Just Another Dead Girl Underwater

By the time the fisherman finds me, I will have been dead for thirty-three hours, six minutes, and twenty-nine seconds. Eighteen hours since the police declared me missing. Fifteen hours since Zoe told my biology teacher that my tent was empty, that I hadn't returned from the party we'd snuck out to the night before. We had crept past the tents carefully, every twig a possible snitch. It was exhilarating-our hearts pounding, the smell of pine and seaweed thick in the air, the moon a perfectly curved sickle.

Zoe held my sweaty hand until we reached the lake. Someone played Billie Eilish on a phone, the volume low enough to pretend we weren't breaking rules. A guy handed us a beer, cooled in the dark water. I remember thinking I couldn't tell where the lake ended and the forest began.

The first article calls me a "Promising High School Student Missing After Night Swim." Soon the water rescue service and fire brigade take over. Dogs comb the woods, a helicopter slices the air, and a human chain moves slowly through the trees. Nothing turns up.

The police ask questions. When was she last seen? Was she drinking? Sad? Suicidal? No, no, and no. She was singing. She was dancing. She seemed happy.

When my body is found miles away, certainty sets in. The autopsy reveals a hematoma on my head and purple marks behind my ears. Water in my lungs confirms I drowned.

My classmates are questioned again. Zoe says she left early. She says I stayed behind with her twin brother, Tom, who's loved me since middle school. Tom claims we barely spoke, though people saw us leave the party together. Traces of his skin are found on my clothes. Still, he sticks to his story-maybe because the truth would embarrass him, or because he's afraid of what would follow.

In a way, Tom isn't lying. We only exchanged a few sentences-his mouth was busy otherwise. I enjoyed it, even wished I'd given him a real chance. But I brushed him off, as usual, worried what people might think.

Cassandra tells the police Zoe and I argued that night, supposedly over Tom. Of course she says that. What else would two girls fight about? Cassandra even claims Zoe pushed me. Zoe denies it, says the argument was about something else-something that wouldn't surface until much later, when our biology teacher became a suspect.

Cassandra has always been a shadow, the kind of girl teachers forget. So when the police finally listen, she gives them everything. She left the party at 2 a.m., forty minutes before I died, leaving me alone with a group of guys who had brought "tranquillisers." Sitting with them felt unreal, like a bad dream pretending to be harmless.

Eventually, I decided to head back. One guy offered to walk me. No one moved. The campsite was visible through the trees, just a few meters away. I'd walked that path for days without fear, but tonight something felt wrong. Still, I refused to be that girl. I took a longer route along the riverbank-lighter, quieter. Someone told me to text when I got back. When I didn't, no one noticed.

Sixteen days later, suspicion shifts to our biology teacher. A classmate claims his tent was empty that night. The teacher makes inconsistent statements, calls Zoe into his office, insists his earlier "proposal" was just a joke. Tutoring, he says. Sarcasm.

Cassandra reappears, claiming she visited him after the party. They went to the boathouse. "Nothing bad happened," she says. Her statement clears him of involvement in my death.

With no strong evidence against anyone, my case fades. It becomes a tragic accident. I was unhappy, they say. Pressured. Maybe I hit my head before entering the water.

The story dries up. My parents grieve. Maybe one day my case will become a podcast or a miniseries, my body discovered three minutes in. Or maybe I'll disappear completely, like so many women silenced every day.

It doesn't matter who profits from my story. In the end, I'm just another dead girl underwater.