AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thank you for the follows/reviews!

This chapter does not feature the boys, but does start to reveal the identity of the mystery girl on the boardwalk.

I should note that I am playing fast and loose with vampire powers. In this story, vampires can wipe or erase memories, but they can't read minds. I wanted to give the humans a bit of a head start;-)

A dream among the sharks is a line from "The Horror of Our Love" by Ludo.

The Lost Boys is the property of Warner Brothers.

One woe doth tread upon another's heel, so fast they follow. Your sister's drowned.

HAMLET Act IV, Scene 7

I was planning to lose my virginity the night I found out Stella died.

I just finished my freshman year at Minnesota State College, and was in no hurry to return to my rural hometown and spend the summer working at the local diner. So I stuck around school for a week, staying in the off-campus house I rented with three other girls. Two of them were staying in town for the summer to pick up a few classes, and none of us had started our summer jobs yet. This meant a lot of free time, which meant a lot of partying.

To say I was enjoying college was an understatement. I loved it immediately. I was never burdened with the feelings of homesickness my sister had. Maybe it was because, unlike her, I chose a school fairly close to home, with a built in network of high school friends to ease the transition. Or maybe it was because I was the more social twin. I bloomed when surrounded by people.

Everyone was surprised when it turned out to be Stella, not me, who chose to attend school in California. Santa Carla State had a great pre-med program but was also a well-known party school nestled in a hippie beach town. It was hard to picture my introverted, solemn sister rubbing elbows with stoners and surfers. But off she went to Santa Carla, and I made myself at home at Minnesota State.

And that was where I met Jeff. I caught his eye at a quarter beer night at one of my favorite college bars. He was tall and tan and guileless, and within an hour of meeting him I knew I wanted him to be my first.

Our dates usually comprised of meeting up with my two roommates and our friends, heading to a bar, and gradually separating ourselves from the group as the drinks kicked in. The night usually ended with Jeff and me making out in a corner until bar close. Then he would walk me back to my house while a drunken debate raged within me over whether or not tonight was the night I invited him in. If I invited him in, it was happening. I would finally cross that threshold that most of my friends had easily leapt over in high school.

But every night Jeff would ask, and I would decline. He would kiss me goodnight, and I would stumble into bed alone. Rinse and repeat.

Until the night in question. Looking back, I can't say for sure why that night was different than the others. Why I felt ready. It was almost as if some part of me knew what was coming, that soon I would be thrown far over the threshold into adulthood, as if my subconscious was trying to shed itself of any last childish vestiges.

When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.

The phone was ringing when Jeff and I opened the door to my house, both pleasantly drunk. At first I ignored the incessant rings, preferring instead to twine my fingers in Jeff's blonde hair and kiss him deeply. Tonight's the night. I'm ready.

As we kissed, I rehearsed how I would broach the subject. I decided the best, most adult way would be to break the kiss, gaze into his eyes, and say in a low, calm voice, "Do you have a condom?"

But the goddamn phone wouldn't stop ringing.

"Should you get that?" Jeff spoke into my mouth.

"Ughhh….yes."

I made my way over to the phone in the kitchen, my steps weaving slightly from my buzz.

"Hello?"

"Dani?" A sob greeted me on the other end. My mother. My mother was crying.

"Mom! What's wrong?" I sobered immediately.

"It's Stella….oh god Stella…she's…honey, she's dead."

I sank to the floor. I was dimly aware that Jeff was suddenly next to me, talking to me. And Mom had dissolved into sobs at the other end of the phone. But everything felt muted. Far away.

"What?" I don't know why I asked. I heard what she said. Maybe if I ask her to repeat it, the answer will change.

"She…she…the police...they found her washed up on the rocks below some cliffs by Santa Carla. They…oh God Dani… they think she jumped."

I dropped the phone and curled up on the floor.

Stella.

Time to put away childish things.

I returned home, and the next two weeks were a blur of grief. I remember only flashes. Both of my parents traveling out to Santa Carla to ID Stella's body, returning home as ghosts of their former selves. My mother crying, always crying. My father withdrawing to his workshop in the basement for hours at a time. Cobbling together a black outfit for the funeral from a black skirt I had from my job at the diner and one of my mother's sweaters. An endless stream of neighbors checking in on us, making sure our broken little family survived the night. A refrigerator full of every kind of hot dish.

There were also many phone calls with the Santa Carla Police Department. When Stella was found forensic investigators estimated she'd been in the water about two days. No sign of foul play, although the scavengers had taken their toll. A surfer stumbled across her body beneath Hudson's Bluff, a popular surf spot that looked out over the Santa Carla Beach Boardwalk.

"It's a popular place for suicides," the detective told us. "There are no railings along the cliff."

"But how do you know it's a suicide?" my mother asked, dabbing her red eyes with a tissue. "There was no note. How can you be sure?"

"I know it's hard to hear, ma'am," the detective answered. "We interviewed to a couple of her friends, and apparently she had mentioned taking her life. Of course we'll keep the case open and continue to investigate, but unless we get a solid lead…"

Most of all, I remember spending hours in Stella's bedroom, now forever stopped in time. A frozen slice of life for a girl who would never grow up.

I laid on her bed and stared up at the walls papered with posters and photos from magazines of the bands she loved. She was fond of a genre of music I called "Sad Asshole Rock." The Cure, The Smiths, and Depeche Mode were her favorites. And Stella loved art too. Prints of her favorite paintings were scattered among the posters of sad men in black.

I studied the artifacts of her life and tried to feel something. I was her identical twin. We were supposed to be connected. And we had been, once upon a time. Her death should feel like a piece of me was ripped away, but instead I felt nothing.

I poured over her photos, her face so much like mine and yet so different. We were like photo negatives of the same girl. Stella's hair was long and dark, while I sprayed lemon juice on my locks to lighten them in the sun. Her skin was pale, and mine was bronzed from hours outside playing softball. By high school we had grown apart, living different lives that rarely intersected. She was drawn to drama, art, and biology, while I excelled at softball, cheerleading, and student council. There was no animosity between us; just an unspoken understanding that we were on different paths.

College only increased the divide. Now we weren't just separated by interests. We had a couple thousand miles between us. I tried to remember the last time we had talked on the phone. Was it January? February? I vaguely remembered her telling me about some part-time job she got at the boardwalk. Had she seemed happy? Would I have even noticed if she wasn't?

During a particularly intense excavation in Stella's room, one of the art prints on her wall caught my attention. The piece was called "Ophelia" by John Everett Miles. It depicted Hamlet's Ophelia, covered in flowers and drowning in the waters of a stream. Her arms are outstretched, palms up, as if welcoming her death. Her face looked entranced, almost ecstatic. I imagined Stella floating in the ocean, seaweed woven through her beautiful dark hair. Her eyes open, unseeing. A dream among the sharks. I looked away.

Did she really kill herself?

Mom was convinced she wasn't suicidal. And just because Stella liked a painting of Ophelia and listened to Sad Asshole Rock didn't mean she did a swan dive off a cliff.

Stella, I thought. What happened to you?

An answer came a few days later.

My parents had gone to counseling. I was up in Stella's room thumbing through her book collection when the doorbell rang. I was expecting it to be another wellness check-slash-hot dish delivery from one of the neighbors, so I was surprised to see a UPS truck in the driveway.

"Are you Danica Ericson?" the man in the brown uniform asked. I nodded.

"This is for you." He handed me a small rectangular box wrapped in craft paper. Did Jeff send me something?

I scrawled my signature on his clipboard and watched him climb back into the truck before shutting the front door and looking down at the package. My heart stopped when I saw the return address in a familiar looping script.

S. ERICSON

SANTA CARLA, CA

What the fuck.

A wave of unreality washed over me. The postmark was three days before Stella's body was found.

I dropped to my knees and tore open the paper.

In my hands I held a battered purple Mead notebook. The pages inside were bulging and uneven as though it had been submerged in water at some point. With trembling hands I opened the cover and read the note in blue pen on the first page.

Dani,

I'm sending this journal to you because I think something might happen to me and don't want them to find it. I don't want HIM to find it. But it's important that someone else knows what is happening in Santa Carla.

Don't tell anyone about this journal. Not even the police. Burn it after you read it.

You have to find a way to stop them. Come to Santa Carla. Go to the comic shop on the boardwalk.

Love you to the moon and back,

Stella

PS- You're only safe in the daylight.

I sat in the foyer for a long time, my eyes closed, listening to my heart pounding in my ears. Stella's notebook sat in my lap, still opened to that first page and that note.

Reading those words, my sister's last words to me, made it seem as though she was suddenly right next to me. As if a door burst open in my heart, and the connection to Stella that I was searching for since her death was suddenly flowing through me, strong and certain. If I opened my eyes again, what would I see? If I kept reading, what would I learn?

She said she was afraid. She said she thought she might get hurt. She didn't kill herself. She wants me to find out what happened to her.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, I opened my eyes and looked down again at the notebook. I eased myself off the floor and made my way to Stella's bedroom, my legs feeling like they would give way with every step.

I sat down on her on her bed, propped the notebook on my lap, and began to read.