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They played the footage over and over — of me in the lake in my striped bikini, waving my shirt, of Finkle bringing his arm down, of Liam leaning out the window of the car, pointing, like a soldier leading a charge.

When I thanked Elijah for sounding his horn, he grinned. “I had to do something, you idiot.”

But when I thanked him for calling the TV crew, he shook his head. “That wasn’t me,” he said. “That was Hannah.”

“Hannah?”

He nodded. “I called her, but my battery was running down. My brain was, too. I didn’t know what to do. I just yelled at her about Finkle and the car and you in the lake, and she went all quiet for a second, then said,
Right, leave it to me,
and the next thing I knew . . .”

The helicopter. It came so quickly, so dramatically. It was in the way, just like I was. It was impossible to ignore.

That was one thing about Hannah. She had always been good at doing what needed to be done.

The helicopter hovered over me, and someone threw down a rope. I grabbed on, and they towed me to the bank on the opposite side.

I was right in the end.

It really wasn’t that far.

“Are you ready?”

Liam nodded.

We were flat on our stomachs, hanging off the raft. Not out by the fire tree, not over the town. Just out in the middle of the lake, in the middle of nowhere.

I let it go.

The head bobbed for a second, hanging in the water as if it was making up its mind, as if it had a choice in the matter.

Then it sank. Down and down, away from the raft, away from the light.

I knew what that felt like, but I wasn’t going to reach out for it, wasn’t going to extend a stick, or a hand, to haul it back up.

I lay alongside Liam, and we didn’t speak, didn’t blink.

We watched Finkle disappear.

The Finkle head, which had sat on its plinth for less than a day before Hannah took it down. Which had sat in Dad’s studio for less than an hour while he said he didn’t know what to do with it, that he didn’t even want it for his creepy zombie garden. Which had sat in my backpack and then between us on the raft and was now sinking, down into the lake.

And I mustn’t have dropped it quite straight. I must have put a little twist on it accidentally as I let it go, because as we watched, it slowly began to rotate, spiraling its way downward and out of sight.

I looked over at Liam and grinned.

It was doing the Finkle-spin.

Out on the water, people were swimming and diving and paddling in the shadows. There were kids on rubber rings and inflatable horses. There were parents on the bank with ice chests and folding chairs.

Over at the fire tree, Amber was hauling herself down the pegs while Emily floated nearby on a hot-pink air mattress.

And coming toward us across the lake was Liam’s dad — not zigging or zagging or lifting his head to correct his course but just swimming straight for the raft in long, easy strokes.

“Your dad’s a good swimmer,” I said to Liam.

“Who do you think taught me?”

His father slowed as he neared the raft, and I inched sideways so he had space to hold on.

He would want to rest when he got here, to take a break. Even though he made it look easy, I knew he was working hard out there, invisibly, underwater.

Swimming was about staying on the surface, but sometimes to stay afloat, to keep moving, you had to figure out what was going on underneath.

Sometimes you had to dig deeper, dive down for things.

I stood up. “Coming in?”

Liam grinned.

We flattened our feet to the rough wood, pushing down for the surest footing we could find on a raft, in the middle of a lake, suspended over a drowned town.

We coiled like springs, waiting.

Then we launched ourselves — out into the sunlight. We sliced the water like butter, knifing down and down into the cool and the dark and the cold and the vast underneath.

Above us, I heard Liam’s father laughing and laughing.

It turned out you could break through the smooth surface of anything if you just kept pushing hard enough.