Riveroak

Chapter 6

I can't tell you what happened in the moments after I screamed. It was chaos. People were shouting my name, then screaming in the same terror that I felt seeing her body. My vision fuzzed over, but the image of her dead body stayed fixated in my brain when I closed my eyes. 

I'm standing in front of Victoria Caldwell's body. 

"I'm calling the cops!" someone shouts.

A strong pair of hands wrapped around my shoulders and slowly drug me back from under the dock. I turned my head slightly and saw Chip standing behind me. "You're okay," he whispered. His face was pale as the moon tonight. 

The night I saw Victoria's dead body. 

I thought that I would know what to do in a situation like this. I've listened to so many podcasts. I've read so many books and watched all the documentaries. I didn't think that I would have panicked. You always think you know what you're going to do in a moment of crisis, but when it actually strikes, it's that point in time where you either saddle up or fall apart. 

I fell apart. 

How did I miss her body as I ran from Jared in the woods? Her bloated deformed body was so visible. I was so focused on not jumping into the lake naked that I missed a whole dead human floating under the dock. 

"How has no one found her until now?" I wonder out loud as Gala, Anne-Marie, Stassi, and Pria run up to me. 

Gala runs over and throws her arms around my neck and squeezes. "What happened? What did you see down there?" 

Victoria Caldwell's dead body. 

It hits me like a ton of bricks that these girls don't know that their best friend is lying under the dock. No one knows what I saw. I didn't say her name, and no one is jumping into the water after the initial few jumped into the water and announced to everyone there was a body. 

"It's..." I can't finish the sentence. I can't break the news to the girls that their friend whom they all assume ran away is dead lying in the water so close to their school.

"Elena, how did no one find who?" asks Anne-Marie. 

I open my mouth to speak, but it feels as if all the oxygen in my lungs were sucked out. Chip puts his hand on my back, and clears his throat. The girls look at him as if they didn't know he was there until just this moment. 

"I think she's in shock. I didn't get good look at what was down there. I was more focused on getting Elena up after she screamed, but it was a girl's body." 

"Oh, my god." 

Anne-Marie and Gala took off in a full sprint toward the dock. They waste no time jumping straight into the cold water, and I watch the color drain from them as they make the same realization that I made. 

Anne-Marie lets out a grief-stricken roar from under the dock. Sobs filled the air from both girls as they quickly made their way back from the water and collapsed onto the sand. "She's dead!" they screamed at Stassi and Pria. "Victoria is under the dock dead!" 

It was then that blue and red lights filled the night sky. Sirens were screaming over the sounds of sobs from Anne-Marie and Gala. Six police offers ran down the beach toward the dock followed closely behind by a team of paramedics. The paramedics were holding a gurney as they ran behind the police officers. 

"Excuse me?" 

I turn and see a man in a cheap pinstriped grey suit. His dirty blonde hair is slicked back and curled at the front. He looked young enough that his wide-set jaw made him look more like a model than a detective. He looks over at the police offers at the dock and one comes out from under and nods to him.