Chapter 38 Beth
Beth
My blood has run cold and I’m shaking all over. What does Jamie mean? I look down the table at her like she’s a stranger. She’s tucked her hair behind her ears, and she looks fragile and afraid. I don’t recognize her. Maybe all along she has been a stranger. Maybe they all have been.
I drop my head and stare at my hands. The dust particles against the windows of the dining room have diminished, leaving in their wake a smell of fire.
Despite the assurances we are miles from the actual fire line, it’s an edgy quiet that has engulfed us.
It was almost better when the relentless drone of the storm outside kept us company.
Now it’s just us, the sorority sisters, here in the dining room reliving a nightmare that happened so long ago.
We are all, I suppose, primal forces of nature in our own right.
Sunny’s smile pops into my head, that delighted grin as she was talking me into accepting the free trip.
The spring break trip she never came home from.
She never left Palm Springs. I have my own side of the story to tell, of course, but first, I need to find out what Jamie did to Sunny.
Even though I don’t want to know the answer, I must hear it. I look up at Jamie.
“What happened that night at the pool, Jamie?” I ask. The room is silent and still except for the flickering candles on the table, the acrid smell of ash outside.
“It was our last night of spring break, and I couldn’t sleep. I knew Sunny was planning to turn me in as soon as we got home. I was terrified,” Jamie says in a quiet voice. She wrings her hands together.
“Of course you were scared; anyone would be,” Amelia says. “Sunny was a fierce one when she set her mind on something. Very black and white.”
Jamie nods. “I knew Sunny would tell my parents about the drugs and report Brett to the dean,” Jamie says.
“Because it was the right thing to do,” I say, defending my best friend. Sunny was a light, a force for good in the world, and she was right to turn them in. But she never had a chance.
“Maybe, but I couldn’t allow her to tell on me.
Everything I’d worked so hard for all my life would be ruined,” Jamie says, her voice stronger.
“I spent the entire trip trying to figure out a way to talk her out of it, to make her see what it would do to me and my future if she told anyone about the drugs or the stealing. But it was our last night of spring break, and I still hadn’t made any headway.
I thought I’d have a chance to corner Sunny before dinner and beg her one last time to reconsider, but she never showed up at the restaurant.
I guess we know why now,” she adds, gesturing in Roxy’s direction.
A chill rolls down my spine, as outside, a swaying tree creaks in the wind.
“I was so frustrated, restless. I gave up trying to sleep around three in the morning and decided I’d take a walk outside to see if I could clear my head,” she says.
“I ended up by the pool. I was going to sit in a lounge chair, and I don’t know, look at the stars, enjoy my last evening of freedom, and not think about my ruined future. ”
Something slams into the window, a piece of debris that broke loose due to the wind during the storm, and Roxy lets out a yelp. “This night is going to be the end of us.”
Dramatic as always. Then again, today has been a dramatic day. I turn my attention back to Jamie.
“You walked to the pool. And you saw Sunny,” I say, another chill rolling down my spine.
“I saw something, someone, floating in the water,” Jamie says, her voice little more than a whisper now.
“As I got closer to the pool, I realized it was Sunny. I recognized her favorite ponytail holder when it sparkled in the moonlight, and her diamond tennis necklace twinkled at the back of her neck. I went into shock, I think.”
All of us fall silent, imagining the scene, the horror of it all.
“What did you do, Jamie?” Amelia slurs. “Did you help her?”
“I don’t know how long she was in the water before I got there, but I think, I think she was still alive,” Jamie says. Her blue eyes are wide with fright, with the still-vivid memory. “I thought I saw her hand twitching, but it could have been my imagination. I’m sure it was my imagination.”
“Oh my God,” I say, clutching my throat as if I were the one who was drowning. I find myself gasping for breath, my throat tight, restricting.
“What did you do?” Roxy says, her eyes as wide as Jamie’s.
“I swear I started to dive in, to save her I swear I was going to. But something stopped me. There was this voice in my head whispering that saving her would ruin me,” Jamie says. The windows of the dining room rattle with another wind gust.
We all stare at Jamie, the admission soaking into our souls, our hearts. Mine is breaking again for Sunny. My beautiful friend deserved to be saved.
“So you did nothing? You let her drown?” I say, shaking all over. “You’re a doctor, you were pre-med. You have a duty to help.”
“Wow, Jamie,” Amelia says as she walks drunkenly over to the cooler and pours herself another glass of wine. “That’s kind of diabolical. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Jamie stares out the window. The swimming pool isn’t visible from here, even if it weren’t nighttime and the landscape weren’t covered in dust. I know what she’s seeing: the pool, that pool, again. Sunny floating face down, dead, or maybe not yet.
Jamie turns and looks directly at me. “I chose my future over hers, Beth. And there’s not a day that’s gone by since that I haven’t known I made the wrong choice.”