Jessica

“It was you!” I storm the beach, shouting over the wind. The coast is socked in by fog, and the froth-tipped waves of the Pacific Ocean churn up the sediment, making the water look brown.

I catch Grady and Chloe in the middle of a kiss—their first? They break apart when they hear me shouting. Their dogs splash and play at the river’s mouth, oblivious.

“Explain this, Chloe.” I hold up the tiny camera, the missing evidence that contains the video of Jake and Tegan having sex, but also more—much, much more.

Grady draws his eyebrows together, and Chloe backs away from both of us.

“What did you do? What did you do!” I cry, clutching the camera in my fist, terrified of dropping it into the water.

Her mouth pops open; her eyes fill with tears. “No—nothing.” Her body breaks into deep shivers.

“I watched the recording.”

Chloe blanches.

“It was you in Tegan’s bedroom. You fought with her and smashed the mirror.”

Grady staggers. “What are you saying, Jessica?”

But my eyes remain fixed on Chloe.

“Tegan attacked me,” Chloe rasps, walking backward.

I shake my head, my voice rising with the wind. “No, you’re lying. You went into her room and fought with her. Tegan saw the posts on her phone and accused you of syncing the camera to the TV. You admitted it, Chloe. I heard you!” I wave the camera at her, and she lunges for it.

“Give it back!” she cries.

“No.” I toss it to Grady, hoping he can catch as well as he can pitch. He’s startled, but his long arm snakes out and the camera lands safely in his palm.

Chloe starts to cry, and I snarl at her, “When Tegan tried to get the camera back, you attacked her. It’s all there, and Jake slept through it. You knew he was innocent this whole time. You let everyone believe—” I choke back tears and press on. “The camera kept recording by the pool house. I heard everything. I know what you did.”

Grady can’t breathe. He stares at Chloe in horror. “You put my sister in the bench? You—you tried to kill her?”

“No.” Chloe’s arms lift up to block her face. The tumbling surf swipes at her legs, licking her hungrily, but Chloe seems suddenly more dangerous than the sea. Her fake teeth chatter. “I—I was trying to climb the f-fence behind the pool house but she…she gr-grabbed me. She fell.”

“Tegan didn’t fall,” I sputter. “You kicked her to the concrete with those.” I point at Chloe’s legs, the thick pistons that power her into the air, fling her into triple flips, and then catch her landings like solid bolts of steel. “You knocked her out, broke her arm, crammed her in that bench, and then let the world believe Jake did it.” My voice warbles.

“Why?” Grady asks, looking destroyed.

Chloe’s voice pitches so high, the dogs bound over to lick her hands. Her head swivels from me to Grady. “You don’t see how your sister treats me. Sh-she hates me.” Her face twists. “Tegan tried to k-keep me away from both of you. She—she tried to ruin me. Do you know wh-what she said right before I took the b-beam that day?”

Chloe glances at me, and I know exactly what day she’s talking about—the day she busted out nine of her front teeth and lost her chance at the National Junior Olympic team. The day that ended her international gymnastics career.

Chloe’s voice turns cold, slick. “After my perfect uneven-bar score, I went to the restroom, and Tegan was there, waiting for me. She said, ‘Beam is next, right? I’m filming it for Grady. Don’t fall like you did in practice.’”

Grady flinches.

“Tegan knew I had a crush on you,” Chloe growls. “She said that to get into my head, and then she sat in the front row, waving her camera at me, and it worked. I couldn’t focus. It almost killed me.”

Tegan’s brother pounds his chest. “She was a kid,” he snarls. “It was years ago. My sister could have died, Chloe! Why did you leave her in there so long? Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“I thought she was dead.”

“Oh god.” A wave of nausea rolls over me. “You thought you were hiding a body.”

Chloe sniffles. “I needed to focus on the college showcase. There was no point in getting help if she…was gone.”

Grady charges her, his arm cocked back, his huge hand balled into a fist.

“Grady, no!” I shout, but he stops himself, inches from Chloe’s face.

“I hate you,” he rasps. “I hate you, I hate you!” His words batter her worse than any punches could.

“Stop it!” she screams, covering her ears.

“Did you drug her too?” he asks. “Did you want everyone to see her and Jake together?”

Sobbing, Chloe shakes her head. “No. I didn’t know about that, just the bet, and I didn’t believe Jake would go for Tegan. I wanted him to reject her. I wanted her friends to watch her lose, like I lost. All I meant to do was film it. I—I had no idea she’d drug him.”

I flash back to Chloe’s contortionist show at the party. “Did you do those tricks on the dining room table so that everyone would be near the TV?”

Her stricken face confirms what I’ve said. She glances at the dark sky. “But when Tegan and Jake kept going, I—I couldn’t believe it. That wasn’t supposed to happen. When everyone started posting, I knew there’d be an investigation, because it happened to that girl on my team. My fingerprints were on the camera, and I just wanted to grab it. I didn’t plan to fight with Tegan. I’m sorry, Grady.”

Chloe is hunched now, shivering harder and soaked with sea spray. She glares at me. “None of this would have happened if you hadn’t made that bet, Jessica.”

“What you did to Tegan isn’t my fault,” I cry.

Grady swipes back his hair, still stuck on the details. “You turned off our security cameras, didn’t you?” he asks. Chloe looks away, tearful, and he drops his head into his hands. “Jesus, I gave you the password when we got the puppies, so you could walk Boomer. The police asked if anyone had access, but I totally forgot. Damnit! You—you…” He can’t finish. He stares at the camera in his hand, which holds the truth about what happened to his sister.

Chloe takes another step back, deeper into the water. “I’m sorry. Please, I’m sorry.”

Her face shifts, so raw, like I’ve never seen it. I cross my arms, sickened. “Did you put Tegan’s phone in Jake’s truck?”

Chloe cries louder.

I glance at Grady. “We should call the police.”

“No,” she pleads. “I just committed to UCLA. I worked for this my entire life.” Her eyes dart to Grady. “Don’t do this to me.”

His eyebrows lift and his cheeks flame. He exhales, almost involuntarily. “Tegan always said you were no good for me. She saw you for the monster you are.”

I think back to Tegan’s hatred when we were kids, calling Chloe a parasite and a clown, taunting Chloe at her meets. I remember Tegan slapping me in fifth grade and then Chloe shoving her into a table. Were each of my friends capable of violence? Then there was me, daring Tegan to kiss Jake and then blaming him for it. I’m no better.

Chloe shakes her head, her wet hair slapping her skin. “Tegan’s the monster.”

“Maybe we all are,” I whisper. We each took things too far, but no one further than Chloe. “I’m calling the police.” I slide my phone out of my pocket. Shawna’s voice whispers across the water, Everyone is lying, and my throat constricts with a new, more terrible realization. “Did Shawna find out you synced the camera? Did you kill her and set up Jake for that too?”

Chloe’s expression hardens and her shoulders lift. “He shouldn’t have cheated on you.”

“He was drugged!”

“I didn’t know that.” Chloe’s eyes morph into those opaque portals from her photos. She sees the future and it scares her; I can tell by the tremble in her chin. It’s the beam routine all over again, and Chloe’s afraid of what’s next. “They don’t have gymnastics in prison,” she murmurs.

Grady and I cock our heads, noticing she didn’t deny killing Shawna.

The waves swell behind Chloe as the heat and wind from Mexico tangle with our fog and icy water, creating a pile of sodden, heavy, gray clouds that sparkle and rumble overhead. As the first droplets of rain splatter us, Chloe dashes into the sea.

“Chloe, stop,” I shout, and then turn my back on the ocean to dial the police.

Mistake number one.

A sleeper wave swamps Chloe and then me, knocking us off our feet. Ice-cold salt water floods my mouth, sand scrapes my skin, and tumbling waves drag me out and roll me into the deep. Murky, swirling sediment confuses my senses. Grady’s muffled shouts pierce the surface like bullets.

Then suddenly I’m sliding through the water, as if something strong, something angry is pulling me. A ghost. Shawna.

No, it’s Chloe.

Her fingers wrap around my arm, and her eyes bulge, terrified, and then a new wave breaks us apart. I kick harder as my muscles catch fire. My lungs seem to swell and shrink at the same time. I scream into the current.

The riptide sweeps us into the open ocean. To the sharks. To the watery graves of fish.

Mistake number two.

Chloe is not more dangerous than the sea.