What could I do, though? They didn’t believe me. But I bet they’re wishing they’d listened to me now.
CORA
IT WAS GETTING dark by the time we reached the stream. In the summer holidays, when we were younger, we’d sometimes go to the stream to splash about. You couldn’t swim in the river, obviously, and the beach was always crammed with tourists. So the stream was like our little secret. A place we knew no one else would come.
“Do you reckon here’s a good place to stop?” said Luke, when we came within sight of the bank.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so relieved. I mean, I would have been fine if it hadn’t been for Abi. Not fine, obviously, but it was only because she was acting so jittery that I’d started to get freaked-out myself. Not because of bears. I mean, seriously. Fucking bears. What planet was she even on? But she was constantly looking over her shoulder, and after a while I started checking behind me, too. And obviously the darker it got, the harder it was to see. It had got to the point that, from imagining I was seeing Sadie in every shadow, I probably wouldn’t have spotted her if she’d been swinging right in front of me from a tree. I—
Jesus.
I can’t believe I just said that.
I just meant . . . You know what I meant. Right? I didn’t mean to imply . . . I didn’t mean anything, I swear. I’d just . . . I’d been trying to make sense of it, you know? Walking along, trying to figure out how we’d got to the point where we were doing what we were doing. As in, searching for our best friend in the middle of the woods, and praying we wouldn’t find her dead. I was comparing it to the beginning of the summer, to that night we spent on the beach, the day we finished our exams. The start of the evening anyway, before Mason threw a Mason and ruined it for everyone else. But at first, as we were passing around the bottles of wine, nothing else seemed to matter. Not school, not exams, not our parents, not being stuck in this shithole of a town. Nothing except being out there in the sand dunes with our friends. And it wasn’t like we were setting the world to rights. We were just . . . having a laugh. That’s all. And what I couldn’t work out was why couldn’t life be like that all the time? Why did all the bullshit have to come along and ruin things? And when I thought about that, I had to bite down to stop myself crying.
So yeah, when Luke suggested we stop, I was the first one to agree. But nobody objected. The others were obviously flagging as well, which wasn’t surprising given the heat. Because there was no breeze out there. No oxygen, it felt like. Just this thickness in your throat, like the air was something you could have chewed.
There was a clearing by the stream, and without anyone saying anything, we dumped our bags and collapsed down next to them. I had no idea how much ground we’d covered, but it felt like we’d walked for miles. And it was tough going in the forest. The ground was hard because it had been so hot, but there were still lots of twigs and stuff underfoot. It was as tiring as walking on sand.
Abi was trying her phone again, and the boys began feeding themselves sips of water. I’d caned half of my bottle already, so rather than wasting any more I figured I’d take a drink from the stream. I splashed my face first, and the water was deliciously cool. I made a scoop with my hands, and brought the water to my lips—but then Luke appeared out of nowhere and batted my hands away.
“Hey!” I said, turning.
“You can’t drink that,” he said.
“Why not? It’s clear.”
“But it’s barely running. And anyway, it doesn’t matter what it looks like. It’s what’s in it that matters. Like, microbes and stuff. You’ll make yourself ill.”
“He’s right,” said Fash. “Here.” He tossed me a full bottle of water. “I’ve got plenty if you’re running low.”
I fumbled the bottle, but caught it before it rolled into the stream. I looked down at the water and, rather than clear, this time the stream looked like it had turned black. It was just the light, I expect, or lack of it, but it made me think of something in a fairy tale. One of the old ones, the type that always gave me nightmares, where people drown, or have their eyes pecked out, or end up being eaten alive. It gave me the creeps, and I crawled back up toward the others.
We laid out my groundsheet and Fash’s blanket. Compared to elsewhere in the woods, the ground was weirdly soft. It was because of the stream, I suppose, and seeing as it was going to be our bed for the night, I guess I should have been glad. But the ground being so spongy felt wrong somehow. Sort of . . . rotten. Like touching a piece of gone-off fruit.
Nobody spoke much after that. We were all exhausted, and not just from the day we’d spent searching. It was everything catching up with us, the sleepless nights since Sadie had gone missing. If you’d asked me before we got there, I would have pretty much guaranteed we’d have sat up talking all night. The way we would have when we were younger. But Luke just rolled onto his side, so that his back was toward the rest of us. Fash started snoring almost the second his head hit the ground, and soon enough even Abi fell asleep. Her phone screen
