The Girl Who Stopped Swimming - By Joshilyn Jackson Page 0,3

room, Laurel saw the board abandoned in the middle of the floor.

Laurel flipped the lock on the sliding glass door and shoved it sideways along its track. The alarm began its pre-howl beeping, an electronic drumbeat of sound, heartless and high, that drove her across the patio. All at once she was too close to the low fence encircling the patio. She’d installed that fence back when Shelby was a toddler whose only goal was to walk straight into the pool and sink like a beautiful, stupid lemming. David, whose gaze turned inward most times, had barked his shin on it so often when it was new that Shelby had grown up thinking a fence was called a “dammit.”

Now Laurel stumbled on it and went skidding across the damp lawn. She fell to one knee and then was up again, running to the higher fence encircling the pool. She was praying, a wordless call to God. The gate was unlatched, and Laurel shoved it open and ran across the tiles, straight down the steps into the water.

The cold shocked her legs and shot up through her spine. It was as if she had been wearing a second set of eyelids, sheer as membrane. The cold snapped them open, and she saw that the girl wasn’t Shelby. She knew Shelby’s every molecule, and the delicate set of the shoulder blades and the contours of the head were not the same.

A wash of red joy bubbled and crashed its way through Laurel’s every vein, as if her blood were suddenly carbonated. Her whole body sang with a sick gladness that this was any child but hers. It was as immediate and involuntary as her heartbeat, and in her next breath, shame crept in. Not Shelby, thank God, thank God, but this girl was someone’s.

The water forced Laurel into that slow, sodden running she was always doing in her dreams. She waded up past her waist and had to bend, holding her face up out of the water, to reach down and grab the girl’s ankle. She pulled the girl up and back, and a reasoning piece of her took note of how lifeless the girl’s skin felt, gelid and pliable under her fingers.

Bet Clemmens? Laurel hadn’t paused to check the guest room on her way down, but this could not be Bet. Bet was a tall girl, and her hair was a single-toned dark red with an inch of brown at the roots.

The house alarm began blaring. Laurel reached the steps and tried to roll the girl, to get her face into the air, but her body folded instead of turning. Then it was as if the girl’s body pulled itself up, levitating. For one crazy second Laurel clung to her, not understanding, but then she saw David’s hands. He was behind her on the pool steps, bare-chested, the water soaking the legs of his pajama bottoms, lifting the girl out.

Laurel grabbed the silver bar and hauled herself up the pool steps. Her heart still felt swollen, taking up all the room in her chest, banging itself against her rib cage. David laid the girl out on the tile. He’d gone to that burny-eyed place he went to in a crisis, his movements precise and spare. He said, “Start CPR. I’m calling 911.”

Laurel dropped to her knees, facing the house. She cupped the back of the girl’s neck and pulled up, tilting the head back to open an airway, using her other hand to push the heavy strands of hair away. She saw a heart-shaped face, pug nose, and round blue eyes half open under straight blond brows.

Laurel recognized her. More than that. It was Molly, and Laurel knew her, knew her high giggle and the way she walked in quick, small steps with her toes turned in. Just last October, Laurel had snapped at least ten pictures of Molly and Shelby, both of them in red lipstick and the ragged pirate miniskirts she’d made for them. She had wondered if this was the last Halloween they would want costumes and trick-or-treating. They’d refused to ruin their look with jackets; they’d run off with their skinny bare arms linked at the elbow and prickling with gooseflesh in the mild chill. This was Molly’s face. It was Molly Dufresne.

Laurel felt like something huge and heavy was rolling fast over her, flattening her and pressing out her breath. There was a film over Molly’s pale, familiar eyes. Laurel wanted to stand up and walk