Long Lost, стр. 45

“You can’t stop me!”

“If you even try it, I’ll tell Mrs. Rawlins everything! I’ll tell her you attacked me! That you kicked me while I was lying in the dirt!”

The truth in Hazel’s words was almost enough to stop Pearl’s heart. While Pearl and Hazel had found many ways to hurt each other, they had never before done physical harm. Now Pearl had changed everything. Hazel may have tricked her, but this terrible step forward was Pearl’s own fault.

Pearl tried to sound uncaring. “Well, I’ll tell her that you and Matthew were the ones who started it all by pretending to be the Searcher!”

“You won’t get to tell her anything!” Hazel yelled. “Not when I get home first!”

Pearl glanced back at this.

Hazel had veered away from their usual track, rushing downhill toward the riverbank. Pixie ran loyally after her.

“Hazel, you can’t take the shortcut!” Pearl yelled. “Hazel!”

Hazel didn’t reply.

Pearl hesitated.

If she ran on, she had a decent chance of reaching the house before Hazel—but that would mean leaving Hazel to cross the half-submerged tree, in the rushing water, all alone.

Pearl turned back.

“Hazel!” she called, running down the bank. “You can’t cross there now! The water’s too high!”

Hazel was already clambering onto the dead tree. “Some people aren’t afraid of every little thing,” she retorted. The muddy black cloak trailed around her. Pixie, unwilling to follow any farther, skittered back and forth on the bank beside the tree’s dead roots, whining.

“It’s not because I’m afraid, it’s because I’m not stupid!” Pearl shouted back. “Hazel! Hazel, stop!”

Hazel refused to cast her a glance. She walked out onto the half-submerged trunk, one cloaked arm spread for balance, the other still clutching the ribs where Pearl’s kick had landed. The water beneath her was foamy, whirling, rushing.

Pearl turned away. “I’m going to take the bridge, and I’ll still get home before you!”

She jogged off toward the bridge, taking a last glance over her shoulder to see whether Pixie had followed her, for once.

And Hazel was gone.

Pearl spun toward the shore. Perhaps Hazel had thought better of her plan and turned back. But Pixie was still there, beside the downed tree, facing the water. The dog gave another bark. And another, louder still.

Its desperation made Pearl’s stomach twist.

“Hazel?” She hurried back along the muddy bank. The river was glutted with rainwater, sloshing so powerfully against each log and rock in its course that Pearl might easily have missed another splash. She ran down the slope into the water, letting it soak and ruin her leather shoes. Even one foot deep, she could feel its forceful pull. “Hazel!”

In the deeper water, far out of her reach, Pearl thought she glimpsed a flowing black shape. It was gone again in an instant.

Pearl shoved Hazel’s stolen knife down the front of her underdress. Then she plunged into the water on the tree’s upstream side. Both she and Hazel were strong swimmers, but they never swam in the river, even when the water was low and warm. Its current was too strong, its rocks sharp, its course deep. Now, in the swollen waves, Pearl barely managed to keep her head above water.

She dove beneath the surface, first reaching with both hands toward the spot where she had seen the dark shape, then reaching for anything at all. The water was icy cold. Soon her limbs would no longer do as she wished. Her numbed fingers wouldn’t grasp; her lungs wouldn’t hold air. Exhaustion seeped into her like the water itself.

Pearl knew the truth then. She had failed. She was too late to reach her sister. She was too late even to pull her own defeated body back to the bank. At least she and Hazel would be together, here, in the dark green quiet. And that seemed only right.

But somehow her body refused to sink.

Pearl rolled, groping through the waves. Her skirt had snagged on a jut of the fallen tree, keeping her from being swept under. She managed to clamber around the tree’s side and break the surface for a breath. She struggled to free herself, popping two buttons and yanking the sodden linen dress straight over her head, leaving her in her underdress. With arms like wet ribbons, she grasped the tree. From there, she dragged herself, very slowly, to the riverbank.

For a while—Pearl had no idea how long—she sat on the muddy shore. Pixie stood motionless beside her. It seemed to her that the sky began to darken. Perhaps afternoon had become evening. Perhaps the cold in the air was the approach of night. Or perhaps it was only the world around her realizing, as she had, that everything was now terribly, irreparably wrong.

When she finally rose to her bare feet and staggered through the woods toward Parson’s Bridge, Pearl did not know she was doing it. When she crossed the lawn behind the grand brick house, when she was spied and caught and bundled inside by the help, Pearl didn’t feel it. The story that she eventually told, of the Searcher stealing her sister away, didn’t seem like a story at all. It seemed more true, more possible, than the thought that Hazel had drowned, and that it was Pearl’s fault.

She hadn’t seen or heard Hazel slip, after all. The dark thing in the water might have been anything or nothing. Hazel might have swum away, slipped off into the woods, and tricked her once more. She might be—she must be—somewhere out there, even now.

Because how could Hazel be gone, when Pearl was still alive? Who could look at Pearl and not see the shadow of the sister who should have been standing beside her?

The questions drifted through Pearl’s whirling mind. When they settled at last, they had formed the start of a new story, one in which Hazel might still be found. One in which mystery and hope mixed together, and a dark-robed stranger would carry the blame.

The other version of the story would stay sealed inside her, buried like the pocketknife