High By the Beach

Chapter 1

One

There’s something in the night air. Something heady, honey-slick and intoxicating.

It makes me feel like I’m floating, even as the cool press of sand anchors me at the soles.

Or maybe that’s just the blow thrumming bright through my veins.

A short laugh spills.

Probably.

No, not probably. Definitely.

This is why I chased the little white line, isn’t it? Couldn’t exactly sit still after my mother’s confession. Or the dull thud of my father’s agreement behind it. That’s what I get for eavesdropping. Lesson learned.

Not that I’m thinking about it anymore. I’ve chased the bitter out with bass, traded hushed conversations for pounding music. Each beat is liquid as it glides over exposed skin.

I pull in a long drag of salt-tinged air, letting it circulate inside like smoke.

My stomach twists in protest, but I barely register it.

Same way I barely register tugging free my hair from the week-old knot it’s been trapped in.

By the time the pale strands cascade down my back, it’s too late to care, and I’m too far gone.

Nothing’s breaking my stride now.

The sand stretches endless ahead, silver under moonlight, and broken only by the occasional neon bleed from the boardwalk.

No one’s here. Maybe because it’s close to three a.m. Or maybe, just maybe, my parents picked the most secluded patch of coastline money could buy.

And after what I just overheard, I’d bet on the latter.

It makes the idea of walking this entire beach all the more tempting, but I stop as it hits.

I’m not alone.

My head tips back, and there she is. The moon. Glinting not with light, but knowing.

She gets it. All of it. How can she not, when tonight, she’s fractured too? A half masquerading as a whole, same as me.

My left arm feels heavier all of a sudden, like the bracelets winding up my wrist are bricks instead of threads.

It’s weird how I stand here with bass and blow dominating my system, but it’s the moon I bare myself to.

Not drugs. Not music.

Her.

It’s been a long time coming, I guess. Acknowledging this anguish, longing and utter grief. Six weeks, to be exact. Since her casket sank into the ground and the first spill of soil sealed her departure.

The concession is debilitating, my knees almost buckling under the force.

How long will it be like this? Dark days, nights darker still, and the ache that doesn’t sleep, the loss that doesn’t loosen.

Sometimes the grief grips so tight I forget how to breathe.

“I miss you, B.”

That’s all I let myself have.

One line. One whisper split in two. Then I withdraw in true Brielle-fashion, cranking the music until it’s impossible to think past the reverberation.

Sand weaves between silk and skin as I drop onto it, but I don’t care. I could stay here until dawn, drift off here, and it wouldn’t matter.

And it’s not just the coke talking. This, this shrugging off of everything I used to feel too much, it’s my new default.

Because if you don’t care, you can’t hurt, right?

Another laugh falls, fading into the emptiness of the night. If only it were that simple. Maybe then our first night here wouldn’t be unravelling like this.

A summer of healing, my mother claimed.

And for all intents and purposes, Grove Bay seems like the picture-perfect coastal town to achieve that.

It has it all: the quintessential boardwalk full of variety, the elusive country-club my father’s already joined, the balmy weather that dips into the night.

But, more than anything, it’s not the echo-chamber back in Merrin.

We were never going to find peace in a house hollowed out by her absence, were we?

My swallow is thick and I look up, hoping the stars will scatter the memory clawing its way in.

They don’t.

If anything, they dim in luminosity, practically demanding I acknowledge it.

It happened on the two-hour-something drive over.

My mother twisting in the passenger seat, her smile too polished, too rehearsed.

“This place will be good for us. For you. You’ve always wanted to be by the beach, right?”

The intangible look that passed between me and my father said it all.

She’d gotten the wrong twin.

It was her at the pool every weekend like clockwork. This vision of summer days, lazing by the water, was her dream.

Only it never happened. Because of me.

Because of what happened when I was eight. An incident that’s left its mark and stitched fear into me so deep it’s never let go. I’ve tried to fight it—God, I’ve tried—pushing myself again and again, because it’s in the water where my twin spoke of being free.

I want to be free. Truly free, not just using a high to give me temporary relief.

They say drugs are gateways to wrong decisions and I get it now, because the second the idea takes shape, I know it’s a bad one.

I let it root anyway.

The earphones go first, tossed aside like dead weight. I push up on my elbows next, moving slow. Then, for the first time since arriving in Grove, I grace the ocean with the attention it deserves.

Vast. Velvet. Venomous.

Moonlight dances across the surface, trying to lull into a false sense of security, but I know better. The ocean is deep, dark, dangerous, and it doesn’t care what it drags under. Even from here, it threatens to swallow me whole.

For a second, I consider letting it. Wading into the abyss wouldn’t be the worst thing, not when it doubles as the perfect middle finger to every demon waiting for me come nightfall.

But I’m all talk. Flashes of the very haunts I relive when I sleep play behind my lids and all that bravado curdles into an all-too-familiar panic.

I can’t.

Who was I even trying to fool?

My next exhale is choppy, doing absolutely nothing to expel the failure sitting on my tongue. I reach for my earphones again, but before I can get a solid grip, something stops me.

No, not something—someone. Out there, in the ocean. Swimming.

I jolt upright, straining for clarity. Broad shoulders. A long, deliberate stroke. Definitely a man—or at least I think so. It’s too dark to be sure, and he’s far out. Too far out.

Worry flickers, but it doesn’t quite stick.

Not when he drives forward with one fluid stroke after another, each cutting through the dark like it owns the space.

He never even breaks for air. I might’ve thought it was simply a late-night swim, but the intensity behind it tells me it’s more than that.

It’s an outlet. Yeah. And under the backdrop of stars, the ocean seems to welcome his turmoil with open arms.

Maybe it’ll welcome mine, too.

I’m on my feet before doubt can sink its teeth in, drawn forward on legs steadier than they have any right to be. False confidence, I’m sure, but I let it ride through me, siphoning every ounce of strength from the swimmer.

Crash.

The waves slam the closer I get, but I can’t tell if it’s a premonition or a beckoning. I don’t have time to figure it out; I’m ankle-deep now, salt nipping at my skin, and my spine? It’s set straight with steel.

I’m going to do this. Face my fear head-on and meet the ocean with a skill forged under years of vivid nightmares.

A summer of healing. And maybe it will be. Just not in the way she pictured.

The water’s lukewarm and laps higher as I go—knees, thighs, hips. Underfoot, the sand is packed tight from the tide, but I can feel how easily it’ll give if I let it.

I can’t let it.

Not when my last swimming lesson was years ago and ended in complete dismay.

Maybe I should listen to the way my synapses fire like flares, but I don’t.

The plea to leave is ignored, defied even, as I sink deeper, lower, until the water kisses my collarbones and ripples under the weight of what’s probably this bad idea.

But tomorrow isn’t promised. I know that now, far more intimately than I ever wished to.

So I let the truth settle into my bones. This is happening. The resolve is there in the square of my shoulders, the press of my lips.

I close my eyes. Breathe deep.

In. Out.

Soft.

Measured.

Exactly the technique they taught me in therapy.

The world thins until it’s nothing but breath, body, and water cradling me.

I know the swimmer is out there somewhere, a silhouette slicing through saltwater but as much as I want to look, I don’t. If I don’t encapsulate this moment right now, I fear I never will.

So I pull in one last breath, let the weight of everything gather in my chest, and then, I slip under the surface.