“What?” I say. As if it’s any of his business. But the thing is, I don’t even wonder how he knows so much about me. It’s almost like I expected him to know everything. Because he is just a part of my imagination, right? “Why am I talking to you? You’re not r—”
“Do you?” He positions himself squarely in front of me so that his eyes bore into mine. His blood drips on my hiking boots, seeping between the laces. For someone who isn’t real, his words hit me hard.
I bite my tongue. “Yes.”
“You love your life? You love your daddy? You want to get back home to him?”
I nod. “Yeah. Of course. What—”
“Then you need to hightail it out of here while you still can, girl. Don’t make me—”
I’m snapped back into reality when a bird caws in the trees. I turn and Spiffy is staring at me. The boy I was just talking to is gone. Whoosh. Vanished.
“Hi there,” Spiffy says gently. “Sorry you had such a crap time out there. Not one of our better days on the Dead.”
For a second, everything is out of focus, and when I finally come back, I have to grab Spiffy’s shoulder to stop myself from falling over. He steadies me. “Still woozy, I guess,” I lie.
“You should probably lie down,” he says, his voice slightly condescending.
I swallow, wondering how much he witnessed. Did he see me talking to that guy? Judging from the way his eyebrows are raised, it’s very likely he saw me talking, all right—to nobody. I want to grab him and ask him if he sees Jack across the river, but by then Jack is gone. I’m back in the land of the living. “I thought maybe I could grab a shower?” I ask, my voice cracking because I’m trying too hard to not sound insane.
He brightens. “Hey. Yeah. Sure. This way.”
I follow him, but now even the idea of a shower doesn’t sound so great. Because now, I really don’t want to be alone. Alone … with them.
Chapter Ten
I wipe away the steam on the mirror but don’t recognize the face there. I scrubbed and scrubbed the river grime from my body in the shower, but no amount of scrubbing could wash away the voices in my head. The visions didn’t attack me while I was washing, but I couldn’t help worrying that they would. If Jack and Trey and the others would rip back the shower curtain and say, “Surprise!”
The thought makes me quiver. My eyes are sunken, and maybe it’s the fluorescent light or the deep creases in my forehead, but I don’t look very pretty anymore. And I can’t help wondering what it was my mother heard, what my mother saw, that made her walk into the river that day. Maybe she didn’t go willingly. Maybe she …
No, that’s stupid. She killed herself. End of story.
As I spread my toiletries along the glass shelf, I wonder if things would have been different if I had insisted on going to the prom. Hell, of course they would have. If I’d had a backbone. If I’d told Justin what I wanted.
I think of what that boy said to me. I thought you were stronger than that. Then I shake it away. I don’t want to think about him, about what one of my stupid visions said. They’re from stories. They’re not real. What do they know?
I don’t have a hair dryer, so I towel-dry my hair and tie it up in a loop at the top of my head, then brush my teeth and throw on a bulky sweatshirt and jeans and my North Face jacket. I was hoping the shower would make me feel more comfortable, but I still feel … icky. Wrong.
When I step into the main room, Justin is waiting for me. “Feel good?”
He grabs me into a bear hug and gives me a peck on the nose. I smell peppermint and shaving cream. He must have showered, too. “Yeah. Better.”
Though not much.
We walk outside and immediately I smell chicken roasting. Smoke billows from a spot over the hill, near the river, and a bunch of people are congregating at picnic benches. We start to walk there, but I stop. I don’t want to be anywhere near the river. I don’t want to be where I can hear the whispering. Where I can look across the river and see him.
Justin senses something and hangs back. “Not hungry?”
I look down at my hands. They’re shaking. I’m pathetic.
Real or not, that guy was right. I am stronger than that. At least, I should be. And maybe if I can prove they don’t frighten me, the visions will leave me alone.
I take a step forward. “No, I am,” I say, picking up the pace. I can ignore the whispers. And if he’s there, I’ll just ignore him. Besides, it’s not like they’re real. They can’t do anything to me. They’ve never done anything to me before.
By the time we make it to the picnic benches, my mouth is watering. We grab a couple of Cokes and stand in line. There’s a Tupperware container of dill spears. As I’m sucking a pickle into my mouth, a camera clicks. Oh no. Hugo. I can just see the next issue of the school newspaper, with my face on the front page.
“Would you stop—” I whirl around, fully prepared to stab him with my plastic fork, when I’m faced with an older man I’ve never seen before. He has a way-more-professional-looking camera and a way-less-smarmy-looking expression than Hugo’s. I step back. “Oh.”
“You’re the one, right?” he says, his words coming out kind of garbled because he’s trying to uncap a pen with his mouth while juggling his equipment.
I just stare at him.
He finally manages to get his things under control and extends a hand. “Mark Evans, Portland Press Herald. Heard about your little swim.”
Oh. My. God. “No, I—” But I don’t know what to say. All I know is that my dad always starts off his morning with two things: a bowl of Cheerios and a copy of the Portland Press Herald. And the last thing he needs is to find his daughter’s picture on the front page when he’s expecting her to be hiking at Baxter State Park.
This is not good.
“You’ve got the wrong girl,” Justin says behind me. “I think I saw her over near the front office.”
“Oh. Thanks,” the man says, hurrying off.
I turn to Justin, surprised. He’s usually the last person to catch on to anything; thinking on his feet, lying—these things come about as easily to him as rocket science. He grins at me. “My girlfriend, the celebrity. What do you say we get our food to go? The Bruins are on tonight. Playoff hockey.”
“That sounds just fantastic,” I joke. He knows how little I like to watch hockey, how much Wayview’s obsession with the sport drives me crazy.
We get two plates heaping with chicken, corn, and coleslaw, and head back up to the cabin. “That was a close one, huh? Don’t know what I would have told your dad.”
I shrug. “My dad likes you.”
“That will change easily if he finds out about this.”
“He won’t find out. And we went over this. Rafting is as safe as bowling. His fears of this place are completely irr—” I stop. I can’t really say they’re irrational anymore. Not after what happened today.
“It sucks that we had to lie to get you up here. I mean, it’d make a cool story. When I was waiting for you to take a shower, I heard all the guides talking about you. Some of them have been on the river for a dozen years and have never seen anything like it. They’re pretty sure you have ice water running through your veins.”
“Really?” I kind of like that. It makes me sound tough.
“Yep. They all want you even more now.”
“Oh, shut up!” I say, nearly dropping my Coke as I’m elbowing him in the ribs.
“All right. But still, it would have been sweet to see your cute mug on the front page. And a headline. ‘The Ice Girl Cometh’ or something.”
I think about it. I guess that would be cool. But the reporter would ask question after question, wanting to know how I survived the ordeal, and I wouldn’t be able to answer any of them. Nobody knows what happened on the river, least of all me. And part of me doesn’t want to know. “If my father knew, he’d kill me,” I whisper.