Chapter 1 #2
Bryan then took a step back and swept his arm toward the sand and trees off the asphalt.
The other men in the Hawaiian shirts copied the gesture, forming a loose tunnel for the guests to walk through.
In the sand sat hundreds of blue bicycles with black baskets on the handlebars that bore the Island X logo.
If Cassidy were alone, she would have tried one of the bikes, since she didn’t know how far away their villa was.
However, Daisy harbored more aversion to anything strenuous than anyone else Cassidy had ever met, and so they walked past the bikes as though they weren’t even there.
She didn’t want to ask, but she suspected Daisy had never even ridden a bike.
“Oh my god, this is so cute. Do you see these?” someone shouted ahead of them, gripping the handlebars of a bike.
“I’m going to get so fucking drunk and forget this somewhere; I just know it.”
Apricot livestreamed the moment.
“Just take a look at this!” she squealed, spinning slowly in the sand as she got a full 360. She stopped on Cassidy, who waved and smiled at the camera, and Apricot continued to walk backwards.
“This is going to make Rob so jealous,” Apricot said.
Rob was Apricot’s on-again, off-again boyfriend of the last decade.
They met at a party when Apricot and Cassidy were still in high school.
At the time, Apricot felt mature and cool for dating a guy ten years her senior, and Cassidy barely hid her jealousy about it.
As they all grew up together, Rob managed to stay exactly the same as the years past. He’d lost his shine.
Now, Cassidy knew Rob was a total loser who would never get his life together, and she couldn’t understand why Apricot still kept him around.
“He’s obviously already jealous, that’s why he said you were going to end up getting scammed on this haunted island, or whatever shit he said,” Daisy said.
Apricot pointed the camera at Daisy.
“Oh my god, wouldn’t it be so funny if I posted something about having the time of my life on a haunted island and put a little ghost emoji in my photo?” Apricot giggled.
“We should take a picture together,” Daisy said.
“Yes, let’s get one on the beach!” Apricot agreed, tapping the video off.
They all stripped off their sandals and ran to the shore to strike poses.
The three women made kissing faces at Apricot’s phone, then at each other, and struck sultry poses as the cool waves lapped at their ankles and slowly removed the sand beneath their feet.
Daisy and Cassidy both told Apricot they wanted to look at the photos first before she did anything with them, but they couldn’t see anything with the sun beating down on the black screen.
“We can take more pictures later if you don’t like these. Let’s find the villa,” Apricot said, and her friends agreed.
The low roofs of the villas offered enough shade that Apricot watched Cassidy and Daisy search for a room number through the camera on her phone as she filmed.
Cassidy punched in a number from the screen of her own phone onto the keypad above the door handle.
The door whirred and clicked, and the light on the handle turned green.
Cassidy turned, smiled into Apricot’s lens, and pushed the door open.
“Here we are!”
Daisy entered behind Cassidy, and Apricot took up the rear.
Light flooded into the villa from the open blinds hanging across the sliding glass door in the back of the house.
To their right sat the kitchen, which had a low counter that separated it from the living room.
Atop the counter was a welcome message from the island and three wristbands they could use as keys to the villa and e-wallets.
A large flatscreen TV hung on the wall opposite a couch and a set of chairs, and on either side of the living room were doors into the bedrooms.
“Daisy, give us a tour,” Apricot said. Daisy turned and faced the camera. At first, she appeared irritated, but her face transformed into a big bright smile as she took her cue, putting on a show as she’d been instructed to hundreds of times since childhood. Cassidy rolled her eyes.
“Well, here you can see a beautiful kitchen, which none of us will use,” Daisy said, one hand on her hip between the waist of high-rise shorts and the hem of a flowy white crop top, and the other hand gesturing to the kitchen.
“But I think we probably will raid the cupboards for all the snacks that the sponsors put in there.” She turned again and continued to walk into the living room to take center stage.
The sunlight streaming in through the sliding glass door erased all of Daisy’s features so she appeared as just a thick, curvy shadow on Apricot’s phone screen. Cassidy wandered into one of the bedrooms, steering clear of Apricot’s shot of Daisy.
“Here you can see our tiled living room with TV and air conditioning where we can escape from the heat,” Daisy said.
“Speaking of which, I’m already dying,” said Cassidy as she exited the bedroom to Apricot’s left.
On the camera, Cassidy appeared as a slight shadow with a bobbed haircut.
Unlike when Daisy turned toward Apricot, there were almost no curves in her narrow frame, but even in the low light, the dark tattoos covering her pale arms were visible.
“Yeah, we should probably turn that on, like, right now,” Apricot said.
“And here …” Daisy continued, taking a step toward the bedroom on Apricot’s left, “is my bedroom, where one or more lucky guests may be visiting for a night.”
Her arms opened wide to show off the room with its queen size bed and wicker bedside table and dresser. She turned back toward the camera, bringing her arms over her head and down again in a showy arc. Apricot laughed.
“One or more?” Cassidy asked, with more venom than she intended. Daisy seemed not to notice.
“Hey, I’m on vacation!” Daisy said, taking another step away from the camera toward the ensuite bathroom.
It was a small room, not even big enough for Apricot to follow Daisy into.
The sink had no counter space, the toilet was tucked into the corner, and the shower was a single stand-up stall with a low showerhead and a single door.
Apricot faced the camera toward the mirror and captured all three of them as they squeezed in next to each other to examine the tiny room.
Although her face was obscured by the phone itself, Apricot’s blond hair was visible, towering above her in a high bun.
In the poor lighting of the bathroom, Daisy and Cassidy looked orange and tired on screen, and Cassidy’s many tattoos crawling up her arms had the appearance of blurry novelty tattoo sleeves rather than real skin.
“Well, this is underwhelming, but I guess I won’t be spending much time in here,” Daisy shrugged.
“I swear the bathrooms were nicer in the pictures online,” Cassidy said.
“It’s probably all about angles, like with selfies,” Daisy said.
The anxiety Cassidy felt on the plane rose again as she thought about the strangeness of the festival and all the warnings she and her friends received against coming.
Rob hadn’t been the only one skeptical of the invites, but as a part-time construction worker and full-time drug dealer, he didn’t inhabit the same social echelon as the women and didn’t receive an invite. His comments were easy to brush off.
“If you only have twenty-four hours to book flights and lodging, that means they’re intentionally not giving you time to think about it,” Barb had said in a frantic phone call to Cassidy the day she and everyone else got their email invite.
“You don’t know they’re legit. They could steal your bank information or leave you stranded on some random deserted island. ”
And yet, Cassidy ignored these well thought out arguments and bought a ticket when Daisy and Apricot told her they were going.
They didn’t have managers to warn them and didn’t feel the need to tell their parents about it.
Also, a number of other celebrities positively confirmed the legitimacy of the festival and the scheduled lineup, and that was all the vetting they did.
Thinking about Barb reminded Cassidy of the text she sent when they’d landed. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and found, surprisingly, that no response awaited her.
“What do you two think? Worth the seven K we paid?” Apricot asked.
Cassidy darkened her phone screen and looked up.
“It’s not amazing, but at least we have it all to ourselves.
And look at this porch!” Cassidy said, hoping that Apricot wasn’t making a direct attack on her presence.
But Apricot’s face remained cheery as Cassidy opened the sliding glass door and stepped outside to watch the waves beyond the trunks of the palm trees.
The porch extended fully from one side of the villa to the other and had entrances from both bedrooms as well.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe I didn’t get this in the video! This is great! Isn’t it, Dais?”
“Yeah, it’s pretty great,” Daisy said, her words sounding automatic as she leaned against the railing and took a selfie with the ocean in the background.