Chapter 23
Shiloh carried me back to the house, cradled to her chest. There were paramedics on the scene when we returned, attempting to pump life back into Skye.
Her body looked so frail and small, splayed out on the poolside.
I couldn’t bear to look and closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, I saw Shiloh looming over me, drawing a blanket up to my chin.
“I’m going to fix this,” she said. “I promise.”
It was the last thing I heard before sleep pulled me under.
When I woke, I didn’t know what day it was or how much time had passed.
It was blue dark in the bedroom, so I thought it might’ve been early morning or just after sunset, on the cusp of night.
There was no clock, and I got up, disoriented, and wandered into the living room, which was packed to near capacity, both with the girls and a number of well-dressed celebrity types, some vaguely familiar, some not.
Monica sat among them, dressed in the same billowy robe she’d been wearing when she found Skye.
Her hair hung tangled down her back, and her eyes were raw, swollen almost shut.
Seeing me, Shiloh got up and led me back to the other girls.
They were sitting in the far corner of the living room, huddled around the baby grand piano, clinging to each other as if for warmth.
None of them had changed clothes since the night before, and their flowing cotton skirts, bright florals, and ragged vintage denim clashed wildly with the black attire of the other mourners.
“What is all of this?” I asked in a whisper. “Who are all these people?”
“Friends of Monica’s,” said Shiloh. “Here for the wake.”
“The wake? How long was I out?”
“Eleven-ish hours?” said Iona, to my shock. “You seemed like you needed the sleep.”
What I needed was a tranquilizer to black me out so that I could wake up from this mess back in my own bed in Michigan, where things at least somewhat made sense. It was the first time I’d missed home since joining the girls. The first time I’d ever really wanted to go back.
“What now?” I asked.
“Now we get the fuck out of here,” said Riley. “We can’t stay.”
“But where will we even go?” Naomi demanded, despondent.
Her cheeks were crusted with rivulets of dry mascara.
Her lips were badly chapped and bleeding.
“He took one girl, but he’s going to make us choose someone else.
He’ll come for us no matter what. So I’m not running anymore.
I’m going to stay here for Skye, to see her off. ”
Chloe and Iona nodded in agreement.
“I’m starting to think that you all don’t quite grasp the concept of a bargain,” Riley snapped, angry now. “We stay here keeping vigil over Skye’s body and we’ll end up just like her.”
Shiloh cut her eyes narrow. “Riley, have some respect—”
“It’s true, and you know it—”
“Shut up,” said Shiloh, a low threat. The girls were already drawing stares from the rest of those gathered, and their raised voices only made things worse. We didn’t belong here. We were the youngest in the room, obvious misfits. Without Skye, it was clear that we weren’t wanted.
I could see it in the way Monica stared at us, wide bloodshot eyes wavering with tears. She looked like she wanted to spit or curse at us, but all she did was twist her head away. I realized she must’ve believed we’d voted for Skye, that we did this to her daughter. And in a way…we had.
“I’m with Riley,” I said, surprising myself. “I think we should go. We’re not wanted here.”
“Skye would’ve wanted us here, and that’s enough for me,” said Naomi. “We were—are family. I’m not just going to leave her now.” The girls looked to Naomi, and Naomi looked to Shiloh. “What’s it going to be?”
Shiloh stared at the pool as if Skye were still out there, floating. “We can stay for the wake. But the moment it’s over, we hit the road.”
—
Skye’s wake was a star-studded affair, the way she would’ve wanted it.
A number of C- and even B-list stars drove up from LA for the occasion, pulling into the cracked parking lot of the Palm Springs crematorium in their black SUVs with tinted, paparazzi-proof windows.
We did our best to dress for the occasion, wearing long skirts and gowns that we’d procured from antique shops and garage sales during our journey west. The girls who were more comfortable in suits—Shiloh and Riley—opted for tailored dress pants and button-downs with starched collars.
We entered this tacky little chapel off the crematorium—with a dusty red carpet and gold leaf candelabras—to see Skye at the end of its short aisle.
She looked like a doll lying in the casket, a rental that was sized too big for her, made to contain someone both older and taller.
I was surprised that the casket was open at all.
It seemed mawkish to me, somehow wrong. I wondered if Skye would’ve wanted to be displayed or if these theatrics would’ve felt as perverted to her as they did to me.
All these people gawking over the body of a little girl.
But then, that’s the way of these things.
Whether they want to admit it or not, people love dead little girls. Sometimes I wonder if they love them better than living ones.
We sat in the back row of the chapel. There were hymnbooks stuffed into the backs of the pews, and Chloe thumbed through one to busy her shaking hands.
Shiloh stared openly at the casket, as if she felt obligated to look.
Naomi did the same, weeping in silence. Riley and Iona kept their gazes pinned to the floor.
It was strange to me that a single dead body could make us all so squeamish after everything we’d seen, everything we’d done. But it was different when you knew the person. And that thing in the casket—waxen and swollen—was not our Skye anymore.
The service began with a hymn on an electric organ. We only got three chords into the song before Naomi, racked with sobs, sprang to her feet and fled. We all got up as one and followed her, streaming out of the chapel, leaving Skye behind.
The fight broke out as soon as the last of us stepped outside. Riley turned to Shiloh and said something so nasty it ripped the air right out of my lungs. “Why are you so upset when you did this? You put her in that casket.”
Naomi stepped forward. “Enough.”
But Riley wasn’t to be quieted. Not this time.
Her upper lip peeled away from her teeth as she stared at Shiloh, disgusted.
“Your hands are sticky with blood. But you love it. You love all of this just as much as he does, and that’s why he picked you.
Because there is nothing you want more than to do this, and you think we all can’t see it. ”
Shiloh didn’t defend herself. Didn’t argue. She just laughed, dark and disbelieving, as if at the punch line of some horrible cosmic joke.
I’m not sure who threw the first punch. I’m not sure that it mattered. Riley shoved Shiloh so hard her head struck the bricks of the chapel, a gashing blow.
Shiloh’s eyes began to roll back into her head.
Her eyes fell closed. Somehow she stayed on her feet, clinging to consciousness, and smiled.
Blood bubbled from her nostrils, and she wiped her nose clean on the back of her hand, a bright smear.
When she spit, red spattered the tops of Riley’s boots. “That all you’ve got?”
No one came between them when they started fighting again. No one dared. Riley dragged Shiloh off the wall, and Shiloh crashed on top of her, throwing punches as Riley thrashed and struggled, pinned to the ground beneath her.
At some point, Riley stopped struggling.
But the blows kept coming.
And then Riley’s eyes were closed, and I was half on top of Shiloh, dragging her away. We both hit the ground, sprawling. Shiloh turned to me, and I flinched away as if waiting for her to strike, but the resolve went out of her as she came to, registered what she’d done. She deflated.
“Stop it right now,” Naomi pleaded, fresh tears streaming down her cheeks. “You’re acting like children.”
But they weren’t. Their cruelty was well beyond that, and we all knew it. They’d fought like they wanted to kill each other.
Riley managed to push to her feet, hunched over, hands braced on her kneecaps. She, like Shiloh, looked utterly spent. Her face was a mask of contempt as she gazed at Shiloh. “Why don’t you just tell her the truth about what really happened to Adeline?”
I froze. My heart pulsed hard—a sharp punch to the backs of my ribs—and then seemed to beat almost in reverse. I looked to Shiloh, who very pointedly did not look at me. “What does she mean?”
When Shiloh didn’t answer, Riley wheeled on me, laughing. The tears streamed freely down her cheeks now. She didn’t hide them. “You might be the only one who doesn’t see, which is ironic because she’s screwed you over more than she has anyone else.”
“If this is about her and Adeline, I already know,” I said, bristling at the implication. I was tired of being treated like a useless appendage, like I didn’t know anything about the girls or the group when I’d been traveling with them, becoming a part of them, for weeks.
“Then you know your role in all of this?” Riley asked, a threat in her tone. But she was holding back, baiting me to ask for more. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction, didn’t want to believe there was still a chance that I was in the dark. “It was you.”
Shiloh froze, face pale. “Riley, please. Don’t.”
But Riley wouldn’t hear her. She kept her gaze on me, malice in her eyes, as if I had caused all of this. Like the one she was really angry at was me and she’d only just realized. “She was set on you before you ever met.”
I knew she meant Shiloh without her having to say it. But I wasn’t ready to hear it, to believe what I had suspected to be true. I turned to Shiloh, waiting for her to say it, wanting to hear it from her mouth before I was forced to believe it. “What is she talking about? What did you do?”
Shiloh deflated, all the fight gone out of her. If Riley had held a knife to her neck, then and there, I don’t think she would’ve fought back or even flinched.
“Adeline talked about you all the time,” said Shiloh.
“Listening to her…I got curious. That’s all it was at first. I looked you up, found your Instagram, before.
Before Adeline died, you used to write these captions about your life and running and the way you saw the world, which was strange to me at first, and then it was intriguing, and then…
I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want to stop seeing through your eyes.
I liked the world as you saw it, and I don’t know when that stopped being enough for me, but one day, I realized it wasn’t that I wanted to see the world as you. I just…wanted you.”
Shiloh’s voice gave out, and she seemed so small and broken then that, in spite of everything, I wanted to go to her.
Comfort her. But in my anger, I didn’t move.
“The things you said and the way you said them made me feel like someone understood what was going on in my mind. Like someone saw me. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt that way before, about anyone.
But it still took me a long time to admit to myself that you were the one I was supposed to be with.
Or at least that I was supposed to be with someone who made me feel the way I did when I thought about you, when I read those captions, when I saw your face.
I realized that what I felt for Adeline—what I thought I liked most about her—was just the traces of you. ”
It was a terrible thing to say. Cruel enough to crush someone. To kill them, even.
Chloe clasped a hand tight over her mouth. Iona squeezed her arm, her eyes pinned to the ground like it was too painful to watch this scene unfold. Naomi choked back tears. I wondered if they knew, if it was just Shiloh who’d betrayed me or if it was all of them too.
“Y-you broke her heart,” I whispered, understanding fully now. The shock dulled my emotions so that I felt almost blank, like this was happening to someone else, a stranger that I didn’t know. “You broke her by choosing me?”
“I didn’t mean to,” said Shiloh, and her voice broke. “I swear it. But one night, she caught me on one of the phones. Saw me looking at your posts, and she just…knew. Maybe she had for some time; I don’t know. But that night, she processed it. It hit her, I guess.”
“What hit her, Shiloh?”
“That I wasn’t meant for her. I was meant for you.”
I felt like the breath had been ripped out of my lungs. “You didn’t even know me.”
“But I did. At least, I knew enough, through your writings and through her. Adeline talked about you all the time, Roslyn, and the way she talked about you—I don’t know…”
I didn’t care about that anymore. I didn’t want to hear it. “What did she say when she found out?” I asked. In the moment, it was the only question that mattered. The only thing that I cared about was my sister and the way I’d broken her heart without ever really realizing it.
Shiloh drew a hand through her hair. She looked like a ruin of the girl I’d first met weeks before. “She told us that she was going to leave. And then she did.”
As she said this, for the first time, I saw the truth: I had killed my own sister, whether I’d intended to or not.
And she’d hated me for it.
My legs gave out, and I scraped the skin off the bottom of my palms trying to catch myself on the concrete. The girls rushed forward, calling my name, the sound warped and garbled like we were all underwater.
They shook my shoulders, tried to bring me back to myself, but I was beyond them now.
Beyond everyone and everything, except for maybe Death.
I could feel him, closer to me than the girls were, and more real.
But he didn’t show himself. He didn’t need to.
In that moment, we were one and the same.
I had killed my sister just as surely as he had.