Page 51 of Girl, Reformed

Ella hummed, encouraging. She couldpicture it. Young love, sticky sweet and summer bright. Probably thought they'dlive forever, the way kids do.

‘Everything was great. Stupid me eventhought about proposing,’ Luca laughed. ‘But I woke up in the middle of thenight and Kate was gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘Yeah. It was about four AM. I figuredshe’d just gone to take a leak or something. But she never came back, so I gotout of the tent and went looking for her. And…’

And here it was. The ghost, the specter,looming up out of the dark. Ella braced herself.

‘You found her,’ she said.

‘I found her. By the lakeshore.’ Luca’svoice cracked and splintered. ‘Laying there in the sand, hair was soaking wet,staring up at the sky with big old empty eyes.’

Ella’s heart twisted in her chest. Christ.Seventeen years old and finding your sweetheart dead by the lake. The kind ofthing that broke you and shattered your heart into an irreparable mess.

‘What happened to her?’

‘That’s where it gets weird, because Ilooked up and there was… someone watching me. Across the lake. Just standingthere in the trees. Wearing a mask. White, plain, big black holes for eyes.’

The bottom dropped out of Ella's stomach.Her mouth suddenly went as dry as a bone. The pieces arranged themselves like amagical jigsaw, and the picture they formed made her heart sink like an anchor.

‘That’s why you went pale as a ghost whenAleister mentioned a mask,’ she said.

Luca’s laugh was dry. ‘Guess I’m not asslick as I thought.’

‘Who was it?’

‘I've got no clue who it was. Just somephantom in the trees, still as a statue. To this day, it was never solved.’

The kid's voice was steady as a surgeon'shand but Ella could see the cracks in his pretty-boy veneer. She looked atLuca, really looked, past the cover model mug and the lady-killersmile, and for the first time she saw the person. The scaredseventeen-year-old boy who'd had his heart ripped out and shoved down hisgullet on some godforsaken camping trip a lifetime ago.

Ella cleared her throat. ‘What happened toKate? How'd she...?’ She trailed off, not sure how to finish that sentencewithout twisting the knife.

‘Autopsy said she drowned. Tox report wasclean, so they slapped a suicide label on it and called it a day. Case closed.'

‘Drowned?’

‘She had bruises,’ Luca cut in. ‘On herskull, the back of her head. Like someone had blitzed her one good beforedumping her in the lake.’

‘And let me guess. You kicked up a fuss,tried to get someone to take a closer look.’

Luca barked out a laugh. ‘Yeah, but I wasseventeen. Nobody took me seriously. More hormones than sense.’

An all-too-familiar ache twisted in Ella'schest. The impotent rage of a victim shoved to the sidelines, forced to watchas the system chewed up their loved one and spat out the bones. She'd seen ittoo many times, heard the same story sung in a thousand different keys.

‘They swept it under the rug,’ she saidsoftly. It wasn't a question.

‘Swept it, vacuumed it, steamrolled itflat as a pancake.’ Luca swiped a hand over his mouth. ‘Left me with nothingbut a'what if' and a gaping hole where my heart used to be.’

Ella swallowed past the sudden tightnessin her throat. Reached out 'til her fingers brushed Luca's, tentative as asparrow's wing. Watched him flinch at the contact then melt into it, shoulderssagging like someone had snipped his strings.

‘I'm sorry,’ she said and meant it. ‘Forpicking at old scabs.’

‘Don't be. I'm glad I told you. Feels goodto finally let it out. Like I’ve lanced a boil and leaked it all over yourhead.’

Ella laughed. ‘There are worse fluids.’

‘I bet.’

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