someone scrambling up the path. Relief hits me like a truck, slamming through my body and turning me weak at the knees. The cops are here. Thank God.
But it isn’t the cops. The sirens are still screaming, getting closer, but they’re not here yet. In place of that wonderful relief, I get a wave of real fear that makes my mouth dry up and my fists clench. The young man who comes out of the path is sweaty, greasy, older than Bon. He’s wearing a stained old muscle tee, and he’s got an honest-to-God mullet. I can smell his acrid body odor from three feet away. He doesn’t look high like Bon, and I think that scares me more than anything.
He looks at Bon, then at me, and says, “What the hell you thinking?” Like he knows Bon. “Oh shit. Boy, I told you to get the money, not kill somebody! Well, we’re in it now.”
“I’ll fix it,” Bon says, and starts walking toward me with the knife. I don’t have time to stall anymore, and panic drowns me for a second before I fight my way through to a plan. It’s not much, but it’s all I have.
I run straight for the darkness looming at the edge of the cliff.
I launch.
But I don’t make it.
Bon’s lunged in pursuit. His arms are just long enough that he takes a hard grip on the back of my shirt and hauls me backward off balance. My arms make windmills as I struggle to keep upright, but he yanks again and I feel myself falling. I twist and hit the stone in a fetal position, head protected, and realize he’s hauling me like a sack back from the edge. “Let go!” I yell, and then I scream. I hear it echo out across the water. Maybe someone—anyone—will hear.
But kids have been out here partying and screaming all night.
Panic is burning a hole in my chest. I punch and kick at Bon as he drags me, and as he bends over to get a better grip, my phone tumbles out of his pocket. I grab it and hold down the button; that brings up an emergency menu, and I hit the button to call 911. I can’t hear when they answer, I just scream, “Help me, I’m up at Killing Rock, I’m being—”
He slaps the phone out of my hand. It skitters across stone to the edge and disappears, and I feel like I’ve lost my only hope. I feel naked now. I can’t call Mom. I can’t call the cops. I don’t even know if the 911 operator heard me at all.
I’m so scared now. This feels final. And I can’t stop crying, tears cold in my eyes and down my cheeks and it all floods through my mind in a rush, all the things I’ll never have again: hugs from my mom, from Sam, from Connor; kisses from pretty girls; movies and games and laughing and running and knowing for sure my mom is coming to save me. It’s all a blur, suddenly, and then it goes still in my mind. Crystal clear.
I have to stay alive on my own.
Nobody’s coming to help.
I stop fighting. I go limp and heavy, but it doesn’t stop Bon’s effortless pull. There’s nothing I can grab on to . . . but then I remember all the things Mom’s taught me. These moves always seemed like a game before. Not now. Now they’re all I have.
I hear her say, If you don’t have anything else, you have to use your own body.
I roll, fast, and Bon’s wrist is turned and his shoulder jerked hard; I set the soles of my running shoes on the rock and lunge up at the waist, breaking his hold on my shirt. I think it rips, but I don’t care. I let momentum work for me; it carries me up into a crouch, and I duck and roll as mullet guy makes a grab for me. “Get her!” Bon says. I dodge.
I spin, coil myself, and leap into a run again for the edge.
I’ve never done this, never jumped off this damn rock, and it’s black down there, no way to tell where the water is, where dangerous rocks could be. I’m jumping blind, but I know instinctively it’s my only shot at making it out of here alive. I’m scared out of my mind as I go off into the dark.
It’s a long two seconds of falling. If I hit a rock, I’ll shatter my legs—maybe not even know I’ve done it until I’m underwater. No no no no no not like this . . . I don’t want to end up drowning. I can’t. Every cell in my body screams at the thought, an incoherent blur of the dreams I’ve had of floating in the water, of my dad’s underwater garden of dead women. Not like this.
I somehow avoid any deadly boulders. I tuck myself and hit the water in an enormous splash that stings like I dove into fire, and I sink, I sink as I unfold and instinctively begin to stroke for the black surface. I think it’s the surface. It’s so dark. I’m blind in the water. If I’ve lost my direction, I could be swimming down. My lungs are already burning, but that’s panic, and I need to stop it before it makes me thrash and lose everything. Calm down. Swim. Break the surface.
It seems like an eternity before I feel air on my flailing fingers, and then my head is up and I take a shuddering gasp. I try to orient myself. Where am I? Close to the shore on the Killing Rock side, but I don’t want to go back there; the beach is practically deserted now, everybody running for the hills, their cars, wherever they can go to get away. The cops. Where are the cops? I can see flashing lights somewhere up on the horizon.
I can’t see Vee anywhere. She left me here. She left me.
I’m a good runner, but I’m not a great swimmer. I get tired fast, and I have to pause to tread water. I know this isn’t safe. Stillhouse Lake is deep, and dark, and people have died in it. Nobody knows I’m out here but Bon and his drug-dealing friend. My phone is gone.
I need to save myself. But I’m tired.
I can’t see if they’re chasing me, but it doesn’t matter. The lake is so cold, and I feel sluggish. I need to get out. Now.
So I swim for shore.
The first police car is pulling around, lights flashing, and there’s an ambulance right behind it. I can’t even feel relieved. I’m too cold.
The two cops who get out of the police car don’t see me swimming toward them. Their backs are to me, and before I can get enough bre
ath to yell, they’re already heading up the path. I wonder if they’re going to think I hurt Candy. That’s a new idea. I don’t like it, and I tread water again. Maybe I shouldn’t go up to the shore.
I don’t even realize that I’m slowing down and slipping under the water for a few seconds until the water closes over my nose and I panic. I flail up again, gasping, and I guess the splashing attracts the paramedic’s attention, because he shouts at me to get out of the water.
I swim until I finally feel the bottom again. I feel a hundred pounds heavier coming out, and I’m not at the beach sand part—it’s rocky here and slick—and I slip and crawl up until I’m finally on dry land. I flip over on my back and just . . . breathe. I cough out water I didn’t know I breathed in. I’m shaking so hard it hurts, and the paramedic runs over with a blanket and puts it around me. He’s yelling questions at me, but I don’t answer. I’m not sure what to say. I just want to go home.
The paramedic is asking me my name, and I manage to stammer it out. I guess he recognizes it, because the next thing I know he’s dialing a cell phone and hands it to me. “Lanny?” It’s Mom’s voice. It’s like a rush of warm water through my cold veins, and I almost gasp in relief. “What’s going on?”
I burst into tears. I stammer out something, I don’t even know what it is, or if she can understand it through the gasps and chokes and sobs. But she tells me she’s coming for me, so I tell her I’m okay and the second she’s off the call I drop to the ground, shivering and soaking wet and freezing cold, and I cry my heart out.
They pile more blankets on me, but I’m still cold when Sam’s truck slides to a stop on the road. More cops have arrived. They try to intercept my mom as she bails out, but she dodges them and races to me, and the desperation on her face makes me feel safe, finally safe. I struggle up from where I’m sitting, and before I can even get out of the blankets her arms are around me, holding me so tight it ought to hurt. It feels so right. I hug her back.
The relief lasts between us for maybe ten seconds, and then she pushes me back and says, “What the hell were you thinking? Why would you leave the house like that? Without telling me?”
Bitter Falls Page 10