I have to get away. From the police, from the pointing fingers, from the regret. My secret’s out—splashed across the bridge in glowing letters—and I don’t know what to do.
I run through the panicking crowd of contestants. I dodge shaky flashlights and shouts and screams. I’m buffeted by people trying to escape in every direction. A rogue elbow catches my temple, and I stumble, grazing my palms on the river wall. I’ve barely gotten my balance when someone else slams into me from behind.
I tip over the wall. I try to hold on, but momentum has hold of me. I do a forward flip and fall face-first toward the mud and water below. I hit my head on something when I land—a piece of driftwood, a lump of discarded metal, a big rock? Whatever it is sends sparks flying across my field of vision.
I scramble to my feet, but a combination of dizziness and the slippery ground makes it impossible to stay standing. My hands and legs sink into thick stinky mud, and I can barely move. The icy cold seeps into my clothes as I crawl toward the water. There’s a swan boat nearby on the shore that’s drifted apart from the others. It’s my only chance.
I stagger toward the swan and shove it hard. It slides surprisingly easily into the river. I throw myself at the hard plastic. I slip and end up hanging from the swan’s neck. It tips to one side; its beak skims the water.
Another contestant is trying to climb aboard too. A boy. He’s shouting at me, kicking out, trying to push me off. I can’t focus on him, never mind fight back. My head throbs in agony, and it feels like I’m going to black out.
The swan catches on a current, rocking from side to side as water splashes down my hoodie and soaks the legs of my jeans. The river’s so dark, and the opposite bank is so far away. My thoughts are splintering, and I’m losing sight of what’s real, what’s a horrible nightmare. The boy on my boat grabs my hood and tries to throw me off. I scream, but it’s lost in the chaos.
Other contestants are trying to cross the river on the boats, but there are too many people. The swans crash into each other with the sounds of splintering plastic and shrieks cut short. A bright light heads our way along the river. The police must have called the Coastguard.
“Get off,” the boy in my boat yells, and there’s something familiar about his voice. “You’re going to sink us.”
He grabs at me again, so I kick out at him with all my strength. My foot connects with his chest. Another swan bumps into mine, and I flip over. I grab out for anything that might save me, but there’s nothing except water. The swan’s heavy base clunks against my head, and I go under.
It’s so cold I can’t breathe. Everything comes to me in flashes and gasps. The current catches me and spins me around. I catch glimpses of a dozen people shouting and splashing, lit up brightly by the Coastguard’s spotlight. No one’s coming for me though. The water swallows me up, and I can’t fight it any longer.
There’s a memory. The memory that brought me here, to this watery abyss.
I’m standing at a buffet table, watching everyone else enjoy themselves. This party—Anton’s party—isn’t as much fun as I’d hoped it would be. Most people are so out of it that their voices have become shrieks and their movements uncoordinated. Matthew is nowhere to be seen, and he’s the only person I know, so I’m alone.
I’m picking at a cocktail sausage when Rose appears to my right and helps herself to a bottle of water. She’s as beautiful and as unapproachable as always. She gulps the water down in one long swallow, then wipes her lips. Her skin is perfect, and her red-lipped smile is ice cold.
“Charlotte, isn’t it?” she says. “Matthew’s sister.”
“Stepsister-to-be,” I reply.
“Same difference.” She screws the lid on the bottle and tosses it in with the unopened ones. “Surprised you’re not mingling. Trying to discover where Anton’s bedroom is or stealing his toothbrush.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say coldly and turn to leave.
“Do you go on GossApp?” Rose says, making me pause. “I think you do. There’s one poster on there who says terrible stuff about me. Really vicious, personal stuff.”
“Oh?” I manage to say, even though my throat is drier than my mom’s roasts. “I haven’t seen anything mean.”
“You haven’t? The posts are seriously unhinged. Personal, even. So I asked my friend to look into it. My friend’s a coder, you know. Coded Shadow City. Finding out an IP address was child’s play to them.”
She can’t know. It’s not possible. I’ve always been so careful.
She gets close to me and drops her voice to a whisper. “Imagine my surprise to discover that the person trolling me was none other than Matthew’s. Little. Sister.”
My heart plummets to my knees. “What…what do you want?”
Rose laughs. “Why would I want anything from some pathetic Anton fan?”
I grit my teeth. All I can think is how much I hate her. She’s so beautiful and so popular and so mean. She doesn’t deserve Anton. She doesn’t deserve to be one of the Accomplices.
She helps herself to an olive, popping it delicately into her mouth. “I’ve read your stories too. I know about your little crush on Anton. Shame it’ll never, ever happen. Why would he look twice at you when he has me?”
“That’s a horrible thing to say.” I gasp.
She laughs and marches off with a swing of her glossy curls, leaving me fighting tears. A couple of the other guests look at me, so I duck behind the pool house to pull myself together.
That feeling. Shame tinged with burning hatred. It’s unbearable. I take out my phone and write that comment on Rose’s GossApp fan page: DIE, DIE, DIE. It isn’t enough to kill the feeling though.
The memory ejects me with a sudden rush of coughed-up dirty water. I’m lying facedown on a concrete ramp that slopes into the river. The wall of a huge building with too many unlit windows looms over me. There are no lights, only the moon.
I cough again, and it turns into a retch. All I can taste is filth and regret. Then I see him.
It’s a person tangled in weeds. He’s lying on his stomach with his limbs splayed at funny angles. He must have washed up here like me. I crawl to him, shivering and shaking in my heavy clothes.
“Hello?” I say. “Are you another contestant?”
He’s not wearing a tracking bracelet. I tentatively poke his arm, but he doesn’t move. Another memory surfaces. In it, I’m struggling to stay on my boat as a boy tries to throw me into the water. The details are hazy.
What I do remember is kicking the boy. And then he went quiet.
“Are you all right?” I whisper.
I carefully roll him onto his back. I fall onto my seat with a gasp. It’s Jesse, the driver from the museum getaway. His face is so pale and his eyes so empty. So dead. There’s a wound on his head, but it’s not bleeding, not anymore.
I don’t scream. I can’t scream.
I stand up and back away, bile burning my throat. Was he the boy I kicked? Did I kill him?
No, this isn’t real. I back up so far that I bump into a pair of rusty metal gates. I stumble as they creak ajar behind me. The mud under my feet becomes concrete. Then I turn and run.
I shoot out straight across the road without looking. A black van slams on its brakes. I stand there and gape as it screeches toward me. It stops just in time, its bumper against my legs.
The door flies open and Beatrix climbs out. The headlights of the van illuminate her from behind, turning the hair that’s escaped her braids into a glowing halo.
“Charlotte? What are you doing?”
“I…I’m…” I can’t get the words out. I can’t tell her that a man’s dead, not when Rose identified me as a suspect. What if everyone thinks I murdered him? What if I did? I can barely remember anything that happened in the water.
Beatrix is watching me like I’m a monster, like I might attack her at any moment. Perhaps I am a monster. Sirens approach as if making a point. “I saw the things you wrote about Rose,” Beatrix says.
Of course she did.
“I didn’t mean to hurt her! I didn’t like her, but it wasn’t real life. I didn’t think anyone would read it.”
“I looked up your username. AntonsGirlXOXO? I saw what you wrote on GossApp this afternoon. Was that real?” Tears are glistening on her lashes. She looks so heartbroken. “You said Matthew was sneaking around behind my back, getting up to no good.”
I shake my head. “I had a fight with Matthew, and I wanted to get back at him. What I wrote wasn’t real,” I whisper.
The sirens get closer, but I’d happily take being arrested over this feeling inside me. Concrete, hardening in my belly.
“Go,” Beatrix says. “The police are picking up contestants, and there’s no way I’m taking you anywhere in my van. So go.”
“But…” I glance over my shoulder at the metal gates hiding Jesse’s body.
“Now!” she yells.
So I run, and I try to pretend that a person isn’t lying dead yards away on the banks of the river. I try to pretend that none of this is my fault. But it’s a lie, and I don’t think I can run fast enough to escape, not this time.