Vengeance (31 page)

“Delaney,” I said. Couldn’t she feel how everything was shifting? How Holden was almost here, and Maya would do anything for him, and we were just standing there self-righteously, defenseless.

I understood, because it’s exactly how I felt, standing on the other side, with Delaney.

I felt her fingers sliding between mine. She felt it. Or maybe my fear had transferred to her, becoming real. Either way, when I took a step back, so did she. We walked without
talking all the way back to my car. The engine turned over, and I saw Maya still standing on her porch with her phone in her hand.

And as I pulled out of the driveway, I noticed that Delaney had her phone out, too. She stared at the blank screen as she held it in her lap.

“She’s dead,” Delaney said. “She could be anywhere.”

“Not anywhere,” I said. She was everywhere to Maya. Dip your toe in the water and feel connected. Sit on your back porch, like holding vigil at a tombstone. Staring out at the water, connecting us all. “She’s in the lake.”

Listen
. “Decker.” I heard my name. Delaney had called it as she fell beneath the ice. My dad’s mouth had formed the word as he slid to the floor.

“
Decker
.” She grabbed my arm, her voice sliding into focus. “The lake?”

“Do you believe me?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. She took her phone out and called 911. “There’s a body,” she said. “In Falcon Lake. Maya Johnson’s mother.” The biggest leap of faith on a feeling. On me.

“
I want to know what you believe
,” she’d said, “
so that I can believe it, too
.”

I cringed when Delaney gave her name before hanging up, because I knew what would happen next.

They came to us first. A dead body wasn’t exactly an emergency. It was a tip. A very questionable tip.

I was there. In her room. With the door open. Trying to convince her she’d done the right thing, ignoring the fact that there was a police car currently idling in her driveway. “But I shouldn’t even know about it,” she said.

The engine cut off.

“But you do,” I said.

A door slammed shut.

“I feel like I’m messing with fate. Like there’s a way things are supposed to happen, according to the choices we make, and I’m changing it all.”

The doorbell rang, and then the front door creaked open.

“You don’t believe in fate,” I said.

There were footsteps on the stairs. And then Joanne was standing at the entrance to the room.

“Delaney,” she whispered. “Why are the police here?” She moved her eyes from Delaney to me. “Decker?” Things like this were usually my fault. She knew that about me. “They claim you called them?”

Delaney stood up. “We know something we shouldn’t, Mom,” she whispered back. “Maya’s mom is dead.”

Joanne put her hand over her heart. “Oh, no. Poor Maya.”

“She’s been dead for a while,” I added. Not
poor Maya
.

Joanne sat on the edge of the bed as I stood up. “Poor Maya,” she repeated, like an echo.

I followed Delaney downstairs. Joanne stood against the wall with a phone pressed to her ear. “Your father should be here for this,” she said, like she was worried that Delaney was about to get in trouble.

“Hey,” I said to the cop, like we were old friends. He wasn’t the one who showed up at our house; he was the one who questioned me when we found Tara in the lake. Who told me to stick around. Which I didn’t.

He nodded at me and started writing. Then he looked up at me and said, “D-e-c-k-e-r, right?”

Maybe this was part of Intimidation Tactics 101. “Yeah,” I said. “And Phillips has two
L
s.”

Joanne cleared her throat. “I need to call his mother if you plan on questioning him.”

He smiled. “No, that’s all right. I’m here to speak with your daughter. Not a questioning. Just want to make sure we have everything right.”

“I already said everything I know,” Delaney said, but she was looking at her mom. “This is a waste of your time,” she said, turning to the cop. I think she was starting to realize that she’d have to (a) lie; (b) lie to a cop; and (c) lie to a cop in front of her mom.

“You should talk to Maya,” I said.

“Allegations like this,” the officer said, making him seem much older than he looked, “are quite serious. If you make a statement that a person was killed—”

“
Killed?
” Delaney said, rising off the couch. “No, she died on her own. She wasn’t killed.”

“Tell me, then,” he said. “Tell me how you know all this.”

I could see from the way he was looking at Delaney that he knew the rumors. That he was a part of this town. That he
believed. The curse. Delaney, safe in this house. A body, hidden below the surface. A trade.

“Did”—he consulted his notes—“did Maya tell you this?” he asked. He didn’t make eye contact with her, like she could wield the lake’s power. Decide who the lake would take in her place.

“She implied it,” she said.
Careful
, I thought.

“We need you to explain how exactly she implied it. We don’t go searching a lake on a whim, you know.”

Joanne sucked in air. “You’re saying that Maya’s mother is in the …”

“She is,” I said.

“Okay,” Delaney said. “Her mother hasn’t been in that house for months. She was sick, really sick, before … on disability. And now she’s gone.”

“And she told you her body is in the lake? Of all places? What on earth would possess a girl to do that to her own mother?”

Delaney shrugged. “I don’t know what possesses anyone to do anything.”

“We’ve just been by the house,” he said. “She claims her mother has been getting treatment in Canada. Something they don’t offer here. She said she’s been there for months.” Something hard to track down, something to cover our story. “She said that she and her brother are going to pick her up this weekend and bring her home.”

I looked at Delaney, thought of the boxes. They’d be gone before those few days were up. Wiped from existence.

“If she’s away in Canada, then how is she signing the backs of her disability checks in Maine?” I asked. And the cop looked up at me. “They’re cashing the checks,” I repeated. Because that was something that was illegal. Something that could be proven. “She’s not there, and they’re cashing the checks.”

Something real.

Chapter 20

It began.

Two boats, out on the lake. A crowd of onlookers scattered along the shore. Whispers—rumors—about what they were looking for. They started near Maya’s place at the first sign of light. We saw them out there as we drove to school.

“What’s going to happen to them?” Delaney asked, her forehead pressed against the car window as we passed the lake.

I didn’t know. We couldn’t prove Holden had done anything to Tara, but we could prove this. This was a crime. And there would be some sort of justice, even if it was for something else. “This will stop,” I said. “This will all stop.”

I hoped the lake heard me as we drove past. I hoped it was listening.

We heard the rumors in the halls at school.

“They’re looking for a murder weapon.”

“The water is toxic, and they’re searching for the source.”

“A man walked straight into the water, and never came back up.”

They watched Delaney walking down the hall, perfect and untouched. “I feel like we shouldn’t be here,” she said.

“Where else are we supposed to be?” I asked. But I knew the answer. We should be down at Falcon Lake, waiting to see what it would offer, and what it would take.

Justin, Janna, and Kevin were already grouped together in an alcove at the science wing. “Go to class,” I said to Delaney. Until this is over, that was probably the safest place for both of us. “There’s nothing else you can do.”

She slipped away, into the rush of bodies.

“Did you hear?” Justin asked. His eyes were watery, and his voice had faded, but he seemed to have more energy. More life to him.

“I heard,” I said.

“My parents said they’re looking for a
body
,” Kevin said.

“Whose body?” Janna gripped Kevin’s arm, her fingers digging in so tightly that he winced and pulled his arm away.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I heard my mom on the phone this morning, but when I walked into the room, she left. And when I asked her, she ignored me. Naturally.”

Justin’s and Janna’s eyes flitted around the hallway. I knew what they were doing. A tally. A check. Not one of us.
Not one of us
.

Justin cleared his throat. “Has anyone talked to Maya?” he whispered.

Kevin’s eyes went wide. A body in the lake. It hadn’t occurred to him it was someone we knew. If someone was missing, we’d know. It would travel through town and we’d hear it in the halls or over dinner or it would just appear in our mind, becoming true.

I saw the panic in his eyes. I saw it start to take control of his shoulders, his face. Panic and guilt, that all of this could maybe be traced back to him.

“It’s Maya’s mom,” I said. “They’re looking for Maya’s mom.”

They pulled up bones while we were at school, but they turned out to be a cat’s. The news traveled through town, and we heard it in school halls and over lunch. Lots of secrets buried here. A graveyard of them. And then there was a large chest that they pried open with a crowbar, only to find envelopes, sealed letters, the ink long ago bled away.

We didn’t make plans. Not out loud. But we waited for one another after school in the parking lot, like there was safety in numbers, and we drove to the site of the party—the house that Kevin’s family owned. There were police cars at Maya’s. And vans designated with acronyms I didn’t even want to try to decipher. And there was Holden’s car.

For all the commotion, for the amount of people either involved in the search or watching from shore, the lake was eerily, ominously silent.

People gathered around in clumps, watching as the boats moved slowly, two people in each, a long rope attached to a
diver on the other end, moving slowly back and forth along the bottom of the lake. Yard by yard. Foot by foot. We couldn’t see them through the murky water, just the rope as it stretched back and forth, but the diver came up about fifteen minutes after we’d been there, sending someone else down in his place.

Delaney pulled her jacket tighter, dipped her chin into the collar. Our neighbors nodded at us as they breathed warm air into their hands or pulled their hats farther down over their ears. But mostly we were all mesmerized by these men searching our cursed lake.

We all stood on the pebbled shore, watching the water, like we were coming to make our peace with it. Everyone negotiating the terms of their own deal. “What
is
that?” Justin asked, leaning forward. The diver had come up again, and the man in the boat was wiping black ooze off of him, off the rope, off everything.

“Just sludge,” whispered the man beside us, whom I recognized as one of the neighbors here. There were people everywhere, dotting the shore all the way around, coming and going around work and school schedules. But most people didn’t speak, or they spoke in whispers out of respect for what ever was buried below.

When the man beside me stepped back, I saw Maya sitting on the edge of the lake three houses down. He whispered, “She’s been sitting in that exact same position since they started.” Her legs folded beneath her, her chin in her hand, letting them drag up every secret buried in Falcon Lake before they got to hers.

“What’s she still doing here?” Delaney asked. “And where’s Holden? I thought they’d be gone. …”

Kevin looked over toward Maya. “Should I say something?” he asked. “I feel like I should say something.” But he didn’t.

I saw our cop—the one who came to question us yesterday—watching us from down the curve. When his eyes locked with mine, he started walking in our direction. “Heads up,” I whispered to Delaney, and we stepped away from Kevin, Justin, and Janna.

When he stood beside us, he looked at Delaney, and then away from her. He cleared his throat. “Could you point us in the right direction?” he whispered. He understood. The way we were all tied to this place. Like she knew the secrets of Falcon Lake, was a part of it, heard it whispering to her in the dark.

“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I only know what Maya told me.” She folded her arms across her chest, and I thought of the recorder still buried in my drawer somewhere. Proof. Truth.

“Problem is, Maya says it’s not true,” he said.

“Her brother,” I said. “Did you talk to her brother?”

“Holden?” he asked. “We called him this morning. He’s sticking to Maya’s story. He just arrived.”

Delaney pushed past us, straight for Maya. Maya saw her coming, held her eyes like the betrayal didn’t sting at all.

Maya watched us approach, and she stood before we got too close. She stuck her finger out at Delaney. At me. “You wouldn’t be doing this to me if I was one of
them
.” Then she
extended her arm so she was pointing at Kevin, at Justin, at Janna.

“They never would’ve done what
you
guys did,” Delaney said.