Kennedy shakes her head wordlessly and heads up the stairs.
I start to follow her, then decide that I need air too. But in the one brief moment that I’m alone in the living room, just me and the expensive scrap-wood furniture and the pile of ancient board games, with the lights off, and only sharp slivers of moonlight slicing in through the windows, I hear it.
A voice whispers into my ear, so close and so tangible I can feel a wisp of breath traveling down my neck, freezing me in place, turning me to stone.
It says,“I’m still here.”
I scream. Ryan bolts back into the house breathlessly. Kennedy rushes down the stairs. A moment later, Chase and Mila follow, Mila wearing Chase’s T-shirt, Chase in his swimsuit.
“I’m still here.”
This time the voice is so loud, so unmistakable, and so insistent, that I whip my head to the side, half-certain I’ll see Emily standing beside me, that the last year has been one long nightmare. Because this time the voice was clear as my own heartbeat. And it belonged to Emily.
“Are you okay?” Kennedy asks, taking my arm and brushing the hair away from my face. “You sounded like you stepped on a scorpion or something.”
I look from face to face. They all look expectant. Concerned. But not scared. That’s not reassuring. It just makes my anxiety rise. “I’m still here,” I whisper.
Chase looks to Kennedy. “We all are. And none of us are going anywhere. Can we all agree to take it down a notch?Hit the reset button and start over? I’m really glad we’re back together. All of us.” All but one.
Kennedy nods. “Of course. I love you guys.” She looks to Ryan. It’s the closest she’ll get to an apology.
“No!” I interrupt. “Someone said ‘I’m still here.’ Just now. And before that when I was alone in the room.” I feel Ryan’s eyes on me. I can’t stand the idea of even him not believing me.
“Okay, Chelsea,” Chase says. “It’s late, you’re tired, everyone is a little shaken up. Imaginations run wild when emotions are high. I get it. We’re cool.”
“No. We are not cool. Someone tampered with the game, and everyone claims it wasn’t them.” I rip the top off the game box and tear through the stack of cards, but I can’t find a single one that includes a dare related to holding your breath without laughing. Or a truth about going to hell or betraying your friends. It’s crush, crush, crush. I slam it back down on the table, frustrated.
Kennedy places her cool hands on my cheeks and looks into my eyes. “Chelsea. Everything’s fine. This is an emotional situation for all of us. We have to be here for each other. I’m sorry I was distant. I just don’t know how to handle being back together.”
The words sting. The multiple meanings. I step back away from her. “We’re all witnesses. She spoke, and we heard.”
Chase gives me an odd look. “Who spoke?”
“Emily.”
Kennedy and Chase exchange a look. “There are a lot of memories in this house,” Kennedy says carefully. “Of course it feels like she’s still with us in a way.”
“Or maybe she’s really still with us.” My words hang in the air like a dare. I hate being put on the stand like this. Being forced to testify. “We were all here,” I say, my eyes stinging, beginning to fill. “We all heard her.”
Kennedy gathers me into a hug and strokes my back. “Of course we did. Right, Chase?”
Chase is silent.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mila says. “No. I’m not humoring her.”
“Mila, please,” Chase says quietly.
“No. That’s not helpful. I’m not being a bitch, I’m just being honest. None of us heard shit. It was a bad idea to come back here. We watched a person die. I didn’t even care about Emily. I barely knew her. But I still have nightmares, and this is like living through them all over again. Also, what ghost sends out printed invitations? Do they like materialize in Staples or possess a printing press? Come on. No ghost. Emily’s gone, and we’re freaking ourselves out.”
“What about the game?” Ryan circles it suspiciously.
“Kennedy said it herself. Her mother dug it up somewhere. Probably at a yard sale or used on Amazon or something,” Mila says. “You don’t think in forty years no one had the opportunity to mess with it? None of the questions or answers are specific to us. Someone wanted to mess with their friends, and it eventually ended up in our hands.”
No one speaks for a while.
“I’m going back upstairs. Chase, you can come with or spend the night telling ghost stories with your friends and sleep on the sofa.” Mila looks at Chase, who avoids Kennedy’spointed stare. A challenge. Choose sides, Chase.
“We’ll talk tomorrow.” Chase surveys the rest of us. “Try to get some rest, Chels. Everything will look different in the morning. It always does.” He flashes his signature team-captain smile and heads upstairs after Mila. Chase is the one who’s always shined the brightest among us. Valedictorian, second team all-American. Nothing ever slowed Chase down. I wonder if Emily’s death has. He doesn’t seem drastically altered. There’s something a little disquieting about that, but grief hits people in different ways, and Chase plays his cards close to his chest. Still, Ryan will be hurt by Chase’s act.
Ryan glances at me and edges toward the back door again. “I need a breather. My brain is on overload.”
I bite my lip and smile. “I know the feeling.”
Kennedy turns back to me. “Are you going to be okay? Do you want me to make you some tea, or draw you a bath, or…” She gives me an impish smile, but it’s half-hearted. She’s as exhausted as the rest of us, the hint of a shadow forming underneath each luminous eye.
“Nope. If I don’t take a sleeping pill now, I may never get to sleep.”
Her smile falters and my heart aches. “I thought we could share my parents’ room,” she says hesitantly. “I feel like my room should stay empty this year.”
I nod. “Of course. I’ll see you later.” The words feel awkward and wrong. Splitting up, even briefly, shouldn’t feel new after a year of living entirely separate lives. But back here, in the place where we fell in love, it does. She kisses me on the cheek and hugs me a couple of seconds longer than she didthis afternoon, and I smell the whole day in her hair. The lake breeze, lemonade, basil, the pines. The lake house. Cedar and wool. Cotton and beeswax. Organic. Those beautiful paper postcards. Everything that went up so very quickly in a swirl of fire and smoke.