But when it’s less than thirty minutes to midnight, the group begins to stagger down the beach to the water’s edge. A few people, either too drunk or deep in conversation to leave the bonfire, stay behind, but the rest of us gather together as if forming a procession.
“Who’s brave enough to go in first?” Davis McArthurs asks aloud so everyone can hear, his spiky blond hair pushed up from his forehead and his eyelids sagging lazily like he’s about to take a nap.
A rumble of low furtive voices passes through the mob, and a few of the girls are pushed playfully forward, their feet splashing into the water only ankle deep before they scurry back out. As if a few inches of water were enough for the Swan sisters to steal their human bodies.
“I’ll do it,” a singsong, slurring voice announces. Everyone cranes their head to see who it is, and Olivia Greene steps forward, twirling in a circle so that her pastel yellow dress fans out around her like a parasol. She’s obviously drunk, but the group cheers her on, and she bows forward as if greeting her adoring fans before turning to face the black, motionless harbor. Without any coaxing, she begins to wade out into the salty sea, arms outstretched. When she’s waist deep, she does a very ungraceful dive forward, which looks more like a belly flop. She disappears from view for half a second before reappearing at the surface, laughing wildly with her tragic-black hair draped over her face like seaweed.
The crowd cheers and Lola steps into the water up to her knees, urging Olivia back to the shallows. Davis McArthurs calls again for volunteers, and this time there is only a half beat before a voice shouts, “I’ll go in!”
I snap my gaze to the left where Rose has stepped out of the crowd, moving toward the water.
“Rose,” I bark, reaching out and grabbing her arm. “What are you doing?”
“Going for a swim.”
“No. You can’t.”
“I’ve never really believed in the Swan sisters anyway,” she says with a wink. And the crowd pulls her from my grasp, ushering her toward the cold ocean. She smiles widely as she wades out into the water, past Olivia. She’s barely up to her waist when she dives forward and slips beneath the surface. A ripple shudders out behind her, and everyone on the beach falls silent. The air constricts in my lungs. The water flattens again at the surface, and even Olivia—who’s still calf deep in the shallows—turns to watch. But Rose doesn’t reappear.
Fifteen seconds pass. Thirty. My hearts starts to clap against my chest—a painful certainty that something isn’t right. I push out from the crowd, suddenly sober, watching for Rose’s red hair to break through the surface. But there’s not even a breeze. Not even a ripple.
I take a single step into the water—I have to go in after her. I don’t have a choice. When beneath the bloodless half-moon, shattering the calm, she suddenly bursts above the waterline, reemerging several yards farther out into the harbor from where she went in, I let out a trembling sigh of relief and the crowd erupts in a collective cheer, raising their cups as if they just witnessed some impossible feat.
Rose flips onto her back and lifts her arms overhead in a fluid pinwheel, swimming toward shore—casual, as if she were doing laps in a pool. I expect Davis McArthurs to ask who else wants to go in, but the group has gotten rowdy and girls are now traipsing through the shallow ankle-deep water, but never actually going all the way in. People stretch out on the sand, some shotgun beers, and others do sloppy cartwheels into the water.
Rose finally reaches the beach, and I try to push over to her, but several senior guys have gathered around her, giving her high fives and offering her beers. I slink back from the group. She shouldn’t have done that—gone into the water. Risked it. My cheeks blaze, watching her nonchalantly wipe the water from her arms as if she is pleased with herself, smiling up at the cluster of guys who’ve taken a sudden interest in her.
The moonlight makes a path up the beach, and I wander away from the noise of the party—not far, just enough to catch my breath. I drank too much, and the world is starting to buzz and crackle and tilt off axis. I think of my father vanishing on a night when there was no moon to see by, no stars to guide his way back from the dark. If there had been a moon, maybe he would have returned to us.
I consider heading back to the marina, ditching the party and returning to the island, when I hear the heavy breathing and staggered footsteps of someone stumbling up the sandy beach behind me. “Hey,” a voice calls. I spin around and see Lon Whittamer—one of Sparrow High’s notorious partiers—swaying toward me like I’m standing in his path.
“Hi,” I answer softly, trying to step out of his way so he can continue his drunken walk up the beach.
“You’re Pearl,” he says. “No, Paisley.” He laughs, tosses his head back, his brown eyes slipping closed briefly before focusing on me again. “Don’t tell me,” he says, holding up a finger in the air as if to stop me from giving away my name before he’s had time to figure it out on his own. “Priscilla. Hmm, Pinstripe.”
“You’re just saying things that start with the letter P.” I’m not in the mood for this; I just want to be left alone.
“Penny!” he shouts, cutting me off.
I take a step back as he leans forward, exhaling a boozy breath and almost falling into me. His dark brown hair is plastered to his forehead, and his narrow-set eyes seem unable to focus, blinking closed every couple seconds. He’s wearing a neon orange shirt with palm trees and pink flamingos scattered across it. Lon likes to wear obnoxious Hawaiian shirts in all shades of bright tropical colors with exotic birds and pineapples and hula girls. I think it started as a joke or maybe a dare our sophomore year, and then it turned into his trademark style. It makes him look like an eighty-year-old man on permanent vacation in Palm Springs. And since I don’t think he’s ever been to Palm Springs, his mother must order them online. And tonight he’s wearing one of his ugliest.
“I like you, Penny. I always have,” he mumbles.
“Is that right?”
“Yup. You’re my kind of girl.”
“I doubt that. You didn’t even know my name two seconds ago.”
Lon Whittamer’s parents own the only major grocery store in town: Lon’s Grocery, which they named after him. And he’s known for being a total narcissistic asshole. He considers himself a ladies’ man—a self-proclaimed Casanova—only because he can offer his girlfriends discounts on makeup in the meager cosmetics aisle at his parents’ store, and he uses this like a gold trophy he only hands out to girls who are worthy. But he’s also known for cheating on his girlfriends and has been caught numerous times making out with other girls in his jacked-up, chrome-rimmed, mud flap–accessorized red truck parked in the school parking lot. Basically, he’s a moron who doesn’t even deserve the breath it takes to tell him to get lost.
“Why didn’t you go into the water?” he asks slyly, inching closer to me again. “Like your friend did?” He brushes his hair back from his forehead and it sticks straight up, either from sweat or seawater.
“I didn’t want to.”
“You’re afraid of the Swan sisters?”
“Yeah, I am,” I answer honestly.