DUTTON BOOKS

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uby said I’d never drown—not in deep ocean, not byshipwreck, not even by falling drunk into someone’s bottomless backyard pool. She said she’d seen me hold my breath underwater for minutes at a time, but to hear her tellit you’d think she meant days. Long enough to live down there if needed, to skim the seaoor collecting shells andshiny soda caps, looking up every so often for the rescue lights, even if they took forever to come.It sounded impossible, something no one would believeif anyone other than Ruby were the one to tell it. But Ruby was right: The body found that night wouldn’t be, couldn’t be mine. We had no idea—this was before the blue-ashing strobe through the pines; the spotlit glare on water; the skiddingover rocks; the grabbing of shoes, any shoes, of clothes, anyclothes. Before we went running through the brush and the