CASS
The sky has morphed from a harsh pink to the early beginnings of a bruise as I speed down the hill, away from my house. Despite Doug’s recommendation to stay home, I need to get out. It’s not just avoiding Logan—though that’s certainly part of it. I need to feel the water on my skin, the sea stretching up above me. I need to dive.
It’s been a while since I’ve had a craving this intense to be underwater. Lately, I’ve been dulling any urges with the pills. But for the first time in days, my head finally seems clear of chemicals, dirtied now only by the thousands of anxieties rushing through my mind. And diving is my one sure way to silence them.
It’s a twenty-minute drive across the island. It would be much quicker to go to Pho Tau beach, but I can’t bear the thought of running into anyone. I’m not prepared for the avalanche of images the sight of the Tiki Palms would unleash: Sengphet smiling as he delivered my coffee; Sengphet waving to me cheerily from behind the bar; Sengphet bruised and bloodied, alone in a nondescript cell.
I’ve seen firsthand what the police are capable of. Last year, my dive student went and tried to fight an off-duty cop while on a midday bender. The police didn’t take kindly to that, so they tracked my student down in his Terrace room, dragged him away from the resort, and locked him up in the Koh Sang jail, a narrow hallway of cells connected to the police station. Frederic sent me there with a crumpled envelope filled with American dollars. The handover was easy, cash in exchange for the guest, a South African tourist in his early twenties. He was cocky, reluctant to listen to any of my instructions during class, just like Daniel was at the beginning. But when I picked him up from the jail, he was someone else entirely. Blood had dried in a crusty mess along his lips and chin, cigarette burns lined his shoulders, and he was missing a fingernail.
And that was just for an assault. I can’t begin to imagine what they would do for a murder.
I push the thought from my mind as I pull up to Lamphan beach. As I hoped, the sand is empty aside from one long-tail boat tied up at the far end of the shore. This part of the island has none of the tourist draws of Pho Tau: no beach bars or water-sport stands. Only silky white sand and turquoise waters that stretch on forever.
I pause, reminding myself how lucky I am—despite everything—to call this my home. I inhale deeply, relishing the fresh, salty smell of the air, and peer across the water. This beach is usually calm, protected by the cliffs that surround it. But today, as the storm nears, the waves have started to pick up, a handful of white caps marring the otherwise placid surface.
After parking, I walk out on the sand and pull the tank and the BCD vest I dragged from the house—my personal backups—off my back. I empty the bag I have looped over my arm, removing fins, a mask, my respirators, and my wetsuit, and leave the rest of my things on the beach. I don’t worry that anyone will take it. This part of the island is—has always been—a safe haven. Within minutes, I’m at the water’s edge, savoring the easy comfort of the water filtering over my feet.
And for the first time in days, I relax. My muscles loosen, the thoughts subside, and I let myself enjoy this. The sun is absent today; dark clouds and the growing winds cast a murky glow over the water. But still, it’s beautiful. Small fish skitter away as I approach them, basking in the beautiful glow of the coral that lives on this side of the island. But the views aren’t why I came here. It’s the reprieve I’m after, the temporary pause of the real world around me.
I stay down for far longer than I should. Whenever I try to ascend, I’m stopped by an all-encompassing reluctance to surface.
Finally, when my air gauge reads close to empty, I break the waterline. I allow myself to float there a moment, buoyed by my inflated vest, and spin, taking in the full 360-degree view. The sky has darkened since I got in the water, a growing wind pushing the sand down the empty beach, spotted only with the occasional palm tree, its branches bending precariously.
When I can’t put it off any longer, I swim back to shore, ultimately collapsing onto the sand next to where I left my bag. I sit there for a while, long enough to feel a few light drops of rain fall from the sky. When the unease starts to return, eradicating the calm like a virus, I finally pull my phone from my bag.
My screen flashes before I can even press a button, warning of seventeen notifications.
I was hoping to acclimatize back into the anxiety of the real world, but it hits me like a wave, taking me under. I open my messaging app and scroll. Panic thumps in my chest as I take in the number of different senders: Greta, Neil, Doug, Logan, and Brooke.
Something is clearly wrong.
I decide to start with Brooke’s message. As I click on it, I realize how much I’ve missed talking to her, and for the first time, I wonder why she never returned my call from yesterday afternoon. Until I see it.
Maybe now you’ll rethink what you did.
A thrum of dread races through me and, at the tail end, confusion. What did I do? Or more importantly, what does Brooke think I did? What does she know? I squeeze my eyes shut, as if that will stop the text from existing, but the words burn into the back of my eyelids. What you did.
Suddenly, the moment I’ve feared since I first stepped onto this island two years ago, since I first realized I had a second chance at life, feels imminent.
I force myself to confront what Brooke is talking about, to get that confirmation, and open the new messages from Logan.
Please answer.
Tell me this isn’t true.
Cass, these are lies, right?
They all follow the same theme. Something terrible has happened. Something that involves me.
And I know. Without having to look, I know that it’s time. Whoever left those envelopes on my doorstep has finally made good on their threat.
Still, I scroll up the thread, finding the first message from Logan.
I click on it, my hands shaking so hard that it takes several attempts for my finger to land precisely on the link. The internet loads slowly so far away from the bustle of Kumvit and Pho Tau beach, and I realize I’m holding my breath.
The link connects to my Instagram app, pulling up a profile I know almost by heart. A beautiful woman stares out at me from the upper-left corner of the screen, her shiny hair pulled back in a tight bun. I click on her most recent post, recognizing it before it even enlarges on the screen. And then everything makes sense.
Why Brooke, this beautiful, confident influencer, took such an interest in me when she got to the island. Why someone of her popularity would be drawn to a quiet, inconsequential dive instructor.
We never had the instant connection I thought we did. She was never the friend or the mentor I believed she was.
She was my betrayer.
All this time, it’s been Brooke. She’s the one who has been leaving those notes, who’s been threatening to expose me. The only reason she got close to me was to use me.
I pause briefly on the photo she’s posted of me on the top of Khrum Yai. I told her not to, lying that it was because I didn’t like the way I looked, not because I didn’t want any one of her thousands of followers to recognize me as Meghan. Now with the eerie filter she’s laid on it and paired with the words beneath, it’s haunting. Exactly what she intended, I’m sure.
I read the caption as quickly as possible, my mind tripping over my name—the real one—paired with the ones the papers had so kindly gifted me: Meghan the Murderer; the Hudson Massacre Killer. But the words Brooke’s typed under those names hurt even more.
I hold the phone, staring at the post for so long that the screen goes black, reflecting my own face back to me. My hair is wild, my cheeks raw from the salt water.
I look like a person who could kill.
Who has killed.
My heart skids against my chest, and I feel as if I’m being buried alive. I picture sand filling my lungs like the bulb of an hourglass. Gasping, I suck in as much of the hot, humid air as I can. In for two. I try to regulate my breathing as I would underwater, standing in case it will help.
But this time, it doesn’t work. I try again, but it’s as if my airway has closed entirely. I drop to my knees.
Black dots begin to flicker at the corners of my eyes, my vision curling up at the edges like the damaged film of the home movies we used to watch on Dad’s old projector.
The memory floods back. Robin and me, probably in sixth and fourth grade at the time, and Mom, running along the beach, Dad off-screen, handling the camera as it bounced with each stride. “I can’t keep up,” I yelled at Robin and Mom. They stopped.
Robin turned around and walked back to me, her voice sweet. “Of course you can. You’re my big sister. You can do anything.”
I try again to breathe, flaring my nostrils as wide as they go, desperate for air. I can do this. I’m your big sister.
And I force myself back to standing. It’s time to confront what I’ve done. To make this right as much as I can.
But the question still pulses deep within me. What could I have possibly done to Brooke to deserve this?