May 7th

Beck and I parted ways the day before after witnessing the 'event' at the blue hole and attended school as if nothing had ever happened, but he did make sure that he still had my phone number and I his in case one of us stumbled across something important in our search.

It was as if there was an unspoken deal between us and the animosity from his side completely vanished, leaving him regarding me with an aloof air of acquaintanceship instead of the bitter malcontent that he normally held for me.

He paid me no mind at school that day and I did the same, however the treatment from everyone else remained the same and he did nothing to stop it even though he knew that I wasn't the cause of his brother's death anymore.

I didn't let it bother me, however, as I finally had someone willing to dig deeper into Adam's death with me when I hadn't before. Everyone else had simply instructed me to let it go, that there were no currents in the blue hole, and that it was just my mind playing tricks on me.

I knew exactly what I saw and the accident the day prior at the quarry proved it: there was something spectacularly and inherently wrong going on at the old mining site and Beck and I were going to prove it and put a stop to it, we just needed to figure out what it was in the first place, and in order to do that, I needed to do some digging.

I texted Beck to meet me at my car after school and silently prayed that he wouldn't object. I had something he needed to see.

I was almost done with my classes for the day when one of my old friends came into my peripheral view and I was almost out of her cross hairs until she shouted my name across the crowded hall.

I groaned inwardly and pulled my light pullover tighter around my body and wondered if there was anyway I could dress any more inconspicuously if I tried.

Jeans and t-shirts were my staple garments in my wardrobe but somehow even with how ordinary I always dressed I remained the girl everyone was able to pick out of a crowd instantly with my jet black hair that was long enough to almost reach my belly button in the front and my fair skin that would remain light as a ghost if I didn't get out in the sun.

I decided to bite the bullet and allowed her to come to me.

Penelope Reyes could not be described with a mere few words, she needed her own dictionary to describe the many details about her.

Light caramel skin that emulated warmth, beautiful brown, almost yellow eyes in the sunlight, a voluptuous chest that made me envious as I stared down at my own sparse breasts and a waist that any girl would kill for: she was the embodiment of gorgeous and we had been best friends since kindergarten-that is until Adam came along.

He stole the spot of number one best friend right out from under her and she could never get over that, so we drifted apart a bit however always remaining cordial and friendly with one another.

"Hey, Nel, what's up?" I asked her, using her shortened nickname that she preferred over Penelope.

"I just heard. I'm so sorry girl! I am totally here if you need me!"

I furrowed my eyebrows at her in confusion, wondering just who else had died.

"What are you...?" I trailed off, hoping she would understand that I had no clue what she was talking about.

She flipped her dark brown curls across her shoulder and mirrored my same confused expression as she regarded me with an almost cold intensity and fiddled with the hem of her cherry red blouse.

"You mean no one's told you? It's been all over the news...I'm sorry sweetie, but the police and firefighters all went back to try to find... him...one last time but something went wrong with the diver's equipment and he ran out of oxygen before he could reach the surface again. Since too many people have died there now, they're putting up a concrete wall around the entire lake and making sure no one else can ever get there again."

At first I thought I knew what she was going to say-that the diver had gotten caught in the exact same current that Adam had-but her story was missing that one crucial detail.

"You mean the diver got caught in the current-right?  That's what caused him to run out of oxygen because the current dragged him under for too long?"

Her face adopted the same look of pity that I'd grown used to over the past few months. The look that said, 'bless your heart' as was a commonplace saying in Arkansas and other states in the south.

I'd never expected to see that look on one of my previously close friends, someone I'd once considered an ally.

"No honey, there wasn't any mention of a current...remember they told everyone that blue holes don't have currents since it's not moving water and it's basically like just a big pond..."

I knew that the police and fire departments had tried everything they could to discredit me and what I had witnessed at the blue hole, but it was still hard when people tried to tell me what I did and didn't see as if they were the ones who were there that day, as if they were the ones who'd seen their best friend drown right before their eyes.

"Right, sure...of course.  Because who'd want to believe the crazy girl, right?" I asked her, a bitterness laced in my tone that held the pain of someone who'd been hurt too many times to count.

"Listen Ray-Ray, I-"

"Stop.  No one else gets to call me that anymore, especially not you."

Her amber eyes grew hard and narrowed in my direction as she stared up at me as she was at least half a foot shorter than me, even in her ridiculous high heels.

"Fine.  Raven.  You're making yourself look even worse, just do us all a favor and accept the truth for what it is and maybe move on with your life or something okay?  Because it sure is pitiful watching you pine after a ghost."

I was left staring after her in awe, my mouth hung open in disbelief as she swung her hips as far as she could from left to right in her best runway walk away from me that she always adopted when she was either feeling very flirty or extremely agitated with someone. 

I felt the tears straining behind my eyes as I held my breath, the easiest way to keep the waterworks at bay but it proved nearly impossible as the salty trail began making its way down my face and I turned to run out of the building but I was stopped from doing so as I smacked right into someone-a very angry someone.

"Follow me," he said, the steam practically pooling out of Beck's ears with his anger.

I quickly swiped my hands under my eyes as Beck placed a hand on my back to lead me out of the school, dozens of pairs of curious eyes following our every move and if he had noticed my almost breakdown he didn't let it show in the slightest.

The heat from his hand emanated through my shirt and traveled all the way down my spine, the effect of his nearness on my body sending unwarranted shivers ricocheting all throughout my entire being.

"What's wrong?" I asked him once we cleared the glass double doors of the front of the school.

The late afternoon sun blinded me for a moment leaving behind black afterimages in my vision as I tried to focus on Beck's equally as blinding grimace.

He led the way to a nearby picnic table in the courtyard that wasn't nearly as populated as the hallway had been, a private area he had picked to keep our tentative armistice a secret, no doubt.

He slung one leg over the seat of the table while I perched on the table top, admiring the slim fit of his jeans as they clung to his muscled thighs and the black v neck he was sporting held my wanton gaze for longer than I had anticipated.

"The local authorities are covering up what happened at the blue hole, they think they were the only ones who were there and saw what happened.  If they can cover this up, I can only imagine what details they're hiding from Adam's death too!"

The anger in his sharp tone was staggering and I needed to be calculated in what I responded with to him to make sure that he kept a clear head as I knew all too well what an angry Beck Anderson was capable of.

"Which is exactly why we have to figure out why they keep covering things up in the first place.  How are we ever supposed to get revenge for what they did!"

His eyes turned to me sharply and I knew I had said something wrong.  The venom in his stare was palpable.

"What do you mean, revenge?  He drowned, Raven.  It's not like someone dunked his head under water and kept him under."

"No, the current did that, and isn't that pretty much the same thing?  Look, this current was never supposed to be there in the first place.  What if the mining company is hiding something that caused it and that's why they keep covering everything up?  My dad was there and he works for the government but I'm not sure what exactly he does for them, I just know it has something to do with the environment.  There has to be a reason why he was there when he told both me and my mother that he was out of the state for the next month and yet there he was, right in the middle of town with no explanation.  Doesn't that seem a little too fishy for you?"

He took a moment to calculate what exactly I was saying and I could see the wheels in his head turning rapidly.

"So how do you suppose we figure out what they're doing there?"

The deep timbre of his voice almost made me shiver in my spot as his once rough tone smoothed out and lost its icy quality as if he were talking to a friend instead of former enemy.  We had become allies somehow in the past twenty four hours, and I didn't quite know what to make of that because of all of the awful things he had done and said to me.

"I already have a jump start on that actually..." I trailed off, knowing that he would think I was crazy when he saw all of the research I'd already done but if it meant I would finally get some help I didn't care.

"What do you mean?"

"My mom won't be home until around two in the morning tonight, she always works that late on week nights although lately I have a feeling she's more than likely avoiding me...anyway, I have everything we need to start figuring things out.  Meet me at my house after school and we can get started."

His piercing blue eyes fixated me with a stare that pulled me under his spell for a moment and I felt as if I never wanted to look away, his spitting image of Adam an eerie reminder of why I was going so far to get revenge for my fallen best friend.

I loved him for everything that he was, and there was no way I was going to let anyone get away with hurting him and then covering it up to save themselves, and there was also no way I was going to let anyone else get hurt because of secrets and lies spewed out by a mining company in such a small town.

"Alright.  I'll be over at your house at five."

"See you then," I said as he brusquely stood from his spot on the table and I took a few calming breaths to slow my racing heart as I followed his retreating figure back towards the school with my eyes.

It was only then that I realized my heart wouldn't calm down for a very long time as Beck Anderson was coming over to my house and would see my extensive borderline obsessive 'research' on Adam's death.

Not only that, but Beck would be in my house with me, alone, for possibly hours on end.  While that thought would have normally made me almost pee my pants in fear, another feeling rose to the surface that I really didn't have time to analyze in the wake of all of the new developments in my quest to find vindication for Adam: excitement.