THE FEELING OF WATER

ALICE BRICKSTONE BOOK TWO

(SECOND EDITION)

TYLER PIKE

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CONTENTS

Before you begin

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

The Alice Brickstone Series

Alice’s Secret

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About the Author

Copyright Page

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

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Enjoy The Feeling of Water.

1

It took only five minutes for the temperature to dive dramatically. Karan hated this time of day when the sun abandoned her. She felt healed and whole with the Colorado sun on her skin, but she was damaged and alone without it.

The river made the evening chill worse. The far bank was lined by dark pine trees that clung to a steep hill. The near side of the river raged against the restaurant where she ate every evening. The place had a deck area that hung precariously over the icy rapids. Six tables had been set for the hardier patrons and the occasional smoker. Karan was neither hardy nor a smoker, but she often escaped out here, if only for a few minutes.

Because anything was better than sitting inside with her father.

Too cold to sit down, Karan picked up a newspaper someone had left behind and laid it on the deck rail. An article caught her attention. She zipped her jacket tight under her chin and began to read.

It was about a teenager in Hardrock, Colorado, a three-hour drive up in the mountains from here. This girl, Alice Brickstone, had helped take down a mobster who had come to her town and threatened her family. And she did it despite her “selective mutism.” The article described that as an anxiety condition that prevented Alice from speaking to most people.

That would be suffocating, Karan thought. She knew how it felt to be different. It sucked. Yet, despite her disability, Alice had still done something even the FBI couldn’t. Karan could only wish to have that kind of confidence.

Karan set aside the newspaper and gazed at the dark hill rising from the river. She fantasized about journeying to a secret valley high in the mountains. Alice was there, in an austere cave, like a sage. Wise beyond words, but young and beautiful. What would Karan say to her? “Save me?” But what did she need to be saved from?

Karan chided herself and shivered. The temperature dropped a few degrees more. Most people retreated indoors, but she resisted. Just a few minutes longer. Only Karan, a few men with beers, and a tall, muscular woman remained on the deck. All were leaning against the rail overlooking the river.

Karan had been watching the woman and noted she was well into her second or third milkshake. She wore a t-shirt and appeared oblivious to the cold. Like Karan, she was alone.

She turned and caught Karan staring.

She had misjudged the woman’s age; she might be younger than Karan. She had an angry scar on her forehead but was otherwise attractive.

Karan was startled by a deep voice from the opposite direction. “Beautiful evening.”

She turned, expecting a massive mountain of a man, and was surprised to be facing a skinny, short guy. Karan was nearly six feet tall, and he must have been half a foot shorter. He was wearing a white T-shirt, holding a beer, and smiling up at her.

“I guess,” Karan replied. She knew she should be flattered to be hit on by anyone, especially with all the scars on her face. She could hardly look at herself in the mirror. But she did have some standards, and this guy didn’t live up to them.

“It gets dark in this valley so early,” he said. “Up here in Golden, we get sunset during happy hour, while all the poor souls in the bars down in Denver have to wait.”

“I guess,” she said, though guessing was all she could do. She had no memory of any bars in Denver or anything before the accident six months ago.

“The river is running clear and low. Not much snowmelt.” He leaned over the railing to see better.

“Wow.” His voice resonated even deeper. “Will you look at that? Hey, come here—check it out.”

Karan reluctantly leaned over the top rail.

“That’s a rainbow trout hovering behind those rocks right there.” He pointed. “He just jumped for a mayfly. They often hatch in the late afternoons.”

Karan’s vision fractured, and she was no longer on the deck of a riverside restaurant. She was in the freezing water. Karan fought to breathe, struggling against certain death, surrounded by water colored pink by her blood. Her chest was pierced with something, and her face was so smashed she wasn’t even confident it was still attached.

She fought toward the surface, but two heavy hands forced her deeper. She glimpsed her murderer through the disturbed river mud and bubbles. A backward baseball cap clung to his head despite the force of the current. He looked like her father.

Before she died, she had to ask him why he was killing her. She wanted to take him by the throat, draw him toward her ruined face, and use the last of her air to scream the single word: Why?

But when she touched him, she knew he was dead. It had been the current pressing his hands against her. She would die with him, her question unasked and answered.

His body drifted away, but then he returned, or was it a different man? He had the same cap, worn backward. Perhaps the other man hadn’t been her father; this was the real one. This man was alive, pulling her out of the river.

“Easy. Easy. Are you okay?” a deep voice asked. The skinny man was standing above her. She was lying on the deck overlooking the river.

Beside him was Milkshake Girl, looking down at Karan with disdain. The tall girl rolled her eyes and walked away. She must have thought Karan was drunk.

“You fell over,” the skinny guy said. “You passed out. What’s your name?”

“Karan,” she said without thinking. “With an A N instead of an E N.” She immediately regretted giving her name to this creepy guy.

When Karan tried to stand, he pushed her down. “No, no, no. You gotta relax. I’ll get the manager.”

Karan collapsed under the sudden pressure of his hands, landing hard on the deck and crying out in pain. Milkshake Girl dashed over and swept him away with the back of her left arm, knocking him toward the restaurant.

“Here,” she said, holding out a hand.

Karan was pulled up. Milkshake Girl’s eyes were miniaturized astronomical events, like exploding stars, with bright bursts of green spindling outward in a billion fibers that disappeared into indigo. Karan was lost in them.

“You don’t remember anything, do you?”

Karan blinked herself out of the depths of Milkshake Girl’s eyes and noticed her height. Karan was tall, but this girl was taller.

“What do you mean?” Karan asked, unsure whether she was being asked about what had just happened or what had happened some time ago.

“Never mind. You okay? I gotta go.”

Karan tried to get hold of herself. “No, but thanks for chasing that guy off.” She looked around and saw he had gone.

“I don’t think he’s coming back,” Milkshake Girl observed. “You black out often?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“I didn’t black out just now. It was more like a grey-out. I was dreaming.”

“Sucks,” Milkshake Girl said, her eyes wandering again. She seemed to be getting bored.

“I think it was looking at the water that brought it on. I’ve always been terrified of water.”

“Oh. That’s weird. I thought you couldn’t remember anything.” Milkshake Girl creased her brow. “Hey, how old are you?”

“That’s an odd question to ask someone you just peeled off the deck.”

“Sorry. Okay, see ya,” she said and turned to walk away.

Karan realized she didn’t want her to leave.

“I’m twenty-one,” she told the back of Milkshake Girl’s head.

She slowly spun and stared at Karan for a moment. “Hey, listen. I’m Alice, I’m seventeen, and I need someone who’s at least twenty-one to sit in my car while I drive. I have to get fifty hours of supervised driving logged in before they’ll give me my driver’s license.”

“Fifty hours?” Karan asked. Her father would never allow it.

Alice smiled a little. “Whatever you have time for. Maybe I can help you with your water thing if you can do it. I’m a good swimmer. I’ll give you a swimming lesson if you sit with me in my car for an hour.”

Fear gripped Karan. There was no way she could go near a pool. Yet, she was excited to be asked to do anything with anyone.

“Why me?” Karan asked.

“I told you, I need to log supervised driving hours. My parents are unavailable.” Alice hesitated, then added, “Plus, you seem to be one of the few people on this planet I can talk to.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have selective mutism. You’re the first stranger I’ve ever had a conversation with. There’s something about you.”

Karan gaped at her. This was Alice Brickstone, the girl from the article. It was absurdly improbable but true. Karan felt dizzy again and grabbed the railing. Had she conjured Alice out of the newsprint? Was her presence real or a dream? Or was Karan losing what was left of her mind?

Karan looked through a restaurant window, where her father was wide-eyed beneath his backward baseball cap. He didn’t like for her to socialize. He said it was bad for her recovery, though Karan knew it was his health that was affected by it. She wasn’t sure how he failed to notice her passing out on the deck, but he saw her now. The sight of Karan chatting with Alice probably set off all the panic alarms in his head.

He rushed out, tripping on the threshold and spilling his beer.

“You okay, honey?” He squinted at Alice, wary.

“Yeah, Dad, I’m fine. This is Alice.”

“Pleased to meet you,” he said, though he wasn’t.

Alice didn’t respond.

“We should be heading home.” Dad was already pulling Karan toward the doors.

“Hey, Dad,” she said with a firmness she didn’t feel, “I’ll catch up with you at the car. I just want to say goodbye to Alice.”

He looked at Alice skeptically, smiled painfully with half his face, and went back inside to pay.

“I’m sorry about that,” Karan said. “He’s overprotective.”

“That’s your father? The one you thought was drowning you?”

Karan paused, confused. “What the hell?” she exclaimed. “I didn’t tell you that! I just said I was dreaming.”

Alice said nothing, just kept looking at Karan with her galactic eyes. Something about them was calming.

Alice shrugged. “So, do you want my help getting over that water phobia or not?”

Karan saw her dad through the window. He beckoned to her insistently. It was profoundly annoying.

“Where is your pool?”

“Not far. I’ll pick you up at five tomorrow morning. Where do you live?”

“Five a.m.? Tell me you don’t swim at five a.m.”

“I’m only here in Golden for a few weeks. I’m trying to keep to the same training schedule as my swim team back in Hardrock.”

Karan considered this proposal. Most nights, her dad drove a rideshare and didn’t return until mid-morning. She might be able to go and come back without him finding out. “Okay, pick me up in the restaurant parking lot. I’ll make my own way here.”

“Cool. See you tomorrow at five.”

As she joined her agitated father, Karan felt more awkward than usual. Her “dream” had given her one more reason to feel uneasy around him. And in a few hours, she was going to flaunt his rule that she never leave the house alone.

Thinking of Alice, she turned away from Dad and smiled.

2

Karan couldn’t remember her past, but she was sure she had never done anything this stupid before. As if getting up at four AM wasn’t excruciating enough, she had to walk thirty minutes down a mountain road through the freezing charcoal darkness, tempting the mountain lions, and then shiver in this empty parking lot waiting for a complete stranger to help her overcome the deepest fear she had.

Karan kicked a rock in the dirt and considered heading back home and slipping back into bed. Then, she remembered Alice’s galactic eyes. Something in her stirred. She didn’t mind helping her out with her driving if she could, but the aquaphobia was another story.

Karan knew she couldn’t get in the water. But maybe just being near a pool would be a step in the right direction. She had to do something to prevent episodes like the one she had at the bar last night.

She heard a distant rumble and looked for storm clouds. There was a clear sky full of stars. Then she realized it was a car. It must be some local hoodlums, she thought, blitzed out of their minds, driving a low-rider home from a backwoods party somewhere.

The car turned out to be a classic Mustang. It rolled onto the restaurant’s gravel parking lot and stopped, idling loudly, in front of where Karan sat on her log.

“Hey, Karan.” Alice leaned out the window.

“How did you know my name?”

“You said it to that little man at the restaurant: with A N instead of E N, right?”

“Oh, I guess I did. Hey, I thought you couldn’t drive alone,” Karan said, standing up from her log but unsure if she should get in this car with this girl.

Alice rolled her eyes. “You coming or not?” she asked impatiently.

Karan walked around to the passenger door and paused again. It was just a car door, but it felt like she was preparing to open a portal to another world or another reality. She looked at the old, dull brown paint that contrasted sharply with the shiny interior full of high-tech components. It looked much too fast.

She opened the door and got in.

Alice put it into gear and hit the gas. The engine roared and the car seemed to hit Mach one. Karan scrambled for her seat belt and was pleased to discover a standard seatbelt, not a flimsy lap belt from the 1960s. Most of the inside of the car looked and smelled brand new.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked.

Alice glanced at her strangely. “Didn’t you say you wanted to learn how to swim? Or did you lose your memory of last night’s conversation too?”

“No, I mean, how far away is your pool?”

“About twenty minutes. Lakewood.”

Golden was a small town in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and Lakewood was part of Denver’s urban sprawl. Karan watched the dry, empty hills gave way to housing developments.

A cold mist seeped through a poorly sealed door in the car, and Karan shivered.

Alice noticed and turned on the heater. “Breakfast?” she asked, offering Karan a plastic jug that was about a foot high, full of some kind of green sludge.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. I usually eat leftovers from dinner, but Mom has me on a health kick. I think it’s raw kale and some nasty raw protein powder. I put in a quart of ice cream to make it taste bearable.”

“No thanks.” Shivering in her sweatshirt, Karan folded her arms, protecting her scarred chest. She was a mess.

Alice was the opposite. Completely at ease, her left hand dangled down from the steering wheel, her right hand held onto the enormous smoothie like it weighed nothing. She didn’t seem to notice the cold, even though she wore only a t-shirt and shorts.

“Where’s your dad this morning?” Alice asked.

“Unavailable,” Karan responded quickly. If she didn’t talk about Dad, maybe he wouldn’t be a problem today. “Like your parents.”

Alice’s eyes flashed dangerously but then softened. “I lied to you yesterday. They were unavailable most of my life. Not anymore. Now they’re just infuriating.”

“Oh.”

After a moment of silence, Alice added, “The problem is they’ve put me in a bad position.”

Karan knew she had to wait for Alice to explain. It took another five minutes.

“They can’t afford the house we live in anymore. They’re selling. And we’re moving into a one-room cabin.”

Karan tried to imagine living with her Dad in a tiny cabin. She would probably go insane in five minutes. So would he, she knew. He was always brooding, drinking, and seemed to need lots of time to himself.

“Sharing a tiny place like that with Mom and Dad would be bad enough,” Alice continued. “But Mom is going to have a baby. That’s why we’re here in Golden. The pregnancy is complicated. The hospital at Hardrock couldn’t deal with it.”

Another brief moment of silence.

“Even thinking about living in that cabin with Mom, Dad, and a baby makes me want to scream.”

Karan nodded.

“But that’s not the worst of it,” Alice continued.

“What’s the worst of it?”

“It proves I can’t trust them. It’s the latest in an endless string of poor decisions they’ve made. It’s infuriating. I’m looking for a way to stay down here in Golden to finish high school.”

Karan was with Alice about the cabin, but this other thing was hard to understand. She couldn’t imagine being so confident in herself that she would know anyone else’s decisions were consistently wrong. To Alice, it was like each bad decision her parents made was a fact written in stone, not something up for interpretation. Not something that might have a spectrum of possible outcomes, given enough time and effort.

Karan had zero confidence in herself. She had no idea what to do after her health improved, but she assumed her Dad would make most decisions for her. At least for a while. Alice, on the other hand, seemed to be barreling forward relentlessly toward a future she alone determined. Her parents were almost irrelevant.

“Wouldn’t you miss your friends?” Karan asked.

“There’s only one,” Alice said, mysteriously.

Karan wanted to ask about Alice’s friend, but she saw something in Alice’s face. She looked like she was on the verge of some kind of display of emotion. Maybe fury. Maybe crushing sorrow. Maybe anything. Karan thought it perhaps best to remain silent for a while.

After a twenty-minute drive, Alice finished her bucket of gloop just as they pulled into a very modern-looking collection of domed buildings. Alice reverse-parked the car into a spot. Alice’s parking job was clumsily executed, Karan thought, but she didn’t dare comment.

“Come on.” Alice rolled up her window and got out.

Karan followed her.

Alice grabbed a bag, locked up the car, and walked toward the buildings.

Karan followed. A sign announced the place was “Carmody Recreation Center.”

A blast of warmth and humidity hit them as they went in. Alice paid a receptionist.

Karan looked past reception and froze when she saw the water. It wasn’t just a pool; it was like an indoor ocean. She knew if she got in, she would drown. It was terrifying to be this close to certain death, and yet the chlorine smell unexpectedly took some of the edge off her terror. Dulling it enough, at least, that Karan could keep following Alice, rather than run back out to the car.

Alice looked back over her shoulder, saw Karan dithering, walked back, and grabbed her firmly by the arm. Alice pulled her by the pool as Karan avoided looking at the water.

Karan could hear the rhythmic, gentle splashing noises that must have been swimmers doing laps. She heard the low, loud voice of a man giving instructions. It was all strangely familiar. The terror remained, however, and Karan plotted her escape.

Alice pulled her into the women’s change room and finally let go.

“I’m s-sorry,” Karan stuttered, “but I can’t go in the water ‘cause I forgot a swimsuit.”

Alice tossed over one from her bag.

“This is my mom’s. I bet it won’t fit you well, but it will do.”

Something within Karan welled up when she touched the black Lycra suit that she held in her hand. It wasn’t fear. It was a feeling of recognition, as though she was touching a well-loved relic. It felt almost like she had worn this very suit before, though she knew that was impossible—she had never worn a swimsuit in her life. Yet it felt natural to strip down and step into it, so she did.

She caught Alice staring at the huge scar that sliced across one of Karan’s reconstructed breasts, so she quickly pulled the straps over her shoulders. Her scar peeked out over the top, but otherwise, the suit fit well.

Alice quickly changed, and Karan noticed that her body, previously hidden by unbecoming athletic wear, was enormously strong, like that of a man—or a male athlete. Her muscles were smooth, not cut like those of a bodybuilder, but she was as strong as one. She had very long limbs that hung down, relaxed and bulky, from her body. Her shoulders were broad and her hips were narrow. Her breasts were small and she unceremoniously stuffed them into her suit, shouldered her bag, and walked out toward the pool.

“Ready?” Alice asked without looking back.

“No,” Karan said to the empty room. Karan took her clothes under her arm and reluctantly made her feet move. This time she had to actually look at the pool just to make sure she didn’t accidentally fall in. This was all happening too fast. She noticed that four of the pool’s lanes were occupied by a team of men and women swimming steadily up and down the pool under the watchful eye of a man in a white golf shirt.

He looked at Karan and did a double-take.

She wondered if he was looking at her scars or if he just knew she shouldn’t be there. Not at 5:20 AM, not at this huge pool, and not with all these elite swimmers.

Alice ignored the coach and his swimmers. They went to a lane marked with a sandwich board that read “fast lane.”

Alice threw her bag down on a nearby bench and pulled out two caps and two pairs of goggles, handing one of each to Karan.

Karan copied Alice as she stretched the cap over her head and tucked her hair in, then stretched the goggles over the cap and fit them onto her eyes.

Karan was having trouble breathing because of her growing sense of dread. She wasn’t thinking straight. She knew no matter what happened, she was not getting into the water. It was enough that she came here, and Alice would just have to understand she had already taken a huge step by doing so.

Alice looked at her again.

Even though they both had blue goggles on, Karan could see that Alice’s eyes were shining and iridescent. They were not kind eyes, but also not aggressive. Karan reached up to take off her goggles because she wasn’t going in the water, and she failed to notice Alice slip behind her.

The taller girl lifted Karan off the ground. Karan couldn’t even scream, such was her terror, as Alice carried her over to the side of the pool.

“Just remember,” Alice said from behind her, “blow bubbles, and kick, kick, kick.”

It sounded oddly like the instructions you’d give a two-year-old, Karan thought, as Alice tossed Karan into the pool.

Time slowed down as some forgotten, deeply-held instinct kicked in. She jackknifed her body to enter the water headfirst, arms out front of her head, one hand folded over the other. Her hands broke the water surface first. She tucked her chin toward her chest and her head followed. She felt a pinch in her rehabbed chest muscles and a ripple through her stomach muscles as she propelled herself underwater. With a strong kick, her speed increased. She did all this without thinking.

She surfaced, holding her speed, feeling the water moving under her stomach. Rather than lift her head to breathe, she kept her head down and began to move her arms in loose, alternating arcs, her legs fluttering in powerful little kicks.

She didn’t know if she was learning this for the first time or if it was coming from somewhere beyond her destroyed memory, but she loved it.

Her lungs began to crave oxygen and it occurred to her she had no idea how to breathe without stopping altogether. Just as that thought came, she rolled her head gently to the left and took a little breath, her mouth barely surfacing above the water near her left shoulder, and then she drew her face back down. Her arms never lost their rhythm. Now that she knew she could breathe, she relaxed into a slower rhythm and reveled in the feelings of the water against her skin. Her hands and forearms were continuously learning how to find better purchase in the water and her abdominal muscles were holding her upper body firmly in connection with her legs.

She breathed left again and playfully pushed up her speed over the next few strokes, then eased off.

She suddenly felt a fierce grip on her ankle, which stopped her dead in the water. She gasped and kicked her foot loose. Thankfully it wasn’t deep and she was able to stand. Turning, she came face to face with Alice.

“Who are you?” Alice asked in a voice as firm and fierce as her grip on Karan’s foot had been seconds earlier.

Karan was in too much rapture to be frightened by Alice’s ominous tone.

They both lifted their goggles.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Karan said exultantly, a big smile spread across her scarred face. “I had no idea…”

“Cut it out. Come on, that was ridiculous. You swim better than I do. You swim better than anyone on that elite team over there.”

“I do? But that’s impossible. Today is my first swim ever. My dad said I never learned how to swim because of my aquaphobia.”

“He’s lying. I know what I’m talking about. Your stroke is the result of years of work. At least four hours a day in the water for years and years. You swim like someone who has lived and breathed swimming her whole life.”

Karan looked over at the swimmers in the squad lanes and wondered if she really had been one of them before her accident.

She looked back at Alice. “Maybe,” she said, putting the goggles back on, “some more swimming will help jog my memory.”

Karan desperately wanted to return to the beautiful feeling of slicing through the water.

“Okay,” Alice said, a strange look on her face, “let’s do some laps. But you follow me this time. Do what I do.”

“I’ll try,” Karan said, disappointed. All she wanted to do was swim freely and feel the water against her body, but it was hard to say no to Alice.

To Karan’s relief, Alice didn’t go sprinting off down the pool. She swam slowly, relaxed, just as Karan had been doing. When the wall approached, Karan saw Alice flip herself around underwater, and somehow Karan’s body knew how to flip-turn just like Alice had.

She followed Alice up and down the pool like this for a while. She didn’t count the laps and concentrated on following Alice’s bubbles, just keeping up. Explosions of information came to her as her body and she continued to fine-tune her conjugal connection with the water.

After ten minutes, she realized she was beginning to hurt. Her damaged chest muscles had responded well at first, but now they were beginning to ache, and her right shoulder was pinching.

Fortunately, Alice stopped.

Thank God that is over, Karan thought, looking forward to a warm shower.

“Okay,” Alice said. “That was a one-kilometer warmup. You kept up okay. Let’s do some sets.”

“What?” Karan asked. “We’re not done?”

Alice finally smiled for the first time since they arrived at the pool.

“I need to see what training you have had. We’re going to do some IMs: individual medleys. You know what that is?”

“No idea: sounds pretty.”

“Pretty hard: Butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle,” Alice said.

Something about those words clicked for Karan and she guessed her body would know what to do when the time came.

“What you were just doing is freestyle, okay? But you already know that, because you have the most beautiful freestyle technique I have ever seen, which means that you will have mastered all the other strokes too, and you’re probably laughing at me inside.”

“I’m not laughing at you inside.”

“We’ll do sets of four hundred meter IMs,” Alice continued. “That’s two laps of each stroke. I’m not going to worry about the clock for now. I’ll swim behind you for the first one, so I can watch you. Okay, go.”

Karan’s head was swimming with all that information, and she hoped her instincts would take over again. Before pushing off the wall to start whatever butterfly stroke was going to be, she looked back at the elite team and saw the coach was squatting at the edge of the water, speaking with one of the swimmers, and both were looking at her intently.

“Hear me?” Alice said. “Take off. This is no longer a splash and giggle session.”

Karan did as she was told and pushed off the wall, aiming herself deep underwater. Again, her body did seem to know what butterfly meant, even though she had no conscious memory of it. It turned out butterfly involved strong, dolphin-like kicks that projected her upper body above the water, a deep breath followed by large powerful arcs with both of her arms together, her thumbs entering the water first, and then a big push with bent arms, all the way through to her hips. It felt great on her sore chest muscles and allowed her entire upper body to stretch out and rejuvenate. She was, however, exhausted by the end of the second lap and relieved to relax into a casual backstroke, which was like freestyle, but on her back. Following those two laps, breaststroke was the easiest and most relaxing of any of the disciplines she had tried yet. She wondered why they didn’t call it frogstroke because the kick was frog-like, launching her into a long glide before she pulled her head and chest up with a strong motion with her arms, breathed, and frog-kicked again. Freestyle felt fantastic after loosening up her body with the other strokes. When she turned and began her last lap, the kinks were gone from her chest and shoulder and she knew Alice was right behind her, so she put on a playful little sprint to the wall, just for fun.

She pulled the goggles off and noticed the coach was staring at them again and looking at something on his phone.

“Okay, smartypants,” Alice said after reaching the wall and catching her breath. Then she seemed to smile a little again. “It’s business time. Get out of the water and stand in front of the next lane. We’re going to dive in this time and I’m going to race you.”

“Hey, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean…”

“I’m not upset. I just want to try some race-pace sets. Just freestyle: four laps of the pool. Fast as you can. We’ll see what kind of times you can do.”

Karan obeyed, though she put on a pouty face, which she thought probably looked strange with her scars. In any event, she didn’t mind going all out, if only just to see how it felt.

It felt amazing. Alice was incredible to swim against. Karan watched her underwater in the next lane and was inspired and immeasurably impressed by her style and strength.

In spite of Alice’s superior strength and size, Karan kept up with her for two laps. Then everything collapsed for her. First, her legs and abdominal muscles gave up, ruining the grace of her stroke, and even though she bravely kept splashing along after Alice, using only the failing strength of her arms, and dragging her immobile legs behind, there suddenly was a knife-like pain in her shoulder and she had to stop swimming altogether and stand up in the middle of the pool.

She felt like she couldn’t even stand up or keep her head above water.

Alice seemed to have seen the whole thing and quickly came to Karan’s aid.

“I got ya,” she said, sliding a meaty arm under Karan’s chest and pulling her toward the wall.

Karan could still see, but she felt like she was surrounded by fire and there was nothing but fire to breathe, which was burning the remaining oxygen in her lungs.

The next thing she knew, she was waking up, lying on the concrete pool deck, staring up at a man in a white golf shirt.

“She’s coming around,” he said to someone behind Karan’s head.

“I can see that,” another voice said: Alice’s voice.

Karan quickly sat up. Alice was behind her. “I’m so sorry, Alice. I don’t know what happened.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Alice said. “I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard.”

“Who is she?” the man asked Alice.

“Don’t worry about it,” Alice said.

“She swims beautifully,” he said. “I haven’t seen a stroke like that since Katie Fremantle.”

“Good thing she’s not Katie.” It was a girl’s voice this time. “The spoiled brat; I wouldn’t be caught dead in the same pool as her.”

Karan lifted herself onto her elbows. The voice was coming from the edge of the pool where five of the elite swimmers were bobbing, goggles on their foreheads.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” another girl said. “We saw you get pulled out of the water.”

“I’m fine,” Karan said, embarrassed. “Sorry you guys had to stop training.”

“I pass out sometimes when coach pushes us before a taper,” the first girl said.

Karan didn’t know what she was talking about, so she didn’t respond.

“You guys training for nationals too?” one of the other girls asked.

Karan could only guess she meant the national swimming championships. Surely she was just kidding, she thought. Alice, maybe, but today was my first day in the water. Wasn’t it?

“Nope,” Karan said. “Just…a splash and giggle.”

“Come join us this afternoon,” the coach said. “It would be good for some of the girls to swim with you.”

Karan was lost for words again, and when she turned to appeal to Alice for help, she saw she had already walked away. She tried to get up and follow her. The coach quickly reached down to help. She saw Alice had taken off her cap and was heading toward her bag and the locker room.

As she walked along the edge of the pool, her feet slapping against tiles, Karan noticed she was no longer afraid of the water at all. On the contrary, she felt like she belonged there.

She caught up with Alice in the showers. Karan didn’t really know what to say and Alice had completely clammed up. After changing, they walked along in silence and left the building to a wash of cool air. It was still dark outside.

Without a word, they got in the car and Alice fired up the huge engine. They roared away from the pool at speeds Karan figured were a little excessive.

Karan decided not to push any conversation. She looked at the brightly lit, empty four-lane road. She looked at the massive two-story cookie-cutter houses they were passing. She wondered if she used to know anyone who lived in them.

As they drove up the ramp onto the C470 highway, Karan looked to her right and saw the sun rising over the small patch of high-rise buildings in the distance. There was a glint of yellow and pink on the glass-and-steel top of the tallest building. She knew that was downtown Denver because the hospital in which she had spent so much time these past six months was near there somewhere.

The highway ended and split into a smaller one that ran either east toward the city of Denver or west toward somewhere called Boulder. They followed the westward way, entering the little town of Golden where Karan and her dad had moved after the accident.

Alice pulled into the parking lot for the riverside restaurant and stopped.

“Now what?” Karan asked. She was almost more bewildered by Alice’s silence than she was by the realization that she had turned out to be a good swimmer.

Alice didn’t say anything.

“Alice? Are you okay?”

At that moment Alice seemed to realize Karan was speaking to her.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“What happened back there?”

“You forgot what just happened?”

“No, Alice, I mean what happened to you.”

“To me? You say you can’t swim, then you swim like that, and you are asking what happened to me?”

“What happened to you after we swam?” Karan persisted. “Why did you leave so suddenly?”

Alice didn’t answer for a while, but she turned off the motor, so Karan sat there and waited.

“I’m a little bit uncomfortable around some people: most people.”

“You mean it wasn’t because I passed out and almost drowned?”

“Kind of. No. I don’t know.” Alice squirmed a little in the driver’s seat. She turned all the way toward Karan and leveled her mesmerizing eyes at her.

“So, Karan,” Alice continued with something of her earlier confidence.

Karan wasn’t sure why she sounded like she was mocking her name.

“What do you know about your amnesia? You can’t remember spending most of your previous life in a pool, but do you remember things like where you were born?”

“No idea where I was born. Mom died a long time ago. Dad said we relocated to Golden after the accident so that I could be near my doctors. My driver’s license is a Colorado one.”

“What did he tell you about your car accident?”

“We were driving somewhere in the mountains. He lost control and crashed into a rock. They had to airlift me to Denver.”

“You crashed into a rock? Not water?”

“Nope. We hit a rock.”

“He was okay?”

“I think so. He seems fine.”

“And what about Facebook and all that?” Alice asked. “Did you check your profile? Maybe something from before the accident will jog your memory?”

“I apparently didn’t do any social media,” Karan said. “At least that’s what Dad said.”

“Seriously?” Alice asked, looking at Karan. “I thought I was the only one on the planet that didn’t.”

“Guess not.”

“Do you have any family photos at home?”

“Lots: taken before my face was destroyed. They’re all just pictures of me and my dad.”

“Any friends?”

“I don’t think so. Nobody has been in touch, anyway.” “How about you?” Karan asked. “Where are all your friends?”

“I have a few back home. Hardrock is a mountain town about three hours’ drive from here.”

“You said your mom is with you and she’s pregnant. What about your dad?”

“Back home.”

“Brothers and sisters? Besides the new one on the way?”

“Brother. Dead. So have you tried meditation?”

“Oh my god, Alice, I’m sorry.”

“Forget it. It was a long time ago.”

“How do you get over something like that?”

“You don’t. I just recently learned that I suppressed my memories of what really happened.”

“You mean you had something like amnesia too?”

“I guess.”

“What helped you remember?”

“It’s complicated. When I used to feel bad, I had this thing I would do. It didn’t help me remember anything at first, but it made me feel better. And it made me able to do a few things that others can’t. I think it also made people think I was even weirder.”

“You mean it helped you remember in the end? What did you do?”

“I just closed my eyes and relaxed, and concentrated on my breathing. There’s more to it, but that’s the main idea. I eventually found out that what I was doing was meditation.”

Karan thought about that and looked out the window at the embankment that led down to the river. The idea of water was giving her a bad feeling. Her swimming ecstasy was wearing off.

“Hey, I gotta go, Karan.”

“Okay.” Karan felt empty.

Alice appeared to notice Karan’s sudden malaise and added, “I’m going to ask my friend Madison to call around and see which swimming squad around here has been missing a girl for the last six months.”

“Oh.”

They were silent for a second. Karan didn’t feel like she had the energy to get out of the car, let alone walk home.

“You don’t look well. Can I just drop you at home?” Alice asked. “Maybe your dad won’t care you’ve been out. And I could log a few more minutes of supervised driving.”

“No way. Dad is really jumpy and he keeps a gun near the door. This car would scare the shit out of him.”

“Wow.”

As Karan sat there staring at the dashboard, she realized she couldn’t possibly walk all the way home. She could hardly rouse herself to get out of the car.

“Actually, Alice, I think I’ll take you up on that. We live up on a mountain. It’s called Lookout Mountain.”

“Yeah, I know the area. Nice.”

“Can you just drive me part of the way up and I’ll walk the rest of the way? If Dad’s back from work, I can just say I went for a walk.”

“Sure,” Alice said, starting the car and pulling out of the parking lot.

As they drove toward Lookout Mountain, Alice turned to Karan. She wore a strange look.

“Hey, what does your dad do anyway?”

“He drives a rideshare.”

“How can he afford a house on Lookout Mountain if he’s a rideshare driver?”

“I don’t think he always was. I don’t actually know.”

As they wound their way up Lookout Mountain road, passing a few morning cyclists, Alice gave Karan a few more meditation tips. It seemed easy enough.

Karan was feeling better and asked Alice to pull off at a little parking lot that had a viewing deck facing west. She could walk the rest of the way. They made an appointment to swim again in the afternoon and Alice left without saying goodbye.

What a strange person, Karan thought.

At home, she snuck in quietly and found her dad was still away, so she went to her room and tried to meditate.

Alice’s first instruction was to sit down on some pillows with her back against a wall, close her eyes, and relax deeply.

As soon as Karan propped herself up and closed her eyes, she could think of nothing but the feeling of water. She re-lived the experience of swimming skills innately remembered by her body, but not by her mind. She felt a rush of adrenaline as she remembered the brief race against Alice before she collapsed. She remembered being revived and how the other girls asked if she was training for the national swimming championships.

Alice was right. Meditation didn’t make her remember anything about her past, but she felt better.

She got up off the floor, grabbed her pillows, and lay down on the bed, giving in to the memories of her morning swim.

The next thing Karan knew, she was waking up to the sound of a text message arriving.

3

Karan rolled over and picked up her phone. She had never received texts from anyone besides her dad and her doctors.

Meet me at the Mayhem Gulch parking lot up Clear Creek Canyon in a half an hour. I’m organizing a picnic and I have some information about your dad. Don’t tell him where you are going. He isn’t who he says he is. - Alice

Karan didn’t remember giving Alice her number. Hoping to ask her for a lift, she dialed the number from which the message had been sent, but it rang out, with no voicemail.

She looked up Mayhem Gulch on some maps on her phone and found it was about ten miles west of Golden. It was eleven-thirty. She had no car. Alice would know that, wouldn’t she? It would take three or four hours to walk up there, or at least two hours to run, and she was not a runner—at least as far as she knew.

She tossed her phone down and rolled onto her back, wondering.

What could Alice have meant when she wrote that her dad wasn’t who he said he was? Maybe she found out Dad wasn’t a rideshare driver? Maybe he was some kind of criminal, or a spy.

Karan suspected Alice found a swimming club that had been missing an athlete. Why had Dad lied to her about that? Her dad also told her that she had been studying at a university. What if that was a lie too?

The same feeling of emptiness and exhaustion she experienced at the restaurant swept over her again. She felt like her heart and her guts had all been gouged out and replaced with brackish water.

She tried meditating again, but she was too agitated to even close her eyes.

Her eyes fell on a photo on her bedside table. It was a little framed shot of her and her dad. When had it been taken? She couldn’t remember how she looked in the years before her face was destroyed and required all that plastic surgery; these photos were her only artifacts. Dad looked about the same as he does now. She wished she could feel something toward him: remember all the tender moments they must have had. They both looked really happy in the photo.

She picked it up, turned it over, and saw a price tag. The frame was bought six months ago. That was when they had the car accident. She pulled out the photo. The back of the photo paper was stamped six months ago. Now that was very strange. He must have had it reprinted so that she would have something familiar on her bedside table.

Right?

Her gaze raced around the room and her body followed, jumping up to take down two different photos that were hanging on the wall.

Both had the same dates on the frames and photos.

She thought of Alice’s text. “He isn’t who he says he is.”

Could these photos be props? And this a stage? What does it mean?

Karan’s feeling of emptiness suddenly flushed away, replaced by abject horror. She had to go meet Alice and find out what she knew.

She heard something downstairs and knew her dad was home.

Karan grabbed her phone and charger, her wallet, put her running shoes back on, and very quietly opened her bedroom window. Her heart was beating so hard it felt like it could rip through the scars on her chest.

She climbed out the window and tiptoed down the thin asphalt shingles until she reached the rain gutter. She peered over it and down at an eight or nine-foot drop into a hedge.

She put her foot on the rain gutter to test its strength. The gutter bent easily down, making a metallic creak. There was no way it would hold her weight.

She thought about what the man inside was doing. She hesitated. Was it possible that Alice was wrong about him? Karan had no memory and little information, so she closed her eyes, breathed, and tried to examine her feelings.

She was absolutely sure now that she felt nothing for him—nothing but fear.

Karan turned and jumped off the roof.

The landing was worse than she’d imagined. The hedge was full of sharp, unyielding branches that cut into both her legs through her clothes. One of her ankles had twisted underneath her as well.

She remained still, buried in the hedge, and accepted the pain in her body. She closed her eyes and listened for any sound from the house. After nearly a minute, she’d heard nothing. She found herself going through the first steps of Alice’s meditation again. Breathe deeply, relax the body; let the thoughts come and go like passing clouds. She kept thinking about the six-month-old photos in her bedroom, put there by the strange man inside the house who called himself her father. Accept the thoughts, she told herself. Let them go. Breathe.

Somehow this process started to guide her away from the pain in her legs and ankle and she found a place within her that was quiet and Dad-less.

There was an image of Alice, walking away from her, full of strength and purpose. Alice was rough, but she seemed to mean well, when she could be bothered, and she was the only person in her life Karan could trust. Alice might be the only person in her life, period.

Karan opened her eyes and gingerly disentangled herself from the hedge, which would never be the same again, and limped toward the garage.

She opened the manual garage door so slowly it took nearly five full minutes. Every metallic squeak made her cringe.

She found not-Dad’s keys hanging on a hook on the wall behind a jacket and then gingerly opened the car door. It took her five painstaking minutes until she was finally sitting in her not-Dad’s Toyota, key in the ignition, no clue how to drive a car.

She couldn’t turn on the engine yet; she had to have a plan. She closed her eyes and tried to recall the steps her not-Dad had routinely taken when he sat down behind the wheel.

She listened again for any sounds from the house. Hearing none, Karan turned the keys until the car electrics switched on, but not the engine. She quickly turned the radio off before it made any sound. As they had in the pool, her hands were beginning to guide her based purely on muscle memories. She put the car into neutral gear and took the emergency brake off. She slowly opened the car door again and placed her foot on the ground, pushing as hard as she could. The car only rocked a few inches.

Karan got out of the car and put both hands on the driver’s side door frame. Leaning into it with all her strength, she managed to roll the car out of the garage, and then dove into it, putting her foot on the brake.

The brakes betrayed her with a loud, dry, squeaking noise, and she knew there was nothing to do but get the hell out of there.

The engine fired right up and she was putting it into reverse when the man she used to think was her dad came running out the front door with a look of panic on his face.

She realized she did know how to drive. As she jammed it into reverse and stepped on the gas, she looked at him again. His panic was genuine. It was worse than panic. It was like he was staring down the throat of an unfathomable tragedy. She almost felt bad for him as she screeched the brakes, flipped the shifter into D and sped off.

The man she used to call Dad chased her for a while, screaming, “Karan!” Her last image of him in the rear-view mirror burned itself into her memory. He was bending over, his hands on his knees, and it looked like he was sobbing.

She recognized that pain. It was exactly how she felt. Bereft. Alone.

Even through her own sobs, she failed to crash the car. In fact, driving came naturally. She followed the road back down into Golden, ignoring the calls that began to start coming in from not-Dad. She followed Highway 6 out of town, up into Clear Creek Canyon, and headed for her rendezvous with Alice.

As she snaked up through the valley, sparsely-wooded hills rising up on both sides of the road and a roaring river running always within view, emotional waves washed over her, cycling between relief, horror, self-doubt, and determination. Relief to be putting distance between herself and that man; horror that she had no idea who she was before the accident; self-doubt arising from the image of him broken and bawling in her rear-view mirror; and finally, determination to catch up with Alice, the only one on the planet she felt like she could trust right now.

After ten minutes, she finally found the turnoff for Mayhem Gulch and pulled off into the parking lot. There was a little hut containing public toilets, a trailhead, and a half dozen parked cars. The trailhead switch-backed up a bald hill. To the right of the trailhead was a dry creek bed. Following it up with her eyes, she saw it ended in a series of dramatic black cliffs.

Then she saw Alice’s car there in the parking lot.

She pulled into a parking spot a few cars down from the Mustang. She figured Alice would either be waiting for her in the car or maybe would be sitting in the shade under one of the trees near the trailhead. Karan got out and limped over to the Mustang. Her ankle was worse.

At first, the glare prevented her from seeing him. Karan was right next to the driver’s side before it became apparent it was not Alice in the car. It was the skinny guy from the bar last night.

She turned to run but knew it was hopeless. Her injured ankle carried her only ten feet before she tripped and slid into the dirt, cutting her hands on the gravel.

“Whoah!” His unnaturally deep voice sounded behind her. “Take it easy.”

“Touch me and I’ll scream.”

“I’m not going to touch you, sweetheart: just here to help. Your friend Alice asked me to wait here for you.”

“Not likely,” Karan said, rolling over so that she could face the man. “It looked to me like she was knocking you on your ass last night.”

“Looks can be deceiving. She didn’t tell you I’m her uncle? She has a fiery temper, but she explained to me everything about your predicament; how you two went for swim this morning, and then she came to me for help in researching your background.”

Karan didn’t say anything and managed to push herself painfully back into a standing position.

“Okay?” he continued in his soothing voice. “She said she invited you for a picnic, right?”

Karan didn’t answer, but softened. Maybe Alice did know him?

“She has made a little picnic for you down the road and told me to wait here and drive you over there when you arrive. She originally wanted to have it here, but there weren’t any good picnic spots.”

Karan looked around skeptically. It seemed like there were plenty of spots for a picnic. Would Alice even want to put out a nice picnic for someone? Wouldn’t Alice probably rather sit on the hood of her car and eat cold pizza? Then again, how well did she really know Alice? She’d met her less than twenty-four hours ago.

“Shall we?” the skinny guy asked, smiling.

Her mind continued to race. How else would he have Alice’s car? Or could he have stolen it? If so, where was Alice? Surely she would be up here somewhere, according to that text message. So he must be telling the truth because how else would he know Alice had taken Karan swimming and she was going to help delve into Karan’s background?

Karan nodded and slowly walked toward Alice’s car.

The guy led the way.

She followed, scanning the hills, and the trail that climbed up one of them, hoping for a glimpse of Alice.

They got in, and then it was too late.

He immediately grabbed Karan’s left hand and zip-tied it to a bike-lock attached to something under the dashboard.

She looked around her in a fit of panic and saw a dozen mobile phones on suction cup mounts all over the car’s dashboard and rear window. Some of them were facing inward, some facing outward. As far as she could tell, they were all on, with video calls running.

Karan was beyond screaming, so she just closed her eyes and tried to breathe.

“We’re not going to hurt you, Karan,” he said to her. It sounded like he was speaking to her underwater. “I promise. Just relax. I had to restrain you so you wouldn’t panic. Listen to me,” he said when Karan didn’t open her eyes. “Your friend Alice is not who you think she is. She’s extremely dangerous, and I’m taking you somewhere that you will find extremely interesting. I’m trying to help.”

Karan’s eyes snapped open and she searched the terrain outside of the car again, looking for Alice. She hoped she was somewhere around here, but she couldn’t see her anywhere.

The skinny guy had pulled the Mustang out of its parking spot and stopped in the middle of the parking lot, facing toward the highway, engine idling angrily. Karan could see the Mayhem Gulch trailhead and her eyes followed it up the hill, where it crept out of view. She looked to the right at the dark layers of cliffs. The highest ledge was about five hundred feet away. Standing there was a lone figure, facing their direction.

Her captor made a video call on one of the phones. The line immediately connected and Alice’s face was there, livid, jaw set with angry facial muscles, her eyes no longer beautiful, but narrow and focused and weaponized.

“Karan,” she said, “why did you invite me up to this cliff? And why are you trying to steal my car?”

“What?” Karan asked, and then realized the phone was pointing only at her.

“I’m not stealing anything!” she shrieked. “I’ve been kidnapped by that skinny asshole from the restaurant!”

“Okay, enough name-calling,” her captor said, killing the connection. They both turned and watched Alice.

Karan could just see Alice well enough in the distance to recognize she was putting her phone in her pants pocket. Then Alice did something inexplicable.

She dove straight off the cliff.

“What the ….” the skinny guy intoned.

Karan kept her eyes glued on Alice. She was horrified she had caused the death of her new friend, but Alice didn’t appear to be panicking in the air. She looked graceful, even.

Just when she was about to splatter upon the black boulders at the bottom of the cliff, she began to move her body, almost like she was swimming.

Alice’s body appeared to shrink to a point but then Karan realized it was an optical illusion. Alice had only leveled out and was swimming horizontally, directly toward the parking lot, gaining on them fast.

Karan’s captor turned forward and pounded on the accelerator. The engine roared and the back wheels spun furiously in the gravel and then jerked forward toward the highway. Once on the asphalt, the back wheels fishtailed to the left before gaining traction. The car burst forward away from the parking lot, engine roaring, RPM screaming, gears changing.

Karan had no idea a car could go that fast. It was so physically overpowering she couldn’t process what was happening. All she could do was keep her eyes on Alice, who appeared to still be gaining on them in spite of their burst of speed.

Karan glanced at the skinny guy only once. He appeared to be scared. His mouth was hanging open and his eyes darted between the road in front of him and the rear-view mirror. He pushed the car faster. They hit a curve too fast and almost careered into the guard rail, but the guy hit the gas hard and somehow the car pulled itself back onto the highway.

After thirty seconds, Alice was close enough that Karan could see her face. She was literally swimming through the air. It was like being in a submarine pursued by a shark. Then Karan couldn’t see Alice anymore because she was above them.

Her captor got really worried and began taking even bigger risks in an effort to lose their shark-like pursuer.

A very loud smashing noise echoed above the roar of the engine and Karan saw two dents form in the roof of the car.

Then Alice’s white fingers gripped onto the top of Karan’s open window frame.

The skinny guy jerked the wheel to the left in an effort to shake Alice off and the Mustang headed straight for the guardrail, the only thing between them and a precipice down to the raging river.

Karan lunged for the wheel with her right hand and managed to pull it a little toward her, just as she saw one of Alice’s hands reach through the driver’s side window. Alice grabbed the skinny guy’s arm and pulled him completely out of the window. It was as though he had been sucked out of an airplane. He was gone and Karan was alone in a car that was careering toward an embankment.

She did the only thing she could think of, which was to jerk the wheel again. This simply turned the Mustang sideways and it slid into the guardrail at high speed, passing through it like it was made of butter. The car was suddenly silent as it flew sideways through the air. Karan had enough time to let go of the steering wheel and brace for impact. She glanced to her right and caught a glimpse of Alice and the skinny guy twenty feet up in the air.

Rather than an explosive jolt, the car landed on something soft and slid gracefully for two or three seconds. Then it straightened out toward the river, moving fast.

They plunged into the water with the smash Karan had been expecting earlier. The impact brought her back into the scene she had hallucinated at the restaurant. It was more vivid this time. She was in the same car and her dad was next to her, his eyes closed: dead maybe. Water was rushing in through the broken windows and windscreen.

She was injured and heartbroken.

“What did he do to your hand?”

Alice’s voice brought Karan back to the present moment. Water was coming into the car, but only at a trickle, and only through the bottom of the door that Alice had just opened. Karan’s awareness slowly began to return. She could see the Mustang’s front hood was partially submerged and the engine was dead.

“I’ve got a knife in the glove box,” Alice said. “Just a sec.”

Karan’s hand was completely maroon, as though she was wearing a ski glove. Curious, she thought. The ski glove ended at a big gap at her wrist. That is where Alice dug into with the knife.

After Alice cut the plastic zip-tie and peeled the plastic out of Karan’s flesh, the pain hit her. It was unbelievable. She knew her hand was going to be damaged forever. It was completely dead.

Alice took off her shirt, wrapped it tightly around Karan’s hand, and helped her out of the car.

Karan was surprised to be able to walk. She was floating. She knew she was in shock.

“Just sit down here, Karan,” Alice said gently, indicating the river rocks near the Mustang. Karan could hear it ticking and hissing over the rush of the river.

“I’m going to go get that guy,” Alice said. He was laying still about twenty feet up the embankment.

Karan watched as Alice walked up the slope until she reached the prone figure. She picked him up and carried him back like a sack of potatoes.

Throwing him down next to Karan, Alice returned to the Mustang and found another couple of the skinny guy’s zip ties. She zipped the guy’s hands together tightly, then his feet. She opened up a container of water and emptied it onto his face.

He spluttered to consciousness and threw his hands in front of his face.

“We’re not going to hurt you, asshole,” Alice said, “unless you don’t start explaining.”

“I … how did you do that?” he stammered. “They said you were a freak but they didn’t say you could do … that.”

“Who?” Alice demanded.

“What the hell else can you do? Breathe fire?”

“If you don’t tell me who sent you, I’m going to show you what else I can do.”

“Hey, relax,” he said, to himself as much as to Alice. Then he noticed Karan and her hand. “Oh, my god, I’m really sorry. I would never have taken this job if I thought either of you would get hurt. You’re just kids, for God’s sake.”

“A job for who?” Alice asked.

“I work for this guy in Denver. He got in touch with some family from India. Some fancy family with lots of money.”

“Names.”

“They didn’t tell me.”

“What did they want?”

“They paid me to set up a situation where you were on top of a cliff with no witnesses and to give you a strong incentive to get to the bottom of it as fast as possible. I was supposed to stream it to a phone number in India.”

Alice looked back at the Mustang and ran in to grab all the phones he had mounted in the car.

When she came back, Karan observed that the phones Alice held were still connected to video calls. The screens were, however, all black.

“Who are you?” Alice shouted at one of the phones in her hand, but there was just silence. The lines stayed open, the screens an ominous black.

Alice went through the phones one by one and disconnected the calls, then put them in her swimming bag in the boot of her destroyed car. All but one.

Alice faced the skinny guy again. “Why?” she demanded.

“How am I supposed to know? All they said was that you are a freak. They wanted proof.”

“Was Karan’s part of the job?”

“No, no, no. They don’t know about her—and they don’t care. I just used her as the incentive and I …” turning to Karan again, he said, “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Focus, dude,” Alice interrupted in an icy voice.

He gazed fearfully at Alice. “I had no idea you would … I still can’t believe it. I thought you were just supposed to be some kind of really good climber, like a mountain goat or something. Nobody was supposed to get hurt, especially not her. I was just going to video stream your freak thing, whatever it was, and then take Karan on a little drive to see something.”

“See what?” Karan finally said, recovering enough to speak.

“I bugged Alice’s car and heard you two talking about your amnesia and your dad. It sounded suspicious. Like your dad is not your dad. Obviously, it all started when you had that accident. So I looked up your hospital records and found the Jeffco Police Crash Report.”

“Isn’t that all private?” Karan asked.

“Pah-lease,” he said, apparently relaxing now that Karan was talking.

“And then what?” Alice asked.

“I went to the crash site this morning. The report described a single vehicle that broke through the guard rail and struck a boulder.”

“And?”

“And this morning I found something the police missed.”

“Yeah, and you’re some genius investigator.”

“Sometimes the police just can’t see things because they can’t imagine the kinds of brutal, crazy things people can do to one another. I don’t have that handicap.”

Alice didn’t say anything.

“It was also probably because the river was much fuller six months ago. You will be interested to see it, Karan. I was going to take you there. It’s just a little bit further up from here. That’s why I set all this up to happen here, so that I could show you what really happened.”

Alice looked at Karan and then back at the guy.

“Then what?” Alice asked.

“Alice,” Karan said, “don’t listen to him. He’s just trying to escape.”

Alice gave Karan a tiny shake of her head.

“Why did you want to help Karan find the crash site?” Alice asked him.

“I’m not a bad guy. I never take any jobs that involve hurting anyone. I have a family to support. Karan’s story was just interesting.”

“What are they paying you?”

He blew some air out of his mouth. “Not enough.”

“Amount, dude.”

“Ten grand.”

“Is one of these yours?” Alice said, holding up her swimming bag.

“Yep. The old beat-up phone.”

Alice dug around and found the right one, then looked at something else on the other phone she was holding.

“What’s your name?”

“Bruce.”

“Bruce what?”

“Why?”

“Okay, never mind. I don’t care.” Alice punched a few buttons on the phone she had been holding the whole time and then put it in her pocket. “Here’s what you’re gonna do, Bruce. I just videoed everything you just said. I bet most of it was bullshit, but some of it was probably true. I just put it in a message to my friend in the Hardrock Sheriff Department and I have it all ready to press send. If you don’t want me to do that, here’s the deal.”

Karan looked over at the skinny guy. His eyes were big.

“First, you’re going to keep your mouth shut about how I’m a freak. You’ll never mention it to anyone. Not to your friend in Denver, not to his Indian friends, not to your friends at the bar, not to your wife or your kids, your mistresses, not to your parole officer, not to your priest. No-one. Ever.”

He nodded.

“Second, it seems you know a bit about cars, seeing as how you just stole mine. So you’re going to go check it out for me and tell me if it can be driven or not.”

He snorted. “No way,” he blurted. “That thing is gone——”

Alice held her phone up, ready to press the send button.

“Okay, okay. Check out your car. That’s a ten-second car, by the way. Was. You probably didn’t even know that.”

“Third, you’re going to use your phone to transfer those ten thousand dollars to my bank account. I’m going to give it all to Karan to help her get back on her feet after all this.”

Bruce looked like he wanted to open his mouth, but held the words back.

“Fourth. You’re going to walk with us to Karan’s crash site.”

He nodded without hesitation.

“Lastly, you’re going to tell me how to find your boss in Denver—and give me an introduction. I want to ask him about those Indians.”

“I can’t do that. You don’t ask these guys questions about anything or anyone——”

Alice pressed send. Bruce looked shocked. After a second, when it had fully registered, he sat back, defeated.

They all sat in silence for a while. Karan was still unable to move her hand and it was starting to bleed through Alice’s shirt.

Alice’s phone rang.

“Hey, Nancy,” Alice said, then listened. “Yeah, he’s still here. What should I do with him?”

Another pause. “Okay. Thanks. And send an ambulance.” Alice hung up. “Cops and ambulance are on their way,” Alice said gently to Karan. She was ignoring Bruce now that he was of no further use to them.

“Alice,” Karan said. “I think I need to see that other crash site. If I get taken off in an ambulance, I have no idea when I’ll get back here, and it’s kind of urgent for me now.”

“Why? Bruce was probably lying.”

“Maybe, but I’ll always wonder.”

“How far, Bruce?” Alice asked.

He didn’t answer. He had laid back on the gravel and was staring at the sky.

Alice looked around, and then at her car. She grabbed Bruce, hauled him to his feet, and dragged him, struggling, over to the Mustang. She shoved him in the passenger seat where Karan had been. Using another one of his zip ties, she hog-tied his hands and feet to the same bike lock he had used to bind Karan. This forced him into a position so awkward and tight that he let out a deep grunt like a pig.

“Let’s go,” Alice said to Karan. “You good to walk?”

“I think so.”

4

They walked upstream, feet crunching along the river rocks. Aside from the odd car on the road above them, they were completely alone.

Her ankle felt better after Alice’s ibuprofen kicked in. The bleeding in her hand was slowing, but she still held it tightly against her stomach and it hurt bad.

As yet another car passed, Karan wondered why no one was stopping to help. Surely there were nasty skid marks and the shredded guardrail? She wondered if people demonstrated the same indifference six months ago after the crash that had shredded her face and chest and deleted her memory.

What was the truth behind that crash?

Bruce said he found something there that proved her dad wasn’t who he says he was.

They didn’t know where the original crash site was, so as they walked, they carefully searched the riverbank for any signs.

The creek was running low, clear and fast, slowed only occasionally by a boulder in the middle creating a deep pool behind it. They examined a few of those slow pools from the side of the river, but nothing was suspicious.

After walking for about ten minutes, Karan thought she heard a distant siren. Alice looked up, but she continued walking.

Up ahead, the river widened and the water was still, and beyond that, it narrowed into a canyon that was going to be impassable for them.

Alice had seen something and was striding purposefully ahead.

At first Karan didn’t see it, but as she walked toward the wide, still section of water, she thought she knew what Alice had seen.

When they got closer, she was sure. There was an old landslide consisting of massive boulders that ran from the road above and spilled down to the creek, right before it narrowed into the canyon. On the near side of the landslide, there appeared to be something metallic shining between some of the smaller rocks that were submerged in the water.

Alice reached the site ahead of Karan and started wading in the water.

By the time Karan had caught up, Alice seemed to come to a conclusion.

“The collision with the boulder up top must have started a landslide into the river, which covered everything so that the police didn’t see it.”

“See what? What’s down there, Alice?”

Alice just looked at her, started to speak, and then stopped—and then started again.

“Karan, you remember this morning when that swimming coach said you swam like Katie Fremantle?”

“Yeah?”

“I think you’re Katie Fremantle.”

Karan didn’t know what to say.

“I called my swimming coach back in Hardrock and asked if he knew of any missing elite swimmers. He said he had, in fact, heard about one. Katie Fremantle was training for nationals. Her dad was her coach, and he drove her hard. She was expected to win in several disciplines, by the way. The rumor is, six months ago Katie had some kind of breakdown. Her dad said she needed some time out and they left to go on a holiday, and didn’t tell anyone where they were going.”

Karan looked at the pile of boulders, then back at Alice. “And one of those girls yesterday said Katie’s a spoiled brat.”

“I guess. But you’re not a brat. Oh, and she’s my age, not twenty-one. She’s seventeen.”

“What does she look like?”

“Maybe like you before your nice new dad gave you all that plastic surgery. Want to see a picture from the internet?”

“No, I do not want to see.” Karan said, and then fell to the ground, exhausted. The sirens were getting louder.

“Listen, whoever you are,” Alice said with her usual lack of tact. “I want to go look at what’s underwater here.”

“You think there were two cars in the accident, not one, and my real dad is under those rocks.”

“Maybe. There’s definitely something under there and only one way to find out what it is.”

Karan thought the sirens were now loud enough, that they must be arriving at the scene and would be trying to find them.

“Go, quick.”

Alice kicked off her shoes and waded into the water.

Karan wondered how cold it was. Must be freezing.

“Hey, be careful, Alice!” she shouted.

Alice ignored her and waded around the pile of rocks until she was standing in chest-deep water. She was having trouble maintaining her footing and was gasping because of the cold.

She lost her footing and went under.

“Alice!” Karan yelled, getting up and rushing over to the water’s edge.

“She’s gone, Karan,” a voice said from behind her.

Karan swiveled around and saw the man with whom she had been living for the past six months. He was carrying his shotgun and was walking slowly down the embankment toward her.

“Everything is gone, Karan.”

“Dad,” she said, trying to smile. “Thank God you’re here!”

He stopped in his tracks, paused, and then continued walking.

“Enough of that Dad stuff. I know that you know.”

“What are you talking about, Dad?” Karan feigned confusion.

“I knew you would figure it out someday, but I hoped by then we would have developed a strong enough bond that it wouldn’t matter. You found out the wrong way. I saw the look on your face and I knew.”

Karan looked back at the creek and saw no sign of Alice.

“Look, Dad, we gotta help her. It’s been a whole minute and the water is freezing cold. She’s drowning down there!”

“I knew that woman would bring you here,” he said, standing there looking at the water. “It’s all her fault.”

“Dad, the police are here looking for me, you know.”

“That’s probably just as well. My life is over—again.”

Something caught Karan’s peripheral attention but she didn’t dare take her eyes off this man and his gun.

“Why did you bring your gun?”

He looked down, as if seeing it for the first time.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. He didn’t take his finger off the trigger.

Karan kept thinking about the look he wore when she’d driven off a few hours ago. In spite of everything, she felt bad for him. His pain was real. “I can see you’re really suffering,” she said, “but this isn’t the solution.”

“Suffering? You have no idea,” he said.

Karan picked up the movement in the corner of her eye again. There was something on the boulders about thirty feet above and behind her fake dad.

The figure sprang, and she could see it was Alice, arms and legs flailing. She flew through the air and landed on the man’s back, forcing his head to whip back.

Instantaneously a shot fired and Karan fell to the ground. The sound deafened her and it felt like the rocks themselves had landed on her head. As she tried to feel where the shot had hit her, she heard the blast echoing up into the valley.

5

It took a minute or two before Karan realized the shot had missed her. She remained on the ground. Alice was kneeling on the man, and the two girls stared at each other. Alice was dripping wet.

He tried to shake the weight off his back but failed.

“Yes, she has an idea about suffering,” Alice said. “She has forgotten more suffering than you have ever known.”

It seemed like hours had passed. In reality, it was only thirty seconds before the police rushed down the embankment, weapons out.

Alice raised both her hands, but Karan couldn’t raise either of hers. The police collected the shotgun, then led Alice to a boulder and sat her down away from the man in the dirt. The other officer helped Karan into a sitting position and started checking her injured hand. He seemed gentle and competent.

His ministrations began to lull Karan into a dream-like state. Perhaps none of this was real.

“Who are you people?” he asked. “What happened here?”

Karan started telling them her name, but she wasn’t sure about that, and she clammed up, smiling awkwardly. You don’t need a name in a dream.

He repeated his question to Alice, who was also unable to respond.

Karan’s “dad” was unconscious or nearly so.

“None of you can talk?”

Karan closed her eyes. She’d like to wake up now. In a warm bed.

Then she felt a hand on her shoulder.

Alice had walked over and spoke in a quiet voice that only Karan could hear. “Tell them for me.”

Karan looked up at Alice. “Tell them what?”

“Tell them they screwed up the investigation of the crash that happened here six months ago. There were two cars involved, not one.”

She assented, dreamily. If she repeated exactly what Alice said, it was like she was speaking about someone else’s tragedy, while she went on dreaming.

The police officer tending to Karan looked skeptically at the rocks in the water and then went over and conferred with his colleague. Then he came back and produced a notebook and pen.

“Not plausible,” the officer said to Alice. “Even if they didn’t see the submerged car, the officers who took the call would have seen tire tracks and other evidence it had been a two-car collision.”

Alice continued in a low tone, looking only at Karan. “Maybe your ‘dad’ swore to the police no other cars were involved. Maybe they took his word for it. I don’t know how these things work; I’m just a seventeen-year-old girl.”

“You’re a what?” The officer squinted at Alice, disbelieving. Karan smiled, as she agreed Alice looked far older than her age. If she existed at all.

The other officer approached to listen to Alice, who maneuvered away from him.

“Anyway, Karan, tell them they’ll find two bodies seat-belted in a car under those rocks,” Alice said. “I saw them.”

The dream was turning nasty. Karan could no longer repeat Alice’s words for the officer. It wasn’t necessary anyway, as he was standing so close he could hear every word.

“I think one of them was your real dad,” Alice continued. “The other one was this jerk’s daughter, Karan somebody. With an A N instead of E N.”

The officer noted this down, skeptically.

“I’m guessing each car had one survivor.” Pointing to the man writhing slowly in the dirt, she said to Karan, “This guy’s car was the one up there on the road. His daughter must have died in his car. The vehicle in the river belonged to your father. He died, and you survived.”

The officer moved closer, and Alice maneuvered away again.

“You seriously think he switched the girls?” the officer asked Alice.

“I think he started with good intentions,” Alice said quietly to Karan. “He dove in and pulled you out of her car. Your face was smashed beyond recognition, but you were alive.”

“That seems hardly possible,” the other officer said. “I fly-fish here with my kid. This river is practically iced over in the winter.”

“No,” the first officer said, “that was November, so it probably wasn’t that cold yet. It would have been about the same as it is now.”

“And you didn’t object to the identity change?” the other officer asked Karan.

Alice responded for her. “I’m guessing that when you were pulled from the car, you were confused. You couldn’t remember anything. Maybe you called him ‘Dad,’ or something like that. He was traumatized. Your amnesia gave him a really stupid idea. He put his dead daughter, Karan, in the car underwater, you in his car up on the road, and told the police you were her.”

Alice was sad-eyed. “Then it got even weirder.”

“At the hospital,” Alice continued, “your doctors said your amnesia was probably going to stick, and that you needed facial reconstruction, so your nice new dad gave them his dead daughter’s photo to model your new face after.”

Alice paused and looked at the police officers, who had their mouths open.

“You guys got all that?” she asked angrily.

“Alice,” Karan asked, tentatively, “what did they look like?”

“Who?”

“My real dad and that girl under the water.”

“You don’t want to know. I don’t want to know. I couldn’t see clearly, thank God.”

The ambulance finally showed up for Karan, who was not used to the idea that her name was really Katie. It felt like there was a fatal danger in embracing that name. It would collapse both the dream of Alice and the nightmare of Karan. If she called herself Katie, perhaps Alice would melt into the ether and she would be left with nothing but pain and scars. She would have no one.

6

The next day, Katie heard a knock on her hospital door. Alice peeked around the corner.

“How are you doing?” Alice asked.

It was the first time she had seen Alice since being admitted to the hospital. It was the first time she had seen anyone familiar. Because Alice and “that man,” as she now referred to him, were the only two people she knew.

“As of this morning,” Katie responded with a smile, “I can feel my fingers again. The doctor said the nerve damage was probably minimal. My ankle is just sprained. They took the gravel out of my scalp. The shotgun blast drove it into my head, they said. All minor injuries, this time. I should make a full recovery.”

“Cool.”

They looked at each other, then away. The hospital’s hermetic tension enveloped them. Nurses busied in the hallways while their patients groaned, acquiesced, and slept in endless cycles of recovery and decline.

Katie looked around her hospital room and tried to imagine what Alice saw. Basically, nothing. No flowers, no cards, no personal effects, no visitors. Nothing. Like in a nightmare.

The therapists had already seen her several times and warned her she would feel this way. Like nothing was real. It was normal, apparently. She knew nothing about it was normal.

“So,” Katie asked with the pretense of ease, “how is your car?”

“I’ll have to come back down next week. They had to rebuild the motor.”

“Oh,” Katie replied. “So you’re moving back to the one-room cabin in Hardrock? Not finishing high school in Golden?”

Alice didn’t answer. Her brow creased, and the inner conflict was apparent.

Alice’s dilemma suddenly seemed absurd. Who cared whether her parents made a dumb decision about that cabin? At least she had parents. Besides, Alice seemed like a competent person. Why couldn’t she help them sort the cabin/ out? Build an extension? If money was so tight, how could Alice afford to get her car motor rebuilt? How could she afford that car at all?

There was another awkward silence.

“I heard that creepy guy who held you captive the past six months is here in this hospital.”

“So did I,” Katie said.

“I heard he was physically okay,” Alice continued. “They transferred him to the psychiatric ward.”

Katie nodded. “The police guaranteed I would never see him again unless I was called to testify against him.”

Saying this out loud saddened Katie. She wondered if that feeling was from Stockholm syndrome. The therapists had explained that a victim or hostage sometimes developed empathy or trust for their captor.

But what if Katie’s sudden empathy wasn’t from Stockholm syndrome? Couldn’t she just feel sad about a broken, devastated human being? In Alice’s black and white world, Katie would hate him forever for what he did to her. But Katie didn’t live in Alice’s black and white world.

Katie slowly sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.

“Come on,” she commanded Alice. “Give me a hand.”

“To do what?” Alice asked.

“Help me put this walking boot on. I can’t do it one-handed.”

After the boot was firmly in place, Katie stood up, wrapped a heavy bathrobe around herself, and limped through the door to the nurse’s station, Alice following close behind. She told the nurses she and Alice were going for a breath of fresh air.

“Where are we going?” Alice asked, after the elevator doors opened to the ground floor.

“You’ll see,” Katie replied.

She went to the main reception and got directions to the psychiatric ward.

“No way,” Alice said.

Katie didn’t respond. She just limped down the hall to the elevator. They took it up to the correct floor, followed the signs to the psychiatric ward, and stopped before a massive set of white, windowless doors.

A sign read, “All visitors must be approved before entering the unit. Weekday visiting hours are Monday - Friday: 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm.”

“It’s a locked ward,” Alice observed. “Thankfully.”

Defeated and exhausted, Katie limped back toward the elevator, Alice shadowing her silently.

As they waited for the elevator, Alice looked incredulous. “Why, Katie?”

Katie sighed. “I don’t know.”

“But ….”

“Alice, he can’t hurt me anymore. Maybe a visit could have eased his suffering.”

Alice looked like she couldn’t believe her ears. “But what would you have said to him?”

“It doesn’t matter anyway. I can’t see him.”

“But ….”

“Look, Alice,” Katie interrupted. “I can’t explain it. Sorry.” She wanted to be alone but didn’t want to say goodbye to Alice. She might never see her again.

They got in the elevator with a tall, young nurse who smelled like marijuana. He swiped his card and pressed the button for a restricted floor at the top of the building. When neither Katie nor Alice pressed a button, they all looked at each other for a moment. It was like they were asking wordlessly. He answered with a shrug of his shoulders.

After getting out on the top floor, they followed him down a corridor and through a door marked “helipad.” He nodded to them and walked off, taking something out of his pocket.

The air was warm and fresh. Playful strands of clouds painted the azure sky. The helipad was a circular concrete platform centered with the letter “H” in red over a large white cross. The platform was elevated three feet above a flat expanse of the hospital roof. It looked like hospital staff used the roof for their breaks. Cigarette butts and takeaway coffee cups were littered around large air conditioning units and metal ducting.

Katie limped opposite the nurse’s direction, and Alice followed. They stopped at the western edge of the roof, with magnificent views of the rocky mountains in the distance. Alice’s home, Hardrock, was perched up there somewhere.

Katie and Alice stood there in pregnant silence. Katie’s eyes traced the awe-inspiring profile of the mountains against the blue sky. It looked endless and wild. Big enough to lose herself.

“Hey, Alice,” Katie said. “I think I’m going to get a bunch of money out of this. My real dad had a lot of assets and a house. They’re putting it all in a trust for me.”

“That’s good.”

“And the courts are going to put me in a foster home. Because I’m only seventeen, not twenty-one.”

Alice nodded. She knew all this. Alice was the one who figured out Karan was really Katie.

“Anyway,” Katie said, “How is your high school?”

“Crap,” Alice said, smiling. “But the Knifespur Wilderness is right outside of town. Two hundred thousand acres of mountains and lakes. And Hardrock Ski Area has the best skiing in Colorado.”

They sank back into silence. Two unspoken questions hung in the air. Was Alice going back home to live in a one-room cabin? If so, could Katie come?

More silence. They heard the marijuana smoker go back inside.

Katie glanced at Alice through the corner of her eye.

She still wasn’t sure this was real. Alice and her abilities. Katie’s shattered identity. Any of it.

“Well,” Alice said, “I just don’t understand how you can be nice to that crazy man.”

Katie sighed and looked down. Exhaustion draped over her.

“But it proves your heart wasn’t damaged; only your head.”

“And face, brain, hand, ankle, chest, and lung,” Katie added.

“If my heart was as big as yours,” Alice said thoughtfully, “I’d be able to help my parents instead of resenting them.”

The compliment was a bit much for Katie. She smiled bigger and felt herself blushing.

“So, maybe I’ll try. But one thing is for sure. I would never subject you to them. Never. I like you too much.”

Katie’s smile disappeared.

“My friend Madison has a nice family, though. Her parents are only partially insane. I reckon you’d like their family, Katie. I’ll call them for you later.”

Katie’s smile returned, bigger than ever. So big it hurt her scars. “Alice, can you call me Karan instead of Katie?”

“Seriously?” Alice asked, shocked again.

“I know it sounds like I’m confused about who I am. But wouldn’t you be confused too?”

Alice shrugged. “I can’t imagine how you feel.”

“Well, Karan is all I remember. I was Karan when I met you.”

Alice nodded.

“It makes me feel like I’m in control. Like I’m creating my reality. Like you do. I’ll keep Katie Freemantle on all the paperwork. But I’d like people to call me Karan. With an A N.”

Alice shook her head in disbelief, smiled, and reached into her bag. “Here,” she said.

Karan took the plastic bag from Alice. It contained a new pair of goggles, a cap, and Alice’s mom’s used Speedo swimsuit.

“I figured this one fit you pretty well the other day, so ….”

“Thanks, Alice. I love it.”

Alice looked suddenly tired. Like she had used up her speaking ability and wanted to turn and leave.

“Hey, Alice?” Karan said, leaning over the edge of the building. It was a six-story drop to the street. About the same height as the cliff off of which Alice had dived.

“Yep,” Alice replied, following Karan’s gaze off the edge.

“Could you just jump off this building and fly?”

Alice looked at Karan and then away.

“I mean, how can you do those things?”

Alice didn’t respond. She looked painfully nervous.

“Look,” Karan said. “it’s just that I am slightly concerned I’m either insane or dreaming all this.”

Alice turned back toward Karan. She nodded and said quietly, “Siddhis.”

“Bless you.”

“No, I have something that yoga people call siddhis.”

“Yoga? Like down-dog, yoga pants, and all that?”

“No. They’re considered mythical abilities. People in ancient India used to have them, but maybe not anymore. I don’t understand why I got them.”

Karan nodded.

Looking up at the sky, Alice continued. “It’s like … the air is water for me. Not air—something in the air. Something intelligent. It’s living and breathing and helps me do things.”

“Wow. That’s unbelievable.”

“I guess I’m a freak.”

Karan reached out and took Alice’s hand in hers. “Hey, so am I. Just look at me.”

Alice did, and Karan was briefly lost in Alice’s astronomical eyes.

“No, you’re not,” Alice said. “Look in the mirror. You are pretty. They did a good job on you six months ago. I think you look better than you did in the photos.”

Karan hadn’t dreamed anyone would even think she looked human, let alone pretty. She blushed again.

“And Katie was a spoiled brat,” Alice continued. “You’re not. It’s an improvement all around.”

“Maybe,” Karan said, feeling warm on the inside.

It was then she knew how attracted she was to Alice. She had no idea if her feelings were reciprocated, but it was good enough to stand here on the roof, holding hands, gazing at the Rockies.

Whatever was going to happen in the coming year would not be dull.

THE ALICE BRICKSTONE SERIES

Have you read all of them?

Girl in the Air

The Feeling of Water

Alice’s Secret

The American Girl Who Broke London

Turn the page to read the first chapter of Alice’s Secret.

ALICE’S SECRET

SNEAK PREVIEW

Chapter 1

Thursday, 3:00 pm

Seventy-two hours before the end

Alice was furious. A tall and broad-shouldered seventeen-year-old, she harbored a fury that thrashed and rumbled inside her like a hurricane. As she stormed away from her parents’ cabin, she felt oppressed by the massive cliff face that enclosed their small rural Colorado property. Today it felt like a damp burrow rather than a family home.

Glancing over her shoulder, she saw her vacant-eyed mother close the front door, probably to return to bed. Mom had postpartum depression. Once again, Alice had returned home from school to learn she had to pick up her four-month-old sister, Connie, from daycare in town.

Alice considered going back to attempt to persuade mom, one more time, to get some medical help. She and Dad had begged her for weeks, but she had declined. Yes, she had the right to choose what she put in her body, but Alice and her baby sister should have the right to a functioning mother.

She stormed into the barn she and her father had converted for her. It consisted of a one-car garage downstairs and a loft above. She pushed open the creaky side door, walked by her restored Mustang, and plodded up the steps to her bedroom, which still smelled of new carpet and recently applied wood stain.

The mirror in her bathroom showed a mess of short light-brown hair and dark shadows under her eyes. Her body was as solid and muscular as ever. At seventeen, she had grown into her six-feet-two-inch tall, two-hundred-pound swimmer’s body. She was powerful and graceful. But tired. She had been awake since five a.m. and had not had a good night’s sleep for months.

She ate four energy bars and texted Madison an apology. Madison, Karan, and Alice were meeting later, but Alice would be late because she had to pick up her sister from daycare. Alice tossed her phone on the bed and immediately fell asleep.

She dreamed she was at the meetup with Mad and Karan. But something felt wrong. Like there was an evil presence. Her dream vision telescoped to a gaping cavity at the top of a mountain. The hole was animated by a hunger to consume everything around it. Alice felt her energy draining.

She heard a hellish rumble from underground, which resolved into a cough, and then into a strangely eloquent voice, which seemed to emit from the hole itself, deep and throaty.

Your filthy secret is out. I know you are a freak. Your abilities are a relic of unholy times and abominations like you were snuffed out long ago. Humans are not meant to do what you can do. I will suck your unnatural powers out of you. You will suffer. Your friends and family will suffer with you. The end is coming.

~

Thursday, 6:00 pm

Sixty-nine hours before the end

Waking with a start, Alice rose and scolded herself for eating so much processed food before sleeping. It always gave her nightmares.

She quickly drank a glass of water and set out to pick Connie up from daycare. She was going to be late because of her unplanned nap. The manager would be standing at the door with Connie in her arms, the last child on the premises. Again.

Worse, she was going to be even later to meet Madison and Karan at the library. Madison had some important things to discuss and had made Alice promise to be on time. Alice had genuinely wanted to keep that promise. Madison and Karan were among the few people on the planet whom she didn’t fear, resent, or mistrust. Friendships were hard work for a socially anxious person like her. She just showed up and hoped for the best over and over again, never sure she would be able to break through her selective mutism even to say hello.

Madison and Karan looked past her selective mutism. She was deeply grateful for that. Yet they didn’t know everything about her. They knew she was a decent swimmer and a fiercely loyal friend but were not yet aware she was a freak of nature. Sure, they had caught glimpses of that strange side of Alice, like the time Karan might have seen her dive off a cliff. Alice hoped Karan didn’t trust her memory of what she had seen. Madison also probably suspected Alice cheated the rules of space-time but hadn’t confronted her about it. Yet.

And Alice had good reason to hide her secrets. As far as she knew, nobody else on the planet could do what she could. According to Mr. Rao—an old Indian man who had lived in her parents’ cabin before he died—she had these abilities because she could see and feel the elemental life force in nature, while other people could not. Mr. Rao had explained that her supernatural powers were called “siddhis,” and they were known and appreciated in ancient India, though they had largely disappeared in modern times.

But maintaining normal friendships was not among Alice’s abilities. It was only last year when she finally broke her silence to make friends with Madison. Better late than never. As a wise man had once said, 90% percent of life was just showing up.

She dropped Connie at home and rushed to the university library, through the echoing atrium, and up the stairs past the librarian’s office, and was soon facing the familiar door to the rare books room.

This room was her sanctuary and had been for the past three or four years. As a little girl, she had often accompanied her dad when he worked on his doctoral dissertation in this room, and she had fallen in love with the library. It was a place she could feel anonymous and safe. While other kids met at the mall or went to the movies, she got her mom and dad’s permission to wander the library halls alone. The rare books room was like a little fortress because it was closed to the general library public behind a locked door. Her dad had made a special arrangement with Brian, the librarian responsible for that space, to look after her and report on her movements. Brian had turned out to have secrets of his own. Alice had discovered some of them, and now she and Brian had an understanding. He had even given her a key.

She unlocked the solid oak door and breathed in the familiar smell of leather furniture, wool carpet, and old books. Her friends were indeed there, but the books dominated the room like a crowd of silent watchers. The shelves were dour, dark mahogany, rising to the twenty-foot-high ceiling.

As Alice’s friends lifted their heads at the sound of the creaking door hinges, Alice suddenly remembered her nightmare—the horrible eye, the hellish voice. “The end is coming ….”

Madison stared at her with dark eyes, her thin lips pursed. “Alice, you’re late again.”

Karan smiled meekly.

Alice thought Karan was pretty when she smiled. It helped hide the network of thin, angry red scars all over her face. Karan had put on some weight since they’d met over the summer, and Alice thought it suited her. Big, strong, and a bit round. Attractive. She had told Karan so multiple times. Hadn’t she? Maybe not in the most explicit terms. Perhaps not at all. She should remedy that; it might make a difference to her self-esteem.

Karan was fragile because she had been through hell. Like Alice, she’d had a miserable childhood, but for different reasons. Born Katie Fremantle, her mother had died when she was young, and her father had trained her ruthlessly. She became one of the most promising young swimmers in the nation, on track to attend the next Olympics. But that ended a year ago when Katie and her dad were in a car accident. Her dad died, and Katie was gravely injured. Alice hardly wanted to think about what happened to her next, but it had resulted in Katie becoming Karan and settling into Madison’s home as a foster sister. The three girls quickly became fast friends.

Smiling back at Karan, Alice sat at the table in a heavy, high-backed wooden chair. “Sorry.”

“You okay?” Madison asked.

“Yeah. Just tired.”

“I know what you mean,” Karan said. “This town exhausts me too. Terrifying place.”

Madison leaned back in her chair and looked at the dusty, stained glass window high on the wall. The gesture accentuated the length of her face and the prominence of her long nose, making her look even more like a bird.

“Karan,” Madison said, “we’ve been through this. Hardrock is no worse than anywhere else. Statistically speaking, you’re just as safe here as in Arizona. You’re just new. It will grow on you.”

“Yeah?” Karan retorted. “But how safe is that? I read that one in four girls in America will be sexually assaulted at least once in their lives. That doesn’t make me feel all that safe. And there are way more meth users here than I ever saw in Arizona. And pot is legal in Colorado. I smell it everywhere.”

Sighing, Madison replied, “Not everyone does drugs here, Karan.”

“Seems like they do,” Karan went on, lifting her blond bangs with both hands. “I know nobody wants to date a horribly scarred girl like me, but the boys in this town all seem to have just crawled out of the woods. They all look like that guy in Into the Wild. Not even I could date any of them. The only boy who doesn’t wear a T-shirt to school is that one who deals Xanax.” She dropped her hair back into place and added, “That guy is hot.”

“I heard he isn’t even a high school student,” Madison said. “He’s the school IT technician.”

“Out of my league, that’s for sure,” Karan said. “Wait, is ‘hot drug dealer’ a league?”

“Seriously?” Madison exclaimed, pinching her nose and shaking her head. “And I thought you were into women.”

“But there is a guy interested in you, Karan,” Alice added quickly. “I thought you went out with Dave, like, yesterday.”

“It was nothing like a date,” Karan said, blushing. “He’s only helping me adjust to life here. His dad works at the sheriff’s office.” She turned to Alice and added, “By the way, Alice, what was your mom doing at the sheriff’s office last night?”

“What?” Alice asked, shocked.

“She wasn’t, like, arrested or anything,” Karan quickly assured her. “She was just in the front atrium by herself.”

Alice thought hard, coming up with no theories to explain her mom’s presence there. As far as she knew, her mom had hardly left home these past few weeks.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Karan said awkwardly. “Like, maybe she was turning in a lost ring or something.”

After a few seconds of silence, Madison announced, “I have a reason for making sure you were both here this afternoon. Two reasons, actually ….”

“We’re all being arrested?” Karan interrupted cheerfully.

Madison rolled her eyes and folded her hands in front of her. Down to business. “I presume you’ve both received the same email?”

Alice appealed to Karan, who shrugged. “I don’t check my phone every three minutes, Mad. Sorry,” she added pathetically.

“Well, aren’t you going to look now?!” Madison’s businesslike manner yielded to her excitement.

Still unnerved by the news about her Mom, Alice tentatively picked up her phone and read the email. It was from the head coach of one of the best university swimming programs in the U.S. Some time ago, Madison had compelled Alice and Karan to promote themselves to all the best swimming programs, hoping to land scholarships. This email was their first response.

Dear Ms. Brickstone,

Thank you for the email and video you sent last month. I also received emails from Katie “Karan” Fremantle and Madison Percival. It is highly unusual that three such promising young swimmers are in the same town! Your coach is an old friend of mine, and I have spoken to him about attending your afternoon practice next Tuesday, provided each of you gives written consent. After training, I would like the opportunity to discuss our program with you. I hope very much that the three of you will visit our university. Please respond at your earliest convenience.”

“Wow,” Karan said. “That’s great, Madison. The only problem is …” She leaned in for emphasis. “I’m not on your swim team. I haven’t trained in almost a year. I don’t even remember what it feels like. I know I told you I’d try to get back into it. But I’ve decided I just can’t do it. I can’t fool people like that recruiter. I haven’t trained. Mad, I think I’m done.”

“Oh, get a grip, Karan,” Madison said dismissively. “You’re one of the best high school swimmers in the nation. You just need some more time to recover from the accident.”

Alice’s heart was beating fast. “I’ll meet this lady,” she said uneasily. “But, like I’ve said a million times, I plan to stay in Hardrock for college. My stupid parents would probably kill Connie in about ten minutes without me monitoring them.”

“Oh, that’s a great plan, Alice,” Karan quipped. “Maybe you can settle down with one of those skinny meth addicts who work at a dude ranch. Raise a family. Get abused.”

Madison regarded Alice and Karan with her usual disappointed mom look. Then she brightened. “You guys will change your minds when we all get full scholarships. Just think: we could be college roommates!”

Alice was skeptical that she could ever be anyone’s roommate. Her secrets, selective mutism, and introverted personality would make it too hard. It suited her to live alone above a garage.

And Karan’s comments had hurt. She had never had a partner, never had sex, or even been on a date. And even if she found someone attracted to tall girls with speech problems, how could she ever reveal her secrets or her traumatic past? She couldn’t imagine having a partner or a family of her own. It was unthinkable. And her career prospects were equally bleak. Because of her social anxiety and selective mutism, she could hardly stand to be in the same room as anyone else, let alone work with them. She was improving slowly, with help from her therapist. She could speak normally to her parents, and now to Madison and Karan, but everyone else was just a big question mark. What career could accommodate that?

But the email was fascinating. It was her first actual proof that someone thought Alice Brickstone had promise. Her swimming coach was always encouraging, but college was different. It was a step into the adult world. But on a deeper level, she feared the attention. What would happen if someone on campus found out her secrets? If, on the other hand, she stayed local for college, she could minimize risks by just living at home and remaining more or less a loner.

Just then, there was a timid knock on the door.

Madison ran over, smiling graciously as she opened it.

“Your guest, ladies,” Brian said ceremoniously. As usual, he was dressed like a golf pro who had escaped from the 1980s. “I’m heading home now.”

~

Alice’s Secret is available at all major retailers. Get your copy now to continue reading.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tyler Pike writes young adult novels full time. Before his writing career took off, he taught literature, film, and Mandarin Chinese at the University of Sydney for ten years. Tyler was academically confused, earning a PhD in Chinese and a physics degree before that.

He grew up reading anything he could find, under the covers, way past his bedtime, and now he needs thick glasses. Let that be a lesson for you.

Tyler Pike lives with his family in Australia. He surfs with his Aussie wife Tamsin and likes to pummel himself in the gym before picking up his daughter from school.

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www.tylerpikebooks.com.

Email: tyler@tylerpikebooks.com

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COPYRIGHT PAGE

Copyright (c) Tyler Pike (2023). All rights reserved.

Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9945794-0-9

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9945794-8-5

Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-6489821-3-5

www.tylerpikebooks.com

This book is a work of fiction. All characters are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.