The Drowning Girls by Paula Treick Deboard Read Free Book Online Page B

over the edge. “Mom, help me!” she screamed.
    In the pool, Hannah was pushing clumsily against the limp mass of Kelsey’s body.
    Kelsey .
    But I’d known that, hadn’t I, from the first scream that penetrated my sleep?
    Her head flopped backward at a strange angle, like a marionette with no one pulling her strings. A red stain flowered on the back of her head. She was wearing the clothes I’d seen her in earlier, cutoff shorts and a T-shirt that billowed around her in the water. At the bottom of the pool, something magenta shimmered—her cell phone.
    I asked the question even as I hooked an arm through Kelsey’s, even as the three of us pushed and heaved and Kelsey’s body emerged from the pool, followed by her dangling legs, scraping the concrete surround. She was wearing one sandal. “What is she doing here?”
    “I don’t know! We were inside and I saw her floating,” Danielle panted.
    “She was just out here all of a sudden,” Hannah sobbed.
    Kelsey’s face stared up at me, her blue eyes unnervingly open. I pressed my hand over the cut on the back of her head, a gash several inches long, gaping wide. “Kelsey, can you hear me?” I slapped lightly against her cheeks, giving her shoulders a shake as if she were merely sleeping, as if this were the scene of a late-afternoon nap. My mind was a wild thing, racing backward and forward. I remembered Kelsey in my driveway earlier that afternoon, remembered shouting at her as the door closed.
    Think, Liz. Think. I could picture the flip chart near the door of the counseling office—In Case of Emergency,with a dozen color-coded tabs for every conceivable situation.
    And then something kicked in—a hyperfocus, the world narrowing to a single element, a sole requirement. My mother instinct, dormant over these past hard months, came out of the cave now, roaring. I snapped into action, ordering Danielle to turn off the music that pulsed in the background and call 911, and Hannah to run over to the Jorgensens’ house to see if Kelsey’s parents were home. Danielle, teeth chattering, ran inside and returned with her cell phone. Hannah’s footsteps thundered through the house and disappeared.
    Airway, Breathing, Circulation. How long since I’d taken a CPR class? The procedure had changed, but how, to what? I felt along Kelsey’s neck for a pulse. Just one beat. Anything.
    I heard Danielle’s voice, but dimly, as if it were a sound track dubbed in to the background. “Hello? Hello? There’s been an accident. 4017 Fairview. My friend—I don’t know. She was in the pool. She’s not responding.”
    I tilted Kelsey’s head back— Airway —my cheek to her face, hoping for a whisper of breath. Say something . Wake up and tell me to get the hell away from you . I watched her chest, alert for a single, small rise, a slight fall, but it was still, her sodden T-shirt cold. My fingers, unsure, found the notch beneath Kelsey’s ribs, just beneath the clasp of her bra. I steadied myself, remembering those long-ago lessons with Annie the plastic dummy, her synthetic lips reeking of hydrogen peroxide. Annie’s torso had been smooth and pliable, her face a plastic, colorless mask.
    But this was Kelsey, not a life-size doll.
    This was an all-too-real nightmare.

JULY 2014 LIZ
    With school done for the summer, my days fell into a pattern: wake late, meet Phil for lunch in the clubhouse, swim in the afternoons, have dinner in front of the television, drink a glass or two of wine in the evenings. Anything more required an energy I didn’t have. My previous life and the things I used to do in it were only half an hour away, but somehow elusive now—the library, the farmers’ market, the public swimming pool where I’d spent hours on a blanket in a shady corner with a novel, looking up occasionally to spot Danielle’s head bobbing in the water.
    “Aren’t we going anywhere on vacation?” Danielle asked once, almost waking me from the dream fugue of The Palms. But