May 6th
The heavy air laced with Arkansas humidity scratched my throat as I trekked across the parking lot to the inside of the only gas station within twelve miles of my home and school.
Cold cereal from my morning breakfast weighed heavily in my stomach as did the painful ache that came with waking up to an empty house yet again, my mother out early to work and my father away with his company like always.
He never quite specified what he did for the government, but I knew that it had something to do with environmental science as I had once peeked at his paperwork that he'd left out on his desk when I was thirteen, but once he'd caught me in his study he made sure not to make that mistake again and kept all of his papers in his locked briefcase whenever he was home, which wasn't often.
The silence was nice; it gave me time to reflect on my day, however, it did have its drawbacks.
In the late hours of the night when I would awake in a cold sweat, I could swear that I could hear voices taunting me, confirming my unfair thoughts telling me that I was to blame for Adam's death even when I wasn't even close to having all the answers of what happened that day.
I still remembered giving the report to the police telling them about the underwater current that had swept Adam away, feeling its deathly grip almost grab ahold of me as well before the firefighter who'd saved me could yank me back up through the water to the surface.
"There are no underwater currents in blue holes. It's impossible..." the officer with the mustache that looked as if it wanted to crawl off of his face had said.
"No, it's not-I saw it, it almost tried to suck me under too!"
His skepticism combined with the apparent fact that blue holes most certainly did not have a current made the truth that came out of my mouth sound more like a story made up by a girl who was too traumatized to recall the actual events of what had happened that day than an actual, credible adult.
The report that I gave somehow became public knowledge and soon the entire town saw me as a liar and turned me into a social pariah because I couldn't even recall the simplest detail as to why Adam had gone under in the first place.
The adrenaline surging through my body after I jumped from the cliff into the water was enough to shock my senses, and my brain couldn't rationalize why Adam had gone under the water when I had dived under as well. At first I thought he had tried to scare me or had simply been joking around and then been caught in the current that couldn't have existed but the more I thought about it the less likely that idea had seemed.
He had already been unconscious when I spotted him drowning, too far away for me to save. It could have been possible that the current tugged him under when he was simply bobbing on the surface, treading water.
I didn't pose that idea to the police, though. No, they already thought I was crazy, and I wasn't about to give them another item to the list of the reasons as to why they thought that way.
The scent of pungent gasoline and cigarette smoke permeated the once natural and brisk air as I made my way to the register to pay for gas in my two door Toyota.
The cashier eyed me with mild disinterest and soon enough I was out the door and pumping the fuel into my severely depleted car.
A trail of police cars, fire trucks, and two ambulances suddenly sped by in a flurry of excitement and turned to the left directly beside the only gas station in town.
Down the red dirt road they went, to the exact spot that I never wanted to see ever again, but couldn't help returning to time and time again all the while ignoring the marked signs to stay out.
I quickly finished up pumping my gas and pulled my car to a vacant spot in the parking lot, catching my breath and wiping the sweat off of the top of my brow while my erratic heartbeat tried to tell me to stop my crazy line of thinking.
It was another search party for Adam's missing body, there was no doubt in my mind about it.
I had seen his body countless times in the back of my mind, always floating there at the forefront just as he had been floating away from me in the vicious current that shouldn't have existed.
I didn't take the time to dwell on why there was a current more so than I had languished on the fact that he was just dead.
It was so hard to swallow, so hard to actually accept, especially when there had been no body. Night after night I replayed the events over in my head, thinking if I could have just been a faster swimmer that I could have saved him.
Guilt washed over me like a wave of nausea, toiling away in my stomach wrapped in a grief laden gift basket.
My decision was made before my engine could cool off and then my door was locked, my bag slung over my shoulder and school long forgotten, the heat causing steam to rise up from the fresh dew on the almost green needles of grass under my toes.
My feet hit the gravel road in a pattern to the beat of Adam's favorite song and suddenly all I could see was Adam: his pearly white smile, his beautiful blue eyes when the sun shone directly in them, the freckles that peeked out in the bright summertime, his soft touch against my shoulder in a friendly hug that I always wanted to turn into something more.
I ducked through a thicket of trees and brush to sneak in the clearing without being noticed, the shrubbery scratching the exposed skin of my arms as I was in a short sleeved t-shirt and jeans.
Strands of my night-black hair got caught on one of the branches to my left and I pinched my mouth shut from emitting a cry in pain as I noticed the emergency teams were close by.
The quarry was the size of a large pond, seemingly innocent and innocuous to the untrained eye, but lurking under the surface were secrets large enough to fill an ocean.
It was just as beautiful as it had been that August day, although its beauty held a dangerous glint of terror to me in that moment.
The firetruck had a long cable and crane attachment that was being lowered slowly into the water and I watched in awe as a man in a wetsuit was descended deeper and deeper into the eerily still water.
My heartbeat racketed in my chest as tears pooled on the surface of my eyes, glistening in the manifestation of pain in their prickling iridescence. I didn't know if witnessing his body rising from the surface of the water would give me closure or destroy me even more.
I was so enraptured in watching the events unfurl before me that I hadn't noticed another presence directly behind me.
I turned and the once easily taken breath was snatched away from me in a flurry of surprise and panic.
The exact replica of the man whose body they were trying to unearth stood before me, sweating bullets in a pair of shorts without a shirt on that showed off his defined muscles that created a sheen of tanned deliciousness.
"Raven Collins, why exactly am I not surprised?"
Beck Anderson had caught me, and I was terrified of what he would do to me now that he had.