Page 20 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

“The way the river makes you feel alive.” She took off her hat and rubbed her salt-and-pepper hair, the droplets sparkling as they fell. Then she looked down at her brother. Charlie was still sprawled across the boat, racked with coughing.

“Breathe,” Thor instructed him. “You’re safe now.”

Liv reached down to pull Charlie’s PFD away from his neck. “It’s okay. We’ve got you.”

His skin was mottled red and white, the adrenaline in his eyes making him resemble a cornered animal.

Liv leaned even closer. “Are you okay?”

He gave her a tight shake of the head.

“Did someone push you?”

“I can’t . . . I don’t think . . .”

He pushed himself upright and glanced around. While the world felt larger to Liv after making it through the rapid, Charlie looked shrunken. Scared. As if the canyon had trapped him.

“Think of it this way,” Mandy said. “Now you don’t have to wonder what it might feel like to fall in.”

“That’s right,” Thor said. “You’re not a river virgin anymore.”

“River virgin. Dunked for the very first time.” What Mandy lacked in singing ability, she made up for in enthusiasm. “River vi-ir-ir-ir-gin—”

Charlie clamped his hands to his temples, pressing his soaked Babette hat to his head. Liv leaned toward him again.

“You’re fine. It’s just a shock.”

“She said it’d be safe out here,” he whispered. “She was lying.”

Liv could barely hear Charlie over the rushing water and Mandy’s singing. But she heard the emotion in his voice. It wasn’t fear. It was more than that. It was terror.

She bent down close to him. “Your sister?”

“She set this up.”

“Did she push you? That’s what I thought I saw, but I wasn’t sure . . .”

“Devon? She got knocked into me by that wave.” Charlie shuddered like a wet dog. “No. It’s Babette. She planned this.”

The raft jolted left, and Charlie slumped down into the footwell, his face hidden by the brim of his cap. The river had ruined his hat, replacing its pristine white fabric with a smeared mottle of reds and browns. But that wasn’t the only thing that had changed. In the middle of the crown, a snow-white uppercase B looped across the muddied fabric.

Liv reached up and touched the crown of her own hat. Just as Mandy had noted earlier, there was something raised there, a swooping layer of embroidered thread. She traced it with a finger. An italicized B.

Liv looked over to where her sister was playing air guitar with Thor. For all Mandy’s frivolous impulses, she was observant. Mandy saw underneath things, rooting out stories she could shape from the little surprises and aberrations of life. As their dad had always said, the best lies are based in something true.

“Your hat,” Liv said to Charlie.

“What?”

“It changed.” She removed the cap gently from his head and turned it to face him. The bright, looping B burst from the dirtied crown like a shout. Like a slap.

He flinched when he saw it. “I’m telling you, she arranged for this to happen. Not showing up. Me falling in. Like Fiona said. It’s all part of her plan.”

“Her plan to what?”

“To get rid of me.”

“Why would she want to do that?”