Vengeance (25 page)

Maya and Holden’s house was silent and still as I passed it. But through the trees I saw a person sitting cross-legged next to the water in front of me. She heard me coming and stood before I got there. Maya brushed the dirt from her jeans and crossed her arms over her chest.

I held up my keys. “Just going to get my car,” I said. As I got closer, I could tell her eyes were bloodshot and there were black smudges at the corners, remnants of her makeup from last night. I wondered if she was still waiting for a call. “Tara’s okay,” I said.

She released her breath. “Thank God,” she said. “Kevin didn’t call.” She turned back to the lake as I passed by. But I remembered Delaney that day at Carson’s funeral. The way nobody, not even me, stood up for her.

I paused behind her. I could see the minivan from here, through the trees, waiting for me. I cleared my throat. “It’s not you,” I said. “We’ve all been—we’ve had a lot to grieve about over the last year.”

“And you think I haven’t?” she asked, her voice wavering. “I used to be so jealous of you guys. You’re all so close, and it seemed like you’d never just abandon one another. I wanted that.” She laughed to herself. “But you’re all so messed up. You’re just too close to see it.”

Time to go.

I heard the sliding door up the hill. “You okay, Maya?” Holden was staring me down, his arms crossed over his chest.

“Just getting my car,” I said again.
And getting the hell out of here
.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Come on in,” he said. She had to be freezing.

“Tara’s okay,” she said, ignoring his request.

She turned back to the lake, and Holden leaned against the door frame. I left them there and walked up the embankment, toward the road. Wondered if it would’ve been worse if I’d known about my dad beforehand. If I had spent the months leading up to his death grieving already, like Maya was for her mother. If this was why he didn’t want to tell me.

Why nobody wanted to tell me.

As I drove back home, I saw Maya still standing at the edge of the lake. And for a second, I wondered if I really would’ve wanted to know what was coming.

I convinced Delaney to come with me. Delaney thought Tara wouldn’t be thrilled to see her there, but I didn’t really care. She took a deep breath as we pulled into the lot in front of Tara’s house.

When I was younger, I thought Tara lived in the greatest house on earth. She literally lived over an ice cream shop with so much family it seemed like a never-ending party. The ice cream shop was the front of the first floor, and the top two floors were split down the center—her cousins’ family on one side, Tara’s family (complete with three younger brothers) on the other, and their grandparents on the top floor.

And we got free ice cream whenever we wanted.

Tara worked there during the summers, scooping out ice cream in a tank top even though it was probably freezing. She never ate it. Said she couldn’t stand the taste of it anymore. As an only child, I was jealous of the perpetual noise in her house, of the fact that everyone was always climbing all over one another. Of the big family dinners. Of the fact that four extra faces never fazed them.

Now I could see why she always wanted to be out. This was a seasonal shop, and the season had just ended—the windows were boarded up, but the tables were still out front. Jared, her youngest brother, was sitting at one of the picnic tables with a portable video game in his hand. “Hey,” I said. “We’re here to see your sister.”

“She’s sleeping,” he said, but he drew out the word “sleeping” endlessly. Like she’d been sleeping endlessly. Or maybe like she would be.

“She’s not sleeping,” Tony said, walking out of the woods with a stick in his hand. He was twelve and the closest to Tara’s age. “We have to stay outside to keep it quiet, though,” he told us. He pointed to the side of his skull. “Killer headache.”

I took Delaney’s hand and pulled her toward the steps—they were built up the side of the house, leading to a balcony on top of the ice cream shop, which is where the actual front door was.

Her mother answered the door, and before I had time to register what was happening, she pulled each of us in for a
quick hug—first me, then Delaney. She was the complete opposite of Tara. Frumpy clothes. No makeup. Never seeming to care what she looked like. “Thank you,” she said, and she tried to smile. “I’m not sure how much she’s up for visitors—Janna was here for most of the morning. I think she may need a nap soon. But go on up.”

She gestured to me because I’d been here more recently. Delaney used to come when she was younger, too, before it became obvious they weren’t actually friends. Tara was the type to pop in and out of every social circle, never settling on just one.

We waited at the entrance to Tara’s room. She was resting on top of the sheets, wearing the most anti-Tara clothes in the world. Baggy shirt. Sweatpants. A white bandage taped over her right eyebrow—I flashed to the image of watery blood running down the side of her face.

I knocked on her open door, and she squeezed her eyes closed before turning her neck slowly toward us. Tara’s face didn’t change. She didn’t smile at me. Didn’t frown at Delaney standing just behind me. Her mouth barely moved as she said, “I see that last night ended better for you than it did for me.” Now would be the moment where she’d smile coyly or flip her hair. But she just lay there. Limp and un-Tara-like.

“We came to see how you were,” Delaney said. She pushed me forward with her hand on my back until I was standing at the foot of Tara’s daybed. The fact that her bed was also a couch was another one of those things that seemed a lot cooler when we were younger.

“Stitches,” she said. She raised her right hand and touched the skin beside the bandage. Her fingers trembled as she traced the border.

“You tripped?” I asked. I had to be sure so I could tell Justin. She tripped and hit her head and almost drowned in the lake, but it was an accident. She was drunk and it was an accident. I hoped she remembered.

“Yeah,” she said. “Not embarrassing at all …” I smiled when she said it, catching a glimpse of the Tara we all knew. She narrowed her eyes for a second and said, “Did you see?”

“You don’t remember?” I asked.

“No, I remember that.” She swallowed, and it seemed like it was painful for her. “I heard you pulled me out of the lake.” She was out there because I pushed her away. I wondered if she remembered that, too.

“He did,” Delaney said. She didn’t mention that she was the one who saw Tara. That she was the one who saved her.

“Okay,” she said, and her fingers started pulling absently at the comforter beside her. “I was just wondering if you saw …” She took a deep, shaky breath. “If you saw how I got in the lake.”

I felt Delaney tense beside me. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Even the room seemed to hold its breath. Tara’s eyes were wide, and she was looking from me to Delaney and back again. Her hands grasped the comforter and she said, “How did I get in the fucking lake?”

I had to lean forward. Lean on something. Anything. I put my hands on the edge of her bed. “I thought you said you
tripped and hit your head.” The room was tilting around me. Or I was tilting. Hard to tell.

“I did,” she said. “I fell off the patio. But how did I get in the lake? Tell me.”

I couldn’t tell her. The lake was a good ten steps away from the edge of the patio.

“We didn’t see,” Delaney whispered. “We didn’t see how it happened.”

“The doctor said I was disoriented after I hit my head,” she said. “That most people don’t remember the moments before. Or after.” Except Tara did remember the moments before. “He said I must’ve stood up. Stumbled around. And fell again. Passed out cold. Bad luck,” she said.

“Bad luck,” I repeated, wanting that to be true.

“The doctor said it was good luck that you were there. Good luck that I didn’t drown in the lake. Good. Luck,” she said, her voice growing louder. Her mouth twitched. “That’s funny, right?”

I flashed to the image of her, her blond wig floating in the water. Like Delaney, disappearing under the surface.

She was starting to panic.
I
was starting to panic. “How did I get in the water?” she asked. She looked at Delaney, her eyes wide. “How did I get in the fucking water?”

Delaney shook her head. I thought she was going to turn around and bolt, but instead she came closer. She put her fingers on Tara’s head, just near the stitches. “You’re fine now,” she said. Tara’s breathing returned to normal, but she was still glaring at Delaney.

She looked at me and said, “Janna thinks it’s real.” She didn’t have to say what
it
was. We all knew. “Not just the lake, though. This whole town. She says there’s something wrong with this place. That it makes us forget.”

This is a place that wouldn’t let me forget. Delaney in the lake. My father on the floor. Taking and taking and making me watch. “So, what,” I said, “she thinks it
made
you get up and fall in the water?” I laced my words with sarcasm, so they would sound ridiculous. So we would believe they were ridiculous.

We heard footsteps creaking overhead. I glanced at the ceiling. Her grandmother lived up there. She told fortunes and sometimes held séances. We used to spy on her when we were little. Tara never believed. “
Smoke and mirrors
,” she’d told me last time I was over here. She saw me looking now. “I don’t know,” she said, “what she thinks.”

I had a vision of Tara lying beside the patio, her forehead bleeding. I saw two fingers of water, snaking up from the lake, weaving through the rocks and the dirt, like I’d seen it trailing down the walls in my house, seeping across the floor. I saw the water circle her wrists and pull her down. Pull her to the lake. Trying to take her.

Tara’s mother stood behind us, pushed past us to get to her daughter. “I’m so glad that you saw her. We really can’t thank you enough.”

She thanked me, like Delaney’s parents had thanked me. Like I had saved her life too. Good luck that we found her. Bad luck that she ended up there to begin with. Good luck
that Tara—and Delaney—lived. Bad luck that they almost drowned first. I was the hero who pulled them out. I was the villain who sent them both out to the lake in the first place.

Like Falcon Lake was trying to tell me something. Something about myself.

Listen
.

“Do you need some rest, hon?” Her mom sat on the edge of the daybed, ran her fingers along Tara’s forehead. Tara nodded. Closed her eyes. Turned her head away from us. The lake had taken something from her—she no longer seemed invincible. But she survived. I repeated it to myself as Delaney and I walked down the stairs to my car.
She lived she lived she lived …

We were two streets away when Delaney started to breathe like she did when she was trying not to cry. She was looking out the window, and she was breathing slowly. Deliberately. I could hear the catch. I thought,
Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry
, and a tear rolled down her cheek.

Shit. I pulled over to the side of the road. Left the engine running. “Delaney?” I asked.

“Why her?” she asked, facing me. “Why her and not me? If it wants me, I’m right here.”

I reached across the center console, across the cooler of snacks I kept between the seats, unbuckled her seat belt, and pulled her toward me. I held her awkwardly across the gap. “Stop,” I said. “It’s not real. You know that.”

“Then how did she end up in the goddamn lake? How did she trip and hit her head and almost drown?” she asked into
my shoulder. I felt her tears through my shirt. Goddamn kryptonite.

“Because people who have a blood alcohol content over .23 are six times as likely to have head injuries. And they’re ten times as likely to drown.”

“You’re making that up,” she said.

“I am,” I said, and I felt her smile.

Her phone rang, and I laughed as she jumped, even though I had jumped too. She ignored the ringing. “We’re okay?” she asked.

“We’re okay,” I said.

She smoothed back her hair, buckled her seat belt again, and checked her phone. “Who was it?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Wrong number.” She put it back in her bag and leaned her head against the window like nothing had happened.

Nothing had happened.

I tried to keep my breath even as we started driving again, but every time I caught a glimpse of her beside me, I saw the blond hair floating in the water, saw a girl floating, facedown. Pictured myself pulling her out by her boots, flipping her over.

And pictured Delaney’s face instead.

Chapter 16

Delaney’s house was empty. She punched in the alarm code while I read the note on the kitchen counter. “Supply run for my house,” I told her.

She was staring out the window, still thinking about what Tara had said, I was sure. This is how the rumor of a curse starts. If you let yourself believe. The fear eats away at you, piece by piece, until it doesn’t seem irrational anymore. We couldn’t let that happen again. “I’m gonna call Justin back,” I said. “Let him know everything’s okay.”

She nodded. “Everything’s okay,” she said. We needed to keep saying that instead. Believe it enough so it became true.

I went into Ron’s office so she wouldn’t hear Justin freaking out on the other end.
“Tara’s okay,” I said as soon as he picked up. “I saw her. She tripped and she hit her head. So you can stop freaking out.”

I heard him breathing, or wheezing, on the other end. “That’s not what Janna said.” He coughed and spoke clearer. “
She
said Tara has
no freaking clue
how she ended up in the water.”

I heard the doorbell in the living room.

“Justin,” I said, lowering my voice, “it’s Tara. She lives for drama. She lives for attention.” She used to, anyway.

I heard a man’s voice in the living room. Guess our parents were back. “Hey, I gotta go,” I said.

“I know I was all drugged up last night,” he said, getting louder, “but was it just me, or did Tara look just the slightest bit like Delaney last night?” And the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.