She was too weak to tread water, but they weren’t too far from the rocks at the bottom of the point. Together, they managed to pull each other toward them.

“The diary-y!” she screamed between shivering breaths. “It’s gon-n-n-e.”

“It do-o-es-n-n’t matt-tt-ter. Forget it-t-t-t-t. Stevie. Stee-e-e-vv-ie.”

Stevie gripped the rock with her right hand, but it was tiring out. She went to switch to the left, but when she did so, a shock of pain shot through her arm. She almost slipped down the rock, but Nate grabbed her shirt and pulled her back.

“I think-k-k my arm-m-m . . . ,” she said, but that was all she could manage before the pain blotted out the sentence.

The water was black and still, with a tiny cartoon moon bobbing on the surface. She tried to look up to see if anyone was visible above them, but it was all rock and darkness.

“Do-o you think they’re g-g-g-one?” Nate sputtered.

She shook her head, unsure if she meant no or that she didn’t know.

“Hey!” came a yell from the other side of the lake. “Hey! Are you okay?”

David’s voice. Was she hallucinating? Had any of this happened? The shots, the fall . . . did she die in the water?

“No-o!” Nate screamed back.

“Nate? Hang on! Hang on!”

“Well-ll, yeah-h-h,” Nate said, his shivering growing worse.

Not a hallucination. That was David.

Stevie watched David and his kayak come closer through the water. Whether it took him five minutes or five hours, she had no idea. Everything was cold, and her hold on the rock was ever weakening. She wanted to try to belly-crawl on top of it to get out of the water, but she didn’t have that kind of strength.

As David glided up to them, Stevie was surprised to find that the first emotion to bubble back to the surface with the rest of her body was annoyance.

“What-t-t the hel-l-l-l a-r-r-re you doing-g here?”

“Getting your ass out of the lake,” he shot back. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Oh-h my Go-d-d,” Nate said. “Shut-t up-p.”

That tiny burst of emotion drained whatever reserve of energy Stevie had. Her body was numb and exhaustion took over. She began to slip from the rock.

“Whoa . . . whoa . . .” David swung his legs over the side of the kayak and slipped into the water, catching her in a clumsy hold. She was dead weight and he struggled to get a grip on her and keep the other hand on the kayak.

“Okay,” he said, seeming to sense the gravity of the situation, “how do we do this? Nate, do you think you can get over here and grab the kayak?”

“I think-k so,” Nate said, reaching for the kayak. He fumbled once or twice but finally got a firm enough grip on one of the ropes on the side and hauled his body over it.

“Arm-m,” Stevie mumbled. “Doesn’t-t-t work-k.”