Chapter Forty-One. Sarah Lynn
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
SARAH LYNN
Kayden came back with the liquor and everyone is a few steps past tipsy.
We have our bathing suits back on, but our exhibition show worked, because Billy and Hannah are making out on the rocks near the mouth of the cave.
Sabrina is off somewhere pouting about it, I’m sure.
I’m floating on my back on the surface of the water, hand interlaced with Olivia’s, and we’re both feeling the effects of a few more puffs of pot.
When I first waded back into the water, she asked me where I’d been.
Nowhere, I told her, sliding my hand into hers.
I was looking for you, she said.
Our bodies have adjusted to the freezing cold spring-fed water, and now it’s the air we’re breathing that stings.
“Do you ever think the stars are, like, talking to you?” she asks.
I laugh, because that’s the highest question I’ve ever heard.
But the stars do look beautiful. The night, inky black and pinpricked with light.
My body feels numb, but the numbness feels nice, like I’m just a beam of moonlight.
I turn my head to check on Hannah just as she’s pulling Billy into the cave. Good for her.
The stars do kind of talk to us, though. Don’t they? Destiny, and all that. Mom would say nothing’s written in the sky. If you want something in this life, you make it happen, Sarah Lynn.
Olivia squeezes my hand. “Thanks for being here with me,” she says.
I close my eyes and feel the bobbing sensation of floating, the night sky and the black water melding, so that I am suspended in nothing. I hear the laughter and the conversations and the music, the wind through leaves and the water lapping against stone.
And then, so sharp it splits the night:
A scream.
My heart rockets to my throat.
It’s coming from the cave. It’s Hannah.