The American Girl: A disturbing and twisty psychological thriller. Kate Horsley

my distance, but he keeps swimming into me. It’s like he’s bumping into me on purpose. And there’s no reason for it, because he’s a strong swimmer, a swim-team-type swimmer. He can only be doing it on purpose, the big stalker. The more I try to wriggle away from him, the more he torpedoes me, knocking into my ribs one time so hard I know I’ll bruise.

      “Stop it!” I hiss.

      He just grins wider than ever until all I can see is the gap in his teeth and the gleaming wet pallor of his high forehead, his bony nose. And then when we’re just near enough to shore to stand, he grabs my waist.

      “Get off!” I shriek, slapping him, kicking him.

      “I know you like me because you check my phone. Are you stalking me a bit, Quinn?”

      “Are you fucking serious? Put me down,” I say in the voice I use on bad dogs and pollsters.

      “If you say so.” He does, but in the same movement, he whips me around to face him and kisses me, his tongue squirming between my lips.

      I push him away and run to shore. My face pulses. I want to be sick. I expect everyone to be staring, to look horrified and tell Freddie off. But no one seems to care. Noémie’s just lying with her sunglasses on, plugged into her iPod. Émilie is fanning flies from her sunbaked picnic. Only Raphael is looking at the water, his arms crossed over his sinewy chest, eyes studiously unfocused.

      I’ve begun to think Freddie is some kind of sociopath, who kissed me for no other reason than to humiliate me. Who tried to drown me. Who’s definitely the person text-stalking me. When he walks up and kneels in front of me and pinches my cheek, I slap his face, hard.

      He falls back into the sand with a surprised little cry.

      “Mon Dieu!” says Émilie. “Quinn, what have you done?” She stands up suddenly, glaring down at me.

      Her anger is shocking. I’ve only seen her face look passive and happy. Now it is dark. Crumpled next to her, Freddie sobs like a child while Noémie and Raphael stay right where they are, staring as the scene unfolds.

      “He pinched my cheek,” I say. “He shouldn’t do that. And before, he grabbed me in the water and kissed me. And I think that he’s—”

      “What do you expect when you dress like that?” she says, looking me up and down. “You are asking for it un petit peu, n’est-ce pas?”

      “Are you kidding? Everyone’s in a bikini …”

      She leans over me and takes the skin of my wrist and pinches it with her nails. “There,” she says, her eyes mean and narrow. “Now you know how it feels.”

      Behind her, Freddie smiles through his tears.

       Molly Swift

      JULY 31, 2015

      I sipped my Jack Daniel’s, my reflection vanishing by degrees as I eked out the last drops. I needed every last drop after my phone call to Quinn’s father, the great Professor Perkins. I’d called him to head off someone else telling him that there was an aunt type hanging around his daughter. To cover my ass, I’d pretended to be one Mademoiselle le Mesurier, the local contact for Quinn’s study abroad program, crossing my fingers that no one from the program had been in touch with him already.

      “Bonjour, Professor Perkins,” I began in my best impression of a French accent. I explained my “role” and expressed my condolences for what had happened as well as my assurance that we were providing all the support we could.

      “While I thank you for your call, I must inquire as to what it pertains?” he asked, his voice charmingly polite and yet so unconcerned it sent a chill through me.

      Surely he must be devastated about all this, I thought; even if Quinn wasn’t a daddy’s girl, she was his daughter.

      “And what day do you plan to come for Quinn, monsieur? I ask because, of course, we shall send someone to ze aéroport.”

      Huffy silence on the other end of the line. Then—

      “Well, of course … ahem … I’m grateful for the offer. So helpful of you. I just don’t know when I can be there, because, you see, my wife is very pregnant, so not until after the baby’s born at the least and even then …”

      I put him out of his misery by thanking him for his time and expressing my hope that he would contact the program if he needed anything. I even gave him Mademoiselle le Mesurier’s real phone number, because by now I was sure he wouldn’t bother. I’d been worried about Leo flying to his daughter’s side and blowing my cover in the process, but I needn’t have been. He was a cold fish, that much was clear—one that wouldn’t swim over here anytime soon. But instead of being relieved, I just felt sad for Quinn, so lonely in her hospital bed. I wished I could go back to the hospital to sit with her.

      I comforted myself with the company of Mr. Daniel’s and the contents of Quinn’s blog. There I read about the ups and downs you might expect on a teenager’s first stay far from home: tension with her host; a rocky relationship with her French exchange; unwelcome advances from the local lothario, a kid named Freddie. And then there was something darker: threatening messages from an anonymous stranger, apparently including footage of someone being suffocated.

      I’d taken a look at her Snapchat app and found zip, just as she said. The messages erased themselves, hence the appeal to teens. Reading further on in the blog, it was clear she’d had her own suspicions about whoever might be stalking her. These seemed to circle around Freddie, beginning on a day at the pool. As I looked through the comments section, her online friends seemed to agree:

      Update: Just looked at my blog and saw that all you guys came to the rescue on the stalking front!

      loserguy38: That guy Freddie has got to be the stalker. Sounds like a loser. Avoid.

      gothgurl: Maybe he did send you that snuff text, Q, then try to snuff you, too, but fight back: refuse to be scared.

      malady_g: Just checked this, the law can’t help with stalkers. Unless he threatens you explicitly, police can’t do jack. Sorry, Q

      dr_kennedy: Noémie’s brother sounds supercute. Pics please!

      Qriosity_cat: Thank you, wonderful people . I’ll do my best.

      Qriosity_cat was Quinn apparently. Her reply to the comments made me sad. She’d put so much trust in these virtual acquaintances and not one of them had thought to call the police or do much of anything when she vanished.

      Her story—what I’d read of it so far—gave me an uneasy sense that there was an awful lot going on under the surface of life in the Blavette household, and none of it had made it into the papers. Reading the description of the girl being smothered in the video, I remembered what Marlene had told me about why the school shut down. The poor girl suffocated. They said it was some sort of game that went wrong. It was too much of a coincidence. I had to go talk to Marlene again, and find this Freddie, too.

      The chair next to me screeched. “How’s the aunt?” Aurelia Perla asked sweetly as she sat down and handed me her business card. Up close, I could see that she was very pretty in a put-together sort of way, her beige suit crisply dry-cleaned, the outline of her lipstick so neatly applied it looked machine-tooled.

      “Holding up.” I smiled awkwardly.

      I looked around the bar for a companion, but saw only the same journalists as when I came in, slouching on tables in groups of fours, smoking e-cigarettes and blending into the surroundings like oil blends into water. One table held a couple