ONE

I think I was a nice person before my mom died. I have a hard time connecting that person to the person I am now.

It’s going on a year and a half since the accident, and I think I’m running out of leeway. People, like teachers, aren’t giving me slack anymore.

One of these days, I’m going to have to decide on a personality.

I am mean to my best friend, Emily Carbonel, that day. And no, it isn’t the first time. But I’m not the first person in her life to let her down.

So that’s not why she disappears.

In Washington State it doesn’t usually get hot in June, but today, the temperature is smack on ninety and the heat is making the air bounce. I just moved here from Maryland five months ago, so I’m used to humidity. I don’t get why everyone is suddenly fainting from heat exhaustion. It just feels like summer to me. No school, and a bunch of people in shorts who really shouldn’t be wearing them.

The only trouble is, my aunt Shay doesn’t have air-conditioning. Most people don’t on Beewick Island. So I try to cool off the old-fashioned way—with a hose on my feet, in a shady spot in the backyard. When Emily drifts in and starts talking to me, it’s too hot to make an excuse and go back inside, but it’s too hot to listen to her, either.

It’s one of the first days of summer vacation. Shay had suggested all sorts of fun summer programs to organize me, but I said no to all of them. She must have put in a secret call to my grandparents, because she targeted what used to be my interests before the accident. Photography camp? Swim club? Writing workshop? Summer job teaching art to kids?

No. No. No. No.

She gave up.

Emily doesn’t have summer plans, either. Her parents haven’t been able to get it together to do much for her this summer. They recently separated, and the whole thing is still pretty ugly. Emily had been accepted to a highly competitive computer camp in Seattle, but her parents fought over who would pay for it and if she’d live at her dad’s full-time for the summer. They were so busy fighting that the deadline passed. So Emily’s stuck with nothing to do all summer but pretend not to hear them fight on the phone and blame each other for the fact that Emily has nothing to do.

Emily must have some sort of built-in misery meter, because she attached herself to me the very first week I arrived on Beewick Island. I could tell she thought we were soul mates, since our parents had abandoned us. I wanted to scream at her that she was lucky her parents are still around and in her face. I wanted to point out that considering what had happened to me, I should have been the needy one. Instead, I just let her sit down at my table at lunch and unwrap her sprout sandwiches. I let us become friends.

I never would have picked Emily for a friend. First of all, we look stupid together. Emily is your standard tall blond, partial to tiny T-shirts and low-slung pants. I’m short, with acorn-color hair, and whatever interest in clothes I used to have has funneled down to finding jeans that are clean. Emily is practically plugged into her computer, and I don’t even go online anymore because she’s always messaging me when I just want to hang out and download some music. Her mode is permanently set on mope, and I don’t need more depression in my life. She has a habit of not listening to you when you’re talking, and this really pisses me off. I don’t talk very much, and you’d think she’d make an effort to listen when I do.

Even though I have some sympathy for her, being with her sometimes just makes my brain scream for mercy. I consider myself in default mode, and she just happens to pop up in the friend department.

Like today. We sit on Shay’s pink Adirondack chairs in the backyard, and I wait for her to get bored and go home.

“It is so hot,” Emily says for about the thirty-sixth time. “Why don’t we go into town? We could get ice cream and go to the library.”

“I don’t think I can handle the excitement,” I reply.

Emily takes a swig of her Orangina. The smell of it makes my stomach turn. It is so hot. I lower my head and rest my cheek on my knees. I turn on the hose nozzle again and let the water wash over my bare toes. If we were really friends, I’d turn it on Emily, too. She’s kicked off her sandals and even her little frosted toenails look sweaty.

“So will you come?” she asks.

I’m smelling orange soda and I feel woozy. “No. It’s too hot.”

“Maybe Diego would drive us.”

I don’t ask Diego for favors. “He’s busy.”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

I think Emily has a secret crush on my cousin. There’s probably some little old lady somewhere on Beewick Island who’s the only one who doesn’t, but I haven’t met her yet.

Maybe Emily is trolling for a new boyfriend. One of the reasons she attached herself to me is because her old friends put her in cold storage. She’d dated Will Stein almost all of last year and dropped her friends like hot fries to spend every minute with him. Not that Emily told me this version, but the truth was pretty obvious. Then when Will broke up with her, they wanted to teach her a lesson, so they didn’t take her back. They would have eventually, but Emily has a thing about rejection and just got frosty instead of wooing them back. Instead, she hung around me to show them she didn’t care. Somehow, our friendship stuck, despite the fact that there was basically no reason for it to exist.

“Gracie?”

“What?”

“Are you my friend?”

It’s the kind of question I hate. I look up at her, and that’s when something happens. At first, I think it’s just the heat playing tricks on me. It starts with something in the corner of my eye, a shadow that grows on the lawn. My heart starts to speed up, to patter in my chest like a hard rain. Because I know what’s coming.

Suddenly, Emily looks different. Her short blond hair isn’t swept back with clips anymore. It’s matted to her forehead with sweat. The trees and lawn fade behind her, all the greens and blues, and I see her against a white background. I feel fear shimmer off her body in ripples. Then I can hear the sound of breathing in my ears. Only it’s not mine, and it’s not Emily’s. It’s someone else’s.

Someone is looking at Emily.

She hears the breathing, but she doesn’t look.

She is afraid…

I close my eyes and tell the image to go away. Go away. Go away.

“All right.”

Emily sounds hurt. I must have said the words out loud. When I open my eyes, she is clutching the Orangina bottle between her fingers and biting her lip. The sky is the same whitish blue, and the pine branches still look like they’re drooping in the heat. The clips in her hair are yellow and pink. Shay’s small house hunkers down on the hill, white clapboard and the windows with twelve tiny frames painted green. Everything is exactly the way it was.

Before I can say anything, Emily is walking away. She’s really hurt and angry, but she keeps the empty Orangina bottle in her hand. She doesn’t drop it on the lawn, like I would have done. Emily is a nice person.

I watch her cross the lawn. I should call her back, but I don’t. She vanishes around the corner of the house and I put on my headphones. Within thirty seconds, I’ve forgotten about her.

I’m the last one to see her before she disappears.