-dark
-tires moving through water
She’s hearing things. Not seeing them. Is she blindfolded now? Tied up?
-scratching, break nails, stings
-falling, water
-no tears
-alone
-can’t breathe
-quiet
-forever, quiet forever
-six nights
-six nights, six nights, six nights…
I push my finger up the page, back tofalling, water. I’d missed the comma. I thought it saidfalling water.
But she was falling.
Then…there’s water.
My chest rises and falls, and I let the wheels turn in my head, but I can’t believe them. This has to be a joke. Someone’s rendition of what happened that night, but it’s not the true story. Winslet MacCreary was not the origin of our urban legend about mirrors.
Or the urban legend about the bridge. I scan the murder map again, seeing mentions of Rivalry Week and the stories about the car still at the bottom of the river.
Pay to pass.
I do know that urban legend and where it came from a little more than the Carnival Tower one. A story about a girl who was packed into a car trunk that was forced over the side of the bridge between our two towns.
I hold the diary, my hands shaking.
Whenever people cross the bridge, no matter which way, they flick a coin into the water. Not for luck. Not out of remembrance.
They pay to be allowed to pass unharmed from her ghost that’s still down there.
According to Hawke, Aro, Kade, Dylan, and Hunter’s map, she died there.
Six days later…I’d read.
I lower my eyes to the pages again.
-free
-swimming
-air
I breathe out the faintest…weakest…laugh.
She didn’t die. At least not there. She made it out.
