Reese Chapter
Reese
There is blood on the floor. I don’t see it until morning, when the sun comes up and I go back onto the porch for the first
time since Daniel left. I didn’t sleep on the porch. I didn’t sleep at all. Once Daniel was gone, I closed and locked the
front door, and then I lay on the sofa with my eyes wide, staring at the front door, knowing that just because it was locked
didn’t mean Daniel didn’t have a key. He does. He has a master key to all the cottages. He can come and go whenever he wants.
There are only a couple drops of blood. They’re on the wood floor. I grab the edge of the rug and pull it over to hide them.
The knife was in my hand when Daniel left. There’s blood on it too. After he was gone, I opened the nightstand drawer, slipped
it in, knowing I have to get rid of it.
When the sun comes up, Emily finds me lying on the living room sofa with my pillows and a blanket.
“Reese?” she asks, standing above me. “What’s wrong? Why didn’t you sleep on the porch?”
I get to my feet. “I’m not sleeping out there anymore,” I say. “Someone else can sleep there, but not me.”
Emily, for once, doesn’t object. Instead, she watches as I grab my bags from the porch and march upstairs with them and into
Mae’s room, where Mae is still sleeping.
“What are you doing?” Mae asks, coming to when I come in, rubbing her eyes, still groggy from sleep.
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m sleeping with you, you idiot,” I say as I pull the covers back and lie down beside
her in the flat, cramped bed.
Out of the corner of my eye, I think I see Mae smile.
That night, Aunt Courtney, Uncle Elliott and Cass come over for dinner. After what happened last night, I’m anxious. I can’t
relax. It’s loud and hot in the cottage, the windows open but no air moving around the room. My clothes are uncomfortable.
The sleeves of my shirt chafe.
“What’s wrong?” Emily asks.
“Nothing.”
“Why aren’t you eating?”
“I am,” I say, stabbing at a potato and putting it in my mouth, but it’s hard to move the food around and chew.
After we’re done, I can’t find my phone. I look everywhere. “What are you looking for?” someone asks as I pull pillows from
the sofa and search behind them for it.
“My phone. Has anyone seen it?”
No one has. Everyone helps look until, from across the room, Mae asks, “Is this it?” and when I turn, she’s holding my phone
in her hand, grinning like a little brat. Cass stands next to her, her face red, trying not to laugh, though eventually, they
can’t hold it in anymore. They die laughing, falling into each other, and my stomach drops because they didn’t just happen
to find my phone. They had it all along. They did something to it. Mae knows the password to my phone because of all the times
I let her go on TikTok and YouTube when Emily says no, saying the videos are inappropriate and addictive, which they probably
are, but Mae’s not as naive as everyone thinks.
My password is Mae’s birthdate, because mine seemed obvious. I regret that now.
“Give me that,” I say, snatching my phone back from them, my hands shaking. I look down to see a bunch of Instagram notifications
pop up on the screen, though I haven’t posted anything to Instagram in months and shouldn’t be getting so many, if any.
“I hate you,” I say. “I actually hate both of you.”
They laugh again. I swipe up to unlock, and then I find the app and open it. All of a sudden, it’s hard to breathe.
They’ve posted a picture of Skylar and me. From my own phone. And not just any picture, but one of us from back in eighth
grade that I should have deleted long ago, that I never should have even kept. In it, we’re smiling and happy, though my face
is covered in acne, which it was before Emily took me to see her dermatologist, worried that if we didn’t get it under control
it would scar. I also have braces, big silver brackets with teal rubber bands that the orthodontist let me pick out, which
I thought was cool at the time, but is now humiliating. Everything about this is humiliating.
Their dumb caption: My bestie.
They don’t know that Skylar isn’t my bestie anymore. That Skylar actually hates me.
Mae and Cass don’t know what they’ve done. They think it’s funny, a stupid joke.
They don’t know that my life is over.
There are three likes and over thirty comments already, in the last two minutes alone, which are beyond cruel.
You wish.
Nice face.
Who actually liked this?
This is so cringe.
My face gets hot and red, and I fill with rage, humiliation, shame.
I look up over my phone to see Mae and Cass still giggling their dumb heads off—gasping for air, holding their sides while
I want to die—about what they did, how they pranked me.
Aunt Courtney asks, “What’s so funny over there?” saying something to Emily about how nice it is to see the three of us having
fun together.
No one tells her. Instead, I lean into Mae and Cass and slur under my breath, “You’re so stupid. You’re both such fucking
idiots. If you ever touch my phone again, I’ll kill you.”
“No, you won’t,” Mae says, sticking her tongue out.
“Watch me.”
“Then we’ll kill you back.”
“You couldn’t. Because you’d be dead.”
They turn and go running upstairs, laughing so hard they run into a wall. A door slams. Emily turns around, asking, “Where
did Mae and Cass go?”
I’m so stupid. I’m so fucking stupid. How could I ever leave my phone alone?
It’s not just the picture of me. It’s because Skylar’s in it too, like I’m needy and obsessed, like I haven’t gotten the memo
that she doesn’t like me anymore, that she’s not my friend.
You’re so desperate for attention.
Skylar doesn’t even like you. No one does.
Emily says something. “Reese? Did you hear me?” she asks when I don’t respond.
I look up. The four of them sit stooped over the little living room coffee table, playing cards and drinking.
“No. What?”
“Why don’t you come play with us?”
“I don’t know how to play,” I say, because the last place on earth I want to be is with them.
I take my phone and go into the kitchen, because it’s the only place in the cottage where no one is.
I hunch over the ugly green countertops with my back to them, rocking in place, being a sadomasochist, not deleting the picture Mae and Cass posted, but reading the comments as they come in, believing them.
You should do everyone a favor and KYS.
Loser.
Lame.
No one likes you.
My mind is all over the place, though the last thing I’m thinking about is Uncle Elliott.
The problem is that he’s still thinking about me.
He comes up from behind. “Listen,” he says, the word a sharp, hissing sound like from a snake. I turn to find him standing
in the kitchen with me, in the open doorway, so that there’s only one way out and it’s past him.
“What do you want?” I snap, wanting more than anything to be alone.
He throws a look back over his shoulder. When he brings his eyes back to mine, he’s on edge, talking under his breath, his
words coming out fast. “Can we just call a truce?”
“Hey, Elliott. Can you grab me another beer while you’re in there?” Nolan shouts out from the living room.
Uncle Elliott calls back, “Sure. Corona or Spotted Cow?” his voice all of a sudden relaxed, like he’s unagitated, except for
the fact that his eyes never let go of mine.
“What do you say, Reese?” Uncle Elliott goes on, coming closer to me, lowering his voice again. “Can we pretend like it never
happened?”
And I would just say yes. Because it’s not like it matters. What happened between Daniel and me is done. I don’t ever want to see him again, for as long as I live. I don’t actually care what Uncle Elliott tells Emily and Nolan. So what if I get grounded. Nothing matters anymore.
“Sure.”
“Say it,” he says.
“Say what?” I ask.
There’s a tightness on his face and around his eyes. He blinks a lot, dragging his hand through his hair before looking back
over his shoulder and then again at me as he says, leaning in, “Say you won’t tell those lies about me. Promise me, Reese.
On your life.”
“On your life,” I mock, not laughing. I shrug him off. “I said yeah. Besides, it’s not that big of a deal.”
“It is that big of a deal. Do you have any idea what they do to sex offenders?”
I ask, “If you didn’t do anything, then what do you have to be so worried about?”
“Just promise me, Reese. Say you won’t say anything.”
“I—” I start to say, but then Nolan appears all of a sudden and slaps Uncle Elliott hard on the back. Elliott spins around.
“Never mind,” Nolan says, “I’ll get it myself.” Elliott’s face is blank. “The beer. Don’t tell me you forgot already.” Nolan
rolls his eyes, goes to the fridge for his own beer, turns back. “What’s this very clandestine conversation about?” he asks,
teasing, his eyes going between Uncle Elliott’s and mine.
“Why don’t you tell him,” I say.
I take the opportunity to make my escape. I cross the room, go to sit in the blue velvet recliner alone, pulling my legs into
me, finally deleting the picture Mae and Cass posted from my Instagram. It’s gone, but it’s not so easy to forget.
You should do everyone a favor and KYS. Loser.
I don’t stop there. I go into my settings and, in an instant, delete every single one of my pictures and videos like they never even existed. I consider deleting the whole damn page, like I never even existed.
Uncle Elliott turns from the kitchen. His eyes move in my direction and I hear Nolan ask, “Tell me what?”
Uncle Elliott shrugs him off. He takes a sip of his drink, watching me over the bottle. I look away, but when I look back,
his eyes are on me, his face different than before. He releases my eye. He looks to Aunt Courtney sitting on the sofa alone
(the spot beside her his) and says at random, “Hey, Court,” his words loud and abrupt, calling attention to himself.
She looks up (everyone does). She meets his eye and smiles. Her voice is tender, teasing as she says, “Hey, Elliott.”
“I was just thinking that I might get up early and go fishing tomorrow morning.”