I watch as he stumbles off, bare feet clumsy as he makes his way toward the trees. Those brittle branches like a skeletal hand reaching out, curling its fingers; the silhouette of a single bird perched on the edge like an omen. Then Lucy stands up, too, brushes the sand from her legs as she turns to look at me.
A smile forming on her lips as she follows him into the dark.
CHAPTER 52
My head is pounding as I open my eyes, the brightness of the tent borderline blinding.
I blink a few times, my surroundings materializing slowly around me before I smack my lips, try to swallow. My throat feeling like sandpaper and my spit as thick as glue. It’s freezing in here, the early morning air still unthawed, and I reach my arm out to the side, instinctively looking for the familiar warmth of another person beside me only to find the second sleeping bag cold and empty and zipped up tight.
No one’s there.
I sit up fast, a pang of panic flaring in my chest. Memories of Eliza, my phantom limb, all those mornings I had woken up to that blissful, bleary second when my subconscious still believed she was alive. I remember now, with a startling clarity, that Lucy should be in here with me. We were supposed to be sharing a tent last night and I close my eyes again as quick bursts of memory explode in my mind like a strobe light, sharp and blinding: the fire, the dancing, the mounds of warm bodies passed out around the giant open flame. The moon in the sky like a large, open eye and the bottles of liquor being drained faster than what should have been possible. Danny and me on the driftwood, whispering those stories: Lucy and her boyfriend, that accident. Some big argument just before he died. Trevor stumbling around, screaming out orders.
Lucy and Levi and that strange confrontation, a simmering anger as he flung her arm off.
I don’t remember putting myself to bed and I fling the covers off now, looking down, realizing I’m still in my clothes from last night. Smears of dried mud caked to my pants; the cuffs of my jeans stiff with salt water. Sand and cold sweat flaking off my chest like a molting second skin.
I remember Levi leaving, Lucy following, that worm of rage writhing around in my stomach. Trying to drown it, kill it, by picking up the bottle and taking another drink.
A sense of claustrophobia comes washing over me and I suddenly, desperately, need to get off this island. It feels like those early memories with Eliza again—the two of us beneath that dock, surrounded on all sides; that bubble of damp air that got caught in my lungs and made it feel like we were sinking, drowning—and I stand up too fast in my tent, fighting the overwhelming sense of vertigo that rushes to my head before unzipping the opening and stepping outside. The island is buzzing with the kind of hungover energy that makes everything feel like it’s moving in slow motion: lethargic stretches and girls sipping instant coffee out of rustic enamel mugs. Splashing their faces with palmfuls of water, mascara smearing like a bruise beneath their eyes. The boys are lolling around in sweatshirts and basketball shorts, thick heads of hair sticking up at odd angles. A few of them attempting to scramble eggs above barely there flames.
I finally catch sight of Sloane and Nicole in the water, calf-deep and moving slow, and I amble over to them, my heart hammering in my chest.
“There she is,” Sloane says without turning to face me. Already, I don’t like the sound of that. “And how are we feeling this morning?”
“Like shit,” I say, rubbing my eyes. “I think I blacked out.”
“You think?”
Sloane looks at me, eyebrows raised, and simply stares for a second before she looks back at Nicole, the tip of her hand trailing idly across the water.
“What happened?” I ask, a croak in my throat, even though I’m not so sure I want to know.
“You tell me,” she says, looking back down, ripples from Nicole’s fingers cracking the glassy surface. “You weren’t making any sense at the end.”
“What was I saying?”
“Something about how you needed to find Levi,” Sloane says, and I suddenly remember the thought that flared up when I was talking to Danny. Wondering if I needed to just talk to Levi, swallow my pride and demand some answers. “I kept telling you to stop but you wouldn’t listen.”
“I was trying to find Levi?” I ask, twisting around, my eyes scanning the beach for any sign of him. For any sign of either of them, Lucy or Levi, although her absence in our tent has made it painfully clear that they’re probably asleep, and they’re probably sleeping together.
“At one point, you ran off to find him and I found you lying by the water an hour later,” she says. “The tide was rising.”