Chapter 8 #2
We roar past the turning point and both curve around it, cutting as tight as we can, trying to beat each other to the inside. I hear Leonard laughing, too, and feel like maybe rich people do know how to have fun.
I glance at the dock, my smile wide. Kira’s jumping, her smile huge. Lexie dances in the background, both of them cheering for me. I can’t hear anything over the roar of the engine, but I can tell she’s having a good time.
And then.
And then.
My smile sours. My stomach flips and I go rigid in my chair.
Brian is walking down the pier behind Kira, his eyes on her unprotected back. And I know–I know what he’s about to do.
Swerving hard, I turn the throttle as far as it’ll go and hurtle straight for the dock.
“Kira!” I scream louder than I ever have before, but my jet ski is so loud I can barely hear myself, let alone be heard from all the way over there. But she sees me coming straight for her, abandoning my race, and she realizes something isn’t right. Smart girl.
All her waving and jumping peters out. Her body language tells me she understands there is danger nearby.
She turns and looks over her shoulder, sees Brian, and spins fully around to face him. And for a moment, my panic eases because she’s seen the danger now, she’ll be prepared–
But she didn’t see it soon enough. Already right behind her, too close to avoid, Brian shoves her hard, his face twisted with a cruel and vindictive smirk. Kira’s mouth widens in a scream I can’t hear as she falls backward, arms pinwheeling. She hits the water with a splash.
Without help, I know she won’t be coming back up.
“FUCK!” I can’t make this machine go any faster. But I’m nearly there, I’m nearly there!
Janessa rips off her lifejacket as she takes a running dive off the pier, making straight for Kira.
Lexie is about to do the same before Gregory–fucking laughing–grabs her from behind and swings her around, like it’s funny to keep her from saving her best friend.
She beats on his arms with her little fists.
I’m nearly there!
Brian’s smile turns to confusion, his eyebrows puckering in a derisive sort of befuddlement as Kira stays underwater, like he didn’t know that would happen.
And then I’m there. I leap from the jet ski, sending it careening toward the shore as I swim hard for Kira.
Janessa surfaces with a gasp, yanking Kira’s flailing arm with her, but she’s quickly pulled under again as Kira’s panic undermines her efforts.
With a final burst of speed, I’m finally underwater right on top of them.
A hand hits my face and I instinctively shut my eyes to protect them, my cheek smarting with pain.
I wrap my arms around the first person I bump into, but I can tell it isn’t Kira; the waist isn’t the right size.
I yank upward anyway, to get her out of my way, and we flail out of the water.
“Kira!” Janessa struggles in my arms, gulping for air. “Kiiira! Help her, help her, help her!”
I let Janessa go and dive. The lake is mostly clear, which is Kira’s only saving grace.
Without two bodies flailing around and clouding the water with bubbles and silt, without two sets of arms lashing out at me and getting in my way, I can see her well enough to grab her hand as her limbs spasm in uncoordinated terror.
I try to pull her up, but even though she grabs onto me like a vise, her fear causes her to unintentionally work against me.
She doesn’t know how to move in order to help me while I help her.
So I yank her closer and wrap my arms around her middle, trapping her arms at her sides, hoping to convey that she needs to stop moving.
My chest is already burning for air, so I know hers must be feeling unbearable, but I need her to hold still!
She’s face to face with me, her nose an inch from mine, and I look straight into her eyes, hoping she gets what I’m trying to do.
The surface is so close, we can’t be more than two feet below it, maybe less.
Her face is pale as a ghost, her stare wide and bloodshot, and I see the moment she loses the battle with her need for air and sucks in water.
Watching her mouth open and inhale, watching her start to drown, is probably one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.
With a grunt of effort, I kick hard, dragging her dead weight up and up, kicking harder, faster, up and up until her head breaches the surface.
The shore is in chaos, I can hear people yelling but it’s going in and out because I’m bobbing up and down, almost drowning as Kira’s weight and uncoordinated seizing drags us down again.
Desperate, feminine hands grab my shoulders and start helping to drag us closer to shore.
Once I get my feet under me on the slick lake bed, I stand and heave Kira into my arms. I slog through the shallow water with her, both of us gasping for air as Janessa hovers anxiously, orbiting me with tears in her eyes, asking Kira all sorts of questions that she’s clearly in no state to answer.
She’s choking, gagging, hacking up water.
Her whole body convulses in my grip as it tries to expel what she was forced to inhale.
Moving quickly, ignoring all the yelling and shouting and panic, I walk her to a patch of grass, lay her on her side, and help her roll onto her elbows as she vomits up more water.
Her eyes blink unseeingly and she gasps, gulps, heaves out sobbing breaths, her entire body shaking.
Her skin is clammy and cold. Her lips are blue.
Janessa is crying, whispering encouragement, her trembling hands running over Kira like she can heal her just by touching her.
She’s begging Kira to be alright. I stay silent, too focused and dialed in to get words out of my mouth, but I clap Kira on the back a few times, trying to help her get it all out.
She finally gulps in a full breath, and even though it sounds suspiciously wet, I think she’s going to survive this.
Which is when my brain shifts gears.
My eyes cut like knives to the culprit. Lexie is red-faced and shouting, pounding her fists ineffectually on Biran’s chest. He’s blushing a little bit, looking embarrassed, and a little upset.
“She can’t swim, you moron!” Lexie shrieks. “Why would you do that?!”
“It was supposed to be a joke!” Brian tries to defend himself from the ire and judgement of the small crowd. “She never told me she can’t swim, alright? How was I supposed to know?”
“We didn’t know,” Gregory shrugs, almost nonchalant. “It was just a joke. It was supposed to be funny.”
“You kept me from going to her!” Lexie turns her screaming onto him. “She could have died!”
I stand slowly, already disassociating. But instead of anxiety, all I feel is a rising tide of black-out, unstoppable, killing rage.
I should stop myself. I should control myself. I should think of the fifteen grand. I should be Tommy Claremont right now.
But I’m not. I’m just Tommy. And I let the rage take me under.
***********
Young-gi
“Help! Someone, help! Help them!”
I hear the terrified scream from my office, and Yosef and I are both running out the door in less time than it takes for the echo to die.
“Someone help! He’s going to kill them!” A girl’s voice, shrill and panicked, cries out from near the back door. Not Kira; she’s still outside. Which means something’s happening–something dangerous–and she’s out there without me. And that is unacceptable.
I won’t let anyone hurt her.
I vault over the stair banister, taking the pain of a rough landing to save time.
Yosef is right on my heels as we barrel through the hallways until we see the source of the screaming; one of the summit guests.
She’s trembling, leading a frantic trail of kitchen staff toward the lake, all of them running but none of them running fast enough.
I blow past them, the lakeshore coming into view.
The lake appears. Adrenaline sharpens everything.
Time slows as my mind races and my seeking gaze skips over everything else, processing none of it, until my eyes catch on Kira.
She’s leaning heavily against Janessa on the grass, crying on her shoulder.
She’s not bleeding or dying, even if she is soaked and distressed.
She’s in one piece, no one is hurting her.
Only then, once my mind understands that she’s not currently being murdered, does the rest of what I’m seeing finally catch up to my brain.
I take it all in–the entire bloody, gruesome scene, and stop dead in my tracks.
And for some reason, I’m hit with the most bizarre thought I’ve ever had.
I think I finally understand art.
I’ve always understood the concept, but it’s never provoked a response in me. I’ve never been moved by it, never understood how anyone could appreciate looking at something just because it has the potential to make you feel something.
But I get it now.
Tommy is straddling the Vandmorson boy, Brian; his knuckles are splattered red and his expression is burning like an avenging archangel’s. With pounding, unending, unmerciful cruelty, he lands hit after hit onto Brian’s already bloody, swollen face.
Not far from him, within the circle of horrified spectators, are two more boys–ah, the Palmer brothers, Leonard and Gregory.
Gregory is slumped on the grass, curled forward over his legs, drooling and heaving, gagging.
The way he’s clutching his stomach proves he’s just had one hell of a hit to his gut.
One of his eyes is already swelling, his mouth is bleeding profusely.
And despite Leonard shaking his shoulder, urging him to get up so they can get to Tommy together, Gregory stays down and shoves his brother away. He knows he’s been beaten.
Frustrated, Leonard rushes Tommy and tries to pull him off, but as easily as swatting a fly away, Tommy shoves Leonard backward, and goes back to his victim of choice.