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It feels like hair. It looks like hair too, long, dark, silky hair. Rachel’s hair. I’m surrounded by a sea of dark hair, waving back and forth, accusing me, pulling me under. It tangles around my wrists and ankles, dragging me down. I strike out against it and get more tangled. I picture Rachel’s face in the water in front of me, her eyes closed like they were at the funeral. Her hair swirling, swirling around me, holding my arms down so I can’t move. I gasp for breath and take in water. I’m freaking out. Drowning.
    Something grabs my shoulders, pulling me up instead of down. I’m fighting against the pull, too panicked to realize what’s happening. Strong arms wrap around my waist and jerk me upward. My face breaks the surface. I choke out lake water, my chest heaves with relief, but I’m still freaking out.His skin against mine feels cold, like a dead body. I fight to get away, but he’s holding me tight with one arm and untangling the lake weeds from my wrists with the other.
    “You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay.” He’s lying to me. Nothing is okay.
    When I look up, my eyes meet his. They’re brown and deep and calming. As soon as I stop fighting him, I realize who he is. Rachel’s friend, the guy who watched me across the field earlier today.
    I push him away, hard. “Let me go!” But he holds me in a grip that feels like steel bands.
    “Calm down,” he says. “I saved you.”
    “I didn’t need your help!” I yell back. He looks at me with a mix of amusement and something like pity. Then I realize that if he’s standing up in the water, so can I, even if he is a good head taller than I am. I put my feet down and stand up; only then does he release his grip.
    He stares at me long enough that it’s uncomfortable. Finally he says, “You’re her friend, Jaycee .” He emphasizes my name like it’s important.
    “ Was her friend,” I correct him. I feel horrible for the way that sounds.
    His eyes turn cold and hard, like they’re made of stone; all the comfort I saw before drains out of them. He nods stiffly, and his chin clenches with pain. I get the feeling if I could push past the stones in his eyes, I’d see pain in them as deep as mine.
    The lake weeds brush against my legs, and panic bubbles inside me again. “I have to get out of here.”
    Without looking at me, he takes me by the arm and drags me out of the water. As soon as I’m on dry ground, I sit down on a log and tear off strands of lake weeds that are still sticking to my legs. I’m so scared and confused, I want to slump forward and cry. If I were alone, I think I would.
    He sits beside me, leans in, too close, and whispers in my ear. “I have a message for you.” He looks around. “From her.”
    I jerk back, startled, my heart pounding as hard as it was in the lake. I shake my head. “What?”
    “From her.”
    I shake my head again, afraid, but I don’t move as he picks up a drawstring bag sitting by the log. He pulls out a piece of paper and presses it into my still-damp hands. I take it from him. I’m trembling with fear or cold or what, I’m not sure. He watches me as I unfold it, gingerly around my wet hands. I gasp as I realize what’s inside. It’s the loyalty pledge that Rachel and I wrote in grade school, signed in Rachel’s blood and mine.
    The paper is yellowed and creased, written in Rachel’s elegant handwriting and signed with my fourth-grade scrawl and two thumbprints of dried brown blood. I close my eyes so I don’t have to read the words, “We promise to always stay friends and always protect each other.”
    I hate blood, even the little dried fingerprints of blood on the note. The sight of it always makes me sick. Rachel knew that. Even when we were little kids and we cut our fingers, she knew that, but she still made me do it.
    He takes the note from me and turns it over. He looks around him again and points at something written on the back.It’s Rachel’s handwriting, but not