His face is calm, but I hear the panic in his voice. He has no idea what we’re up against. He gulps in a lungful of air and dives back down. I glance back up to the house. Emily hasn’t moved. I can hear Chelsea still swimming toward us. I fill my lungs and plunge back into the darkness. It’s harder this time. I feel out of air almost immediately, my heart drumming a death sentence, my head aching, the Tylenol wearing off, the wine swirling around, driving me up when I mean to swim down. I try again, and again I become disoriented and quickly propel myself straight up to the surface. My eyes sting with tears, and I scream and punch the water.
“What’s going on?” Mila shouts.
“Nothing. Just, nothing. Is your eye on Chelsea?” I can’t help snapping at her. This isn’t a time for being nice.
“I was looking for Ryan.” She falters.
My blood runs cold. “Stop looking. Where is she now?” I swing my head around, but I don’t see her. Then I hear a splash about fifty yards away, no voice. I immediately begin to swim toward it, slowed by tears and shivering and my body beginning to shut down from panic.
I collide with Chelsea before I see her. She grabs onto my neck and the weight pulls me under, water flooding into my nostrils, intense pain filling my head. I can’t breathe. I’m a fish out of water. No. The other. I kick away from her and grasp for the surface, pulling, pulling up. “Stop. Chelsea. Stop swimming. Just stop. Let go. Trust me.”
She spits out a mouthful of water, coughs. “I’m drowning.”
“Just relax, and I’ll get you to the boat.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.” It takes everything in me to mask my own panic. But I do, long enough for her to roll onto her stomach in a dead man’s float, her head turned to the side, shivering. I grasp her carefully and begin to sidestroke slowly toward the boat.
“Someone fell off the boat. They went straight under and didn’t come back up. It was like something grabbed them or something,” she says.
“I know. Chase is getting them.”
“Who was it?”
“Ryan.”
She starts crying, and I feel the last part of my heart that was intact rip in two. “Chase is taking care of it,” I say.
“There was something in the water. Something grabbed him.”
“It’s a lake,” I say. “Nothing grabbed him.”But it did. He did. Stop. Protect.
“Then how did he disappear like that? People don’t just sink.”
I don’t answer. Instead, I focus my strength on closing the distance between us and the boat. When I reach it, Mila helps pull Chelsea up onto the deck, but she doesn’t look at either of us. Her face looks completely drained of blood and her eyes are wide open, fixed on the water. Her hair is wild and messed up, her shirt thrown on backward. She looks like a figure from a horror movie, like someone who just stepped through a mirror in a haunted house or something. As soon as Chelsea is safely on board, Mila turns from us as if in a trance and leans over the side of the boat, watching. I try to help Chelsea sit down, but she drapes herself next to Mila, shaking hard, shuddering breaths, blinking tears down her face.
“We have to do something,” Chelsea says.
I stand behind her, afraid to do or say anything. It’s been minutes. There is nothing else to do. Chase resurfaces yet again, takes another determined breath, and goes back under. Mila inhales sharply, as if each dive is another stab of a needle. That’s what it’s beginning to feel like. My eyes go back to the house. Emily is still in the window, her head down. She doesn’t know.
I turn to Chelsea. “You’re right, you know. People don’t just sink. He probably swam away to freak us all out.”
She looks at me with contempt. “He wouldn’t do that. He’s not cruel.”
I look at her. I love her. I really do. “Of course he isn’t.”
Chase reappears. He floats on the surface for a moment, a shadow in the water. Then he slowly makes his way to us and silently climbs the ladder, dripping water on the already-soaked deck. Mila continues to stare at the water, and Chelsea covers her face with her hands, but I look at Chase.
“I can’t do it anymore,” he whispers. “I’m exhausted.” I want to cry. Those words are everything.
“He probably swam for shore,” I say in an even voice. “People aren’t stones. They’re filled with air.”
“Not when they drown.” Chelsea looks at me. “I saw him fall.”
A shiver runs down my spine. “So, what did happen?”
She shakes her head. “It was far away. He fell in and never came back up. I told you, it was like something pulled him down.”