Famous Last Words

Ever so slowly, I forced myself to turn around. Maybe the body had made it across the pool without my knowing it — floating behind me … inches away, about to brush my bare skin with her cold, swollen hands …

Suddenly, something was alive and thrashing next to me. Then I was being grabbed and dragged through the water again. I frantically fought to push away.

“Stay calm!” The voice, deep with authority, echoed off the walls of the courtyard. “I’ve got you, just stay calm!”

Jonathan.

“No! I’m fine — I’m not —” I tried to say, but by then we’d made it to the steps of the pool, and he could see for himself that I was fine.

Well, fine-ish. I’d been better, let’s put it that way.

“Willa!” Mom came ru

“Nothing,” I said, staying clear of her arms. “Nothing.”

Jonathan was panting. “We saw you from the window. You were struggling.”

I didn’t know what to say. If I pretended nothing had been wrong, it would be obvious that I was lying. But I couldn’t possibly tell the truth.

“My hair got caught in the filter,” I said without thinking. Then I saw my mother’s gaze land on the tight bun coiled at the top of my head. “I mean, my necklace.”

They both looked at my bare neck.

“I managed to break it, but it got sucked down.” I shrugged. “It’s okay, though. It wasn’t an important necklace.”

For a moment, nobody spoke. Then Mom stepped toward me again.

“Come on,” she said, wrapping the towel around my shoulders and hustling me toward the house. “It’s freezing out here.”

“The water’s pretty warm, actually,” I said. “It’s nice.”

Except for the dead body.

The tiny, crisp buds of the night-blooming jasmine on the trellises framed the entryway like glow-in-the-dark stars. After Jonathan shut the door, we stood in an awkward triangle of silence, still surrounded by the flowers’ dreamy-sweet scent.

I pulled the towel tighter around me. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to clear my head.”

“I hope it worked,” Jonathan said, the tiniest hint of irritation in his voice.

Yeah, well. Not quite.

“Good night,” Mom said, kissing me on the forehead. Then they turned and started down the long hall that went to the master suite, leaving me alone in the darkness.

The next morning, my mother steered Jonathan’s SUV into the parent drop-off lot at my new school, Langhorn Academy.

Back in Co

“Want me to come in with you?” Mom asked.

“No, thanks,” I said. I mean, I didn’t expect to win any popularity contests, but I did have my pride. “The paperwork’s taken care of, right?”

She nodded. “Just go to the office and talk to Mrs. Dunkley. She’ll get you your schedule.”

“Okay. See you later.” I nervously smoothed the hem of my green-and-black-plaid pleated skirt. I still couldn’t believe I had to wear an actual uniform. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was going to a really stressful costume party.

“Willa,” Mom said, “wait.”

I waited, even though I wanted to get out of the car quite badly.

Was she going to talk about last night? After hours of fitful, restless sleep, I’d managed to convince myself that the dead body I’d seen had been nothing more than a stress-induced hallucination. I wasn’t eager to rehash the incident.

But it wasn’t that. Mom reached sheepishly into her purse. “I got you a present, too. It’s not as nice as Jonathan’s, but …”

Not as nice as the monstrosity currently sitting between my feet, mocking me with its grotesque designer logos?

I took the small, flat package from her. Even before I peeled the wrapping paper off, I knew it was a journal. The cover was caramel-colored leather, and the pages were plain white, unlined. It was a perfectly nice journal … for a person who needs that kind of thing in their life.

“Oh,” I said.

“Listen, I know you don’t think you have anything to write about, but I think if you just let yourself try … Even if it’s just one line every day.”

“It’s great.” I wished I could inject even a hint of sincerity into my words. “Thanks.”

“Don’t do that.” Mom’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Don’t just say ‘great’ when things aren’t great. I’m your mother, Willa. You can say anything to me.”

Anything? Maybe there was a time when I could have told her about trying to communicate with Dad. Maybe I could have told her that the headaches and visions never really went away. Maybe even that I thought I’d seen a corpse. Or that something had held me down in the pool last night.

But now, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Telling her about any of it would mean telling her all of it. And I’d been hiding things from my mother for so long that I couldn’t get a toehold.

She didn’t even know the real reason my ex-boyfriend, Aiden, had broken up with me back home. She thought it was because he’d found another girl, when really it had been — how had he put it? — my “wall of pain.” Shutting myself in and shutting him out. My mother considered Aiden the bad guy, when the truth was that I was the one who couldn’t deal with being close to another person.

Rather than answering, I leaned forward, unzipped the monstrosity, and slid the journal inside.

“I should get going,” I said. “See you after school?”

Mom nodded and leaned over to give me a hug and a kiss. Then I got out of the car before she could say anything else.

Lunchtime. Where the lonely and friendless go to be devoured.

I told myself that by the time I made it through the food line, the universe would, in an uncharacteristic fit of benevolence, find a way to show me where I was supposed to sit. Some girl from one of my morning classes would take pity, wave me over, and then BOOM, instant BFFs.

Instead, I found myself holding my tray, staring out over a sea of people who seemed sophisticated, comfortable, and totally not in need of a new friend.

The Langhorn lunchroom looked like the mutant offspring of a regular high school cafeteria and a hip nightclub. The ceiling was vaulted, with real wood beams, and the lights were nice hanging lamps, not cheap fluorescent bulbs. Then there were the couches, two semicircles in the center of the room. (So in case you wondered what thirty thousand dollars a year in tuition buys you — it’s the right to eat your lunch without a table.)

As I made my way past the tables of smiling, laughing kids, someone called, “Hey, Co

A girl beckoned to me from one of the couches.

I froze.

She clucked her tongue at me, like I was a dog, and patted the sofa next to her.

“You look agonizingly lonely.” Her voice had that detached flatness I was used to hearing from the kids at my old school who spent too much time in New York City. Only I could tell this girl really meant it, because the boredom went past her voice, into her eyes and the turned-down corners of her mouth.

She wore exactly what the rest of the female students wore: a green-and-black-plaid skirt, white collared shirt, green cardigan, and black tights. But she seemed much older and wiser, like a twenty-five-year-old trapped in the body of a high school junior. Her blunt-cut black hair brushed her shoulders and her glasses were cat-eyed with rhinestones at the corners.