I can't tell you what happened in the moments after I screamed. It was chaos. People were shouting my name, then screaming in the same terror that I felt seeing her body. My vision fuzzed over, but the image of her dead body stayed fixated in my brain when I closed my eyes. 

I'm standing in front of Victoria Caldwell's body. 

"I'm calling the cops!" someone shouts.

A strong pair of hands wrapped around my shoulders and slowly drug me back from under the dock. I turned my head slightly and saw Chip standing behind me. "You're okay," he whispered. His face was pale as the moon tonight. 

The night I saw Victoria's dead body. 

I thought that I would know what to do in a situation like this. I've listened to so many podcasts. I've read so many books and watched all the documentaries. I didn't think that I would have panicked. You always think you know what you're going to do in a moment of crisis, but when it actually strikes, it's that point in time where you either saddle up or fall apart. 

I fell apart. 

How did I miss her body as I ran from Jared in the woods? Her bloated deformed body was so visible. I was so focused on not jumping into the lake naked that I missed a whole dead human floating under the dock. 

"How has no one found her until now?" I wonder out loud as Gala, Anne-Marie, Stassi, and Pria run up to me. 

Gala runs over and throws her arms around my neck and squeezes. "What happened? What did you see down there?" 

Victoria Caldwell's dead body. 

It hits me like a ton of bricks that these girls don't know that their best friend is lying under the dock. No one knows what I saw. I didn't say her name, and no one is jumping into the water after the initial few jumped into the water and announced to everyone there was a body. 

"It's..." I can't finish the sentence. I can't break the news to the girls that their friend whom they all assume ran away is dead lying in the water so close to their school.

"Elena, how did no one find who?" asks Anne-Marie. 

I open my mouth to speak, but it feels as if all the oxygen in my lungs were sucked out. Chip puts his hand on my back, and clears his throat. The girls look at him as if they didn't know he was there until just this moment. 

"I think she's in shock. I didn't get good look at what was down there. I was more focused on getting Elena up after she screamed, but it was a girl's body." 

"Oh, my god." 

Anne-Marie and Gala took off in a full sprint toward the dock. They waste no time jumping straight into the cold water, and I watch the color drain from them as they make the same realization that I made. 

Anne-Marie lets out a grief-stricken roar from under the dock. Sobs filled the air from both girls as they quickly made their way back from the water and collapsed onto the sand. "She's dead!" they screamed at Stassi and Pria. "Victoria is under the dock dead!" 

It was then that blue and red lights filled the night sky. Sirens were screaming over the sounds of sobs from Anne-Marie and Gala. Six police offers ran down the beach toward the dock followed closely behind by a team of paramedics. The paramedics were holding a gurney as they ran behind the police officers. 

"Excuse me?" 

I turn and see a man in a cheap pinstriped grey suit. His dirty blonde hair is slicked back and curled at the front. He looked young enough that his wide-set jaw made him look more like a model than a detective. He looks over at the police offers at the dock and one comes out from under and nods to him. 

"My name is Detective Hudson. I've been the lead investigator on the Victoria Caldwell case since she went missing earlier this year. Do you mind if we take you back to the station and ask you some questions?" 

"Wait, so she's really dead?" asks Stassi shocked. "Like she-"

"Oh my god," Pria gasps. 

"Miss?" Asks Detective Hudson looking at me. "Please? I'll contact your Dean and allow him to meet us at the station." 

Still unable to speak I nod my head and I walk with Detective Hudson down the beach and up to his black Pontiac Firebird. He opens the door in the front for me, and I slide into the passenger seat and buckle my seatbelt. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The station was an old building with coffee machines literally everywhere. People had desks strung out along the floor and multiple cases and stacks of folders covered each desk. There was a large wooden staircase that led up to a second-story office that I assumed was the chief's.  Detective Hudson led me through the room and turns down a narrow hallway. 

"Am I going to an interrogation room?" I ask him. 

"Yes," he says quietly. "It's merely for an interview though so we can get the details of what happened." 

My stomach knotted as he stopped in front of a grey door. When we walked into the interrogation room there was a single table with two metal chairs on each side. He motions for me to sit down at the table and my stomach drops. There's a mirror on the wall that I know serves as a two-way mirror.

"Is Dean Withers coming?" I ask him.

"Yes," says Detective Hudson. "He's on his way now."

Detectives can't talk to minors without a guardian present. Since my mother is states away, the Dean of Students for Riveroak is serving as my guardian by proxy. A wave of nausea falls over me. I have nothing to hide. I was running from a jock who was playing a game with me. 

I didn't mean to find a dead body. 

I didn't ask for the nightmare of her deformed corpse to be burned into my head every time I blink my eyes. Deep down, I know that these detectives just want to talk to me about what I saw. Bringing me to an interrogation room is terrifying though even when you're innocent. 

I look at the mirror on the wall. Are they watching me right now? Are they waiting for me to show something? See if I crack under pressure? 

Okay, remember the basics all the podcasts and shows tell you.  Don't take a lie detector test. Don't say anything that isn't directly provable by you. Don't talk in what ifs and don't give a hypothesis about what you think happened. They always think that it's the murderer giving details on how they did it. 

Or you can remember you got here fucking yesterday and you're acting like an idiot. 

Dean Withers comes into the room and walks over to me and puts a hand on my shoulder. "You poor girl," he says. "I can't imagine your first couple of days here being off to a worse start." He sits down in the chair next to me, and Detective Hudson walks in moments later. 

"Alright, Elena," says the detective. "Thank you for your time. I have a few questions. One, what were you doing under the dock?"

"I was running away from someone. We were playing a game at The Bay and I was being chased. I didn't want to be caught. I was far enough away to duck under the dock and I crammed into a little space between one of the rocks shore." 

The detective takes notes on what I just told him and clicks his tongue. "So you didn't notice a body floating in the water as you ran under the dock?" 

I bite my lower lip. "There was...Dean Withers, can you step out of the room for just one second?"

"Elena," he says confused. "You need to have a guardian here with you." 

"I just...it's something I need to say in private." 

He looks at me confused but nods as he walks to the door and exits. I know he wants to stay and hear what I had to say, but there is no way I can tell him about the stripping at The Bay without becoming a total outcast at the school and getting everyone in trouble. I'm already going to be known as the girl who found Victoria Caldwell before my first day of school. I can't be known as a snitch as well. 

"I know it seems weird to think about these things in a time like this," I tell the detective. "But, I'm new at Riveroak, and I don't want to be the girl who found the body and the girl who snitched on everyone. Can this next part stay between us, please?"

"If it isn't crucial to my investigation." 

"It isn't," I say. "Look, it's my first week here at Riveroak. I don't want to be known as the girl who found a dead body and snitched on everyone on the same night." 

"That makes sense," he scribbles something else before he looks at me and gives me a sympathetic smile. "Look kid," he says. "I don't care if kids were drinking right now. I don't care if kids were smoking weed right now. What I care about is that you saw a  body of a missing girl, and I want to know how she got there. Victoria's family has been a nervous wreck since their daughter went missing. She is my sole worry right now." 

 I nod my head and take a deep breath. 

"Uh, the reason I was so nervous as I ran was because if you were caught in this game you had to jump into the water naked in front of everyone who wasn't caught. I didn't want everyone's first time officially seeing me to be nude." 

The detective nods and writes that down. "That is something I can keep from your Dean for cooperating with me," he says. "However, I am going to tell you not to agree to games like that again." 

"I won't," I say. "It was stupid and I was just nervous." 

"Elena, my last question," says the detective. "Did you see anything weird tonight at the dock before you hid under it?" 

"No," I tell him. I was hiding in the hills area with a friend for about twenty-five minutes, and I was sitting at the bonfire before that." 

The detective nods and clicks his pen closed. "Alright, Elena," he says. "That's all I had for you. If I need anything else I'll be sure to keep in touch. For now, go get some rest, and maybe talk to someone about what you saw," he flinches for a brief second before he shakes his head. "You never forget seeing something like that." 

I get up from the table and walk toward the door. I turn before I exit the room and look at Detective Hudson. He has his head in his hands, and he runs his fingers through his hair. "Detective Hudson?" 

He turns and looks at me. 

"There's something that's been bothering me about finding the body," I say. "Other than the fact I found it, I mean. I just can't shake the fact that she was so close to the surface. Didn't you guys check the area?"

"That's the thing," he says. "We definitely did. We even sent divers to look around. I don't know that she's been in there the whole time." 

Chills ran through my body because I realize what this means. 

Someone moved Victoria Caldwell's body into The Bay.