But it was a computer. A beautiful, brushed-metal, razor-thin laptop.
“I thought you could use it for school,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sure it’ll be really useful.” There was no point acting like this was the greatest gift anyone could have ever given me, because I knew enough about my new stepfather to know that spending fifteen hundred dollars on a computer was no big deal to him.
“Jonathan, you shouldn’t have,” Mom said. “Willa has a laptop.”
“That rickety old one she was using on the plane? The screen’s practically falling off.”
But my dad gave it to me, I didn’t say. My dad, who knew I was desperate for a computer of my own. My dad, who brought his old work laptop home for me when they were upgrading him to a new one. The night he gave it to me there had been joyous squealing and hugs and jumping up and down.
That was nothing like this night.
Jonathan was buying me nice things to keep the peace and make himself feel better about uprooting me. Not that it wasn’t a perfectly kind gesture, but make no mistake — this wasn’t about what I wanted.
Which was fine, because I didn’t want anything.
Nothing money could buy, anyway.
I woke with a start in the middle of the night.
The clock read 3:23, and I had a headache that felt like two sharp electrified sticks were trying to meet in the center of my head. Under my multiple layers of blankets, I was drenched in sweat.
I sat up and pushed off the covers. The room was too bright. I’d forgotten to close my curtains before falling asleep, and the ceiling was awash with rippling moonlight reflected off the surface of the pool outside. But that wasn’t it. There was another source of light….
The candle, flickering away on my nightstand.
Don’t be ridiculous. The candle can’t be lit.
But the candle was totally lit.
I searched for an explanation. Maybe Mom had come in and lit it…. You know, the way every safety-obsessed mother lights candles around the house in the middle of the night. Maybe it was one of those novelty candles that relights itself. Except it was the third one from a three-pack, and neither of the others had ever done anything like this….
Or there had been a trace of a spark burning on it all evening, and then it had gradually reignited itself.
That had to be it. Because any other explanation would be crazy.
And I was so not going to go crazy right now.
But I was unnerved, and a little wired. I wandered to the window, my head suddenly full of the Hollywood Killer and my lame new backpack and the earthquake and everything strange about my life now. The strangest thing, by far, being that I was here, in California. Everything I’d ever known was carrying on without me, three thousand miles away, on a completely different part of the continent.
I realized I was staring longingly down at the pool.
I love to swim. Even after what happened with Dad, I still love it. I feel more like myself in the water. It holds you together in a way that air doesn’t.
I found my swimsuit in a box marked SUMMER CLOTHES and grabbed a fluffy towel from the bathroom. I twisted my long hair up into a bun and secured it with two bobby pins.
There was no way Mom and Jonathan would hear me from across the massive house, so I didn’t bother to be particularly quiet as I found my way outside through the doors off the living room.
The temperature was about forty-five degrees, and my skin was instantly blanketed with goose bumps. Under my feet, the patio tiles were so cold they practically burned.
The backyard was amazing, truly befitting a Hollywood legend. Tucked throughout were pristine white loungers and comfy-looking chairs surrounding squat clay chimneys. To my right was a charming little cottage — a guesthouse? — with a miniature front porch and a pair of small windows like curious, watchful eyes. The landscape was shady and rambling and lovely.
But I only had eyes for the pool. It was huge and gorgeous, with gentle curving edges and a rock waterfall, and it glowed an otherworldly pale aqua in the moonlight.
A breeze ruffled the leaves in the trees and sent me hurrying for the water. I figured someone like Jonathan — who was so pool-proud he’d given us a mind-numbing tour of the entire chlorine-free filtration system — had to keep his pool heated, even in March. And I was right — instantly, luxuriant warmth shrouded my body. It drew me down the steps like a siren’s call.
I ducked under, the water covering me in a second skin. For a few minutes, I floated on my back and stared up into the inky night sky, the cold air on my face and the sound of my own breathing echoing in my ears. Then I flipped over and swam as far across the pool as I could without coming up for air. I felt clarified and cleansed, like the tension had been wrung out of me.
I bobbed up at the deep end, taking a big breath. I prepared to plunge under again and swim back to the shallow end. I could almost imagine that I was Diana Del Mar, a movie star, and this house was all mine — no stepfathers or headaches or new school to worry about — just me, beautiful and adored, gliding like a water nymph through my fabulous swimming pool.
Then something brushed my ankle.
I yelped in surprise and spun around, treading water as I searched for whatever had touched me.
Nothing — there was nothing.
It must have been bubbles, a random current — maybe a sunken palm frond.
But then I felt it again.
This time it took hold and pulled me under.
Fear and adrenaline burst through me in a massive, soul-shaking pulse. My heart slammed around in my chest like it was trying to break out of my rib cage.
Then something grabbed my other foot.
For a moment, I didn’t even process it as something that was really happening. Because it couldn’t be happening — it wasn’t happening —
Only it was.
I tried to kick free, but my legs were held fast.
I managed to flail above the surface of the water and gasp in an enormous breath before being yanked back down toward the blue-tiled bottom of the pool.
My brain was on red alert, acting on pure animal instinct.
THIS IS NOT OKAY.
I thrashed and groped at my ankles in an attempt to pry off whatever had wrapped around them. But I couldn’t free myself. In fact, as far as I could see, there was nothing to free myself from — not another person. Not a rope or piece of plastic. Not even a nightmarish monster.
Only the sharp outline of my own body as I flipped and struggled.
I was rapidly running out of air. Panicked, I looked up toward the sky — and saw another person in the water.
For the briefest second I thought it was someone else swimming, and I wondered wildly why they wouldn’t help me.
But then it hit me with ironclad certainty — this person wasn’t swimming.
They were floating.
And it wasn’t a person….
It was a corpse.
I stared in terrified stillness at the body floating overhead like an abandoned ship adrift on a calm sea.
The corpse was female, wearing a knee-length skirt and a gauzy blouse that formed a translucent border around her rib cage, like the body of a jellyfish. She was barefoot, and her hair hovered in a thick halo around her head, silhouetted against the night so that I couldn’t tell what color it was, or how long.
I couldn’t see her face….
I was so glad I couldn’t see her face.
Suddenly, whatever had been holding my ankles let go.
My lungs burned. But as badly as I wanted to reach the surface, I didn’t want to float upward and collide with a dead body. I fought my way toward the shallow end. In what felt like a year but was probably just five seconds, I was finally able to stand up and gulp in air. My eyes locked on the deep end of the pool … which was empty.