Chapter 4 #2
“This is dumb. I’m gonna go to Aaron’s room,” she said.
“Who’s Aaron?” the tattooed woman asked. The bored woman turned and pointed in the general direction of the bonfire, where six or seven guys were standing with their backs to the hot tubs and appearing as dark silhouettes.
“Who?” she asked again.
“We met him during the show, remember?” Black Kimono said.
“Uh, no, I have no idea who you’re talking about. Maybe we should go with you to see who this guy is,” the woman in the tub suggested, which produced a scoff from Black Kimono.
“Don’t be such a mom. Maybe you should try to find yourselves some guys to have fun with, too.”
The woman next to Edie looked out of the tub, towards the fire where dancing shadows congregated. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen, Daisy. I think I’ll stay over here.”
Daisy and Apricot turned to follow her gaze and scoffed.
“Of course that asshole is here,” Apricot said.
“Is that the guy who dumped sand on me?” Daisy asked.
“Someone dumped sand on you?” Edie asked. She hadn’t meant to say anything, but the drugs had gotten her too enraptured in their interaction. The other woman’s head whipped to look at Edie in surprise.
“Yeah, as some sort of prank. I guess that’s the shit he does for his YouTube channel that got him here.”
Daisy returned attention to her phone, illuminating her hands and face in a blue glow. “Anyhow, you have my number. See you bitches in the morning.”
Edie got a bad feeling from the bored woman for leaving her friends like that, barely acknowledging them. Then again, if these women were her friends, it was possible that they were just as fake and shallow.
“Well, Cassidy, what do you want to do?” Apricot asked.
“I kind of just want to hang out here for a while. You can go do whatever, but don’t leave without me, okay?” Cassidy said.
“I would never!”
Apricot kissed the top of Cassidy’s head and walked off toward the water.
Edie was obsessed with the idea that someone had dumped sand on someone as a joke and she was looking around the fire to attempt to identify which person seemed immature enough to do that just for views, but there didn’t seem to be anyone around the fire who disqualified themselves.
Scanning the beach, something caught her eye. A small unmoving figure next to the fire. People danced around it, blocking Edie’s view momentarily, but it still didn’t move. It looked to her like a small child staring directly into the flames.
“Do you see that?” she asked, aware that the child couldn’t possibly be real and that she was still very high, but something about the sight chilled her to the core.
“See what?” Cassidy turned to look.
“I think there’s a kid standing next to the bonfire.”
Rose sat up.
“I don’t see anything,” Cassidy said after a moment, but it didn’t sound like a throwaway comment. She sounded concerned, and her eyes searched for something in Edie’s face.
Edie squeezed her eyes shut. Upon opening them again, the figure disappeared. She leaned back against the seat of the tub and laughed. “Ha! Guess I’m just seeing things.”
But her residual doubt mixed with the champagne in her belly, and all the lightness she’d felt earlier melted away as the nameless anxiety fully destroyed her buzz. Edie kept smiling, as though she could convince herself that she wasn’t suddenly feeling ill.
“We saw a kid, too, earlier,” Cassidy said.
“Really?” Edie asked.
“Yeah. Well, I mean, the creepy thing is that we didn’t see them at the time, but later when we were watching a video we took in our villa, there was some kid peeking in at us through the back door.
” Cassidy’s fingers were already flying over the phone screen to retrieve the video from Instagram.
She paused the video with her thumb and extended the phone slightly for Edie and Rose to see.
On the screen played a ten second clip of Daisy, backlit but her features still slightly visible in the dark, walking around in the villa with a text box that read “WTF??” The woman seemed to be giving a tour, then stepped out of frame and the video ended.
Edie couldn’t understand what she was supposed to be looking at.
“Wait,” Cassidy said, sounding confused.
“I don’t know what’s happening. There was a shadow standing right there when Apricot showed me this at dinner.
A little kid was standing right there on the porch.
” She pointed to the glass door in the video when the woman stepped away from it. Edie didn’t see anything.
“Maybe your friend was just playing a prank on you,” Rose said, settling back into her seat in the tub.
Edie remained upright, back straight as a board. She hoped they were playing a prank. It wasn’t any funnier than pouring sand on someone, but at least she wouldn’t have to keep trying to convince herself that she hadn’t seen something in the bonfire.
“Why would Apricot have posted it asking what the fuck it was and edited it to take something out? That doesn’t make any sense,” Cassidy said.
She began tapping around on the screen of her phone again. Edie fixed her gaze on the bonfire. Something touched her arm and she jumped.
“Are you feeling okay?” Rose asked. Her fingers gently squeezed Edie’s arm.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s just the drugs,” Edie said. A tense silence fell over the tub, barely broken by the rumble of the jets.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” Rose asked.
“Yeah, yeah, just, you know, coming down now.”
Apricot’s hands hit the side of the tub, breaking her run, and startling Cassidy.
“Party in the woods, let’s go!” she shouted.
“What?” Cassidy asked.
“A bunch of people are taking the tiki torches into the woods so that’s where the party is moving. I guess there’s a waterfall in there that is super cool, and one of Aaron’s friends said he’s got more drugs.”
“Who the fuck is Aaron?” Cassidy asked.
“That guy that Daisy left with. Point is, the party is ending here and the night is young. Let’s go.” Apricot slapped the rim of the tub again like someone trying to get a horse out of a stable.
“Oh wa? Let’s go Edie!” Rose shouted, matching Apricot’s intensity. Edie set her gaze on Rose.
“Are you sure?” Edie asked.
“Yes. I don’t want to come down. It’s our first night and I don’t want to just go to bed like an old granny because they shut down the party here. Let’s go have fun.”
Edie’s stomach turned at the idea of heading into the woods with just tiki torches. The image of the shadow in the bonfire tightened her gut and she wondered if she should do anything else, but Rose stood and started to exit the tub.
Any other night, you wouldn’t hesitate to go to a party, Edie told herself and followed her friend.
“So?” Apricot asked. “You heard them, are you going to be an old granny tonight?”
“I just don’t know if it’s really a good idea for me to go…” Cassidy said.
“Come for me, then. Be my trip sitter and make sure I don’t end up in the ocean when I try to get back to the villa,” Apricot said, grabbing Cassidy’s arm to plead with her.
Cassidy sighed.
“Pleeeease,” Apricot said, drawing out the vowels in the word. Then she stuck out her bottom lip and did a puppy dog caricature of begging. Cass closed her eyes, then finally gave in, shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders to rid herself of her conviction.
“Okay, fine, but only because you did nearly drown at Harry Styles’ last release party, and you might actually end up in the ocean tonight if I don’t go.”
Cassidy crawled out of the tub and tried to find her sandals blindly alongside Edie, Rose, and Apricot.
The string lights remained on, but the unattended bonfire slowly died down as the tiki torches were all claimed, darkening the beach but lighting the way for the partiers as they trekked north toward the woods.