I used to think that the world was a simple place, governed by the predictable rhythms of a small town. In Mystic Ridge, the seasons changed, the old families threw their garden parties, and the history books were filled with names that everyone recognized but no one really questioned. I was Lyra Vance—the daughter of the town doctor, the girl with the perfect grades and the steady boyfriend, the girl who believed that "forever" was a promise that life actually kept.
Then came the water.
People talk about death as if it's a sudden flash of light or a long, dark tunnel. For me, death was a color. It was the murky, suffocating green of the Wickery River at night. It was the sound of the car's engine dying, replaced by the violent, gurgling roar of the current rushing through the shattered windows. It was the smell of old silt and gasoline.
I remember my father's hand. He was reaching back for me, his eyes wide with a terror that I felt reflected in my own soul. I remember the way the water swallowed his voice when he tried to tell me he loved me one last time. I remember the weight of it—the thousands of pounds of cold, uncaring river pressing against my chest, squeezing the air out of my lungs until there was nothing left but a burning, white-hot agony.
I'm sorry, I thought as my vision began to fray at the edges. I'm sorry I didn't say goodbye.
I let go. I stopped fighting the current. I closed my eyes and waited for the silence to become absolute. I was ready to sink into the mud and become just another name carved into a headstone in the family plot.
But the silence didn't come.
Instead, there was a vibration. A shockwave in the water. I felt hands—stronger than any human hands should be—wrap around my waist. The touch was icy, colder than the river itself, yet it felt like an anchor. I was pulled upward, the world blurring into a kaleidoscope of bubbles and dark shadows.
When I finally broke the surface, the air felt like a blade in my throat. I coughed, retching up the river, my body shaking so violently that I couldn't even scream for my parents. I lay on the muddy bank, the rain washing the blood from my forehead, staring up at the dark silhouette of Wickery Bridge.
And there, standing in the mist at the edge of the trees, was a boy.
He was pale, almost translucent in the moonlight. His eyes weren't the eyes of a savior; they were the eyes of a ghost. They were a deep, haunted emerald, filled with a sorrow that seemed to vibrate through the very air between us. He didn't move. He didn't speak. He just watched me breathe, as if my survival were a miracle he hadn't expected to witness.
"Help them," I managed to gasp, pointing toward the water. "My parents... please..."
He didn't jump back in. He didn't call for help. He simply vanished. One moment he was there, a solid presence in the dark, and the next, he was gone, leaving nothing behind but the scent of woodsmoke and old, forgotten things.
Four months have passed since that night.
The town of Mystic Ridge has moved on. They look at me with pity, the "poor Vance girl" who survived while her parents didn't. They see the smile I force onto my face, the way I pull my hair back and put on my jewelry, and they think I'm healing. They think the "before" and the "after" can eventually be stitched back together.
They don't know that I died in that river, too.
Every morning, I wake up in a house that is too quiet. I sit at a kitchen table where three chairs are empty. I look at my brother, Jeremy, and I see the wreckage of our family reflected in the dark circles under his eyes and the way he hides in his room with his sketches and his grief. I see Aunt Jenna trying to be a parent when she's barely older than we are, her hands shaking as she pours her coffee.
I'm a liar, I tell my reflection every morning. I'm pretending to be human. I'm pretending that I don't feel the ghost of that cold hand on my waist every time the sun goes down.
I've started writing it all down. In a leather-bound journal, I record the thoughts I can't say out loud. I write about the way the wind sounds like a whisper in the trees. I write about the strange feeling that the town is changing, that the shadows are growing longer and darker than they used to be. I write about the boy with the emerald eyes.
I know he's real. I know he wasn't a hallucination brought on by the lack of oxygen. I can still feel the coldness of him.
Tomorrow is the first day of senior year. The first day of the rest of my life. Everyone expects me to be Lyra Vance again. They expect me to go to class, to cheer at the football games, to be the girl I was before the bridge.
But as I sit here on my window sill, watching the moon rise over the ridge, I know that's a lie. Something is coming to Mystic Ridge. I can feel it in the ozone before a storm. I can feel it in the way the crows are gathering on the power lines, watching the road that leads into town.
The Thorne estate, the old manor on the hill that has been empty for decades, has a light in the window tonight.
I reach up and touch the silver locket at my neck. My heart beats a slow, steady rhythm—thump-thump, thump-thump—but for the first time in four months, it feels like it's waiting for something. It's waiting for the cold to return. It's waiting for the boy who pulled me from the dark to tell me why he let everyone else drown.
The history of this town is written in blood and fire, but we've spent a century forgetting it. We've spent a century pretending that the monsters were just stories we told to keep children in their beds.
But the water didn't just take my parents. It opened a door. And now, the past is walking back through it.
I pick up my pen and write the final line in my journal for today, the ink staining the page like a bruise.
My name is Lyra Vance. I am a survivor. But I think the hardest part isn't staying alive. It's figuring out what I was saved for.
A leaf scratches against my windowpane, a sharp, rhythmic sound that mimics a heartbeat. I look out into the darkness of the yard, and for a split second, I see a figure leaning against the old oak tree. A flash of emerald eyes. A tilt of a head.
The air in my room drops ten degrees. I don't pull away. I don't scream.
I just watch the shadow watch me.