Page 1

Chapter 1

No one gets in the car expecting to find a body on the side of the road. At least, no one who’s had a semi-functional upbringing or largely trauma-free life does.

When I slipped behind the wheel and headed down the misty forest backroads toward my university, I adjusted the volume of my car stereo, turning it up to twenty-nine—never an even number—with the bass of the rock song thrumming in my chest. Tall hemlocks and Norway spruces whirred by in my periphery as green blurs skirted in white from the mounds of snow and ice the snowplows kicked up. Just as I got to the chorus, I pushed the volume to thirty-three for the swelling instrumental, but my finger slipped off the controls when my gaze jerked to the right, landing on a deer-sized, haphazardly-tossed object lying across a boulder in the water.

Penn’s Creek widened on the side of the road, the water churning with chunks of ice that broke on the boulders jutting out of the white stream as it raced to empty into the Susquehanna River a mile away. Ice water pulsed against the obstacles in its path, spraying the white object caught on the rocks.

My throat constricted. It had to be a trick of the eyes. Riss told me about something called pareidolia—a condition of seeing patterns and faces where there weren’t normally, like a smile in tree bark or eyes in a chair. In more extreme cases, a discarded jacket on the side of the road could look like a wounded animal.

In my case, I wanted to believe what I saw was little more than a scarecrow leftover from Halloween that wound up in the creek, snagged on the rocks and looking like a bone-pale body.

I couldn’t make assumptions though, and I slammed on the breaks, careening onto the shoulder before whipping it into reverse. Tires kicking up gravel, I backed up until I could see through gaps in the trees on the bank and shut off the stereo with a flick of my hand. My heart took up residence in my throat, threatening to choke me.

Not real, not real, not real.

I squinted to get a better look at the figure on the rocks.

It definitely wasn’t a scarecrow.

I couldn’t believe it was a body, but I couldn’t make out what it really was either.

There was only one way to find out. I had to get closer.

For ten seconds, I debated whether or not I should leave the car running. Would someone try to steal it while I shimmied down the bank? What if I locked myself out by mistake over nothing?

You’re wasting time.

I dashed out, hitting the unlock button three times to be sure I didn’t get locked out without my keys, then headed for the bank. The frozen dirt cracked under my boots and crunched like broken glass. I grabbed onto dead creeper vines and spindly sapling trunks to stop myself from rolling headfirst to the pebbled shore below, leaning back to keep my center of gravity low.

When my soles hit the rocks, I walked up to the frozen edge, then two steps further until there was an echoing crack of the ice about to give. Only a foot of water ran beneath me, but I still wasn’t keen to fall in.

At last, I glanced up at the rocks that had to be at least twenty meters away, and I couldn’t process what I saw.

Deep down, I knew what it was. I knew this was something I was never going to unsee, but I wanted to find an explanation. I wanted to be convinced it was something else, and I had panicked for nothing.

I wanted someone to tell me that those weren’t legs. They were just a pair of pants washed up on the rocks, and I wanted to be told those weren’t bare arms. They were just mannequin parts of Styrofoam pieces that looked like appendages.

There was no way to come to grips with the face. White and blueish from the cold, eyes shut, purple lips parted, and raven-black hair plastered to his cheeks and forehead.

Maybe it was another trick of the wind and my frazzled mind, but I could have sworn his back rose and fell weakly every few seconds like a buoy on the icy waters.

I drove my fingers into my hair, raking my scalp as a whimper of frustration bubbled out of me.

“This can’t be real... This can’t be real, this can’t be real, this can’t be real.”

I paced the shore, thoughts turning as tumultuously as the waters threatening to drag the man down off the rock with every churn of the current. I needed to call for help. I needed to flag someone down on the road and get them to call the fire department or rescue team or whoever you called for a situation like this.

But that would take several minutes. Maybe twenty. Maybe thirty.

I had to act now. Thinking of my sister, I hissed under my breath. “Evie is going to kill me if I die doing this.” I ripped the zippers down the side of my boots, kicking them off and stepping onto the cold, hard ice that crackled and popped with every breath. Tossing my coat, scarf, and gloves back onto the shore since I would need them dearly when I returned, I spread out my legs and shuffled little by little to the edge of the ice.

The inevitable was coming, so I took my next step deliberately hard, breaking through the sheet of ice and landing straight into the bone-chilling waters.

Jack from the Titanic said it felt like knives all over your body, and I had to agree. I wanted to jump back out and run for the car the moment the water made contact with my fragile skin, but then I thought how cold and how pained the young man on the rocks had to be if he’d been in the water for more than a minute.

Whimpering, I stuck my next foot in the water, then began wading out. The water level deepened quicker than expected. Every inch that rose up my body elicited a hiss of pain and discomfort. When it reached my stomach, I wanted to cry. When it reached my chest, I gritted my teeth, determined to take the pain like a hardened warrior.

If anyone ever asked me to do a polar bear plunge in the future, I fully intended to smack them.