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Daisy slept over at John’s after the party, and even though she had to show up to work exhausted the next day, she didn’t regret it for one minute. She fell into an easy rhythm with John that was completely different from her relationship with Hana. The rush of a simple, meaningless crush was all-consuming, and Daisy let herself get wrapped up in it. She became friends with all of John’s friends, and the rest of July and start of August slipped away with more parties, dates, mornings lifeguarding at camp, and a few awkward dinners with Noriko, Dennis, and her dad where Daisy tried her hardest not to look at the empty seats at the table.
When she kept coming up short on finding Hana’s note, she let the investigation fall to the wayside. She hated arguing with Hana’s ghost every time she showed up, but it was better than having nothing left of the girl she loved other than the all-consuming grief that crashed into her at random intervals. Hana stopped showing up to argue and instead just lingered in the corners at parties, watching Daisy with mournful eyes that Daisy was becoming very good at avoiding.
She woke up the third weekend in August and realized she didn’t remember the last time she had cleaned or even tidied her room. It felt like she spent every spare moment with John, and she neglected the basic upkeep of her life in the meantime.
John was out of town the night before because he was visiting his grandparents in Syracuse, and Daisy drank herself to sleep to avoid Hana’s ghost lingering in her doorway, inching the door open to let in the hall light her dad always left on.
It was raining out, and Daisy took advantage of her sudden burst of inspiration by deep cleaning her room and listening to cheesy music she used to love in middle school. She was almost done getting everything organized when she came across Hana’s journals.
After she read the truth about Hana’s affair, she’d tucked them under her bed where she wouldn’t have to see them ever again. She realized that in her need to get away from them after she read the entries about Frida, she never actually finished reading Hana’s second to last journal.
Daisy settled down on the ground next to her bed, picked up the journal, and thumbed through until she found the entries from after Thanksgiving. She skimmed them, noting that Hana was more stressed about her finals than she let on, and it wasn’t until Daisy got to the final two entries, dated December twenty-fourth and twenty-seventh, that she really read them.
This was when Hana started looking into her father’s death and when she made that note on Jake Hansen’s death threat in her father’s study. She must have forgotten to tear out the pages in this notebook when she was taking out the ones from her last journal. Daisy was glad Hana forgot to tear this out.
—
12/27/18
Dear Diary,
I think something is up with how my dad died. Something about Jake Hansen’s last death threat feels off, like he didn’t write it. But if he didn’t, who did? And how does the person who wrote this note relate to my father’s death? I mean, I know Jake Hansen pulled the trigger. I know he’s the one who actually killed my dad. There were witnesses who saw him running from the scene. But what if it wasn’t his idea? What if someone else put him up to it? Gave him the idea? And what if that person made sure Hansen could never rat them out?
I know it’s insane to think that someone else is involved in my dad’s death. It seemed cut and dry. But I have a feeling that I’m right, and I have to investigate this. Either I’ll get proven wrong or I won’t, but if I never look into things I’ll always wonder. And I can’t stand not knowing something important.
Sincerely,
Hana
P.S. — Daisy and I tagged the water tanks yesterday. I love her so much. I wish I could be the person she deserves, and I wish I could stop doing things that will hurt her when she finds out about them.
—
A wave of grief crashed over Daisy, and she gasped at the feeling of it invading her senses, permeating everything around her. She wished she could go back to this version of Hana and hold her and tell her none of this was worth it. Finding out the truth would never bring back Mark Holm, and searching for it took away Hana too. If that version of Hana could see this version of Daisy, would she think twice about her investigation? Who would mourn Daisy if she met the same fate as Hana?
Daisy flinched when her phone rang, and she didn’t even look at it before answering and putting it to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Daisy!” John greeted her. “I’m on my way back from my grandparents’ house, and I just got off the phone with Todd, so I thought I’d call instead of text. What are your thoughts on a beach day?” he asked.
Daisy looked out her window at the gray skies and light rain still falling. “But it’s raining out?”
“So? We’d get wet anyways, we’re at the beach. Plus, no crowds.”
“But what about our stuff?”
“Jackie offered to drive all of us in that van she just got, so we can leave our dry stuff in her car.”
Jackie had decided she wanted to spend the year converting a sprinter van into a tiny home so she could travel the country for a while after she graduated in the spring.
“I ... okay,” Daisy agreed. “Yeah. I mean, as long as there aren't thunderstorms, why not? I’m in.”
“Amazing. Meet at my place in an hour?”
“See you then,” Daisy said before hanging up. She needed the distraction, and nothing said distraction like hanging out in the rain with the boy she was having a summer fling with.
Daisy took one last look at Hana’s journal entry before putting it back in the pile on her floor and getting ready.
She skipped makeup, figuring the rain would just take it off anyways, and put on a black one piece with a flowing flowered sundress over the top. She clipped on her favorite necklace that she wore almost every day — a gold locket with a daisy on the front that had belonged to her mother — and braided her hair before throwing a beach towel in a tote bag to bring with her. She went downstairs and was slipping on a pair of sandals when her dad cleared his throat from the living room.
“Heading out?” Henry asked.
“Yeah, just hanging out with some friends,” Daisy called back, slipping on her rain jacket and hoping Henry wouldn’t ask any more questions.
“Okay, be safe out there. People forget how to drive when it rains like this,” Henry responded dismissively. She took her easy escape and ran to the car, already partially soaked by the time she got in it. She wasn’t sure how good of an idea this excursion was, but she needed to forget for the night, this one last night. In the morning, she would start looking again at all the places Hana possibly left her note, try to look more into Mark Holm’s death, and stop using John as a distraction from her real life. But for tonight, she was committed to being a normal, irresponsible eighteen-year-old.
“Great weather for a beach day,” Hana said, appearing in the passenger seat. She hadn’t really spoken to Daisy for the past week, and she was startled by Hana’s appearance.
“It’ll be fun,” Daisy said, flipping on her car radio and putting in an old Miley Cyrus CD she thrifted a week earlier with John.
“It will be, sure. Who doesn’t love sitting in the rain and ignoring their problems?”
“Hana, I swear to you that tomorrow I will start retracing my steps and rechecking the evidence I have, but as of right now I have nothing to go on. Until I find your note, all I have are dead ends.”
“You leave for New Paltz on Thursday. If you don’t solve this by then—”
“I know,” Daisy interrupted, “but it’s not like one afternoon of acting like a teenager without a tragic backstory is going to ruin an investigation with no new leads.”
“Fine.” Hana paused before adding in a soft voice, “You look beautiful. You should have fun.” The ghost disappeared, and Daisy turned up the volume on her stereo, trying to drown out the gentleness of Hana’s departing words with cheesy pop music and the flick of her windshield wipers.
She parked right in front of the house, and John was sitting on the porch when she arrived. As soon as she stepped out of the car, his eyes were fixed on her.
“Are you ready for a beach day?” he asked, grinning at her like a little kid, all joy and no embarrassment. Daisy smiled and gave him a quick peck on the lips. John would never be right for her, but she would pretend like he could be for just a little longer.
“Absolutely. Had to make sure I packed the sunscreen,” Daisy teased. He put his arm around her shoulders and walked her into the house where everyone was getting their things together.
“Hey, are Jackie and Nina almost here?” John asked. Todd gestured to the street where Jackie’s sprinter van was pulling up.
“Who’s ready for the beach?” Kyle called, flinging open the door to the backseat and revealing a few rows of bench seating. Jackie had just gotten the used van a few days earlier, so she hadn’t taken out the seats yet. John, Daisy, Todd, and John’s other roommate, Gabe, all made a dash through the rain to the van. John, Daisy, and Todd ended up stuck in the way back with John in the middle, a position he volunteered for even though Daisy was smaller than him and probably should’ve taken the seat.
John’s body was warm against her side, and she shivered at the contact. He mistook it for her being cold and draped an arm around her shoulder, pulling her closer with a grin. Daisy smiled back and leaned into his side. Although she’d slept over in his bed after nights out quite a few times, they hadn’t slept together yet. He understood that she was younger and fresh out of a long-term relationship with someone who had died, so he never pressured her, but she could tell he wanted her.
“How was Saint Martin?” John asked Jackie and Nina once everyone was settled into the van and they were on their way to the beach. She stayed tucked into John’s side while Jackie and Nina started detailing the epic highs of their ten-day vacation. Daisy laughed and asked questions at the right time and teased John just the right amount.
She fit here, she knew she did, despite being younger than everyone else, despite all of them knowing each other better. She could rebuild the person she was around these people. She could burn away the version of herself that Hana loved and be reborn as the kind of girl that went almost skinny dipping in strangers’ pools and knew how to take a shot without wincing and didn’t talk about her dead ex-girlfriend. She wanted to be that girl so badly, but sitting there surrounded by the near strangers she called her friends, she was never going to be that girl.
Daisy couldn’t leave behind who she was and become someone entirely new, someone unaffected by her past life. She couldn’t burn away what once was; she had to build layer upon layer upon layer of herself, like Rome rising over the centuries. No matter how many times she tried to burn her old self away, the sediment of the ashes would still be left behind. Maybe it was time to put the fire out, but she would let herself have one more night of dancing in the flames before she returned to the reality of who she was.
When they pulled into the parking lot for Charlotte Beach on Lake Ontario, it was almost entirely empty — no one else was crazy enough to show up at the beach on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Most people would go to a movie, or bowling, or just stay home, but not John and his friends.
They all climbed out of the van and immediately stripped down to their swimsuits. It was one of the hot, rainy days that only comes in the heat of August. The rain was warm against Daisy’s exposed skin, and she settled into the girl she was trying to be like an actor walking onstage.
John and Todd carried a cooler Nina had brought down to the beach with them, and Jackie grabbed a bag that she wouldn’t reveal the contents of before they made their way to the deserted boardwalk in their swimsuits and sandals.
“It’s kind of eerie. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it this empty in the summer,” Todd said.
“Yeah, it’s like we stepped into another world.” Jackie casually slung her arm over Nina’s shoulder as they walked. Daisy ignored the pang in her chest watching the two girls together, instead turning back to look at John, who was already watching her. She smiled at him and forced herself to be present in this moment, not in the past or the future, just for this one last day.
When they got to the beach, they all took a beer out of the cooler and cracked them open, but before they started drinking, Todd cleared his throat.
“To the final weekend of the summer,” he said, raising his Genesee beer can in the air. The rest of the group followed suit then took their first sips, and Daisy drained half of hers in one go. John tugged on Daisy’s arm once she stopped drinking and nodded towards the open stretch of beach.
“Want to take a walk?” he asked. Daisy nodded and they went on their way, hand in hand.
“This summer has been fun,” John said once they were out of earshot of his friends.
“Yeah. It’s definitely not what I expected it to be,” Daisy said.
John winced. “I know we don’t talk about it, but I am really sorry about Hana. I know losing people can be hard.” Daisy wanted to scoff at him that he didn’t know anything about loss, that the death of his ninety-three-year-old grandpa a few years earlier may have been sad, but it wasn’t like losing Hana. John didn’t know what it was like to lose someone who still had their whole life ahead of them, to watch as the light of an entire future blinked out.
“Yeah,” Daisy said instead. “Thanks for giving me something fun to look forward to all summer. I’m pretty sure that if I didn’t have you guys, I would’ve just slept any time I wasn’t working.”
Although John wasn’t right for her, and he would never understand why he wasn’t right for her, she did appreciate him. When she was with John, things were simple. It was just flirting and drinking games and parties at places she would probably never visit again after this summer.
“Well, I’m glad we could be here for you. And I know you’re going away to school in a few days, but I was thinking—” John was cut off by Daisy’s startled shriek, and they both wheeled around to see Todd ten feet behind them holding a super soaker. Daisy had never been so happy to be blasted with freezing cold water from a water gun before in her life.
“Come on, love birds, it’s time for war!” Todd shouted, hitting John square in the chest before taking off back to the cooler where Nina had emptied her bag containing a multitude of water guns. John ran after Todd, and Daisy drained the rest of her beer before heading back towards them.
They spent the next hour running around shooting each other with water guns and developing a drinking game around it. By the time they finally tired themselves out, everyone aside from Jackie was drunk and giggling. They swam in the lake for a little while, rough housing and playing chicken. But after a few hours, Nina shivered so hard her teeth knocked together and Jackie called it.
“Who wants to head out?” Jackie said. “I’m pretty sure I have the ingredients for Irish coffee at my place if we want to warm up and keep the party going.”
“As the party master—” Todd started.
“I thought you were the tsar?” Kyle interjected. Kyle’s girlfriend, who Daisy discovered was named Emily a week after they met, laughed.
“As the party tsar,” Todd said, “I declare that the party is now moving to Jackie and Kyle’s place. After we get pizza.” Gabe cheered and lifted up the cooler over his head.
“Put that down like a normal human. A hospital trip will ruin the vibe,” Nina chided. Gabe rolled his eyes but relented, and the group gathered their things and made their way back to the car, where they all wrapped themselves in towels before climbing in.
The car ride was pure chaos. Nina put on the playlist they’d been building at all the pregame and hang-outs for the past month, and everyone sang along to their favorites on the drive. There was at least one person singing at all times, several conversations happening across the van, often with people speaking over each other, and Jackie issuing threats of continually higher severity the more annoying everyone became. They stopped for pizza on the way back to the house, and they were politely asked to leave after the third time Gabe laughed so hard he fell out of his chair.
By the time they got back to John’s place, Daisy’s cheeks hurt from laughing so hard, and she could almost forget why she would be leaving these people behind so soon.
“Go get changed. We’ll wait here,” Jackie said when she pulled up to the curb. They climbed out and headed back into the house, gripping their towels and clothes in their hands. The boys raced each other to the house, with Daisy nominated as the referee.
“I think ... I think Todd won,” Daisy declared. Todd was several feet ahead of the other two, but the losers still groaned.
“I think we might need to review the tape,” Gabe joked.
“I don’t know. I think Daisy has a good eye.” John winked at Daisy.
Todd and Gabe made gagging noises, and John retaliated by throwing Daisy over his shoulder and running upstairs with her while she shrieked with laughter. Once they got upstairs, he put her down gently and grinned at her.
“Want me to give you a minute to change before we go?” John asked.
“What if we don’t go?” Daisy asked, her eyes flicking down John’s body before going back up to meet his gaze.
“I’m good with that too.” John said before crossing over to his door and yelling out, “You guys go without us, we’re staying back.” He closed the door quickly, shutting out the sound of Todd and Gabe’s responses.
Daisy threw her towel in a spot where it was least likely to get something else wet, and when she looked up, John was there, pulling her into him for a kiss. He seemed unhurried, like he wanted to take his time, but Daisy didn’t want that. With time came space to think, and Daisy wanted nothing more than to not think on this last night when she let herself act her age.
Gabe and Todd left a few minutes later, and Daisy could tell John understood this was different, that they were going to have sex. She also knew that if he was really thinking, he would start his conversation from the beach again, but he was too tired and happy and drunk to remember reason, and Daisy was too much of a coward to end things without this one last goodbye. This was Daisy’s last act of defiance as the girl she could never really be before she went back to who she was. She tried to weave goodbye in their kisses, tried to trace apologies into his skin where she held him, tried to give explanations in her movements, but she didn’t think John understood any of it.
Afterwards, he smiled at her and brushed her hair back from her face to kiss her forehead. It felt too intimate, too real, and she wished she was sober enough to drive so she could leave right then. She’d already made her decision and said her goodbyes, and now she felt like Cinderella standing in the middle of the ball and letting everyone watch as her finery changed back into maid’s clothes. It was a good thing John was blinded to who she was, otherwise, he might notice her illusion fading in front of his half-shut, tired eyes.