Chapter 28
CHAPTER 28
L ucy pedaled hard, her legs burning as she pushed faster, desperate to escape the weight of Mrs. Fletcher's words. The wheels of her bike hummed against the pavement, each rotation carrying her further from Jenna's family home but closer to an unbearable truth. A gust of wind whipped her hair back, and the familiar salty breeze that usually reminded her of summer adventures now carried an arctic chill, cutting through her jacket and settling deep in her bones.
Jenna hadn't drowned accidentally. She had made a choice—the kind of choice that Lucy had never imagined her best friend, with her infectious laugh and endless stories, could make. The kind of choice that rewrote everything Lucy thought she knew about their friendship.
The quaint streets of Periwinkle Shores blurred past her, each landmark triggering a memory she couldn't bear to face. The ice cream shop where they'd spent countless summer afternoons planning their futures. The old oak tree where Jenna had first shared her stories, her eyes bright with possibility. The pier where they'd watched so many sunsets, their feet dangling over the edge, not knowing that same pier would later…
Lucy's vision blurred with tears. She blinked them away furiously, nearly missing her turn. The tires of her bike skidded across the gravel driveway, stones spraying in her wake. She didn't bother with the kickstand, letting her bike clatter to the ground as she stumbled toward her front door. Her hands shook so badly she dropped her keys twice before managing to unlock it.
The house echoed with emptiness as she burst through the door. The screen slammed behind her with a familiar crack—the same sound that used to earn her mother's gentle reprimands. The memory hit her like a physical blow: her mother's voice, warm but firm, "Lucy Katherine…" She could almost hear the ghost of Jenna's perfect imitation, the way they'd dissolve into giggles afterward. Now both of those voices were lost to her forever, and the silence that filled her house felt heavier than ever.
She threw her bag on the dining room table and looked at the journals spilling out. The sight of them made her stomach lurch. She forced herself to approach, pulling them out with trembling hands and spreading them across the weathered oak surface. Her grandmother's table—the one she'd inherited after her mother's death. Its scratched surface held so many memories: homework sessions with Jenna, late-night conversations with her mother, years of family dinners before everything fell apart with her father, Silas.
She grabbed her favorite pen and a fresh notepad. "Everything leaves clues," Jenna used to say when they discussed their favorite mysteries. "You just have to know where to look." Lucy took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. She would approach this like one of their beloved mystery novels. She would find the truth hidden in these pages.
The first journal she opened was the one she'd already spent the most time with, its blue cover worn soft at the corners from handling. Jenna's distinctive handwriting filled the pages—slightly slanted, with looping g's and y's that always ran into the lines below. Lucy had teased her about it once, calling it "enthusiastic handwriting." Jenna had laughed and said her thoughts just couldn't wait for the next line.
She began to read, really read, searching for what she'd missed before:
"Sometimes I feel like I'm underwater, like I'm screaming but no one can hear me. Everyone says I'm fine, so I must be, right? But I'm not. I'm not fine. Mom keeps saying it's just senior year stress, that everyone feels overwhelmed about college applications. She doesn't understand that it's more than that. It's like there's this darkness inside me that keeps growing, and I don't know how to stop it."
Lucy's chest tightened until she could barely breathe. She remembered the day Jenna had probably written this—they'd had lunch together at school, and Jenna had been quieter than usual. Lucy had asked if she was okay, and Jenna had smiled, saying she was just tired from staying up late writing. That smile had been so convincing. Or had Lucy just wanted to be convinced?
She flipped to another entry, dated just three weeks before…before everything changed.
"Had dinner with Lucy tonight. We talked about me joining her when she backpacks around Europe after graduation. She was so excited, planning everything out like she always does. I wanted to tell her the truth—that I can barely plan for tomorrow, let alone a summer. That sometimes the future feels like this vast, dark ocean that I'm drowning in. But I couldn't bear to see her face fall, to watch her try to fix something that can't be fixed. It's easier to smile and nod. It's what everyone expects of me anyway. Jenna the dreamer. Jenna the storyteller. Jenna who's always fine. Only I’m not fine at all."
Lucy set the journal down, her hands pressed flat against the pages as if she could reach through time and grab hold of her friend. How had she not seen it? The signs were all there, written in Jenna's own hand, crying out from every page.
With shaking fingers, she picked up one of Jenna's unfinished stories—the stack of papers she'd dismissed as just another one of her friend's works in progress:
"The girl stood at the edge of the pier, her toes curling over the worn wood. The weight of expectations pressed down on her shoulders like lead, each breath a struggle against the crushing pressure. The water below was dark and still, a mirror reflecting the gray sky above. She didn't want to jump—not really. But she couldn't see another way forward, couldn't imagine carrying this heaviness for another day, another hour, another minute. The water called to her, promising silence, promising peace. Promising an end to the exhaustion of pretending to be whole when she felt so impossibly broken."
A sob tore from Lucy's throat, raw and painful. She pressed her hand to her mouth, but it was too late to hold back the flood. Tears splashed onto the pages, smearing the ink. She pulled back quickly, desperately wiping the drops away. She couldn't damage these words. They were all she had left.
Her notepad was already covered in frantically scribbled observations, passages underlined and circled, but she could barely read them through her tears. Jenna's voice echoed in every word, more honest in these pages than she'd ever been in life. The friend Lucy thought she'd known so well had been drowning right in front of her, and she'd never noticed the water rising.
"I'm so sorry," Lucy whispered, the words catching in her throat. "I'm so sorry I didn't see. I'm so sorry I didn't hear what you were trying to tell me."
She let herself cry then, really cry, for the first time since Jenna's death. Not the quiet, dignified tears she'd shed at the funeral, or the shocked sobs that had come when she'd first heard the news. This was grief in its purest form—ugly and raw and real. She cried for the friend she'd lost, for the pain Jenna had carried alone, for all the words left unsaid between them.