Content Warning: Mentions of death, violence, and sexual misconduct

When the diver’s flashlight glides over me, I’ve been submerged for thirty-three hours. My absence was noted eighteen hours earlier, when Zoe reported my empty tent to our biology teacher. By then, the campsite was already buzzing with whispers—Where did she go? Was she drunk? Did she run away? But I hadn’t run. I’d danced.

That night, the woods hummed with rebellion. Zoe and I slipped past the counselors, our laughter muffled by the crunch of pine needles underfoot. The lake’s edge pulsed with muffled bass, the air sticky with beer and adolescent bravado. Tom, Zoe’s twin, lingered near the cooler, his gaze tracing me like a hymn he’d memorized but couldn’t sing aloud. When he finally approached, his hands trembled as he handed me a drink. I drank it, not out of thirst, but to quiet the ache of his unspoken longing.

The headlines called me “A Honor Student Lost to Lake’s Depths.” Search teams scoured the water, drones slicing through fog, cadaver dogs sniffing damp soil. My parents sobbed on camera, clutching my junior prom photo—a version of me frozen in sequins and smiles. The police dissected my last hours: Who saw her? What was she wearing? Was she depressed? Depressed? I’d been humming Olivia Rodrigo on the hike to the party.

Zoe’s interview made the news. “She stayed behind with Tom,” she said, avoiding the camera’s glare. Tom denied it. But forensics found his DNA on my hoodie—skin cells nestled in the fleece, a silent witness to the moment he’d pulled me into the trees. We’d kissed, clumsy and desperate, until I pushed him away. Not here, I’d said. Someone might see. He left, hurt curdling into something darker.

Cassandra, the girl nobody remembered until now, swore Zoe and I fought over Tom. Lies. Our argument was about the biology teacher—how he’d lingered after class, how his “extra credit” offers made Zoe’s hands shake. But Cassandra craved the spotlight. She told police she’d seen the teacher’s tent empty that night, then backtracked, claiming they’d “talked” in the boathouse. Her contradictions unraveled the case.

The teacher’s suspension made headlines. Parents demanded answers; the school scrubbed his name from the yearbook. But Cassandra’s alibi spared him. Without evidence, the police shrugged. Accidental drowning, they concluded. A head injury from diving, they theorized. Never mind that I hated cold water.

In the end, my story dissolved into rumor. Zoe transferred schools. Tom deleted his social media. Cassandra wrote a memoir no one read. The teacher retired early, his name a footnote in true-crime forums.

Years later, my mother still leaves flowers by the lake. My father drinks in silence. Sometimes, I wonder if they sense me in the ripple of waves, in the way the moon bleeds over the pines. But grief, like water, erodes even the sharpest edges.

Maybe a filmmaker will resurrect me—a docudrama with a moody soundtrack, my face pixelated for “artistic effect.” Or a TikTok trend will reduce my death to a hashtag: #JusticeFor[MyName]. But justice requires someone to care longer than a news cycle.

Tonight, as algae clings to my ribs and minnows dart through my hair, I think of the boys who joked about tranquilizers, the teacher who preyed on quiet girls, the system that failed to ask the right questions. They’ll move on. They’ll forget.

But the lake remembers. It always does.