Excerpt: hollyrusken@yahoo.com

Chapter One

“The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea.”
Isak Dinesen

I’m not supposed to know this, but I do: I overheard it, Holly’s parents and my parents talking, her mother still in shock a week later.
“Those first three days were the worst, when we didn’t know where she was. The police Chief said it could’ve played out that we didn’t find her for a long, long time. The car was completely hidden in the desert brush.”
Holly’s Mom then said the words I’d never forget, not until my own dying day, I’m sure.
“He said it was the vultures circling that alerted the rancher whose land the car was on.”
From my perch in the shadows of the staircase, I saw her body shudder, the tremor like an aftershock to the original groan. It was one of those images you could never unsee once you saw it.
Anyone who lives in the desert knows that circling vultures are harbingers of death.
It seems Holly was thrown from the car, after it rolled.

***

What is a deadly weapon? A sawed-off shotgun? An ice pick? A big-butt bow and arrow, like the kind men use to hunt deer? A cinder block cracked against an unsuspecting cerebellum? Even life-giving water can be deadly – you can slip on ice, for instance, or drown in an angry ocean. A non-apologetic icicle can aim for your ear and push through to your brain.

I'd go with water frozen into something big enough to cause blunt-force trauma and then melting innocently down the kitchen sink, the murder weapon -poof- disappeared into thin air.

How about more everyday culprits, like a car, a drink, and the immortality complex of teenagers? That combination is one of the deadliest weapons I know, especially when there’s a drunk nineteen-year-old behind the wheel and your best friend in the passenger seat.

I know what people think -- what the kids at school think – at least some of the kids. That Holly Rusken brought it upon herself, somehow, even though she never drank alcohol and she hadn’t been the one driving. That Holly Rusken knew better, coming from a decent-enough family, with an intelligent head on her shoulders, who shouldn’t have, what, gotten into the car with her own cousin? Shouldn’t get any sympathy because she’s pretty and popular and people were jealous of her?

I’d seen her cousin, Brian, just an hour before, and he’d appeared normal enough; he hadn’t looked like he was drinking, nor had we smelled anything on his breath. He was a varsity football player, and a serious runner. No one had known he’d been a peer-pressured, fraternity party-boy, too; at least, not us kids still in high school.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard all the rumors. They’ve circulated through our school like whiffs of smoke before the big, roaring fire. Sometimes questions were posed to me carefully, by those who knew I was Holly’s best friend. But, sometimes the words were behind-your-back mean, curled up like secret snakes unfanging just before your foot presses down: stuff like, that Holly deserved to die by getting in the car with a drunk driver; that (consequently) Holly had brought the tragedy upon herself and didn't deserve any sympathy, and neither did I: as if her tragedy had somehow tainted me by association.

It was completely bizarre, like falling down Alice’s rabbit hole. It was like my reputation was muddied because I was Holly’s best friend and now she was dead. And no, unlike some of the rumors claim, I didn’t let Holly get in the car with a drunk guy. Believe me, if I’d had an inkling of what was to come, I would’ve done something – anything -- EVERYTHING. I would’ve intervened no matter what.

But it wasn’t like that. Holly wasn’t like that. No one can make assumptions about her; not accurate ones, at least. No one can judge Brian, either -- not unless they add in the fact that he was young, and being young, probably believed he was invincible like the rest of us.

My mom said it’s because our frontal lobes aren’t done growing, yet, so it’s unfair to blame a teenager’s age on them. Kids do stupid things, sometimes. We make mistakes. We’re teenagers. That’s our job.