Her eyes focused on Teddy, Darcy, and Lauren running in lazy circles, sand exploding over their bare feet, their cheeks florid under the bright beam of the headlights. They didn’t know about that girl. Here, she didn’t have to be that girl.
Brynna slapped Evan’s hand away and forced her lightest, brightest grin. “It’s no big deal,” she said, leaning the back of her head against the cool glass of the window. “I’m just not that big of a beach person. And it’s totally freezing out there.” She zipped up her hoodie and shivered against a chill she didn’t actually feel.
Evan’s gaze went over her shoulder. “You’re absolutely right. Those three look positively hypothermic.”
Evan popped out of the car and headed for them; Brynna kicked open her own car door and unsteadily put her feet on the ground, the sound of the grainy sand underneath her sneakers pricking at the back of her neck. She worked to breathe deeply, desperate to claim a second of calm as her heart hammered like a fire bell. She could hear the waves crashing outside and tried to reconcile them with the crashing waves inside her head.
She forced herself to look at the surf beyond, to look at the pier in front of her, the wooden staves drifting off into the dark water. She remembered the way the wood, pocked and cracking with age, felt underneath her bare foot. She remembered that Erica worried they’d fall through the pier rather than jump off it.
“Erica is dead,” Brynna muttered, teeth clenched.
But all at once she heard the ping of the Twitter message in her head. Remember me?
THREE
“And then what happened?” Dr. Rother leaned back in her chair, the leather groaning as she shifted.
“Like, what actually happened, or is this like a ‘See? You didn’t die’ kind of a question?”
Dr. Rother cocked her head, and Brynna sighed.
“It’s not like anyone went into the water. I just sat on a log for a little bit.” She chewed the inside of her cheek, studying the bright green fern just to the left of the doctor’s ear. Dr. Rother moved her chair an inch to the left, so she was once again in Brynna’s full view.
“And what did your friends say?”
Brynna shrugged and looked at her sneakers. “Nothing, really.”
“Did they ask why you weren’t joining in? Did they want you to hang out with them?”
Brynna looked away, trying to find something in the tiny office that she hadn’t studied extensively in one of her previous sessions.
“Brynna?” Dr. Rother prodded.
“I didn’t feel well, so we left after, like, an hour.”
“So you spent an hour on the beach, listening to the waves. Did it bring up—”
Brynna uncrossed her legs and slumped in her chair. “I said it was like an hour. Less though.”
“So forty-five minutes?”
Brynna wouldn’t meet the doctor’s gaze, and the doctor’s eyebrows went up.
“Thirty minutes? Really, any amount of time is making progress.”
That’s good, Brynna thought. Because she was out of the car and back inside in less than fifteen minutes.
“And you said the breathing exercises have been helping you.”
Brynna nodded, and Dr. Rother gave her a tight-lipped “yay, you!” kind of smile.
They stayed that way, Brynna plain-faced and Dr. Rother giving off her good-feeling vibes. Then she opened her mouth. “Now that you’re enjoying more things at Hawthorne High, have you given any consideration to the swim team?”
Brynna felt her mouth drop open. “I practically had a panic attack at the sight of the ocean.”
“A pool isn’t the ocean, Brynna.”
She hated it when Dr. Rother used her name and hated it more when she pinned her with that psychotherapist stare. Brynna sucked in a shallow breath. “I know. I just—I’m not ready yet. And honestly, it’s not like I miss it.”
But that was a lie. Lying in bed at night, Brynna couldn’t get comfortable, missing the freedom that the water used to give her. It was in those long nights, in those desperate, confusing moments when Brynna thought about the drugs again, the way the memories—everything—hung on her periphery when she was high, the edges of her thoughts becoming soft, barely recognizable.
She’d lost count of how many beers she’d had. The keg was empty, tossed out on the grass like a giant soda can, and everyone around her seemed to have their own full cups or hidden flasks of booze. She needed something because the beer wasn’t working. She could still see Erica’s face; she could still hear her voice. She didn’t have to go upstairs, back to the party, to know they were all talking about her, pointing at her. “That’s her, that’s Brynna Chase. She kept swimming while her best friend drowned.”
She barely noticed the tears dripping over her cheeks, and she barely noticed when he sat down. She knew him from school—his name was Campbell or something—and she had steered clear of him because he was supposed to be bad. But he looked at her with a kindly smile now, with a cocked head.
“You look like you could use a pick-me-up,” he said, his friendly smile widening.