The Drowning Game by Dusti Bowling excerpt
PROLOGUE
November 1999
I have to convince this cop of two things:
- I was wrong about everything because a girl was, in fact, murdered.
- It wasn’t me who did the murdering.
But his stare, full of distrust and doubt, is a bony, calloused fin-ger digging into all the sore parts of me. A slender ribbon of smoke rises from the glowing tip of his cigarette up to the flickering, buzz-ing fluorescent light. I bet they deliberately let the lights go bad to stress people out. The ticking clock on the wall is no doubt inten-tional as well. They probably searched for the loudest clock they could find.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock.
It all works together to make my body feel as though it’s going to explode—a ticking time bomb.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock.
Like computers right now—a ticking time bomb counting down to the year 2000. The next millennium. A bomb that might blow up the whole world.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock.
I came to him. So why does it feel like he’s interrogating me? If I had something to hide, I certainly wouldn’t have come.
At least that’s what I want him to think.
Officer Hendrix takes a long drag from his cigarette and blows it out, clouding the small room. “That’s quite a story, Christian.”
The secondhand smoke makes me want to cough, but that would probably insult Officer Hendrix. I try to ignore the tickle deep in my throat and drum my fingers on the table. Forcing myself to press my hands flat on the cold metal, my foot starts bobbing on the linoleum floor. It’s as though some part of my body has to be in motion, no matter how much I want to keep still. No matter how much I don’t want him to see my nervousness. Nervous means guilty. And I’m not guilty of anything.
Well, almost anything. I may not be guilty of murder, but I’m also not completely innocent.
“It’s not a story.” I cross my arms, pressing my palms under my armpits. Sweaty palms are another sign of guilt. I look down and see the smears I’ve left on the table. I hope Officer Hendrix doesn’t notice them. “It’s true.”
He tilts his head to the side. “Then why were you out on the water with them?”
Maybe I should ask for a lawyer, but that might make me seem guilty. “I was trying to get to the truth.”
“Right.” He smiles, but it’s not friendly. “The truth you just told me.” “Yeah, that truth.” The sort of truth. The mostly truth.
Officer Hendrix opens the manila folder lying on the table and
flips through the papers inside. He glances at me, his lip turned up in a sneer. “You’ve had some trouble before. Haven’t you, Christian?”
“No.” I say it too quickly.
He raises both eyebrows. “You want to revise that statement?”
I squeeze my sides so hard that I’ll likely leave marks over my ribs. “Nothing serious. I’ve never been arrested for anything.”
Officer Hendrix slaps the folder shut and places a large hand pro-tectively over top of it. Like what’s inside is top secret, when I know it must be all about me and what happened on the river. What happened between me and her.
“Tell you what,” he says. “How about we go back to the very beginning.”
I force myself to fold my hands in my lap. “That would be when James called and asked me to go whitewater rafting with him and Freya and two other friends.”
“Weren’t you living in Minnesota at the time?” The ashy tip of Officer Hendrix’s cigarette is growing dangerously long. I can’t stop watching it. Waiting for it to drop somewhere. It’s another thing stressing me out in this awful room.
I shrug. “Yeah, but we were still best friends.”
That ashy tip is so long. “And you’d never met Freya before this?” “No, but James had been talking about her for months, so I knew she was his girlfriend.”
It’s going to fall at any moment. I wish he would tap it over the ash-tray. “How did he talk about her?” he asks.
“He said she was beautiful. And rich. And popular. He only ever had good things to say about her.”
“And you’d never met these other friends either?” “No.” Please tap your cigarette out on the ashtray. “Then why would he invite you?” he asks.
“I thought he wanted me to come because it was something we’d done together back in middle school. James loves doing stuff like that. He’s already been skydiving and bungee jumping.”
“What are you saying?” Officer Hendrix finally taps his cigarette over the ashtray, and I breathe a sigh of relief. “James is an adrenaline junkie?”
“I guess that’s what you’d call him.”
“But you’re not.” He grins. “Are you, Christian?” “No. I don’t even like whitewater rafting.”
“So why, of all people, would James ask you to come?” He nar-rows his eyes like he’s caught me in some kind of trap. “You lived over a thousand miles away. You didn’t know these other two friends. You didn’t know his girlfriend. Why invite you?”
“He invited me because I’m afraid of the water. James is the kind
of person who always pushes you to . . . do difficult things.” At least that was what I’d thought.
A bead of sweat drips down Officer Hendrix’s forehead. “Why?”
“I guess he thinks it makes you stronger.” It does seem to be get-ting hotter in here.
“Stepping out of your comfort zone?”
The smoking, the lights, the clock, and now the heat. This feels like deliberate torture. “Something like that.”
“And that’s why he invited you?” “That’s what he said.”
Officer Hendrix grinds his cigarette out in the ashtray and imme-diately removes another one from a pack in the front pocket of his blue button-down shirt. He lights it up. “Do you do everything James tells you?”
My stomach is growing queasier by the minute, but I can’t ask Officer Hendrix to stop smoking. Can’t ask him to turn the heat off. Can’t show how sick I feel. I glance at the large mirror along one wall of the gray room. Are others in there watching me? Analyzing every-thing I say? Looking for any holes or inconsistencies in my story? If they make me take a lie detector test, I’ll fail.
I quickly return my attention to Officer Hendrix. “No,” I say.
He is doing this deliberately—the smoking. Like the buzzing lights that won’t shut up. Like the ticking clock. It’s all their way of making me explode. But I can’t explode. Can’t accidentally admit the things I don’t want them to know. I have to stay calm.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock.
I swallow down the vomit rising in my throat and say, “But James has a way of making you do things you don’t want to do.”
Officer Hendrix blows a cloud of smoke in my face. “When was that first phone call?”
I inhale the smoke deep into my lungs. If this keeps up, the smoke will kill me. But not as quickly as a lungful of water. It won’t kill me as quickly as the water killed her.
I’m going to win this game with Officer Hendrix. I’m not going to explode. I’m not going to vomit. And I’m going to make them believe every word I say. Even the half-truths. Even the lies. “James called me about two weeks before summer break ended.”
“And that’s when this all began?” “That’s when it all began for me.”
PART 1
THE RIVER
AUGUST 1998
“Drowning girls is a game I play.”
Alkaline Trio
CHAPTER 1
The phone rang on a completely normal, boring summer evening when I had nothing better to do than kill zombies, eat ramen, and play which hand has the treat? with Zia, my orange cat. For the record, she’s terrible at that game.
I picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“How much sour cream have you shot out your sour cream gun today?” the voice on the line said.
“I’m not even working,” I told James. “And my responsibilities at Taco Bell extend far beyond sour cream shooting, I’ll have you know.”
“Oh, right. I forgot about meat stuffing. I know you love stuffing your meat into soft tacos.”
I snorted. James had been my best friend since sixth grade. Since the day we got into a fight over a girl and were forced to sit in the coun-selor’s office for hours together. We’d never fought over a girl since. It helped that I’d lived in Minnesota the past few years.
“So what’s going on?” I asked James, eying my TV. I wanted to get back to my game.
“What’s going on is you’re flying to Phoenix in the morning.”
“I am?” I spun around in my office chair and patted my lap. Zia jumped into it. “And why am I flying to Phoenix tomorrow?”
“We’re going whitewater rafting.”
I petted Zia and laughed. “Sounds awesome. I’ll pack right now.” “I’m serious. I bought you a plane ticket. You’ll pick it up from the American Airlines desk at the airport tomorrow when you go.” “Wait.” My hand froze on Zia. “You are serious.”
“Dead serious.”
I stood up, and Zia jumped down. “You know I’m not going rafting with you. Why would I go rafting with you?”
“Me and Freya and a couple of other guys are going, and I really want you to meet Freya. It’s our only chance to do something like this before our senior year, and I miss you. Don’t you miss me?”
“You don’t have to make it sound so romantic.”
James made kissing sounds. “Don’t you miss me, baby?” “No! I’m glad we’re almost two thousand miles apart.” James clucked his tongue. “You’re breaking my heart.” “Your heart will recover.”
“Live a little, man!”
“Or die a little,” I said. “Like I almost did last time we went rafting.” “Please. We were kids.”
“I don’t think the water discriminates based on age. It kills every-one the same.”
“You are so dramatic,” said James. “Listen. We’re just going down the Salt River. Dude! People do it in baby floaties. Without life jack-ets. Seriously plastered. On autopilot. No driver behind the wheel. And they don’t die.”
I rolled my eyes. “People do not go down the Salt River in baby floaties.”
“Babies do.”
“Babies do not raft the Salt River,” I said.
“Yeah, they do. I saw a baby once in one of those baby tubes.” “Yeah, in the short tubing area.” I rubbed my forehead and squeezed the bridge of my nose. “Not where you probably want to go.”
“It will be like old times,” said James.
When James and I were kids, we were a lot more alike than we were now. We went camping and fishing and boating together, back when my dad was still around to take us. After he died, that all stopped. James’s parents were always too busy with their jobs and other important things. James never made the list of important things. I did miss doing that stuff, but James took things too far now. And I liked being on dry land.
“Christian, it’s nothing. Let’s just go. Like I said, I do miss you. I want to do something together before high school’s over. You know we won’t be able to get together once school starts. It’s not a big deal.”
I gripped the chair arms, my hands shaking at the thought. “It is a big deal. People do drown in the Salt River.”
“Barely.”
“How does someone barely drown?”
“Okay, so I heard this one girl drowned because someone, like, dove off a cliff and landed on her. But that was because of cliff diving. Not because of rafting.”
“You’re completely forgetting about the two guys who drowned the year we went,” I said.
James made a scoffing sound at this. “That’s only because they went over Quartzite Falls like total morons. No one should’ve done it back then, but it’s totally safe now that it’s been blown up. I know because I’ve done it.”
I sat there, breathing. In and out. In and out. “You don’t want to go over Quartzite Falls, do you?”
“It’s super easy to go over now, but we can totally walk around it like everyone used to. We can be wusses.”
I could hear the sarcastic grin in his voice. “Not wanting to go over Quartzite Falls does not make me a wuss,” I said. “It makes me a responsible, intelligent human being.”
“Wussy, wussy, wussy,” James sang in a high-pitched voice. “Don’t you think it’s time you get over this ridiculous fear of water? You fell out of the boat one time, and you’re fine. Put down Resident Evil and stop being a huge dweeb and come and have an actual exciting time for once in your life.”
“I am not playing Resident Evil.” I was actually playing Resident Evil 2, but James didn’t need to know that.
“We’ve hardly been able to see each other the past few years. Come on. Meet Freya.”
“Who are the other two guys going?” “Scott and Daniel.”
“Seriously?” I said. “Freya can’t bring a friend for me? You’ll have Freya, and I’ll be stuck with the two douchebags.”
James laughed. “Man, those guys really are douchebags. But it’s going to be amazing. Memories we’ll tell our grandchildren.”
“Like you’ll ever be a grandfather. I thought you weren’t going to make it to thirty.” James said that when he told me he’d be BASE jumping as soon as he was eighteen. Even his checked-out parents had enough sense to not let him go BASE jumping.
“A lot can happen before thirty,” he said. “Do it for me.”
That wasn’t fair. Now if I said no, it would be like an attack on him. That was what James did. He found ways to make you do what he wanted you to do. Like when he pressured me into sneaking out of the house to meet girls. We came home one night to cops waiting for us. And the time he talked me into drinking a bottle of Boone’s Farm at his party in eighth grade. I threw up a disgusting pink strawberry slurry and hadn’t been able to stomach even a sip of alcohol since. Or the day he made fun of me so bad (I think he’d called me a wuss then, too) that I finally agreed to try an ollie on my skateboard. I fell and broke my wrist.
I knew he wouldn’t let this go. “I have to work tomorrow. I can’t just call in and say ‘Hey, sorry I can’t come in because I have to go whitewa-ter rafting today.’ ”
“No, but you can call in and tell them you’re sick. Or will Taco Bell crumble to the ground without you there?”
“It might.”
“I’m sure they can find someone else to shoot sour cream into the soft tacos.”
I grinned. “Not as well as I can.”
“Please,” he said. “I can’t even imagine how sloppy you are. I bet it all ends up on one side so the customer gets to finish their dry taco with one giant bite of sour cream.” He huffed. “I hate it when that happens.”
I searched for anything, anything, that could get me out of this. “I didn’t think August was a good time to go rafting.”
“You kidding? We’re having a banner year! El Niño, man. The water flows have been crazy.”
Higher water flows meant bigger rapids. “It will be really hot.” “Yeah, there’s this thing we’ll be sitting on top of. It’s called water.” “What about monsoons?”
“Forecast doesn’t show anything. It’s now or never!”
James had an answer for everything. I could’ve said no. Just said no and let him be disappointed. But the truth was I hated disappoint-ing him. That’s how he always got me into this stuff. “You already bought the plane ticket?”
“It’s waiting for you at the airport. You fly at seven fourteen. Don’t be late.”
“That must’ve cost a lot of money.” “Who cares! It’s just money.”
Said someone who had a lot of it.
“Call Taco Bell right now,” James ordered. “Tell them you’re sick with the flu. Diarrhea coming out of everything. Trust me—they won’t want you there if you tell them that.”
“I am not calling Taco Bell and telling them I have diarrhea com-ing out of everything.”
“Tell them it’s from a bad gordita. Gorditarrhea.”
I hated it when he made me laugh when I didn’t want to. It made saying no impossible. “I’ll tell them I’m throwing up, but I’m not telling them I have gorditarrhea.”
“Suit yourself.”
I took a deep breath and turned off my PlayStation. James didn’t know how to lose. I just hoped that didn’t mean I had to.
CHAPTER 2
James picked me up from the Phoenix airport in the brand-new Jeep his parents bought him for his sixteenth birthday. That was how they made up for being too busy to show real love—that and a hefty allowance.
“So what did your mom say?” he asked, glancing between me and the road.
“She was thrilled. She said it was time I came back for a visit.” She really did say that. She loved James. Somehow, even though he always got me into trouble, he could charm her until she didn’t blame him for anything.
“Christian makes his own choices,” she said to him once. “No one can make him do anything he doesn’t want to do.”
Right now, with the Jeep bumping over a long dirt road, I wished that were true.
James’s mouth dropped open. “You mean she’s not worried her baby is going to drown to death?”
“I may have skipped over the whitewater rafting part. I told her we’re going camping.”
“Ooh, Christian,” he said. “You rebel.”
“We could just go camping.” I hadn’t meant it to sound like begging.
James shook his head. “Nope. We already bought the boats.” “What kind of boats?” I hoped they were sturdy boats. Warships would probably be best, but I doubted people took warships down the Salt River.
“Three-person blow-up rafts with paddles. Me, you, and Freya will go in one, and Scott and Daniel will go in the other.”
“Aren’t those expensive?” I asked. I couldn’t help but think about money all the time. Ever since my dad died, money was a constant worry for us. That was the whole reason we moved to Minnesota in the first place—to live with my aunt. Mom always stayed home with me before, so she’d had a hard time finding jobs that paid more than minimum wage. And my dad’s cancer drained all our savings.
But money had never been a worry for James. His parents were rich, and since he went to Brophy, an expensive private boys’ high school in Phoenix, all his other friends were rich, too. I’d never met any of James’s Brophy friends, but he called me regularly so we could laugh about the stupid things they did. I knew that Scott burned his arm falling in a fire at a desert party and that Daniel crashed James’s Jeep into his garage door after forgetting to put it in park.
Like I said: douchebags.
Freya was the opposite of what James had told me. She went to Xavier, the private high school for girls, and everything James had ever said about her seemed too good to be true. Even before she became his girlfriend, he’d been talking about her, about how hot she was. How he was wearing her down until she’d finally go out on a date with him. How she was way too good for him. I’d never heard James talk about a girl like that before.
The Jeep bounced and jerked. James was driving too fast for the rough dirt road, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if we crashed before we even got to the river. Maybe that would be a good thing? No. Way out here, we’d probably die of dehydration within a day.
“Where are we starting?” I asked James as he swerved around a large rock.
“Gleason Flat. It’s the best put-in spot.” He glanced at me. “It’s where we started before. Remember?”
I stared straight ahead at a sharp curve I hoped James noticed. “It’s been a long time.”
James laughed. “Only five years.”
I swallowed and stopped myself from grabbing the handhold. Like a wuss. “Five years is almost a third of my life.”
“Someone knows their fractions.”
I ignored his joke. “I’ve forgotten most of that trip.”
Maybe I’d tried to make my mind forget, but my body wouldn’t. I could still feel the icy cold water. The instant shock to my system. The taste of salt. The pull and pressure of the current. The inability to fight it. Being tossed around by a force you can’t comprehend until you’re facing it. I hadn’t known which direction was left or right or even up or down. And then the worst part: the stab of water in my lungs as I breathed in the whole river.
“You’re not twelve anymore,” said James, jolting me out of the memory I’d lived hundreds of times.
How did I end up here again? “You should be a salesman,” I told him.
He jerked his head at me. “Why’s that?”
“Because you can talk people into anything. I bet you could sell furnaces in Phoenix.”
James laughed. “You know I’m not cut out for actual work.”
I smiled and shook my head. “Yeah, I know. You’re going to be one of those guys who travels around in a van, skiing in the winter, rafting in the summer.”
“Don’t forget the rock climbing,” he said.
“And BASE jumping,” I added, a sick feeling in my stomach. James really wouldn’t make it to thirty. But I wanted to. “So no college for you, I guess.”
“I don’t need college to go BASE jumping.” “What do your parents think about that?”
James’s face darkened, and for the first time since we got into the Jeep, he seemed serious. “It’s my life,” he muttered. “They can’t con-trol me.”
“So they’re not happy about your plans?”
James waved a hand dismissively. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll do what I want.” He grinned. “Like I always have.”
“Don’t you think you should have a back-up plan? What if you get injured?”
James scoffed at this. “You know I’m not a back-up plan kind of guy.”
I stared out the window at the shimmering desert, the heat already floating off the sandy ground in waves. “Yeah, I know.”
“Where do you want to go for college?” he asked, his eyebrows raised.
“I’m applying to the University of Minnesota.”
James nodded, and it was strange, but he seemed relieved. “Good.
That’s good.”
“Why’s that good? You don’t want me to come back here for school?”
For a moment, his smile dropped, like he’d been caught doing something wrong. He smiled again. “It’s good because you can stay close to your mom. She needs you.” He reached over and shoved me. “Mama’s boy.”
I pushed him away. “In-state tuition is cheaper.” “What’s your back-up plan if you don’t get in?” he asked.
“I guess community college. That would be even cheaper. And staying home will save a lot of money on rent.”
James gripped the steering wheel and pursed his lips. His throat bobbed for a second. “I’m glad I don’t have to worry about any of this,” he said.
The other two guys were already standing near the shore when James parked the Jeep next to a small white car close to the river. They had two rafts, as James said, and were busy blowing up the second one with what looked like a bicycle tire pump. They were both wet. I guessed they’d been taking turns jumping in the river to cool off.
When I got out of the Jeep, the air hit me like a blow dryer. Gleason Flat was about three hours outside Phoenix, and it wasn’t as hot as the city, but that wasn’t saying much when Phoenix was well over a hun-dred degrees.
“How are we getting back to the Jeep?” I asked James.
He slammed his door, took off his T-shirt, and shook out his dusty blond hair, which he’d allowed to get shaggy. He threw his T-shirt into the Jeep through the open window. “Daniel dropped a car off at the end point, and they drove over here in Scott’s car.”
“Where’s the end point?” I asked.
James slipped on a white long-sleeved shirt. His skin was pale and burned easily. “We’ll get out at the bridge. Near Roosevelt.”
“How long do you think it will take us to get there?”
James exchanged his boots for water shoes as he talked. “A couple of days. We want to hit Quartzite Falls by tomorrow.”
“Why?” I ask. “Aren’t we just going to walk around it anyway?” “Sure, you can. I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“Well, that would be a first.”
James threw a baseball cap over his messy mop of hair. “You don’t have to raft Quartzite Falls, Christian. But the rest of us want to.”
I was relieved to know I’d be able to walk around Quartzite Falls. But James was my best friend. My incredibly reckless best friend. I worried about him making it over. “But it’s too dangerous.”
“I told you it’s not,” he said. “Not since it got blown up. It’s way different.” He walked to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “Really, you’ve got nothing to worry about. We’ll be fine. But your worry over my safety sure is sweet.” Before I could stop him, he planted a big wet kiss on my cheek.
I laughed and pushed him off me. “Save your kisses for your girlfriend.”
Back in 1993, the summer I almost drowned, two people really did die going over Quartzite Falls. Later that year, a group of guys decided to blow up the falls with dynamite to make it safer. I guess you could say they had good intentions, but it definitely wasn’t legal.
“Obviously I haven’t seen it since it got blown up,” I told James.
“I have.” He slapped my back. “I guess you’re just going to have to trust me.”
I threw my head back and laughed. “Ha! Last time I trusted you, I ended up with a broken wrist.”
James raised an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure you won’t break any-thing this time. Pretty sure.”
A girl stepped out of the small white car. She stood beside it, her
back to us. Her long hair was the color of the few wisps of clouds in the blue desert sky. She was wearing a white tank top and short jean cutoffs, her slender arms glowing in the bright sun as she stretched them over her head. For a moment, everything was completely still except the soft breeze lifting strands of her hair. She grabbed some-thing out of the car and slammed the door, breaking the intense quiet, and slipped on a baseball cap and sunglasses. Stepping gingerly over the rocky path in her tennis shoes, Freya walked toward us.
When she reached us, I couldn’t find anything better to say to her than “Xavier.”
Freya tilted her head. “I thought your name was Christian.” Her smile was bright, and her teeth were slightly crooked, which I wasn’t expecting. Still, James was right—she was beautiful. I could tell that even with the baseball cap and sunglasses.
I pointed at her baseball cap. “Your hat. You play varsity softball at Xavier.” When James told me Freya went to Xavier, I had thought, Of course she does. All the rich girls in Phoenix went to Xavier. But he never told me she played softball. She looked too petite to be a softball player.
She laughed and swung her arms like she was holding a bat. “Yep, that’s me.”
James was quiet, like he was observing us. “Great. Now you two know each other,” he said curtly. “Let’s get in the water.”
I glanced at the other two guys. One had bright red hair and was so pale, I was pretty sure he’d be horribly sunburned by the end of this trip, no matter how much he tried to cover up. The other guy was the opposite—dark-skinned with short black stubble for hair, as though he’d shaved his head a week ago. I knew one was Scott and one was Daniel, but I had no idea which was which. I raised my eyebrows at James and tilted my head at them.
“Oh, right,” said James, walking to them. He slapped the lighter-skinned redheaded guy on the back. “This useless piece of crap is Scott.” He put a hand on the darker-skinned guy’s shoulder. “And this goofy-looking idiot is Daniel.” James pointed at me. “And this worth-less wuss is Christian.” He turned to the other two guys. “I’ve told you both about Christian, right?”
All three of them smiled like they had a secret between them, and those smirks made me wonder what James had said about me. All he’d ever told me about these two guys was a bunch of stupid things. Did he talk about me like that with them? I pushed the thought out of my mind. I didn’t want to know.
I pointed at the two coolers in Scott and Daniel’s raft. “What’s in those?”
James lifted one cooler’s lid. “Just the essentials.” He pulled out a red can of beer, popped it open, and chugged it down. He let out a loud burp, and the three guys laughed.
Freya did not look amused. She crossed her arms and stared at him through her dark sunglasses. “I hope you put some food in there,” she said.
“How can you doubt me, my love?” James opened the other cooler and pulled out a pack of hot dogs. “Dinner for tonight.” He tossed them back in and pulled out something that looked like a protein bar. “Lunch.”
I glanced at our raft. A couple of puffy dark garbage bags were in there along with a small boom box in some kind of plastic bag—to protect it from the splashing water I assumed.
“What are we supposed to sleep in?” Freya asked, the frustration growing in her voice.
James pulled out one of the garbage bags. “These sleeping bags.” “How many are in there?” Freya asked.
“Three.” James grinned and pointed at us one at a time, mouth-ing numbers. “Oh, shoot. There are five of us. Well, we only had three sleeping bags. I guess two of us can sleep in the rafts.”
“James,” I said.
He took another swig of his beer. “Hm?” “Where are the life jackets?”
The three guys froze and looked at one another. “Scott was sup-posed to bring them,” James blurted.
Scott threw his hands up. “Daniel said he was going to bring them.”
Daniel’s mouth dropped open. “I never said that! I thought James was bringing them.”
James shrugged. “It’ll be fine. We’re not going over bad rapids.” “No life jackets,” I mumbled. “Perfect.”
James threw the empty beer can in a nearby bush and put his hands on his hips. “Good thing we all know how to swim.”
“I’m not a good swimmer, and you know it,” I said.
“Don’t worry, my sweet damsel. I’ll jump in and save you.” James blew me a kiss. “You know I will. I would never let my best friend drown.”
Freya pointed at the second beer in his hand. “It’s going to be hard to do that if you’re drunk.”
James took a sip of beer and smiled. “Don’t underestimate me.” “Maybe I’ll stay back,” I told them. Something felt off. Every cell in
my body was screaming at me that this could all go wrong. Bad idea. I never should’ve come. What had I been thinking? Oh, right. That I didn’t want to disappoint James.
James grinned. “And do what? Sit on the side of the river until we’re done?”
“I’ll take your Jeep and meet you at the end point. That way you don’t have to drive back to get it.”
“No can do,” said James. “We still have to drive back to get Scott’s car anyway. And no one drives my Jeep but me. Not after this guy crashed it.” He shot Scott an evil look.
“I can take Scott’s car then,” I said.
“That’s a negative,” said Scott. “I don’t even know you, man. I’m not going to let you drive my car.”
“I’ll figure something out,” I insisted, my anxiety growing by the second.
James spun in a circle, his arms thrown out. “You didn’t come all this way to sit in the desert and die of heatstroke. You’re in the middle of nowhere. It’s over a hundred degrees outside. You can’t walk out of here. No one is going to drive by. It’s the river or death.”
Freya slid tentative cool fingers into my hand and squeezed. “It will be okay, Christian.” She took off her sunglasses and smiled up at me.
My stomach twisted at her touch. Her voice. Her smile. “You think so?” I muttered.
She glanced at the other three boys and back to me. “Please don’t make me go with them alone,” she whispered.
It was in her dark brown eyes. In her trembling fingers. The way she bit her lip. The furrow of her brow. She was nervous, too. So why was she here? How did James manage to convince her to come on this trip? No doubt the same way he convinced me.
I gazed at the sparkling water, It looked almost completely still from where we stood. But it was a lie. It wouldn’t stay like that for long. Whitewater waited for us. Without life jackets. Without helmets.
With nothing but a cooler full of beer and hot dogs and a boom box that I knew would only play James’s favorite CDs—stuff like Limp Biz-kit and Smash Mouth. I wasn’t sure what would be worse, drowning in the river or listening to Smash Mouth for three days.
River or death, huh? Somehow I felt like it wasn’t an either/or choice.
CHAPTER 3
Scott and Daniel pushed the raft with the coolers out onto the river and hopped in once the water was deep enough. I was glad I didn’t have to ride with them. James wasn’t the most sensitive guy, but at least he was thoughtful enough not to make me ride in the other raft with two guys I didn’t know and didn’t want to know.
The three of us pushed our own raft out into the river, and the water was both relieving and shocking as I stumbled over the slippery rocks. I’d forgotten how cold the Salt River was. When we were out far enough, the three of us climbed into the raft and got situated—James at the front, me in the middle, Freya at the back. While I’d only floated the Salt River once, James knew the river really well. He’d know what was coming.
Floating lazily out onto the quiet, peaceful river, we were alone. Everyone rafted the Salt River in the spring, when winter runoff was high. When the weather was cooler. When there wasn’t a risk of mon-soons. We must’ve been crazy to be out here at this time of year, but the peace was also kind of nice.
Freya dipped her paddle into the sparkling water. “This isn’t so bad.” Her voice was high-pitched. Sweet. Soft. If I hadn’t known she was seventeen, I would’ve thought it was the voice of someone much younger.
I turned around so I could face her. “Haven’t you ever rafted the Salt before?”
She shook her head. “No. I like to swim, though. I’m on the swim team at Xavier.”
“That’s cool,” I told her.
James let out a loud yawn like our conversation was boring him and shouted to the other raft, “What’re you losers doing over there?”
“Scott already needs to take a dump!” Daniel called back.
“That was between you and me,” Scott hissed, his voice echoing over the quiet river.
“Just lean over the edge,” James said.
Freya and I looked at each other. “Gross,” she muttered, and we burst out laughing.
“Extra incentive not to fall in,” I said to her. “It’ll travel with us.” Freya covered her mouth with her hand and laughed harder.
“Don’t tell me that.”
Scott stood up in the raft, wobbling terribly, and started pulling his pants down.
“Dude, I was joking!” James shouted.
Scott was having a hard time keeping his balance, and it was easy to see where this was going.
“Sit down,” Daniel ordered. “Let’s try to get to shore.”
But Scott wasn’t listening. He was too focused on trying to get his pants down. One quick tilt of the raft, and he splashed into the water.
“Man overboard!” James said, laughing hysterically.
Daniel crossed his arms and glared at the water where Scott had gone under. He looked like he had no time for this nonsense, and I had to admit I hadn’t expected Daniel to be so serious. Scott and Daniel weren’t just opposites in appearance—they seemed to be opposites in personality, too.
Several seconds went by, and Scott still hadn’t reappeared. “Doesn’t he know how to swim?” I asked. My heart sped up, and I almost lost my grip on my paddle.
James waved a hand. “He’s fine.” How could he be so relaxed about absolutely everything?
At that moment, Scott broke through the surface, his head thrown back. “Little Mermaid impression,” he announced. “What do you guys think?”
“You’re not pretty enough,” said Daniel.
The three of us all stared at Daniel from across the water. “What?” he said. “The little mermaid is hot. You don’t think so?”
“That’s weird, man,” said James.
“What?” Daniel said again, seeming offended. “She’s sixteen. She’s like our age. It’s not weird.”
James’s mouth dropped open. “How did you know she’s sixteen, Daniel? How many times have you watched that movie?”
Daniel scowled. “It’s not weird.”
“She’s a cartoon,” Freya said. “You have a thing for a cartoon.
That’s what’s weird. Not her age.”
Daniel rolled his eyes and made another one of those I don’t have time for this nonsense looks. “I don’t have a thing for her. She’s just pretty. That’s all.”
Scott was floating quietly on his back beside the raft. “I like those boob shells she wears,” he said. “I’d get with her.”
“You’d get with the genie from Aladdin,” said James. Scott looked like he was considering it.
“Now you can take your dump in private,” James said to Scott. Scott pushed his legs down and treaded water upright for a while, a sly grin spreading across his face.
“Gross!” Freya cried. “You’re disgusting! How did I end up on a trip with four disgusting boys?”
James reached over and grabbed her neck, pulled her to him, and kissed her. She looked uncomfortable, almost angry about the kiss, as he pulled away with a loud smack.
“Because you love us,” he said.
She glared at him. “Don’t bet on it.”
The mood in the raft had become so heavy, I worried it could sink us. Scott was still floating in the water, doing things I didn’t want to think about, and Daniel was struggling to keep his raft straight.
“You better get back in,” I called to Scott. “Before we hit rapids.” A whooshing white noise had been building. It sounded like a distant air conditioner. Or maybe wind through the cottonwoods lining the riv-erbank, but there was only the lightest of breezes.
The whooshing grew into a low rumble, like distant thunder. As the rumbling turned into roaring, it echoed off the canyon walls around us, amplifying the sound, making it hard to tell how far away the rapids were. I looked ahead and saw nothing but calm river and canyon walls.
Scott was floating on his back again, and I wished he would get in his raft. He patted the water and kicked his feet and spit water straight up into the air like a fountain. He behaved as though he were swimming in a safe, clean pool instead of an unpredictable river with a human turd in it.
My chest hurt, and my stomach clenched into knots. “He should get back in the raft.”
James shrugged. “He’s fine, Christian. Stop worrying so much.”
We rounded a bend, and the roaring turned into the clear sound of crashing water. Up ahead, the water broke, changing from a smooth glass-like surface to a rippling, boiling, frothing, living thing. Foam and bubbles created patches of whitewater, while standing waves smashed against rocks in a rhythm. Larger rounded waves flowed over boulders not tall enough to break the surface.
It was both beautiful and scary, the whitewater. The melody of rushing water can be soothing when you’re on the shore. But we weren’t on the riverbank. We were in flimsy rubber rafts.
James jerked his head at me and grinned. “Get ready.”
Excerpted from The Drowning Game by Dusti Bowling. Copyright © 2026. Available from Union Square & Co., an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
It’s the late 1990s, and seventeen-year-old Christian is content with his summer plans to work and hang out with his cat, when he gets a phone call from his best friend that will change his life forever. James invites Christian to Arizona for a whitewater rafting trip, even though he knows Christian is terrified of water. But James is persuasive, and Christian relents.
In Salt River Canyon, the heat is scorching, and so is James’s pretty girlfriend, Freya. However, something seems off between the couple as bitter words fly. When James and the others disappear in the second raft, Christian and Freya are left to face the rapids alone. Disaster strikes when Freya falls into the river, and Christian is frozen with fear.
One year later, Christian is still wracked with guilt over Freya’s death. Now, he’s a freshman at Arizona State University, and he thinks he sees Freya on campus. It can’t be her. Freya is dead, after all. They found her body. Didn’t they? Christian follows Madison, the girl who looks like Freya, everywhere. He was certain Freya had died that day, but now he’s certain Madison is Freya. Will he ever find out what’s real? Or will his obsession be his downfall?