Page 138 of High Season
“Do you remember,” Hannah begins. “When we would sit on the beach and watch the moon come up over the cliffs? We used to say that moonrises were better than sunrises. Although I’m pretty sure I only thought that because I was never awake in time for sunrise.”
Josie turns to face her. Her skin is golden in the strange, honeyed light.
“Why wouldn’t you talk to me?” she says. “After…”
She trails off, but Hannah understands. After the day that Imogen’s video went viral. The day that their lives changed forever for a second time.
In truth, Hannah had not been able to face her former best friend. The shame had been colossal. The guilt that she had hoped would dissipate had clung on. She had seen it in Josie’s face on the day that Hannah confessed. The sadness. The exhaustion. The fact that nothing that Hannah said or did would give Josie back the time she had lost.
She had been relieved when Josie had not attended the trial. Glad that she hadn’t had to face her.
And yet, over the past year, she has thought of Josie every day. She has wanted to do this every day. Now or never, Hannah thinks. Speak now, or forever hold your peace. And Hannah has spent more than enough time not speaking out.
“Josie,” Hannah says. “I am so sorry. I’ve been carrying this guilt inside me for years. And look—I know it doesn’t fix anything. But I wanted to say I’m sorry for not coming forward back then. And, I suppose, for just not being brave enough. Not standing up to Blake Drayton. Not protecting you. I never got the chance to tell you before. And I wanted you to know.”
The sun is almost gone. Only a schism of light, just above the rooftops, remains.
Hannah looks at the woman standing beside her, and she sees Josie Jackson. The girl whose name had been notorious and terrible. A byword for evil, and then, a byword for injustice.
But Hannah also sees Josie Jackson as she was nearly thirty years ago. The lost child who wandered up to Hannah’s parents’ shop and asked the way to the beach. The girl who Hannah grew up with. Who she loved. Who she betrayed.
She sees the two of them, peeling back the cover to the Draytons’ swimming pool with all the world stretching out ahead of them. Infinite summers. Thousands of sunsets.
“I don’t know if I deserve it,” says Hannah. “But I hope you can forgive me.”
Josie’s eyes are damp. It occurs to Hannah that she has never seen her friend cry. Slowly, Josie nods her head.
“I already did,” she says. “You never had to ask.”
Something inside Hannah splits in two then. Relief flooding through her like a wave breaking against the shore. Josie is hugging her, and she still smells the same, like saltwater and summer. Like Hannah’s childhood, and all the best and the worst years of her life. Like coming home. Like high season.
Josie pulls away then, looking past her, out at the sky. The last embers of the sun.
“So,” says Hannah, searching for her gaze. “What do we do now?”
This is when Josie looks at her, and Hannah sees a world inside her best friend’s eyes. The hurt, and the healing. The years lost, and all the years ahead. The sadness. The forgiveness. The hope.
“We go on,” Josie says.
She takes Hannah’s hand, and they could be girls again. They could be two girls, looking out over the sea.
FIFTY-THREE
2004
In the seconds before Tamara loses consciousness, she thinks of Josie.
The first time she saw her. Early mornings, the salt pool at sunrise. The two of them, kicking beneath the water.
She can feel a strange sensation in her head, a numbness that wasn’t there a moment ago. A moment ago she was above the water, and now, somehow, she is here. Somehow, the world has turned blue around her, and she can see the refracted glow of fairy lights above.
She thinks then of how, last night, after she had shredded her diary, tossed the pages into the sea, she had gone up to her room and found Josie waiting for her there. How they had sat on her bed together. How Josie had told Tamara that it was alright. That there was nothing wrong with her; she understood why Tamara was sad, and angry. Why she lashed out.
She loved Tamara, too. Just not in that way. Not like that.
But you will find someone who does,she had said.You will find someone who loves you back.
In those words, Tamara felt the bad twin inside her wither and die. Maybe there was hope. A chance for Tamara to be good at last.
It was only yesterday, but now it feels so far away. It feels like a thousand years ago, and yet it also feels like it is happening to her rightnow. As if Josie is here with her, saying these words all over again.You will find someone who loves you back.
Tamara knows that she is underwater. She knows that the world is slipping away from her. That she should reach for the surface. But she is tired. So, so tired. There is a warmth, a peace here. Sleep, folding her close. Darkness, drawing in.
In the last moment before she leaves this world, Tamara is swimming. She is kicking hard against the water. She is breaking its surface, and above the waves is Josie. Waving her arms. Calling Tamara’s name.
Cheering Tamara on, as she swims across the sea toward her.
