Death And All His Friends

Chapter One

"I now officially declare the start of summer," said Kristina, laughing as she and Adriana walked out of Kelly's. Yesterday had been the last day of junior year, where they had both taken their calc finals and had run out of school faster than was humanly possible. But that day hadn't really felt like summer, with the stress of cramming still on their backs. Plus, it had rained, and that was no way to start off those glorious ten weeks of no school. They had both gone home and vegetated, glad to finally be done with it all, at least until September. This morning, Adriana had slept until eleven, happy to wake up to the sun shining in her window instead of the moon. Kristina woke up at noon and called Adriana to go out for Kelly's ice cream the second she got out of bed. According to Kristina, summer didn't exist until that first spoonful.

Adriana smiled at her friend's energy while they both grabbed a table right outside of Kelly's. Kristina dug into her ice cream like there was no tomorrow, while Adriana took slow bites, not having had a proper appetite for quite some time. She was sure as hell glad this school year was over. It had been one of her worst, and she just wanted the laziness of summer to erase its memories.

"So, how did you do on your finals?" Kristina asked, still shoving ice cream down her throat. Adriana was amazed at how her friend could still be thinking about school while she basked in the glory of summer. As far as Adriana was concerned, junior year was eons ago. But she was determined to keep the conversation pleasant and positive. Her friendship with Kristina wasn't quite back to where it had been at one point, and she wasn't going to mess up the progress they had made.

She shrugged. "Okay, I guess." In all honesty, Adriana had done great on her finals, considering the slump she had led herself into over the winter. She had managed to scrape at least an A minus on all of them, but that was just because she had studied more than she breathed. "What about you?"

Kristina raised an eyebrow. "Is that even a question anymore? I can't not do well on my finals. My mom would actually kill me."

Adriana gave a small smile, her lips barely separating. She hadn't given anyone a real smile for months. She couldn't even remember the last time she had laughed. "So I'm guessing that you have straight A's for your cumulative grades?"

Kristina nodded. "What about you?"

Adriana bit her bottom lip. "Just in English and history. B's in everything else." Even though they were friends, Adriana missed getting better grades than Kristina. Even though Kristina would get into her little moods about it, Adriana hated when her friend talked down to her, which is what happened when Kristina did better in something. Adriana was sick of people talking down to her. Claudia had gotten that memo. Kristina's had gotten lost in the mail somewhere.

"Well, maybe I can tutor you this summer or something," Kristina offered, and Adriana could feel the condescension strike at her very core. But she didn't acknowledge it. That would only make things worse.

"Aren't you gonna be busy with college tours?" Adriana asked. Kristina was a shoe-in for Yale, but Alexis wanted her daughter to explore other options, in case, by some horrific act of God, Kristina didn't make it into her dream school.

Kristina rolled her eyes. "Yeah, but I'm trying to get my mom to chill out on the whole college thing. I mean, she's going psycho. She's even thinking about turning it into a whole road trip and bringing Molly along. I am not spending my entire summer in a car with my mom and my little sister." She smiled; Adriana returned it, but it wasn't as large. "So, how's Claudia handling the whole college thing?"

"Honestly, it rarely comes up in conversation," said Adriana. "I mean, at the beginning of the year, I had Oxford on my mind, but I doubt that's possible anymore." Saying it out loud really hurt. Oxford was where Adriana's adopted parents had gone, studied, and fallen in love. But after this year, Oxford was merely a blip on the radar screen of reality. "I might just stick around here, maybe go to PCU. Or go down to Manhattan, like NYU or something. I have to figure out what I'm doing with my life first."

"Yeah, I don't really have that problem," said Kristina. "I'm going to Yale for law, no matter what other colleges my mom forces me to see."

Adriana wished she had her life planned out like the rest of her grade seemed to. This one wanted to be a doctor, that one wanted to be a cop—was it wrong that she didn't know what she wanted to do yet? She thought about her parents. Her father had been a salesman, and she definitely didn't see herself doing that. Her mother had worked as a guidance counselor until her father had started traveling for business. Adriana doubted she should be guiding students when she couldn't even guide herself. Her birth father had been a lawyer, but Adriana had argued enough to last her a lifetime. And Claudia? Well, as far as Adriana was concerned, she was unemployed.

"So, what do your summer plans consist of?" Kristina asked, her ice cream completely finished. Adriana noticed that she had barely touched hers, and that it was already starting to melt in the June sun.

"Well, your grandfather was gracious enough to give me my job back," said Adriana, making sure her gratefulness was completely evident in her voice. Mike had no reason to hire her back when she had just stopped showing up to work, but he had, and she appreciated it very much. "I start next Monday. And then soccer training camp starts in July. I want to get back on varsity, even if I'm not captain again."

"Sounds a lot more fun than my summer," said Kristina. She peered over at Adriana's ice cream bowl, which still had not been emptied. "How can you not finish that?"

Adriana shrugged. "I'm not hungry."

Kristina frowned. "You're never hungry."

Adriana didn't want to talk about it. "What time does the pool open?" she asked, intentionally changing the subject. She was Kristina's guest at the country club today, and they were both already prepared, with their bathing suits on underneath their shorts and tank-tops.

Kristina didn't acknowledge the change in subject, though she certainly noticed it. She took her phone out of her pocket and glanced at the screen. "In, like, ten minutes. We should start heading over before all the lawn chairs get taken up."

Adriana nodded, standing up, grabbing her half-empty bowl, and preparing to head inside. But Kristina stepped in her path before she could reach the door.

"You are not letting that ice cream go to waste," she said.

"But I'm not hungry," Adriana insisted.

"Fine," said Kristina, snatching the bowl from Adriana's hands. "I'll eat it. It'll break Grandpa's heart if he sees you didn't eat it all." She started shoving spoonfuls of the ice cream in her mouth, while Adriana watched with a slightly amused smile.

As Kristina continued her shoveling, a young woman with three children, a stroller, and a dog was making her way towards Kelly's. The oldest of her children couldn't be more than five, and he was bouncing around in anticipation for whatever excitement lay in store at Kelly's. The middle child looked about three, holding onto his mother with one hand and sucking the thumb of the other. The stroller contained a very newborn-looking baby girl, who was fast asleep as her mother pushed the stroller with the hand that also held the dog's leash. The dog was huge, a German shepherd in top form, pulling at the leash with all his might. But the woman would not let him get loose. Kristina noticed the woman struggle and rushed to help her with the door.

"Thank you," said the woman. As she tried to heave the stroller over the threshold of the door and keep an eye on the two children not in the stroller, the dog's leash came out of her grasp, and it broke into a fast sprint before anyone could stop it.

"Clancy!" shouted the five-year-old boy after his beloved pet. The woman turned around to watch the dog, leaving the stroller in the middle of the doorway. Adriana saw the dilemma written all over her face; she didn't want to let the dog get away, but she didn't want to leave her children, either.

Without a word, Adriana bolted after the German shepherd, determined to stop it before it got too far away. She hadn't run in months, but she had been blessed with natural speed, so she was able to keep the dog within her sights as it continued running through the pier towards the dock. Adriana's flip-flops slapped the pavement, but they didn't slow her down. She followed the dog closely, making sure never to lose sight of the red leash that dragged behind it. Adriana was so focused on catching it that what happened next completely caught her off guard. It was a combination of things that cumulated in the end result. The dog ran down the few stairs to the dock, Adriana still following it. In her haste, she bumped into a man who was standing on the dock and talking on his cell phone. As she turned around to apologize, she felt herself trip over one flip-flop while the other one slid on the wood that was still wet from the previous day's rain. These three incidents, combined together, caused her to take a tumble, right into cold and most likely body-infested waters of the harbor.

At first, Adriana panicked at the sudden impact of her fall into the water. Her flip-flops had fallen off and were probably settling themselves at the bottom of the deep harbor. She gave herself a second to calm down and let the shock wear off, then started swimming upwards. But something was preventing her from doing such a thing. As she tried with all her might to swim to the surface, she felt a tug around the waist of her shorts. She moved her hands towards the area that was caught and felt something metal between her fingers, most likely a large part of a destructed freighter left from a shipment explosion. Adriana tried releasing her shorts from whatever they were caught on, but she seemed to only be making things worse, because she still couldn't budge. Trying to remain calm and remind herself that she still had enough time to hold her breath, she opened her eyes in order to assess the situation more clearly. But she only had them cracked for a second before she shut them again. Whatever had been dumped in this harbor over the years continued to linger, and her eyes stung painfully from exposing them to the water directly. Now she started to panic. She couldn't unhook herself from whatever she was stuck on without looking, and she couldn't force herself to open her eyes. She started to frantically kick and pushing her way towards the surface, but she remained stuck. She was slowly loosing breath and becoming light-headed. The harder she paddled, the more tired she became. Eventually, she just stopped and watched as everything around her went black.