by Kieran Scott
“How many drownings?” Raj took a big bite out of another s’more as if they were discussing the latest series to binge watch, rather than a bunch of people dying horrible deaths, possibly yards from where they now sat. “I don’t know exactly.”
“Fourteen,” Colin said flatly. “At least, that’s what I heard.”
“Fourteen?” Hannah repeated incredulously. She was starting to sweat, and not from the fire.
“Yeah. This one distance swimmer from Pennsylvania—she, like, swam the English Channel or something—even drove out here to prove the lake wasn’t cursed, and she drowned during her second lap around the island,” Alessandra explained, wide-eyed. “How freaky is that?”
Hannah really didn’t understand how they could be so casual about this. They were talking about real people who had drowned just yards from where they now sat, merrily making s’mores. And Alessandra’s own friend had disappeared not that long ago. What if that girl Claudia had fallen victim to this … curse? Was the lake actually cursed? Hannah shuddered just thinking about it. It all crowded in her head: Alessandra’s friend, the diary, the girl she had read about who had drowned herself …
And then, like a bolt of lightning to the chest, it hit her. The diary. In the diary, if A was Alessandra and P was Prandya, could the girl writing it … could Dear Future Me be … Claudia?
Hannah’s heart raced and she felt light-headed. The fire seemed to flare hotter against her face, and when she breathed in the ash she felt like she might faint.
Colin cleared his throat. “Anyway, supposedly those fourteen souls haunt the lake, looking for new souls to join them.”
There was a long silence, interrupted only by the crackling of the fire. Hannah felt the fingers closing around her ankle as she raced Jacob. She saw that gray, wrinkled … thing rising out of the lake from her window. Felt the bump under the boat and heard the scrape. Saw Katie go flying and heard her scream.
It was too much. It was just too much.
Katie was staring her down, but Hannah refused to look at her. She couldn’t.
Could it have been the fourteen ghosts out there, trying to drown us? Throwing Katie into the lake?
Did she even believe in ghosts? Hannah wasn’t sure. She’d never had to think about it before now.
She tried to take another deep breath and coughed.
“Are you okay?” Colin asked, patting her on the back.
Hannah put her head between her legs and took a few deep, bolstering breaths, trying to get ahold of herself. Finally, when she felt able to sit up straight again, she looked right at Jacob.
“Why haven’t you ever told me this?” she demanded.
“Because!” He rounded his shoulders, clearly prepared to go on the defensive. “First of all, no one told me these stories until last summer. It’s not like my dad sat me down to tell me why the cost of real estate around here was so low. But last year I overheard something at a party and asked my dad about it so then he had to tell me.”
“So you could have told me then,” Hannah said.
“Yeah, but why? Why freak you out?” Jacob asked. “I mean, I’ve been coming up here for years and I swear, nothing weird has ever happened before.”
“Until today,” Hannah muttered under her breath.
Jacob’s marshmallows caught fire and he pulled them out quickly, blowing the flames out. “Okay, fine. What happened on the lake today was weird, but all this haunting stuff? It’s just stories. No one here actually believes in ghosts, right?”
He looked around the group beseechingly. They were all quiet as they glanced at one another, gauging the general mood.
“No. Of course not,” Katie said at last, and gave a dismissive laugh. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Totally,” Colin said, and shot Hannah a reassuring look.
From somewhere in the distance, there came a high-pitched shriek that raised all the hairs on the back of Hannah’s neck. Everyone froze as the screech went on and on and then finally, pathetically, died away. There was half a second of silence, and then they all laughed. Everyone except Nick. He stared into the distance as if he could see something the rest of them couldn’t.
“Probably just a screech owl,” Colin said.
Hannah nodded, but she couldn’t relax. She had an awful feeling that she was going to be hearing that sound in her dreams.
“Are you sure that wasn’t human?” Hannah asked a few minutes later. The conversation had continued, but Hannah hadn’t said a word. She could still feel the scream down the back of her neck as if it was a tangible thing.
“Honestly, Hannah. It was an owl,” Jacob said, shifting in his seat and glancing up at the dark night sky. “Or some other kind of bird.”
“A bird with excellent dramatic timing,” Alessandra said wryly, looking over her shoulder at the trees.
“It’s really fine,” Colin said, reaching around to give Hannah’s shoulder a squeeze. Nick stared at Colin’s arm as if he was trying to incinerate it with his heat vision.
“I’m going inside.”
Hannah stood and handed her skewer off to Katie so quickly that Katie fumbled it into the dirt, ruining the marshmallow. Hannah didn’t care. She stepped over the bench, clinging to the blanket around her shoulders. Now that she’d started thinking that the journal’s author might be Claudia, she was dying to read more. Maybe there was some clue as to what had happened to her—where she had gone.
“Come on, Hannah. Don’t get scared off,” Jacob chided.
Hannah paused before turning around. “I’m not scared. It’s just … somebody’s gotta do the dishes and I know it’s not gonna be you.”
Jacob nodded. “Fair point.”
“I’ll help,” Alessandra said, dusting her hands off on the back of her jeans. “It’s too cold out here anyway.”
Hannah waited for Alessandra to catch up to her and they walked inside together. After clearing the table, they stood at the sink, Hannah washing and Alessandra drying. The silence was companionable, but Hannah was bursting with questions she wasn’t sure how to ask. She scrubbed a platter with a brush, her arms halfway submerged in sudsy warm water, enjoying the mundane normalcy of the chore. All the time, though, she was aware of the lake outside the window as if it were a living, breathing thing.
“What’s your friend’s name again? The one who disappeared?” Hannah asked finally, even though she remembered quite well.
“Claudia?” Alessandra said, wiping the water from a small plate. “What about her?”
Hannah scrubbed at a stubborn barbecue-sauce stain, her skin aflame with nerves. “Did they look for her here by the lake?”
“They looked everywhere,” Alessandra said. “Why?”
“Just … when you live near a place called Drowning Lake …”
Alessandra let out a short laugh. “You think she drowned out there? No way. Claudia hated swimming. She never would have gone out there on her own—especially not at night. She was afraid of her own shadow.”
She turned to put the plate away and sighed as she gazed out the window. Hannah couldn’t imagine what it would be like, always wondering what had happened to someone she cared about. Wondering if they’d been hurt, if they’d been scared, if they were …
“But they did trawl the lake looking for her, just in case,” Alessandra added, closing the cabinet door. “Her mom was a mess that week.”
Hannah shivered, remembering the story from the diary—how they’d found that girl … what were the words the writer had used? Bloated and veiny. Should she tell Alessandra about the journal? Or wait until she knew for sure that it was Claudia’s?
Hannah let out a long, shaky breath. “God. I can’t even imagine.”
“They didn’t find anything except a whole lot of old trash, though. So don’t worry,” Alessandra added, forcing a small smile. “If anyone’s haunting that lake out there, it’s not her.”
“Got it.” But maybe it was the girl from the journal. Or one of the other fou
rteen people who had lost their lives out there. Hannah handed the wet platter to Alessandra, then reached into the sink to pull out the stopper. It made a loud sucking sound as it began to drain.
“You know what’s weird, though?” Alessandra said, tilting her head to one side as she worked the dish towel over the large plate. “You kind of look like her. I said that to Jacob the first time I saw your picture on his phone.”
Hannah’s heart tripped. “Like who? Claudia?”
“Yeah.” Alessandra frowned. “Same hair color, similar eyes … You’re even just about her height. Although, like I said, she hated swimming. Claudia was more of a runner.”
“Huh.” Hannah’s mind turned over this information. Similar eyes. She thought back to earlier that afternoon. The flyer in the movie theater that was almost entirely covered by other ads and business cards. “Did they … put up flyers and stuff when she went missing?”
“Are you kidding? The entire town was wallpapered with them. It was like everywhere you went, there was Claudia staring out at you. Which was totally weird, since she wasn’t actually anywhere.” Alessandra bent to put the platter on a low shelf. “I’m kind of glad they’re mostly gone now. But every once in a while, I see one, all faded on a telephone pole or something, and it just gives me the chills.”
“Yeah. That must be weird.” Hannah found herself staring past Alessandra at the dark lake waters outside.
“Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I think I might have seen one today, that’s all. At the movie theater.”
“Yeah, you probably did.” Alessandra took a deep breath and blew it out. “My mom says all we can do is hope and pray that she’s out there somewhere, living the life she wants to live, and that one day she’ll come home and tell us all about it.”
“I like that,” Hannah said as the last of the suds got slurped down the drain. “I hope that, too.”
Alessandra put a plate into an upper cabinet, then closed the door.
“Remember earlier … you said they had a suspect or something?” Hannah pushed on, her heart pounding. “Was it anyone you knew?”
A slight flush lit Alessandra’s cheeks. “Oh, yeah. It was Nick.”
Hannah gripped the edge of the cold sink. “Nick? That Nick?” She gestured at the window.
“Yeah, they were kind of dating,” Alessandra said. “It was a whole big thing. But like I said, he had an alibi.”
Wait. Hannah felt like an idiot for not realizing it earlier. Nick. N. The diary’s author was dating a guy she called “N.”
It was Claudia’s diary. It had to be.
“Alessandra, I—”
“You guys!” Katie burst into the kitchen, her eyes shining with excitement. “Get your butts out here! We’re gonna play Truth or Dare!”
“Oh, I’m totally in!” Alessandra balled up her towel and tossed it on the counter and was gone before Hannah could utter another word.
* * *
Hannah grabbed her mystery novel from the living room and took it out onto the porch. She cuddled up on one of the rocking chairs with her blanket and placed her phone next to her on the arm of the chair—somehow, she felt better with it close by. Alessandra was back at the fire with the others, but Hannah felt like she needed a little time to herself with all the information and theories swirling through her mind. She was sure Jacob or Katie would think she was weird for not rejoining the group, but she didn’t care. The last thing she wanted to play now was Truth or Dare.
Under the dim porch light, Hannah pretended to read, her mind a rush of possibilities. If it was in fact Claudia’s diary that she’d found, what was it doing buried in a box at the lake? Had Claudia hidden it there before she disappeared? If so, why? Or had someone stolen the journal and stashed it in that box so that the police couldn’t find it? Was Hannah, even now, harboring evidence? Could she get arrested for this?
Every now and then, someone down by the fire would laugh or shout or exclaim at something, but she was able to tune them out. After a while, though, she found herself looking toward the lake. It was as if her eyes were drawn there by some magnetic force. What was she hoping to see out there? A girl’s ghost? The lake monster? Did she want to spot it again so she’d know she wasn’t crazy? Or was she hoping to not see anything?
“Hey.”
Hannah flinched. She hadn’t heard Colin approach, but there he was, his hands in the front pockets of his jeans.
“Want to go for a walk?” he asked. “There’s a path around the lake and the stars are really pretty tonight.”
Hannah’s pulse thrummed in her wrists like feathery moth wings beating at her skin. She laid her book aside. “Um … sure.”
Hannah stood up, letting the blanket fall back onto the chair. She grabbed her phone to shove it into her back pocket. Colin smiled as she followed him down the stairs and toward the water, moving away from the others at the fire.
“Where’re you guys going?” Jacob called after them.
“For a walk!” Colin shouted back.
“Alone?” someone replied.
Jacob? Probably. It hadn’t exactly sounded like him, but who else would have asked? And she kind of liked the idea of Jacob being jealous.
As soon as they were out of the reach of the firelight, it was all but pitch black, the only light coming from the half-moon and the smattering of stars.
“I hope you know where you’re going,” Hannah said, keeping her eyes on the white strip around the soles of Colin’s sneakers.
“There’s a little beach not too far from here,” he said. “It’s good for stargazing.”
“Oh. Cool.”
Hannah’s palms were suddenly wet, as she remembered what Katie had told her earlier about the setup. Had Colin really thought she was cute? The whole stargazing plan sounded fairly romantic. And now his mom wasn’t around to walk in on them.
She followed after him in silence, trying to sort out how she felt about all this. Did she want to kiss Colin? Did she want to turn back? Apparently not, because her legs kept right on walking, keeping pace with his. She could hear her own breathing and wondered if he could, too. The thought made her cheeks burn, so she focused instead on the chirping crickets and the rocks crunching beneath her feet.
“You okay back there? You got quiet.”
Hannah bit her lip to keep from smiling too broadly. “I’m fine. Just enjoying nature.”
Enjoying nature? You’re such a dork! Katie’s voice said in her mind.
“Good. It’s just past that big evergreen up there.” Colin gestured ahead and Hannah looked back over her shoulder. They’d come around a bend and she couldn’t see the fire anymore. She couldn’t even see the house. She could, however, see the lake, which stretched out to her left for what seemed like miles. In the distance, lights on some other house flickered, but it all seemed very far away.
This was good, though, going for a hike along the lakeshore. The more she acted normal around the water, the more normal it would feel—the more she would be able to shrug off everything that had happened as paranoia. It was all a figment of her imagination. That’s what she told herself.
Colin jogged ahead a few paces and Hannah followed him onto a short stretch of sandy dirt. He paused, tipping his chin up to look at the sky. “Amazing, right?”
Hannah looked up, too, and instantly lost her breath. The sky was blanketed in stars. It seemed as if there were so many more than there had been just a few minutes ago. On all the camping trips she’d taken in her life, she was sure she had never seen this many at one time before.
“Wow,” she murmured.
“Hard to believe anything bad could have ever happened up here, isn’t it?” Colin said, stepping closer to her and never taking his eyes off the sky.
Images of the monster and of Katie splashing into the water and of a girl who looked like Hannah stashing a diary in a lockbox flitted quickly through Hannah’s mind. But Hannah shooed them away.
“Yes, it is.”
&n
bsp; Colin reached out and took her hand, cupping it at first and then—when she didn’t pull away—lacing his fingers through hers. Her whole arm was on fire. “This okay?” he asked quietly.
Hannah didn’t trust herself to speak, so she just nodded. She could feel the warmth coming off Colin’s body.
Then her phone vibrated in her pocket. Hannah used her free hand to pull the phone out and found new texts from both Theo and her father. Theo’s read:
Current Situation?
Hannah deleted it, feeling slightly guilty. She wasn’t about to snap a picture of moonlit Colin and send it to him. The one from her dad read:
How’s everything? What did Jim make you guys for dinner?
A rock formed in Hannah’s chest.
“What’s the matter?” Colin asked, studying her face.
“It’s my dad,” she said. “I still haven’t told him that Jim and Frida aren’t here.”
“Ah.” He nodded.
Reluctantly, Hannah tugged her fingers from Colin’s and texted back.
We had grilled chicken. Then s’mores. ☺ Miss you!
The reply was instantaneous.
Miss you too!
Hannah sighed and shoved her phone away. And now she wasn’t sure what to do with her hands. Should she hold Colin’s hand again? Could she even remotely be that forward? One glance into his brown eyes and she had her answer. No. No, she could not.
“I just feel bad that he doesn’t know we’re alone out here,” Hannah continued. “Is it a lie if you’re just not telling?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer.
“It depends.”
“On what?” she asked.
“On how good a person you are.” It was obvious Colin was trying not to smile, and she knew why. He’d said “good,” but what he’d meant was “goody-goody.”
“I know, you think I’m a dork.” Her face was on fire.
“No! I don’t. I think it’s cute.” He reached out and tugged on her sleeve.
“Cute. Great,” she groused. “So I’m like a five-year-old.”
She turned as if to walk back to the house, and Colin gently grabbed her wrist. Hannah’s heart went into a tailspin and for half a second she actually felt dizzy.