Chương 32: The Missing Cheerleader

Fifteen minutes into the search, I'd confirmed the Ponytail Twins were named Kayla and Jess… or maybe Jess and Kayla? I'd already forgotten which was which, and they didn't make it easy to tell them apart. Turns out, they weren't even actually related in any way, but both had brunette hair, matching ponytails, and glitter streaked across their cheekbones. Kayla (I think) had soft features and a black ribbon hair tie. Jess was the one with big doe eyes and pink, glossy lip balm. She wore a red ribbon in her hair.

Or maybe Kayla had the red ribbon? The Ponytail Twins had spent the first ten minutes frantically analyzing Tiffany's last text message, dissecting the punctuation and timestamps with the kind of forensic observations that would've made SVU's Ryan O'Halloran jealous. Then they pivoted to speculating about whether she'd hooked up with someone and lost track of time. Then they debated who that someone could have been. Eventually, Summer had kindly but firmly shut that theory down.

Meanwhile, Brynn hadn't said a word since we left the bonfire. We'd made it maybe a quarter of the way around the lake, finding nothing but mud, rocks, and the occasional beer can some assholes had tossed into the woods. Calls for Tiffany remained a consistent fixture as we made our way over the uneven path. Tre stayed on my shoulder, and Isabel was close beside me while everyone else spread out.

"I'm getting really worried that something bad happened to her," Brynn said, voice trailing from somewhere ahead of us.

"She'll be okay. We'll find her," Summer replied, but her voice had lost some of its cheerleader brightness. The farther we got from the bonfire, the more the manufactured confidence seemed to drain out of her. As we progressed around the lake, the tree branches wove densely overhead until the moonlight came through in pinpricks. Even with the flashlight, I could barely see Summer's back three feet ahead of me. No wonder they hadn't found anything the first time.

It was dark enough that you could easily hide a body ten feet off the path, and no one would see it.

"I'm getting major déjà vu." Liam stumbled over an exposed root and cursed. He caught his balance on a tree trunk and immediately pressed the heel of his hand hard against his forehead, wincing. He shook his head violently, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment before they snapped open, returning to his usual annoying, sycophantic demeanor.

"Why are we doing this again?" Liam complained.

"I mean, it's pointless."

"You checked it in the dark without flashlights last time, genius," Isabel said, not breaking stride. Evan spoke before Liam could respond.

"We're almost to where we turned back. Another five minutes at most." Isabel leaned in close, her voice barely above a whisper.

"You're looking for Sameer too, aren't you?" I nodded, sweeping the light toward the treeline.

"If he's out here..." She didn't make me finish the thought. We both knew what it would mean if we found him skulking around in the woods while Tiffany was missing. The small talk of fashion, movies, and music petered out as the search continued. For a while, we just listened for any sign of Tiffany, someone occasionally calling out her name. A branch snapped somewhere in the trees to our left. Everyone froze mid-step.

"Tiffany?" Brynn called out, voice filled with hope and fear in equal measure. The stillness of the forest felt manufactured, like Maltheris had turned the volume on nature sounds down to zero. Another snap. Closer to us. There was definitely something moving through the underbrush.

"Should we check—""It's nothing, Kalya," Summer said curtly.

"Deer, raccoon, whatever. Stay on the path."

"But what if it's Tiffany?" Brynn asked.

"Then she'll hear us calling and come to the light." Summer kept her light trained ahead, not even glancing toward the sound.

"Don't go running after every sound we hear in the woods. That's how people get lost. Or worse. Haven't you ever seen a horror movie?" The logic was sound, but I knew we still had Sameer to worry about. He could be following us right now. I swept my flashlight slowly across the tree line, trying to look casual about it. Looking for movement. Looking for Sameer. If he was out here somewhere, if he'd followed us from the party…

"Nora," Summer said.

"You coming?"

"Yeah," I said, falling back into line. But I kept the flashlight angled slightly left, kept my peripheral vision sharp. Isabel hung back with me, her voice low enough that only I could hear.

"You think that was him?"

"I don't know," I whispered back.

"But something's out there." Ahead of us, Summer walked with her shoulders relaxed, her pace steady, as if she wasn't worried at all about what might be following us through the trees.

"You know, it's entirely possible she just went home," Liam suggested, not quite looking at anyone.

"She didn't," Brynn said.

"She would have texted me back by now." Liam opened his mouth like he wanted to argue, but Evan put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head. The unspoken message was clear: don't fight with the grieving friend. The group walked another ten minutes or so before the path began to funnel inward, filtering us into a line and forcing us to push through trees close enough that branches caught on my jacket with every other step.

I could hear Isabel behind me, Evan and Liam further back, but I couldn't see any of them without stopping and turning around. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. Ahead, Summer's phone light glowed faintly through the branches. She'd somehow moved ahead of me even though I was the one with the actual flashlight. When did that happen?

One moment, we were walking together, the next, she was leading, and I was following her dim light deeper into the trees.

"Tiffany!" Brynn shouted, voice thin.

"TIFFANY!" No answer. Just wind whistling through the trees and the bass from the party, so faint and far away it was a weak heartbeat carried by the breeze. Just going on record that I hate this, Tre's voice crackled in my head through the Mindbleed. We're literally in a dark forest looking for a missing girl. Talk about a horror movie cliché. By the time we were halfway around the lake, the party noise was gone entirely.

It felt like we'd walked off the edge of whatever Maltheris had staged and into the raw teeth of the place, or maybe just deeper into it. The cheerleaders had moved about five feet ahead of us, their calls for Tiffany eventually dying out, replaced by hushed conversation I couldn't quite make out. I tried to keep my eyes on the cheerleaders who had wandered even further ahead. Brynn's red hair caught the ambient moonlight, and I got a glimpse of Kayla and Jess beside her. But Summer wasn't there.

I stopped walking, sweeping the flashlight beam forward. Three cheerleaders. Not four.

"Hey," I called out.

"Where's Summer?" The three girls ahead turned back, confusion on their faces.

"What do you mean?" Kayla (or Jess?) asked.

"She's right—" She turned, looking behind her, warmth fleeing her skin as her face turned white.

"Wait. She was just here!"

"SUMMER!" She screamed at the top of her lungs. Damn. Tre's voice crackled through the Mindbleed, low and almost impressed. She moves quietly; Killer stealth for an NPC. As the next painfully silent few seconds passed, I trailed the bright beam slowly in a complete 360 around us. I strained so hard to hear something that the muscles near my temples moved. I listened for anything: footsteps, rustling, even her taking a piss in the bushes. Oh, this girl is a thousand percent dead, Tre said glibly in my head.

He was probably correct. The game was obviously setting us up for some kind of confrontation with Sameer (and probably the Lake Mothers, but that's a problem for future-Nora). If Sameer grabbed Summer, he was either going to kill her as we stood here, or he was going to use her as bait. Or as a human shield. There were endless, increasingly fucked up ways this could all go. That mounting pressure behind my eyes told me my Fear had to be spiking again. If I hit another panic attack out here, we were fucked.

"Summer, come on," Evan called out with minor annoyance.

"The girls are getting nervous." He listened for a response.

"At least make a little BEEP noise so we know you're okay and just trying to pee in peace." When she didn't answer, the group started to fan out to cover a larger search area. The Ponytail Twins were already about ten feet ahead of us, but they'd moved off the path to the right, closer to the path's edge leading down to the lake. Evan and Liam moved deeper into the woods to our left.

No one seemed ready to admit Summer was also now missing, clinging to the idea that she was just out of reach of our frantic screaming of her name. I started to panic that this was exactly what Sameer wanted, and we were going to get picked off one by one until no one was left.

"Don't wander too far," I said to Isabel. And to Tre, who remained on my shoulder.

"Let's stick close to each other." But even if the three of us were together, we still had to worry about whoever was potentially working alongside him. That could be anyone at this point, even those among us. I shoved the catastrophic thinking aside as Dr. Boivin's voice soothingly reminded me that ' spiraling only leads down'.

"SUMMER!" Brynn yelled from somewhere ahead.

"Summer, seriously, this isn't funny!" Evan shouted from the woods to our left. Jess called out in a wavering voice, "Summer, please!" Isabel cupped her hands around her mouth.

"SUMMER!" The calls overlapped, echoing off the water and bouncing back at us from the trees. Each shout was met with the same terrible silence. After about a minute of this, the shouts died down. People were running out of hope. I was relieved when everyone naturally walked back toward each other, all of us bunching together on the path. Evan spoke first, his face in that place between confusion and crying.

"I'm starting to get worried about—" But before he could finish, a high-pitched, drawn-out yell exploded from the trees to my right, along the water. Only I couldn't tell if it was close by or further up the path. I swung the flashlight right, toward the water. Dense underbrush choked the space between tree trunks, and beyond that, the ground steeply declined before flattening out into a muddy shoreline. We'd have to continue on the path until we found another natural opening or risk sliding down the slope.

Is that another missing girl, because that's just ridiculous, Tre said in my head.

"Was that Summer?" I asked.

"OH, GOD! GUYS!" the same voice called out in desperation. The trees bent the sound weirdly, making it impossible to pinpoint.

"That's definitely Summer," Evan said with alarm, perking up with a sudden clarity he'd been lacking all night. I took off down the path. Tre came off my shoulder, clinging to my back, using me to protect him from the low-hanging branches. Focused on finding Summer, I ignored the stinging micro-tears they sliced across my exposed skin. The flashlight whipped and spun frenetically along the ground, turning the undergrowth into a blur. Evan, Kayla, and Jess were right on my heels.

Evan was a quarterback, and the Ponytail Twins were surprisingly fast, but the confined space between the trees boxed in our path, preventing them from overtaking me. Further back, Liam and Isabel's labored gasps sounded loud in the still forest. Brynn was somewhere behind them, but I couldn't tell how close.

"I FOUND HER! HELP!" Summer's words were crystal clear and directly to my right. I slammed the brakes so hard Evan nearly collided with my back. I maneuvered the beam to light the area by the water's edge, and Summer stepped into view, looked up at me with a hand up to block her eyes from the light.

"I found Tiffany," she said bluntly, without a hint of emotion. I adjusted the light, pushing the beam toward the shoreline. The beam cut a shaking, frantic cone through the dark, bouncing off the mud and the smooth, cold stones. Then it caught on to something else: a small, dark bundle, half-submerged near the edge of the water. It took a second for my brain to process the details. It was a body, facedown, the black lake water lapping at the shoulders.

Long, dark hair spread out around the head like grotesque, oily seaweed, clinging to the surface. It didn't fully click what I was seeing until my eyes caught on the white Chuck Taylors, half-submerged in the muddy water, laces dark with blood. The Ponytail Twins, Evan, and Brynn started down the incline. Brynn, Jess, and Kayla nimbly eased their way to the muddy shore below. Evan half-slid down the drop, coating the back of his jeans in wet dirt.

"Summer?!" Tre, Isabel, and I reached the shore in time to see the others gather around Summer.

"Help me turn her," Summer cried, kneeling by the body.

"We have to see if she's breathing!" Kayla and Jess recoiled, their matching ponytails bounced once like the suggestion startled them, and they took a step back. Brynn gripped the body's shoulders, her fingers sinking into the sodden fabric of a crop top. Summer pushed as Brynn pulled, and with a grunt of effort, they rolled the body onto its back. I squeezed my eyes shut, mentally preparing, not wanting a repeat of what happened when we discovered Austin's corpse earlier.

Evan said nothing, frozen at the foot of the slope. On my left, Isabel gasped, as Tre sighed loudly in my head and said: I'm so glad I can't puke anymore. Liam had caught up and stood to my right. He put a hand over his mouth, turned, and vomited. See?! That could have been me, Nora, Tre said via Mindbleed. I exhaled, finally braving a look. Her face was paper white, blue veins visible under her flawless skin, eyes open and unfocused. Some of her jet-black hair clung to the sides of her face and neck.

Her mouth hung open, frozen in a final gasp, overflowing with lake water. A deep gash slashed horizontally across her throat, just above the tie on her crop top. The cut was wide, exposing the fleshy pink of her throat. The water washed the blood away as fast as it pumped out, creating a swirling crimson cloud around her head. Brynn looked at the face she had just revealed and let out a thin, keening sound laced with grief.

She didn't let go, instead clutching the body's shoulders and pressing her own face into the girl's water-soaked hair. Examining her limbs, I noted she wasn't yet stiff with rigor mortis.

"No water bloat," I whispered to Tre.

"She hasn't been in there long. The Weepy Whites are close." Whoever did this was still out there watching us. Waiting.