Page 40 of The Black Table
I’m done—I should be done, the others will be done inside and getting showered and eating before team meeting—but I can’t swim back to shore.
Not yet.
Call it protective. Call itoverprotective. Call it compensating for the people I couldn’t save.
But I can’t just leave her here.
ELEVEN
GWENNA
The lake looksas cold and miserable as I feel.
It’s the color of iron, but smooth, unlike the churned-up clouds of the sky overhead. I shiver, despite the coverage of the wetsuit that, improbably, Morgan not only owns, but let me borrow. It covers my scars, and apparently adds buoyancy to boot, which will help, because I sink like a stone.
Too late, I realize I should have brought a swim cap, or at least a hair tie. It’ll be ridiculous trying to thrash my way through the water with my hair loose, but I don’t have time to go back now. I already had to reroute when I got to the field house and saw the notice on the door:SWIM TEST STUDENTS PLEASE PROCEED TO SOUTHWEST SHORE. I’m lucky I’m even close to on time.
On the surface, a row of orange buoys bob up and down like cereal marshmallows in milk, and I idly wonder what the actual test is. Out and back, laps, treading water. I rub my upper arms.
In front of me, there’s a small plaque sunk into the face of a rock—a name and a few lines of Latin in simple brass.
Vivian Thorne
Loved much, lost too soon.
Custodiat hunc locum amoenum in eterna.
May she watch over this lovely place for eternity.
It’s a nice sentiment, until I remember the rumors that someone drowned in this lake. Was it her? And they put a memorial upright by the lake? That’s downright macabre.
“And…there you are.”
The voice behind me is cold and sharp as broken glass.
I turn and my stomach drops.
Pacing out from the field house, clad in a red one-piece, is Elena. Her brown hair is scooped back into a perfect ponytail, and her beautifully shaped brows are drawn.
Oh no, I think.She’s taking the test with me? But she’s been here for weeks. She should have?—
She lifts her arm to reveal a clipboard, a stopwatch, and my stomach plunges further.
No, I think.Of course she’s nottakingthe test. She’sproctoringit.
“Welcome to your physical fitness test,” she says, the barest hint of heat creeping into her words.
I look around us. Are we being watched? Monitored?Who proctors the proctors?I think idly, a bit of dark humor as I stare out into the choppy surface of the lake.
My stomach tightens.
I don’t want to do this.
Even more than I didn’t want to do it before.
I should say something. I have to say something.
“Elena, about the other night,” I start. “I?—”
