Burned

26 THE BENDS

That afternoon, despite the fact that she still had a teensy bit of gum in her hair and her ankle hurt like hell, Spencer sat in a fishing boat with the other members of the dive class. They had motored to a small set of naturally formed coves in an uninhabited part of the island. The rocks looked slick and wet, and the empty turquoise sea spread out behind them. The spot was beautiful, but it was also eerily remote.

Tim cut the boat’s engine. “I’ve saved the most picturesque dive for last. The coral in this cove is amazingly preserved and in perfect health. See if you can spot all the angelfish—this is where they like to hang out. Is everyone ready?”

Everyone murmured yes, and Tim led them through the meticulous checks of their gauges and tanks. After he finished, Tim gazed at Spencer. “Do you and Reefer want to go down first?”

Reefer. Spencer peeked at him across the boat. Reefer was sitting next to Naomi, pointedly avoiding her gaze. They hadn’t said a word to each other since Spencer broke up with him. She would have skipped the last dive altogether, but ditching out would mean she wouldn’t pass the course. And even though her future at Princeton seemed secure, she wasn’t putting it past A to try and screw it up once again.

A—meaning Naomi. Spencer glowered at Naomi, who was possessively holding Reefer’s arm. Happy now? she wanted to snap. You got exactly what you wanted, like you always do.

Instead, she shot Tim a tight smile. “Can Kirsten be my partner instead?”

Tim glanced at Kirsten, who was sitting with her partner, a girl named Jessica. “It’s cool,” Jessica said, and Kirsten stood up and grabbed her swim fins.

“The only thing I ask is that no one strays from the group, okay?” Tim said as he moved out of the way for the girls to climb into the water. “These currents can be very dangerous. I don’t want anyone getting swept away.”

A hand went up in the back. “But I heard there’s even more amazing coral a few coves over,” a short-haired guy with a pierced eyebrow said. “Can we check it out together?”

“Definitely not.” Tim’s eyebrows furrowed. “The coral in those coves is really sharp—someone could hurt themselves. It’s also really deep over there—not safe for novice divers. Stay where I can see you at all times, okay?”

Spencer sighed. That meant she’d have to stay in sight of Reefer and Naomi, too.

She grabbed a dive mask from the milk crate and pulled the strap over her head. Then she and Kirsten sat on the side of the boat, counted to three, and flipped backward into the water.

The water was cool on Spencer’s skin, and she felt herself sinking down, down, down. She opened her eyes, sucked in a breath, and looked around. Tropical fish darted to and fro. Fingerlike seaweed waved in an elegant ballet. She located Kirsten a few yards away and waved. Kirsten gestured to Spencer’s tank and raised her eyebrows—as partners, they were supposed to keep an eye on each other’s gauges. But Spencer just shook her head—they’d been in the water for only a few minutes. There was no need to check the controls yet. What she really needed was a few moments of being truly and purely alone. She turned toward the cove the boy in the boat had been talking about, eager to check out the vast depths. Screw the rules.

She watched everyone else on the boat descend into the water, including Naomi and Reefer. Once Tim’s back was turned, she swam gracefully away from the group, and for a few minutes, all she could hear was the sounds of her mechanized breathing. Bubbles floated across her field of view. A school of small, neon-pink fish darted past, followed by a sinuous manta ray. Spencer swam even deeper until she was face-to-face with the coral.

Unbidden, a memory popped into her head. At the beginning of sixth grade, when they’d first become friends, the Hastingses and the DiLaurentises both took a trip to their vacation homes in Longboat Key, Florida, for a long weekend, and Ali and Spencer had taken a scuba class. As they’d walked down the dock, Ali had nudged her side and pointed to an icy blonde leading the group. “For a second, I was afraid that was Naomi Zeigler,” she’d whispered. “Her family has a condo here, you know.”

Spencer had looked at Ali. “Why aren’t you friends with her anymore?”

“We had a fight,” Ali answered simply, adjusting her bikini strap.

“About what?” Spencer asked.

Ali shrugged. “Naomi knows what she did.”

She never elaborated further. Now Spencer understood that it had been Courtney talking, a girl who’d never known Naomi. There had never been a fight—Naomi had never done anything.

Or … had she? There had been something so chilling about Courtney’s voice when she spoke about Naomi, a rawness not even the best actress could fake. Had she identified something dangerous about Naomi when she’d arrived in Rosewood? Was there more to the story than Spencer knew?

As she ran her fingers across a piece of coral, a sharp pain prodded at her skull. She wheeled around, thinking something had struck her, but there wasn’t a person or even a fish anywhere close. She blinked hard, suddenly feeling light-headed. When she took a breath, her lungs didn’t fill. Had she gone too deep? Did she have the bends?

She tried to breathe in again, but she couldn’t inhale. Suddenly desperate, she fiddled with her dive mask—perhaps it wasn’t lined up properly with her mouth. But it was, and yet she still couldn’t draw a breath. Her heart began to pound. She tried to swim to the surface, but her arms and legs felt like dead weights. She checked her pressure gauge again, but the tank was still full. That was impossible, though—she definitely wasn’t getting oxygen.

She gasped for air, an idea forming in her mind. She’d heard about this kind of thing happening. People could mess with the gauges, make them appear at the right levels when in fact the tank was empty. She knew that was what had happened. And she knew who had done it, too. A.

Spencer woozily glanced through the water, finding Naomi within the clump of divers in the distance. The baby oil and bed-breaking tricks were child’s play compared to cutting off her oxygen supply. Of course Naomi still hated her! And to think, Spencer thought she was safe just because she’d broken up with Reefer!

“Mmm!” she cried, the sound getting swallowed up in the water. Spots were starting to form in front of her eyes. She flailed her arms and legs and weakly called out for help, but the divers were too far away to notice. She kicked closer. By now her lungs were burning, greedy for air.

“Mmm!” she called out, waving her arms some more. But all the divers’ backs were to her. Spencer’s eyes started to close. Her neck lolled back, and her body suddenly felt heavy. Darkness crept in, obscuring her vision. Her leg bumped a piece of rock, but she couldn’t move. She had no energy to move. This was the end, and she couldn’t even fight.

A warm feeling washed over her body, and she allowed herself to sink. She couldn’t hear breathing in her ears any longer. Her eyes fluttered closed. The last thing she saw was a light coming toward her, filling her field of vision …

Then, air pushed into Spencer’s lungs, and she opened her eyes with a jolt. She coughed violently, and salt water spewed from her mouth and exploded from her nose, burning her nostrils. She was lying on the deck of the boat again. Reefer crouched over her, his lips wet, a relieved look on his face.

“Oh my God,” he breathed. “Are you okay?”

Spencer tried to speak, but another cough came out instead. She rolled over to her side and waited for the water to drain from her ears. For a split second, she thought Reefer had just been kissing her, that their break-up had been a dream. But then everything rushed back.

“What … happened?” she croaked.

“You just started sinking,” Reefer said. “I found you and pulled you to the surface, then gave you mouth-to-mouth. Tim checked your gauges—you had no oxygen left in your tank.”

A chill snaked up her spine. She searched the crowd of kids that had gathered on the boat and found Naomi lurking at the back, her gaze bouncing from Spencer to Reefer. Her lips were pressed together so tightly they were almost transparent, and her eyes were round and wide. She looked shaken—maybe because Reefer was comforting Spencer.

Or maybe because her plan to hurt Spencer had failed.