Chapter 9 #3
Cassidy reached over and grabbed Apricot’s phone off the table.
Apricot lifted her head at the movement and recoiled from the phone as though it were a dead thing.
Cassidy couldn’t bring herself to rewatch the video knowing that it all looked and sounded like her to everyone else but that it wasn’t really.
It was someone else—something else. Instead, she looked at the comments to see if anyone pointed out discrepancies about the two different videos.
“Cassidy …” Apricot whispered.
Cassidy scrolled, waiting for her friend to continue her thought.
“All of the comments about Ryan LeHane on my video are gone.”“Well, those would be easy enough to monitor and delete,” James said.
Apricot didn’t seem to hear them. Her hands clasped at her mouth, eyes unfocused as tears slowly flowed down her cheeks.
Cassidy had only ever seen her this pale after some very long nights of drinking in college, and even then, an amused bubbliness lived in Apricot’s eyes.
But now, she just looked frail and sickly.
“A?” Cassidy asked. The faraway look in her friend’s eyes caused a new seed of panic to sprout in her belly.
“How did they know what I looked like?” Apricot asked.
Immediately, Apricot’s eyes focused and shifted to the front door. Then, she turned quickly in her chair to look at the sliding glass door, now hidden behind the blinds. Her breathing came in hard, sharp inhales with few exhales and the tears flowed harder.
“We need to close all the blinds. What if they’re watching us? What if that kid tries to break in? What if—”
Apricot’s words got caught in a tornado of her own creation and she started keening. Cassidy wrapped both arms around Apricot’s shoulders and head, drawing her close and preventing her from looking at the backdoor.
“Hey! Hey, it’s okay. They’re not filming us in here, okay?
They’re not,” Cassidy said, but she caught the look on James’ face and knew that neither of them believed that.
If anything, given all the unknowns on the island and the kind of people there, it was more likely than not that they were recorded everywhere they went.
“What if they break in? What if they get in? What about that kid?” Apricot asked, shuddering into Cassie’s chest.
“No one is going to break in. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
“I want to go home, Cassidy. I want to go home.” Apricot wrapped her arms around her friend and began to sob hard. “I just want to go home! Fuck this place and fuck Daisy. I want to go.”
James and Cassidy shared another look.
“Maybe I should go,” he said.
Cassidy nodded. She continued to hug Apricot and stroke her hair as she cried, and James left without another word.
“I want to go home, too, but there’s no way to get home.”
“There’s always a way, Cassidy,” Apricot said, breaking out of the hug and grabbing Cassidy hard by the arms. “We could call someone, or email someone. Your dad could get someone to fly here so fast.”
“What about Daisy? Don’t you want to find her?”
Apricot screamed. She grabbed a fistful of hair on either side of her head and pulled down furiously. “Fuck Daisy!”
Cassidy’s stomach knotted in horror, and she grabbed Apricot’s hands, pulling them up to loosen the grip. “Don’t do that!”
Apricot let go of her hair, but stood suddenly, pushing Cassidy away. “She’s a shitty friend and she never liked you and you knew that.”
The admission threw both women off guard. Apricot’s eyes went wide as Cassidy’s whole body went slack. Apricot put her hand out as she would to calm down a scared animal.
“I’m sorry, that was mean, but it’s true. She should never have come, it should have just been me and you, like this.” Apricot turned to show Cassidy the tattoo of a spoon with legs on the back of her upper arm.
Cassidy’s matching tattoo of a plate with legs tingled on her arm, but she consciously decided not to touch it or even look away. She’d never seen Apricot like this, and she had no idea what kind of behavior to expect.
“We’re best friends forever, Cass. I know I haven’t been a good friend lately, but you’re my best friend. You and I need to get off this island, and Daisy can figure it out for herself.”
“Apricot—” Cassidy started, but Apricot interrupted her, taking another anxious step forward as she spoke.
“You know she wouldn’t hesitate to do the same thing to you.”
“We don’t even know if she’s still alive!
She’s been posting but not replying to our messages, and Ryan LeHane has been posting but is dead.
Doesn’t that concern you at all? If someone made up a video of us, couldn’t they make up a video of Daisy?
” Cassidy was shouting now. Soon they would both just be yelling at each other, blinded by their own fear and unable to think clearly if they didn’t calm down.
“Why do you care? What does it matter? She fucking ditched us, but we’re gonna stick together, and we’re gonna get off this island because you’re going to call your dad and he’s going to send a plane for us to go home.
” Apricot stuck her pointer finger out at Cassidy as she spoke, as though accusing her of being wrong for not thinking of this earlier.
“Okay, yes, okay. That’s a good idea; I’ll call my dad. You should try to call someone, too. At least let them know what’s going on even if they can’t do anything.”
Cassidy dialed her father’s number, but the line rang and rang without ever picking up. She paced around the living room of the villa with the phone pressed to her ear as Apricot did the same. No one ever picked up.
After that, Apricot fully lost it. She paced like a caged animal, pulled her own hair out, and threw anything light enough to pick up.
Apricot swept an arm across the breakfast table, knocking the cheap woven placemats and water glasses to the floor.
She took a step toward the kitchen and swept an arm over the counter, sending the ceramic salt and pepper shakers clattering to the floor, followed by Cassidy’s laptop and another glass of water.
“Apricot! Stop!” Cassidy ran to her laptop and checked that it still worked, and Apricot ran into Daisy’s room.
Something crashed hard against the wall, and Cassidy jumped back, laptop closed and pressed to her chest. The sound came from Daisy’s suitcase ricocheting off the door jam.
Apricot picked it up like a giant book and hurled it into the living room.
It opened wide, and Daisy’s collection of cotton tops and sheer sun covers twirled into the corners of the room.
The suitcase separated Cassidy from an escape into her own room, and she took a step back toward the front door. “What are you doing!”
Apricot reached into the suitcase and pulled out handfuls of thongs and string bikinis and threw them around her. “Fuck Daisy!”
A large eye makeup pallet frisbeed from Apricot’s hand into the sliding glass door.
Her other hand threw Daisy’s favorite perfume, Daisy by Marc Jacobs, into the living room wall.
It exploded like a glass bomb and sent shards and the air filled with the scent of pure alcohol and flower pollen so thick that Cassidy could taste it.
“Stop it!”
“What does it matter? We’re trapped!” Apricot screamed. “We’re trapped and we’re going to die on this fucking island!”