Without thinking, I kick off my shoes and run barefoot down the jetty. I don’t need my T-shirt, any more than I need the skirt. Every few steps another piece of clothing slips to the ground until I’m completely naked and there’s only water in front of me. The wood is warm beneath my feet, the summer evening smells of salt and freedom.
‘Nyla, wait!’ My friend doesn’t get to finish the sentence, because I dive under. Just like that. Headfirst into the dark water.
When I surface again, I laugh out loud.
‘You’re crazy,’ she mutters, stepping up to the water’s edge.
‘Then be crazy too!’ I splash water in her direction. ‘Or are you scared?’
She snorts. Slips out of her dress. And jumps.
‘We’re just having fun,’ I repeat so quietly that my friends can’t hear it, and feel the faint smile forming on my lips.
‘Girls’ night? I’m in.’ That’s Olive, whose gaze now wanders around the circle. ‘Who’s got something exciting from their private life to report?’
Autumn quickly lowers her lids, I shake my head just to be safe. Because talking about Jaden would inevitably lead to the question of what exactly is going on with me right now. Then the girls would want to know where this new Nyla is coming from, the one who’s fighting more and more for her place in my life.
And there’s only one answer to both questions. One I still don’t understand. One I sense has come to stay. One that makes me jittery and happy and desperate and powerless.
Jaden.
Chapter Twenty-Four
JADEN
Two minutes. That’s how long it’s been since Nyla declared our patient in the remote house on Spruce Hill Lake dead.
The number haunts my mind as Nyla, apparently lost in her own thoughts, leans against the porch railing and Ray, shoulders slumped, trudges over to the ambulance to report in to dispatch. Because foul play can’t be ruled out, dispatch will inform the police.
Twenty-five minutes. That’s how long it will take for them to show up here with lights flashing.
Three hours. That’s how long, in my experience, we’ll have to wait at a minimum until the law enforcement officers have finished their work for the time being and have no more questions for us. That’s almost two hundred minutes in which I’ll be closer to death than I want to be. I erase the numbers from my head and replace them with new ones.
Thirty-nine hours. That’s how long I haven’t seen Nyla since I brought her home from the fair.
One hundred milliseconds. That’s how long it took to make her smile today when our shared shift started.
Zero point six seconds. That was the interval between the beats of my heart when she was sitting so close beside me in the ambulance that our thighs were touching.
Spruce Hill Lake lies calm before us, the water reflecting the gentle colors of the evening sky—a delicate purple that turns into a warm orange. I glance sideways at her, see her elfin face, which looks thoughtful.
‘Do you smell that?’ I ask Nyla, to remind us both of what is still good despite everything.
She looks at me sadly. ‘What?’
‘The fresh scent of pine and damp moss.’ I take a deep breath.
‘That’s what you’re thinking about right now?’ she asks me with a mixture of pity and incomprehension. ‘A person just died.’
I haven’t forgotten that. I turn my head toward her, our gazes meet. ‘Yes,’ I say quietly. ‘And there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it.’
She studies me intently, seeming to search for something very specific in my eyes. ‘So we just act as if nothing happened? That’s your solution?’
I knew she would say something like that, that she wouldn’t look away, that unlike me she could bear it. She is so much stronger than I am, and not for the first time I envy her for it.
‘What’s your solution?’ I ask cautiously.
‘I don’t know either,’ she answers, surprisingly.