Page 41 of Black Waters

He hung up on her. Bastard.

Whit’s face was lit by her phone when it rang again. I inspected the Russian. He was video chatting with her as if there wasn’t an injured man lying behind him.

When Whitney’s house lights automatically switched on, we both jumped.

Dad continued to watch Crash through his binoculars. “Crash is trying to talk. He’s pointing to something on the dock.”

The man talking to Whit held his phone in Crash’s direction. My mother’s shoulders shook as she tried to keep her tears silent. Crash’s finger was about where my water sign had been engraved. “He’s telling Whit where he is. Don’t panic, baby. I’m right here.”

Watching Whit find composure and sweet talk the Russian made me love her even more, but watching dangerous men walk into her home was like having someone slice me with razors.

The office was destroyed, bedrooms were vandalized, and then they made their way to Tim’s room—the one room I’d never searched myself. I don’t know why I believed her parents wouldn’t involve him after his death, but that was where, amongst the dead young mans belongings, the Russians found Whitney’s Russian birth certificate and a copy of the illegal one my dad had created.

“You got what you wanted,” I said to the men who couldn’t hear me. “Now leave.”

“Doesn’t feel right,” Dad said as we watched a black SUV pull into Whit’s backyard as the sun began to show itself. “They’re going to take Crash?”

But they didn’t. Men loaded into the SUV with two left behind, Crash and a stranger palming a syringe. In slow motion, the syringe emptied into my brother’s vein.

In slow motion, Crash was rolled into the black waters.

In slow motion, my mother, father, and I ran to our dock.

And it felt like slow motion as I dove and swam as fast as my body would allow.

In the distance, I could see her body forcefully entering the water, rushing to his. It took only one look at her cast to know I now had two lives to save. Surfacing for my last breath of air until we all would be inhaling again, I pled for Timothy Summers to help me. He once told Whit he would always be in that water waiting for her, and I was hoping he was right because I needed him more than ever.

There was no beauty in her dying that day…

The blue water Whit once loved now looked ominous because it was claiming her, taking her from me. My brother was unconscious again, blood floating from his wounds, his shirt clutched in her desperate, tiny fist. I swam with a vengeance to save them both. At least that’s what I believed until I saw her expression, the message in her eyes. The ballerina’s sacrifice… I knew Whitney was choosing to die for him—with him.

Morning sunrays showed the way, shining my path through the blackness to my best friend, to my brother. Whit’s elegant dancer hand floated gracefully above her, following her undeniable decent until her fingers twitched as if life—hope—had been somehow ignited. Whitney looked down to see Crash’s fingers pitifully touching hers, trying to encourage her to fight for her life because there was no beauty in her dying that day. Crash and I both knew it.

His eyes locked on mine. He had a slightly shocked expression seeing me racing to them both. And then… my brother smiled.

He looked proud.

I had made him proud, just as he had asked me to.

I wanted to scream when his eyes began to close again, but I couldn’t, or I would’ve swallowed the water trying to kill us all. The three of us would have tombstones like my Constance if I didn’t keep control of my emotions the way Timothy had taught me.

Through her dancing red hair, I grabbed her hand. Whit’s expression said she understood I was the only one who could save her and Crash. I hoped my expression told those green eyes that I would die trying.

I raced to the surface with two bodies in tow. At first, Whitney held tight to my wrist. Then her body began to jolt. I looked down and saw horror. Whitney’s mouth was open, and her body violently reacted to the water her hungry lungs demanded she consume. It was awful, the worst thing I will ever witness. I pulled her to me and tried to give her the little air I had left. Mouth to mouth, her body slowly subsided and molded to mine. But it wasn’t out of relief, it was because of her death.

When I pulled back to see her, Whit’s eyes were closed, and she had unwittingly released my brother. Crash floated downward beneath us. The back of his shirt was in my grasp before I even told my brain to grab him. It was a natural instinct to find my brother. But it wasn’t natural to sense what their stillness meant.

They were both… dead.

Both sets of eyes were closed, and tiny bubbles clung to blue lips.

I began to drown myself. My heart cracked wide open, and I screamed under the water blanketing me. Unimaginable sorrow forced me to release my remaining air. As I too accepted death, I pulled the now lifeless Whit against my chest and held my brother to us, clumsily holding their smaller bodies to mine.

There is nothing worse than feeling the people you love most die while you try to save them. And there is nothing more tragic than holding their dead bodies in your embrace.

We will sink to our fucking demise together.

As I surrendered, her lifeless head slowly floated down to my shoulder, and I closed my eyes, ready to feel her for the last time. Her soft little cheek caressed mine as it descended… “Don’t fail her again.”