Chapter 6. Tessa
Tessa
AFTER
My mind rises slowly through the deep, drifting past layers of silt and sand. Hoisted ever upward through the dark and endless fathoms. I don’t have the energy to open my eyes but sense it’s bright as I near the surface. Blindingly bright.
Don’t wake up, I whisper, coax. Not yet.
Stay hidden behind the veil of sleep.
There was something I wanted desperately to hold on to. The shadow of a thought. A moment of choice.
Rise or fall.
Stay or go.
I was grasping it. Dredging in the silt for an answer of some kind. Or perhaps, having already made up my mind, I don’t want to face the gravity of the decision.
Hold. Wait. Dream.
Were it not for the occasional splashes of red and blue across the backs of my eyelids, my mind might have opted to sink back to oblivion. Instead, it snaps into focus, my eyes fluttering open.
I’m not in my bed. I’m not sure where I am exactly, only that my hip juts into a hard wooden floor. Above me hangs the slanted roof of an attic ceiling. Lights flicker hypnotically overhead through the early-morning haze.
Red. Blue. Red. Blue.
Strobing on and off, they’re like party lights, but not. Then a memory jostles loose, unlocks.
The party.
All at once, visions of last night fly back to me. The mansion. The breakup. Hiding from those guys with Reed. The alcohol. So much alcohol.
Oh my God. Did I pass out here? Did I never make it home?
I smack my palm to my forehead, arriving back in my body piece by piece.
Stupid Reed and his stupid idea to play a stupid drinking game.
And me, foolishly thinking I have something to prove.
My father’s going to be furious. I push myself up from the floor, patting my pockets for my phone.
It’s gone. Of course I’d lose my phone. Could this day get any shittier?
Now I’ve no way to call Jillian or Tilly to come get me.
My anxiety is mounting again, and that leads nowhere good. I need to breathe. Focus. I can get myself home. I am capable. I am smart. Breathe.
I just need to find someone and borrow their phone, that’s all. Though it’s oddly quiet. Did everyone go home already? Why in the world did I climb to the rickety attic of this creepy mansion and fall asleep? Reed’s nowhere in sight.
He must have ditched me.
Damn him.
I rub the sleep out of my eyes and head for the window.
A thick mist hovers over the ground. Like fog rolling off the ocean, it swirls in eddies around the trees, bushes, front porch. It presses against the windowpanes. It’s so dense I can’t even make out the front gate.
But the red and blue lights on the street are unmistakable, even if the cars themselves are concealed. The police are here. The party’s been busted.
For one wild moment I imagine climbing out the attic window to shimmy down from the upper floors in a daring escape.
But then I remember Mika Rogers’s sixth-grade birthday party, when I panicked after scrambling to the top of the rock wall and had to be rescued by a burly employee named Mr. Cougar while Mika screamed that I’d ruined her sixth-grade year. Heights and I don’t mix.
I could hide until the cops leave, but who knows how long that will take, and my dad is definitely freaking out by now. Since staying forever isn’t an option, I creep down the narrow attic stairs. My plan for trying to resurrect the scholarship for outstanding moral fiber evaporates with each step.
Dear Ms. Fieldman, after punching your lights out, I went to a blowout graduation party, drank myself into a stupor, then got busted by the cops.
But please, I swear, I am a very together and dependable person.
I was merely corrupted by my evil nemesis, Reed Walker.
It was him I meant to be punching. If you knew him, Ms. Fieldman, I swear you’d want to punch him, too.
On the third floor I see my first cop. I press my back against the hallway wall, trying to make myself as small as possible.
But when he glances my way, he doesn’t seem concerned.
When I step onto the landing, two more officers walk past. I expect to be scolded.
Arrested, even. Doesn’t that happen when parties are busted in the movies?
But no one breathes a word to me. When I descend to the second floor, the action really gets going.
The police are everywhere, from uniformed beat cops to detectives in suits and ties.
There’s caution tape. Cones on the floor. A somber vibe.
My brain can’t make all the pieces slot into place. There are no students. What happened here? Was there some kind of crime? Maybe it was lucky I fell asleep in the attic after all, away from the action.
“Excuse me,” I ask an officer snapping photos of the surroundings. She brushes past, ignoring me.
“Did they ID our Jane Doe?” She joins a group of men gathered on the other side of the room toward the large second-story windows overlooking the lawn below.
“We’re working on that now.”
It’s only then that I notice the small lump on the floor by their feet, covered in a tarp. No, not a lump.
A person.
I know I should leave. I’m not meant to be here. I should walk out and never look back. But I can’t. I’m pulled forward. “What’s going on here?” I ask, but no one pays me any attention.
In the end, it’s the old-fashioned boots jutting out from under the plastic sheet that snatch my breath away—vintage Victorian boots with the laces looped around and tied halfway up. Did someone steal my shoes while I slept?
I glance down, but mine remain on my feet.
A chill creeps over my skin. The mystery of the boots compels me to step closer, dig further. Like bodies held tight to the earth, like metal filings drawn to a magnet, there’s a force now beyond curiosity, beyond anything I’ve ever known. I need to know who that person is.
I stumble forward, through the chaos, determined to get some answers. “Who is she?” I press again, but the officers huddle together, unconcerned. It’s infuriating. “Hey, answer me! Who’s under there?” I march up to the edge of their circle.
One of the detectives pulls a pair of plastic gloves out of his pocket, working them onto his hands. “Poor kid, likely OD’d. We’ve sent off labs for a tox screen. And we’re running DNA so we can notify the family.” He leans down and pulls the top of the tarp back.
My head spins. Black hair braided into messy buns. The lace dress. The house tilts on its axis as my world explodes. Is this some kind of joke? I stagger backward. I can’t suck enough air into my lungs.
She …
Me …
She … looks so pale. So lost. Eyes blank and expressionless, staring up at the ceiling until the detective runs his hands over her face to close them.
“Nooooooo!” someone screams. It’s me. I’m screaming.
I need to get out of this room. I don’t know what kind of cruel game this is.
But as I turn to race forward there’s a police officer, clipboard in hand, directly in my path, and inexplicably, though I’m standing right in front of him, he barrels toward me.
I brace for impact, but it never comes—at least not in the way I expect.
I’m met with the bitter crush of ice, my sense of self dissolving, as the cold seeps into my bones, drowning out my every thought. I’m consumed with his memories … our memories.
In a locker back at the precinct there’s an engagement ring tucked in his coat pocket.
He’s been denied a promotion and resents it.
I’m sad to be here, having lost a friend in my twenties to a drug overdose.
Wait, did that happen to me? I can’t tell. I’m totally unmoored.
And then it’s over. When I whip around, the officer is suddenly behind me. I don’t … I can’t line the pieces up into reality. How?
I stumble forward, barely able to stand. The cold is marrow-deep. My teeth are chattering, my body shaking. It’s as if, for a heartbeat, that cop and I occupied the same space, as if he passed straight through me.
But that’s impossible.
And yet … I knew him. I knew him in a deeper way than I’ve ever known anyone. But it’s already fading, leaving me shivering, empty, and alone.
No.
Not alone.
Standing on the other side of the room, in the doorway, there’s one person in all the spiraling chaos who is staring straight at me, who can unmistakably see me.
His eyes drill into mine, with the same edge-of-panic expression plastered over his face.
Reed Walker.