Possessions by Nancy Holder Read Free Book Online

pockets of her peacoat, and she rocked back on her heels when she saw me, her eyes spinning with excitement. I had the feeling she hadn’t known about this little trip at dinner. But she was there now.
    I smelled the lake water—mossy, with a slight undercurrent of rot. The moon glittered on the vast, black surface. Flashlights bobbed as the girls stood beneath starlight and moonlight, waiting, like me, to see what was going to happen next.
    Then, at the very edge of the shoreline, Shayna from our lit class shifted her weight. She was dressed in gray sweats and a navy hoodie, holding a folded blanket in her arms.
    Kiyoko saw her, stopped, and said, “I brought a towel, Shayna.”
    “This is stupid,” Shayna hissed. “I can’t believe you’re doing it. That you didn’t tell me.”
    “This is why, Shay,” Lara said. “You’re embarrassing her.”
    Lara took hold of the backpack and slung it off Kiyoko’s back. She unzipped it and pulled out a coil of white nylon rope. She dropped it to the sand and showed the end to Kiyoko. Kiyoko took a deep breath and took off her jacket. Then she pushed her skinny pants down over her ankles and stepped out of them. She was wearing a red-and-black bikini bottom that was practically a thong. On her, it wasn’t very sexy—she was skin and bones.
    I had a feeling I knew what was going to happen, and I didn’t like it. As Kiyoko snaked her sweater over her head, the top of her bikini stretched over her almost-flat chest confirmed it. She was going to swim in the freezing cold lake.
    Lara handed the coil to Mandy as Kiyoko wrapped the other end around her waist. I could see Kiyoko’s breath as she looked out at the lake. Her shoulder blades looked sharp enough to cut steak.
    “It’s good and strong,” Mandy confirmed, testing the rope between her hands. “But the ghost of the lake is very lonely. She will try to untie it, and keep Kiyoko with her.”
    Nervous laughter greeted her announcement. I puffed air out of my cheeks and shifted my weight. I couldn’t believe Kiyoko was going to willingly jump in the lake. Correction: I could. I would have done it, if Jane had told me to.
    “Just more one thing before you go in,” Mandy went on, giving Kiyoko a once-over. “No suit, sweetie.”
    Kiyoko blanched; beside her, Shayna shook her head disapprovingly. “You didn’t say anything about that,” Kiyoko murmured.
    Mandy tsk-tsked like some melodrama villain. “I said ‘no clothes.’ That means . . . no clothes.”
    “It’s freezing in there, Mandy,” Shayna protested.
    “Then it won’t matter if she’s wearing a bathing suit or not, Shayna,” Mandy said. She turned back to Kiyoko. “You don’t have to do it.”
    I knew then that Kiyoko’s fate was sealed.
    “All right,” Kiyoko half-shouted. She grabbed the blanket out of Shayna’s hands and wrapped it around herself. Then she snaked her left hand up and grabbed her suit strap, giving it a tug down her arm. Some of the girls closest to her began to hoot and applaud.
    “Take it off, baby!”
    “Go, Ki-yo-ko!”
    She moved and shifted inside her blanket; about ten seconds later, her suit dropped to her ankles.
    Mandy lifted a brow. “Check the rope. We want you to be safe. Lara?”
    Lara pulled some plastic glow-in-the-dark necklaces out of the backpack. She broke the liquid inside and they started to glow green, pink, yellow. She looped a few over Kiyoko’s neck. They rattled on her collarbones.
    “Her ankles and wrists, too,” Mandy said.
    “This is stupid,” Shayna hissed, as Kiyoko stuck out her right arm and Mandy wrapped one of the glow-necklaces around it.
    “No one is forcing her,” Mandy reminded her. She smiled at Kiyoko, whose blanket began to undrape; Kiyoko turned her back, holding the blanket between her teeth as she tried to maintain her modesty. Her rounded shoulders and back looked bluish-white beneath the alien green and pink of the glowing necklaces.
    Then she walked to the edge of