“Who was that, pumpkin?” Dad calls from the living room.

His words don’t register. Not at first. I stand there with the receiver to my ear, listening to the growling static on the other end and trying to figure out if I heard what I thought I heard.

It had to be Rachel.

Rachel, threatening me.

She was pretending at school when she acted like she didn’t know what happened yesterday.

No—she remembers the lake. She remembers me pushing her in.

Now she’s playing with me.

I slam down the phone and rush up to my room. It’s only when I reach the top of the stairs that I realize I never answered my dad’s question.

I close my door and press my back against it, breathing hard. Even though my bedroom is on the second floor, I fully expect to see Rachel floating outside my window, smiling maniacally, her wet hand pressed to the window. But there’s nothing outside, and that almost feels worse.

She’s waiting to make her move.

I just have no idea what she’s waiting for.

Maybe I should have unplugged the phone in case she calls back. The last thing I need is for her to talk to either one of my parents. Or worse—my sister.

Jessica would go to the cops immediately, I just know it.

For a long time I stand there, slowing down my breathing, listening for the phone to ring. But all I hear is Jessica gaming away and my mom listening to music and the faint chatter of the news downstairs. No phone calls.

Maybe Rachel’s given up for the night.

Maybe it wasn’t Rachel at all, but someone else, someone trying to scare me.

Neither option makes much sense.

If it was Rachel, why not just confront me directly?

And who else but Rachel would know?

Something glints out of the corner of my eye, and I look over to my closet.

I see water

pooling

from the door.

It spreads across my carpet, staining the tan a dark beige.

As if it’s alive.

As if it’s coming toward me.

My heart hammers so loud it sounds like the water has a pulse, but that can’t be possible, can it?

I can’t look away.

For a moment, I consider running out the door and down the stairs and outside and not stopping. Ever. Not until I’m five towns away and this is all behind me.

Except I know that running won’t work.

In my bones, I know Rachel will find me.

I remember her sketchbook, hidden under all my clothes. I jolt toward the closet and yank open the door, my feet squishing in the wet carpet. I toss aside my dirty clothes as I search for the book.

Every

single

article

of clothing

is soaked.

The clothes plop wetly behind me, making a further mess, but I don’t care. My hands finally close around the sketchbook.

It’s dry.

What?

I glance behind me.

The puddle is gone.

My clothes are all dry.

The carpet is dry.

I press my hand against it to make sure.

What in the world is going on?

I sink to the floor and, with shaking fingers, open the sketchbook.

It’s filled with poems. Poems and sketches of girls that look an awful lot like Rachel, only in the sketches she has angel wings and her hair falls in her eyes, manga-style. I remember sitting next to her while she was drawing these, trying out art styles, trying to improve. She was always a much better artist than I was, even though she never thought she was good enough.

I flip the page, and there’s a sketch of two girls holding hands, walking away. One has angel wings. And one has a cat tail. Even though the girls are facing away, I know it’s supposed to be the two of us. Whenever we would pass notes to each other, we would sign them with little doodles like this. My alter ego was a cat girl, and hers was an angel. The poem on this page, written between the two girls, right above their clasped hands, makes the breath stop in my lungs:

For a long time I just stare at the page, until my eyes start to water and I have to wipe away my tears, even though I tell myself I’m not crying, my eyes just hurt from looking so long.

It’s then I see the date at the top.

She wrote this around the time we had our fight.

Around the time everything changed.

A full year ago …

I flip the page. And continue flipping. My eyes skim the poems, but it’s easy to see the shift.

In the later pictures, there is no longer a cat girl. No longer me. Or, if the cat girl is there, she’s on the opposite side of the page, and the angel girl is watching her with tears in her eyes.

As I go, the sad poems turn more to hurt. The images are darker, filled with lightning and fire, the angel girl’s wings now shaded black, or turned to bat wings. The poems are all about being picked on, about how terrible life is now that we’re no longer friends.

The poems make me feel terrible. I mean, she made me feel terrible because of what she did, but reading it on the page is much worse than imagining it.

I pause on one page.

It’s a picture of the lake.

Exactly like yesterday—Rachel sits at the end of the dock, her black angel wings folded against her back, sketching. Something seems off, but my heart hammers so fast and my curiosity gets the better of me, and I check to make sure.

Yes. This is the last page. The pages behind it are blank.

This is what she had been sketching yesterday.

Before I came along.

Before I—

I flip it back, and the drawing is different.

Impossible.

Rachel no longer sits on the dock, but stands.

I’m there on the dock in front of her, cat tail curled around my feet.

“No way,” I gasp.

I blink.

And the image

moves.

I watch as the drawing of me steps forward. As I jerkily shove her.

Once.

A thought bubble appears above her head, asking, Why?

I shove in response.

The thought bubble changes. Please don’t.

A third time. Help me!

Then she falls into the lake.

And as I watch,

	the
	lake
	changes.
Clear waters	turn gray.
My drawn figure	turns and walks away.
And as I watch	faces appear in the water.
Hundreds of faces	emerging,
Hundreds of hands	reaching
	grabbing
	dragging
	Rachel
	down.

Until I blink again, and the page is once more serene—a clear lake, tall trees, an empty dock.

And two words, scribbled in another thought bubble, scratched into the page as if by claws: