Total pages in book: 152
Estimated words: 147545 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 590(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147545 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 590(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
Her eyes are already wide and terrified, but I’m not finished punishing her, so I keep going.
“I’m telling you this because I know that if I let you leave this lake house tonight, you’ll be facing the same choice she did last summer. Should I tell someone what he did and hope they’ll believe me, or should I keep my fucking mouth shut and let him get away with it?” I pull her up out of the water to drag her closer, but this time, she flinches away. “I’ll get away with it no matter what you choose, but only one choice will allow you to escape unscathed. If you even briefly consider betting on the decency of others, I want you to remember how that went for Cassie and consider very carefully if you really want to take a walk in her shoes.”
“I don’t,” she says softly, keeping her face turned away from me, her body limp with submission like good little prey.
Nina’s more realistic about the food chain we all live by than Cassie ever was. She knows there’s no chance she will win if she takes me on, and she only fights what she knows she can kill.
I let go, and she sinks back into the water.
I stand, and she rolls over, bracing herself on her hands and knees. She’s soaked through, her top dangling, exposed in a way she hadn’t anticipated.
She looks up at me, and beneath the fear, I see the hurt, the betrayal.
The sadness.
I don’t think that one is for me, though.
This encounter has set her straight on which brother she’s dealing with, but when she looks at my face, she can’t help but think of Tim.
He never deserved that kind of devotion from her.
“I know you liked him,” I tell her, and beneath the fear combo, she looks stricken by the mention of him. “You never would have been able to keep him, though. Tim didn’t commit. I guess when that quality was divvied out between us, I got all of it.”
I didn’t think Nina had it in her to surprise me, but despite what I just put her through, she recovers enough to say dryly, “Cassie’s a lucky girl.”
I smile faintly, but clear any trace of amusement before she looks up at me again. I don’t want her to mistakenly get the impression there’s any camaraderie between us.
I know Nina’s resilient, and she rolls with the punches—even when those punches have spikes—so as she gets to her feet, I’m not expecting any trouble, and this time, she doesn’t surprise me.
Across the lake, an errant firework explodes in the sky, some neighbor celebrating late now that it’s dark enough.
I wonder if it reminds Nina of the other night and makes her wish she hadn’t sat down to talk to me.
During those fireworks, she told me that Cassie wasn’t the only girl in Holbrook. Maybe now she realizes she’s the only one who matters to me.
I don’t know why I attached to Cassie the way I did all those years ago. Maybe I’m not even being honest with myself about when I first felt it, because even before I realized I liked Cassie, I have memories of her.
We’ve gone to the same schools our entire lives, so we’ve always orbited each other.
She was the prettiest girl in kindergarten, so Tim and I used to battle it out over who got to play house with her during center time. I stole her library book in first grade and got her in trouble with the school librarian. It was the first time I’d ever seen her shoot anyone a dirty look, and even though I was the recipient of her baby wrath, I felt uncomfortable when her big eyes filled with tears after the librarian got done scolding her for something that was my fault.
In second grade, I slipped a valentine into her backpack but didn’t sign it because, frankly, she was still holding a grudge about the library book theft from the previous year. But then in third grade, she sat next to me when she saw me sitting alone at the back of the bus on the way to the field trip. Not because I was a Walters or even because she had a soft spot for me, but because it’s who she is. She would have sat down next to any lonely-looking kid, even the one that had been a jerk to her.
She had a crush on Ian Campbell in fourth grade, so I got in my first fistfight with him. We weren’t in the same class when she left school in fifth grade, but I remember the strange way my stomach dropped when I overheard that she didn’t go to our school anymore. And I remember in middle school, spotting her at recess in a denim skirt and a pink shirt with daisies on it and feeling relief that she was back.