I was back at the river. Choking on storm water, on river water, as I hauled Josh to shore. Desperately racing back for Ian. Reaching for him, again and again, feeling the cold of his hand as he slipped away from my fingertips this time—
The phone on my bedside table was vibrating, and I bolted upright in bed. It was later than I thought, and I was startled by the midmorning daylight, trying to tear myself away from that night.
My first thought, as I pulled the phone to my face, was: Amaya.
But my eyes focused on a text from Russ: I’m sorry, had a family emergency, had to drive to their place.
And another: Are you home?
I texted back, I’m home, then watched, waiting for it to show as delivered. Everything felt on a delay, as if I were stuck in a current, in quicksand, the geography shifting beneath my feet. As if the distance of this week had officially been too much. Like I wouldn’t ever be able to make it back to the person I used to be.
The only other person who had checked in yesterday was Jillian, sending a text to ask if I was okay. A subtle reminder, or maybe a genuine worry, that I had not done the things I had promised this week. It was unlike me. Unlike the person she knew me to be, at least.
No one else had reached out. Not Josh, to let me know whether he arrived at Amaya’s. Not Grace, checking in to see if I’d made it the rest of the way home.
I wondered if anyone else had received a letter.
I wondered if they understood, like Josh had.
I pushed myself out of bed, stomach twisting—I’d finished a bottle of wine last night. Needed the first glass to make it through the letter to Josh the first time. Needed the rest to make it through again and again.
I could recite it by heart now, the words resounding in my head. Even the first time I read it, I knew what was coming, like a whispered echo.
Josh was right that this information could have come only from me or from Ian. We were the only ones there. Hollis had escaped the sinking van on her own, and later made her way back to the rest of us once Grace lit that flare. The only people who knew what had happened with Josh and Ian were the three of us.
The only people who knew I had pulled Josh from the van were the two of us.
Someone other than Josh had been through my apartment.
I’d kept the journals at the bottom of my fireproof safe for as long as I could remember. Underneath my passport, my birth certificate, my social security card. Hidden safely under the legal settlement and my bank paperwork. As if I were offering all this up first, should someone come looking.
But all of this was undisturbed, and still the bottom of the safe was empty. My passport, my birth certificate, my signed settlement—all accounted for. But where there had once been a flattened layer of journals was now just an exposed metal base, dust gathered in the corners.
The only things missing were the books.
The proof.
Why did no one contact me? Why did no one reach out, as they had to Oliver, to Josh, to Hollis? It was a question that had nagged Josh, and bothered me.
And now I understood.
They didn’t have to reach out to me, because they already had everything they needed.
A familiar type of fear gripped me—a fear that this was all my responsibility, and I was too slow, too late to stop it. To save them.
When was the last time I’d seen the missing journals? Before a trip to Europe last summer, when I’d needed that passport?
The key was still here, tucked safely away in my nightstand drawer, under the book I’d been reading. I didn’t think Josh would have replaced it so carefully, seeing how the rest of the apartment had been disturbed. I would’ve seen the journals on him before he left, if he was the one who took them.
No, this wasn’t Josh.
I splashed water on my face, orienting myself, and desperately circled through the rest of my apartment again. Checking places already checked, against all logic and reason, as if I might’ve misplaced the journals in my memory.
I checked the boxes in the closet, the space under my bed, the upper kitchen cabinets, as if, in my subconscious, I had moved them and forgotten.
But the journals were gone.
Everything was my fault. My responsibility. I felt the pounding in my chest, the sinking of my stomach, the same feeling when I’d shared them with Ian, for the first time, back in that summer when we were together. Giving voice to something that had only lived inside me, the expectation and thrill of putting it out into the world.
The look on his face was a fraction of how he’d looked at the river that night. Confusion. Surprise. Horror.
We all had our own ways of coping. He should’ve known that—I was sure he understood that. But in the end, he really didn’t approve of mine.
In the months after the accident, I’d written it all out, in a desperate attempt to understand.
I’d been in Brody Ensworth’s creative writing elective the year before. I’d sat behind Joshua Doleman on the bus for three straight years. I’d lived down the street from Oliver King. Hollis March was partnered with me as a guide when she entered school; we ate lunch together until she got swept up into Brody’s world. And I’d been part of this Volunteer Club with Amaya for the entirety of our high school career, had heard her talk about her family as if it defined her as well. I felt like I knew them all.
It was my therapist who asked me to do this, to try imagining someone else out there that night, instead of me. So I might give them the grace and empathy I should give myself.
But something had happened out there, some darkness I couldn’t shake. The words poured out of me in a fever dream. I had always loved to write, but this wasn’t the same. It wasn’t an outlet, but a compulsion—an obsession. I couldn’t get the words down fast enough, as if they would slip from my grasp if I didn’t get them down immediately. I needed to turn my fragmented memories into something concrete and real.
Ian was the one person I trusted, so I showed the journals to him near the end of the summer, when I was finished, hoping he could help me fill in the blanks. That, with his help, I could piece the rest of the night together. So that we could both understand.
But I’d misjudged the depths of his understanding and acceptance.
You can’t. You can’t write it down, Cassidy. My god, what the hell are you thinking? Why do you know all of this about everyone?
He looked at me then like he was seeing me for the first time. And maybe he was. He hadn’t noticed me in four years of school. So many of them hadn’t.
I promised him I’d get rid of them, but I knew instantly that something had been severed between us. I’d forgotten that he had a history with so many of them from before. That Ian had grown up on a street with some of these people, had been close in a way I was not. That he had other allegiances, other reasons to keep them safe.
Destroy them, he’d said. Promise me.
I said I would. Back then I wanted to do anything he asked. But I kept them instead, for the same reason, I now understood, that he must’ve kept that knife. Proof that it happened. Proof, should we need it. A level of protection; an accusation, ready in response. A way out.
The journals had never been far from my sight. They’d come to college, stuffed in the top of my closet; they’d continued to my first apartment that I shared with a roommate from school; and they’d followed me here. A comfort, in their proximity. I hadn’t read them in nearly a decade, and so the words in Josh’s letter lingered in the air, familiar and not.
But now I saw that Ian was right. I should’ve destroyed them. Out of my hands, they had taken on a life of their own—a force I couldn’t stop.
What if someone thought I had given them freely, as Josh implied? How many others would recognize me in the background of every scene? That the threads of information followed only my path that night?
My hands shook as I found Josh’s number and tried calling him—no answer.
The only other people I could think to call were Amaya’s parents, but their home was unlisted. The only public number was the listing for Andrews & Andrews. It was a Saturday; I assumed they’d be closed. Still, I imagined they must’ve had someone checking their answering machine.
I left a message, curt and to the point. “Hi, this message is for Mr. Andrews. This is Cassidy Bent. I’m worried about Amaya. She was with us this week, but she left, and no one has heard from her since. I can’t get ahold of her. Please, let me know if you’ve heard anything.”
All these people I felt were my responsibility. A list of names, to keep track of. To ensure they were okay. There were so many people I couldn’t help any longer:
Jason, Trinity, Morgan, Ben.
Clara.
Ian.
I wished I understood what Ian was doing at The Shallows, before he died. I wished I could see who he contacted, or who had contacted him. Whether it was through text or email or personal letter. Whether it was through Instagram, like for Hollis. Or email, for Oliver. It seemed like the method most likely to rattle each person.
I should’ve taken the slips of paper from his room and tried them all, so I could get into his email. I plugged his phone into the charger, so I could check again, methodically, folder by folder. Everything was enabled for Face ID or asked for a password.
I opened a list of apps, hoping there was something labeled passwords—maybe he’d moved on to a method like this, instead of stuffing scraps of paper into his desk.
But I found only an assortment of games and social media apps. Even his Notes were empty.
The folder labeled Home contained his banking app and a string of food delivery services. But at the very bottom was an app that tugged at something in my memory. Made me look twice.
WatchingHome.
It was the same name as the label on the camera I’d found at The Shallows.
I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at it.
The camera.
Maybe no one had been using it to watch us this week.
Maybe that camera belonged to Ian.
I opened the app now, holding my breath, except he must’ve had Face ID enabled here too. I didn’t know the password. I tried his birthday, since his mom said he was always forgetting passwords, needing to write them down—
And then I raced for my luggage, still out in the hall, near the front door. Now I laid it flat, unzipped the top, and rifled for his familiar jacket, which I’d packed under a layer of my things.
I reached my hand into his pocket and pulled out the receipt from High Tide. It was meaningless; he had no reason to keep it. Just a note he’d written on the other side…
The Shallows!
Except, maybe not a note. With shaking hands, I tried it now, in the password prompt, all one word: TheShallows!
And suddenly, miraculously, I was in.
My heartbeat resounded inside my head, and the phone was trembling in my hands.
There were several notifications asking for renewal information and for credit card payment. A note popped up warning that the membership had expired.
I ignored the warnings, and instead scrolled to the label marked Recordings, hoping there was still something here, despite his lapsed membership.
Several folders popped up. The recordings were labeled by date, organized by most recent. The most recent saved recording was the end of February. He must’ve paid for only that single month.
I held my breath and pressed play.
The image was like a distorted fishbowl, from the hidden camera angle over the corner shelving unit. There was a widescreen view stretching across the living room and dining room, with the dark stairwell in the distance.
The first sound on the recording—the creak of the front door opening—shattered my nerves.
At 9:10 a.m., a man and a woman carrying various cleaning supplies through the entrance started moving around the living room. I let out a breath. The cleaning company, as Oliver had mentioned. The recording captured them as they crossed back and forth through the room often. They left two hours later.
There were no other triggered recordings until several weeks earlier, on February 5.
The front door creaking open again, this time in the dark. It was the middle of the night, and none of the lights were on, inside or out.
“Hello?” a voice called.
A light suddenly flipped on, and Oliver stood in the entryway, blinking as his eyes adjusted. “Ian?” he called.
My hand went to my mouth. Oliver went to the stairs first, the first place I would’ve looked—up to his room on the third floor.
It felt like I was walking the steps with Oliver—except I knew what he was about to discover. And yet, I couldn’t look away. Some dark path I couldn’t free myself from. Eventually, Oliver returned downstairs, and I heard cabinets opening and closing in the kitchen, the sound of running water as he filled up a cup.
He must’ve thought Ian was not in the house.
And then he came back into camera view. He pulled out a dining room chair, frowning. He’d spotted Ian’s backpack, and now he turned it over in his hands, called his name again into the house.
Oliver then carried the bag out of frame, toward the back of the house.
I could only imagine he was heading toward his bedroom. I could only imagine what he saw.
It wasn’t in the frame—I didn’t see what happened, didn’t see the reaction, but I heard it. Heard Oliver calling out his name, just as I would’ve called it. The horror of it.
It was a sound I had heard only once before from him—screaming Jason’s name into the void, after he’d been swept away by the river. A tragedy Oliver must’ve realized he had set in motion with the vote to send someone into the water, and then with the decision to draw straws. He’d risked then, and he’d lost. The worst had already happened—and he’d survived it.
I closed my eyes, the call of Ian’s name rattling my heart. Had Oliver tried to revive him? Or had he decided he was too far gone?
I didn’t want to know. These were secrets Oliver could keep.
Eventually he came out of the room and sat on the living room couch with his head in his hands. He stayed like that for so long I believed the feed had frozen.
And then he stood abruptly, hooked Ian’s bag onto his shoulder, and disappeared from view. The light turned off, and the recording stopped.
I didn’t know what happened to Ian’s phone then. Whether Oliver had taken it, or it was left inside the house. Whether someone had been there earlier. And I was scared, for once, to know the truth.
Wasn’t that the truth with all of us, though? We didn’t really want to know. Not anymore. We didn’t want to know who had hurt Ben, with a knife. We didn’t want to think about the way we had circled Brody, almost forcing him into the water. How we heard Trinity yelling after us as we walked away. We didn’t want to know what happened to any of them after we left—and I suddenly didn’t want to know what happened to Ian.
He’d been paranoid, his mother said, after Clara’s death. What if that wasn’t an effect of his addiction, but the cause?
I owed it to him. Of course, I owed it to him to bear witness. I owed them all so much. I had to watch. Who else was left to do it?
On the WatchingHome app, I navigated to the day before—the first day of any recording. The first thing I saw was Ian’s face, so close, like a funhouse mirror. Large brown eyes and hair cropped short and his teeth caught on his lower lip. He was adjusting the camera, brown eyes staring directly into the lens as he stood on a chair.
I could tell from his expression that something was off. He exuded a nervous energy, gaze a little wild—a little too intense. He flinched as his eyes seemed to latch on to mine, his pupils wide. I held my breath, imagining he was seeing me, across time—I’m here—before realizing he must’ve just caught sight of his own reflection.
He was so close. So close I felt I could reach out an arm for him, one last time.
Then he stepped off the chair, ran his hand through his short hair, the tremble of his hand visible as he did. I pulled the phone closer to my face, like I was losing him. Like the current was taking him away. Like I’d reached for him one last time, and missed.
He checked his phone, looked back up at the camera, like he was making sure everything was working correctly. Then he went to the front window, peering out.
I could hear his voice, thought he must’ve been talking on a phone I couldn’t see. I turned up the volume, leaned closer—but it seemed he was talking to himself. His words were indecipherable, but the cadence unsettling. Haunting.
Ian was spiraling, and no one was there to help him. I hadn’t made it. Oliver hadn’t made it. There was no one there to stop his descent. No one there, even, to witness it.
Ian came in and out of frame often, but nothing was happening. Nothing but his own descent, the pacing increasing, pausing only as he peered out windows in something that verged on obsession, or paranoia.
I scrolled forward, watching as he paced from the front window and then back to the kitchen, as if he was waiting for someone.
Finally, as he was standing at the front window, something seemed to jar him. He turned abruptly, staring toward the back of the house.
I rewound, watched again, listened closer.
A knock on the back door.
As if whoever he had been expecting came around the back, instead of the front.
Ian cast a quick glance toward the camera, before crossing out of frame, to the back of the house.
There were two voices, but I could only hear Ian’s clearly. I had turned the volume all the way up, and could tell how he was trying to project, while the other person was not.
“Yes, I have it. Yes, this is where we meet.”
My god, Ian, what did you have? What were you giving away?
Ian entered the frame, as if he was trying to lure the other person into view. As if this was his plan all along—to catch them.
A way out. A way to protect us. To save us.
“Why were you at the back door? Where’s your car?” he asked.
“I’m staying at the campground.” A man’s voice, soft but determined. Something familiar in the cadence. I cycled through their faces: Oliver, Brody, Josh. Will? Nothing clicked into place.
The campground. Where Oliver believed he’d seen someone heading on the beach that night. Someone Amaya might’ve seen, days earlier. And someone who might’ve seen Amaya there, after she left us…
“Can I see your phone? I mean, it sounds like you’re recording me.” The voice had shifted, a little nervous, a little confrontational. I couldn’t be the only one noticing Ian’s unstable demeanor.
“I’m not,” Ian said, but I watched as he placed it on the kitchen counter, arm extended out of frame. It was gone, possession passing like Oliver’s knife the night of our accident.
There was a long stretch of silence, where the other man must’ve been looking at Ian’s phone. Finally he said, “Can I get a drink?”
Ian disappeared from frame, voices faded and harder to hear.
Finally, Ian reentered the frame, like he was trying, desperately, to move the conversation toward the front of the house. Catch it on the camera. His plan, all along.
“You said you would help,” the other man said. “You said you had it.”
How quickly this was turning. Ian was not going to help. I could see that from the start. He was trying, against all odds, to save us. And he was in no shape to do it alone.
“Listen, they’re not bad people,” he said. “You don’t understand.” The same way I would’ve claimed it, believed it even. Because we made a pact, and to admit otherwise would force you to go back, look again, to unearth the truth.
“They are very bad people,” the other voice said, louder now. “You know how I know that? My sister told me. Before she died, she told me that.”
The word buzzed in my head. Sister. How many people could have told him that? Grace, Hollis, Clara.
There’s only one person Ian would’ve felt compelled to help, other than us. The only other survivor, who was no longer here. Clara. Her picture taped to the back of ours. He would’ve done this for Clara.
“You don’t understand,” Ian was saying, voice rising. “You weren’t there.”
“Clara was, though. And she told me. She told me you had all done terrible things—herself included. She didn’t want to talk about it. After she died, I kept an eye on you all—”
“You’ve been watching us?”
A pause. “Checking in,” he said. “Just seeing what you were up to. There’s so much information available online…”
I got a chill as he spoke, thinking he was keeping tabs on us, just as I had been doing over the years. Scrolling social media feeds, reading job announcements, searching our names and locations.
“I felt like I knew you all. But Clara protected you, and so would I. And then I got the invitation for that ridiculous memorial library dedication. I showed up, and you know what I noticed? There’s not one mention of Clara. Nothing. She’s not one of you, and she’s not one of them.” His voice, for the first time, grew louder. “How does she not count as a victim? How are we not part of the victim compensation settlement? I went to the lawyers while I was in town, to try and get Clara included, and they shot me down immediately. Total bullshit. I’m not gonna lie, Ian, I could really use that money right about now…”
“I know,” Ian said. “Trust me, it’s been a hard time for all of us. We could all use some help.”
The other man laughed, something mean, angry. “At the dedication, they had some pictures out, of that first-year anniversary. That fucking memorial, where they rang the bells. She had insisted on going. The day she died, remember?”
Silence.
“You know what I saw in those pictures?”
Still, he didn’t respond, as if he already knew.
“So many of you were also there. You and Grace and Josh Doleman. Brody and Hollis. Amaya Andrews. Oliver King.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. My parents had moved by then, and I had stayed far, far away. But they had each been there, or they had returned. As if there had been a pact, even before I was a member.
“You know what I think?”
Again, Ian didn’t respond.
“I think Clara was trying to tell the truth. And now she’s dead.”
“It’s been nine years,” Ian was saying, a defense, a desperation. “Please, stop this—it’s torment.” I could feel it in Ian’s voice, the way he was being tormented by this man. And this was his only way out. He was stuck in a spiral, and there was no one there, no one who would pull him out this time—
“Yeah, imagine that,” the man continued. “Nine years, and she’s all but forgotten. Another thing in the past you’re all sweeping under the rug.”
“No, we didn’t.”
But I heard his mother’s warning, Ian’s paranoia: I’m going to be next—
“Clara told me you were the one person who knew what happened that night.”
“No, I don’t.”
“She told me you were the one with proof. That you had evidence. That it was all written down somewhere, and you told her. She needed you, Ian. She needed you on her side. And now I do.”
I felt something coming. Something closing in. A rumble of thunder. A warning, a portent.
“I don’t have it anymore,” he said, though I knew that was a lie. He’d hidden the knife, to keep it safe. The safest place he knew. “And I’m not the one who wrote it all down. I saw it once, but that was a really long time ago—”
“Who? Who had it?”
“Cassidy, but they’re gone now—I swear it.”
Oh, Ian, no.
My name, a thread to follow. He’d sent this man my way, and he got what he needed after all.
“So then what are we even doing here?”
Silence, as the realization settled in. Ian was never going to deliver. He was not there for him. He was there, once more, for us.
“Let’s go out for a walk, Ian.” I heard the back door open and close, and the video faded to black. There was no motion ever triggered again. Whatever happened after they left, Ian had never made it back to the living room.
There was no proof.
He was never in frame. Never. But that voice…
I clutched the necklace hanging around my neck, felt the cold metal in the center of the palm of my hand. The interlocking circles, the letter C.
There’s a moment, when your mind rebels against what it knows to be true. A van hurtling through space in the night; water rushing higher and higher, chasing you, consuming everything. When it comes up with a thousand other possibilities instead.
I took Ian’s picture of us, from that first year at The Shallows, and I turned it over. Clara, smiling into the sun, light catching off her necklace—
And still, I didn’t want to believe. The letter C.
The man who said, I saw this and thought of you, and hadn’t been thinking of me at all.
All along, he’d been thinking of his sister. Clara.