As I exit the locker room several minutes later, my relief is palpable. I suddenly couldn’t care less if we win or lose the football game. Surely no victory could be as sweet as having an empty bladder. I’m swinging my phone beam back and forth to ensure the path is clear of floaties or stray goggles when I catch a dark streak on blue out of my periphery.

Someone’s thrown a raft or something into the pool. I narrow in on it, step closer. Less raft, more person-shaped. A CPR dummy in a dress. I know this game.

“Ha ha. Very funny,” I say, addressing my prankster. Frankly, I’m impressed that Luke was able to carry off the logistics. He would have had to run from the field to beat me, and known I was coming here.

Wait.

I inch closer to the body at the far end of the pool. A hollow, sour tugging at my navel slows me. The dress is seafoam green. And the “dummy” has hair. They don’t normally have that, do they? The hair is a dark-brunette tangle, floating like seaweed. Fear strikes my core.

“Come on, Morgan. You’re ruining your dress.” I step closer.

Morgan stays put.

“It’s not funny anymore.” Another step forward. My head swims, dizzy, like I’m drunk. I am outside my body, watching myself approach. I know this sensation. This isn’t happening.

I notice the Swarovski crystals. Natalie. I didn’t see her when I came in. How didn’t I see her when I came in?

They never tell you what dead bodies look like, how actors on TV can never get it right, because the light in their eyes makes it impossible.

I can’t see Natalie’s eyes. She’s facedown in the pool, unmoving. But I know two things to be true:

There is no beauty in this drowning.

And another Seaview queen is dead.

My scream is swallowed in the glittering, glimmering blue.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I sleep to forget.

I thought when my mother died I would stay up through the night, wanting to prolong the before from the after. But that night, much like last night after I found Natalie in the pool, I shut down the torrent of emotion with welcomed unconsciousness. I pushed down all the black thoughts, the repeating loops of finding her, running for help, sitting on the curb as police lights flashed across the school parking lot. Watching at a distance when they told her friends. My friends.

Morgan is my opposite. I wake to the evidence of her insomnia.

You there? [DELIVERED 2:02 AM]

sorry I can’t sleep [DELIVERED 4:18 AM]

Maybe you could stop by the diner tomorrow? [DELIVERED 6:30 AM]