Page 115 of The Deepest Lake

The dock is too low in the water to be seen from a distance. Higher up on the shore, Casa Eva looks like a dollhouse. She shouldn’t have come out this far, and she’s wasting energy trying to talk.

Rose calls out, “You didn’t answer—”

But then a small wave curls over her head and she startles, inhaling water. For the first time, she’s down deeper, fully submerged. No blue sky, no volcano, no birdcalls. She opens her eyes fully underwater and sees only dark green, her pale hands, bubbles.

She’s losing energy with every flailing attempt to stay afloat. She inhales water again, chest burning. She’s panicking—as Jules surely panicked. For a moment, her head clears the surface, but she’s swallowed too much. She can’t stop coughing.

When she sinks again, her mouth is still open. Eyes squeezed shut, hands grabbing at nothing. For one dark second she can’t tell which way is up.

Then a sudden pressure against her back, an arm reaching around her neck. Rose yanks her head around to see, wet hair plastered against her own face, her vision obscured, the pressure at her throat too tight. She kicks back to defend herself but her feet don’t make contact.

She fights with both hands, twisting away from the arm at her throat, captured again.

They emerge into the air together with Eva screaming at her, “Stop flailing! I’m trying to help you!”

But she isn’t.

Deep green below, the water’s surface over her head, silver dimples and streaks. A kick in the stomach makes Rose fold. She’s clutching her knees to her chest, a heavy weight, sinking. A foot tangled in her hair. If Eva is trying to help her, why is she pushing her down so hard?

Eva is trying to drown her.

The underwater sounds of ticking and clicking are overtaken by a louder, persistent whine. Mechanical.

Rose feels a sharp pain at her scalp as she is yanked upwards, followed by the pressure of being choked again. But there is also light. She’s on the surface, floating on her back as she is rhythmically yanked and lifted, yanked and lifted. Eva’s toes, kicking hard, brush against her own. Opening one eye, she sees the water taxi, twenty feet away, all the faces gathered along one edge of the boat, watching. Voices erupt. People clap.

“Stop fighting!” Eva shouts again.

A moment later, hands grab her by the arms while Eva jams her shoulder under Rose’s thighs, pushing upward. Rose feels a sharp pain as the head of a screw on the rail of the boat slices into her leg. Four people work together, trying to wrestle her over the side, like some big, dying fish. She is scratched and bruised. But she is alive.

“Keep coughing,” a new voice says. “Get the water out of your lungs.” It’s Pippa. Gentle Pippa.

“She tried—” Rose tries to say, but the coughing won’t allow her to speak.

“She saved your life,” Pippa says. “We saw it all. It was bloody brilliant!”

34

JULES

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For an entire day, no one visits. I’m wracked with anxiety about my mother, hardly able to sleep, wondering when Eva will return. When she comes the next morning, she brings the new kind of tea. I taste it. She’s complied with my request and I’m no closer to my goal.

“It’s not right,” I say, because I can’t let go of the only idea I have so far—that I need medical help, and maybe Eva will allow it if my supposed nausea doesn’t abate. “Something is missing.”

“Oh, lord. You’ve got to be kidding, because Hans went ahead and made gallons of the stuff.”

“I’m sorry.”

Eva starts rambling about all the needy women and their stories. I can smell something familiar on her—maybe it’s just the smell of the lake, like she’s just finished a swim. I try to picture everything she must be doing today: the workshops, the individual meetings, the bizarre writing prompts.

“But there are always a few good ones,” I say, trying to sound chipper while really my mind is racing in search of solutions, a way to send a coded message. The eyebrow piercing didn’t work, but now that I know who I’m trying to reach, I can figure out something better, something only Mom would understand.

“Yes, there are two girls with possibilities,” Eva says, brow furrowing. “I don’t know. Sometimes I’m just tired of the whole three-ring circus.”

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