Annie knew they were going to do it. They were going to leave her somewhere she wouldn't get into trouble and then they were going to go and kiss. 

Jonny Varky didn't really seem interested, if Annie was reading him right. There was some reason he was here today with both of them together and that reason most certainly was not his sister's luscious lips. That, in itself was astonishing to her. How could he not be interested? How could anyone possibly not be interested in the miniature simulacrum of love her sister was giving. 

Annie nebulously understood the concept of 'easy'. She also knew for a fact that her sister wasn't that.  Neither of her sisters were generous with their love, for whatever reason. They liked love. They reveled in it when they got it. They actively sought it out, each in her own way. But they didn't give it away. 

When they arrived by the outcropping of rock they were headed towards, Annie just went forward all on her own. She didn't want to be told that "chechi was going to go talk with Jonny chachen all on their own for a while so don't disturb them". She did not like that conversation. 

She did not much like the river today either. It was dying, anyway. Everyone knew that. But in the moonlight with the occasional murky reflection of a firecracker colouring its blackness for a brief few seconds, it looked dangerously inviting. Like a kiss, she supposed. 

She sat on the edge of the rock and did not let her legs dangle too much. They were talking behind her, she could hear. She didn't believe it was right to eavesdrop so she didn't but she could hear them. His voice held the promise of deepening into something chocolaty and delicious but it was just before that phase, now. It was like an unopened Cadbury, promise covered by a blue, plastic film. She could listen to that voice for hours, whatever he was talking about. Shame he didn't talk much. It was mainly her sister's voice she heard, lilting and twinkly and delightfully complementing him, trying to draw more words out of him, trying to listen to him more. 

They were straying away from her, their voices receding further and further into the thicket of trees to her left. They'd be back soon, she knew. They'd be back soon and she'd have to go back soon. To leave this lonely isolation all too soon. It wasn't good to tell people how much you liked loneliness.  

She spent a while tossing rocks into the river and watching it swallow them up. She heard footsteps behind her, slowly getting louder but she didn't turn. She thought better of it. 

Annie heard a woman's voice. 

"Little girl, what if I pushed you into the river?" 

Annie turned to see the Reverend's wife. She was shaking and covered in sweat. "Aunty?" 

"You look like how Mirror Grace used to look when she was younger. So that must mean you look like what I used to look like." The Reverend's wife sat next to her. "So you didn't answer my question." 

"What if you pushed me into the river? I'd drown." 

"Do you read your Bible and pray every night, little girl?" she asked. 

"Mmhmm." 

"Then pray you'll float." 

The distance between the surface of the river and the top of her head could not have been that extensive but she felt like it took ages. Her feet went first, the water claiming her skin. Then her waist. Then her chest. Then her arms. She could smell it, then. The smell of rotten eggs and goat-shit. And then, finally her head. 

Annie was always the kind of girl who could open her eyes under water. It stung a little more than usual and the water was dark and murky but she could see. Her skirt was billowing around her and she was falling deeper and deeper. Some primal part of her mind understood that there was something very wrong with the physics here. She should be floating now. There was something so wrong about this. 

She looked down. 

She wasted all her breath in a scream. 

She did not feel strong hands grip her own and pull. She did not realize the tussle that was happening around her. She was being shaken like how a crocodile shakes its prey. The water became even hazier and bubblier and the grip on her feet loosened and tightened around something else. Something that didn't deserve to die today. 

She coasted up to the surface. She floated. 

She was pulled out of the water and the water was exorcised out of her. She did not hear the screams of the dead boy's name. She did not feel being put on a stretcher. She did not feel the hospital sheets. 

She did not see Mister Varky barging into the room and slapping her father before collapsing into his arms and sobbing the words "It should've been her." She felt neither of her sisters and their quiet, fervent ministrations. She did not feel the mixture of relief, resentment and remorse Viki seemed to be effusing like emissions from an old car.

But she woke up with one immutable fact lodged in her brain. The devil killed Jonny Varky. And it should have been her.