Chapter 21
I head back to my room, pausing every few steps to listen for more dripping water or wet footsteps. When I’m sure there’s nothing, I lurch forward, darting into my room.
Slamming the door, I twist the lock as exhales chew my lungs.
I lean my forehead against the sturdy door, my own breath warming my cheeks as it bounces back at me from the paneling.
I turn slightly, left ear near the seam of the door, listening hard.
No dripping. No muddy footsteps approaching. It’s all in my head.
Sighing, I pull back, swiping a hand across my sweaty brow.
When I turn around, a woman is standing on the threshold of the bathroom, watching me.
Gentle tapping drips melodize the narrow space as water runs down her frayed clothing and mottled skin.
Her hair is matted; strands cling to her bloated cheeks.
There are chunks of her flesh missing, sliced sections of her throat and chest that might indicate marine activity.
Her mouth opens, and dark water dribbles out, staining her lips and chin, rolling down her neck.
A briny, fishy smell envelops the room. It’s reminiscent of low tide and rotten carcasses.
A scream strains against my throat, dying before it can reach my parched mouth.
This time, I think I might recognize her.
“Elena?” I whisper.
But then I blink, and her face changes, shifts, looks even more familiar.
There’s salt crusted around her nostrils and in the corners of her eyes.
Her skin grays, becomes pocketed with rips and craters—flesh sags around her skeleton as if she’s wrapped in wet paper bags that are slowly disintegrating and falling off her bones.
She reminds me of someone I can’t think about anymore. I gag and clap my hands over my face, trembling uncontrollably. I take a deep, shuddering breath, and then slowly lower my arms, uncovering my eyes.
The figure is gone. My room is empty, untouched and dry. As if she was never here to begin with. I grab my chest as if I can restrain the thumping of my heart. I fight the instinct to whirl around and flee back into the hallway, racing up to the main level, the top floor, anywhere else.
When the knock comes at my door, I jump so hard I nearly hit my head on the low ceiling. Gasp catching in my throat, I wheel around automatically. The knock comes again, and a familiar, muffled voice slinks through the crack between the wall and the door.
“Charlie? Are you in there?”
Hurriedly, I rush over to the end table where Elena’s phone still sits, attached to the charging cord.
With no service, her notifications have finally calmed down, and I free the phone from the charging port and gently move it into the drawer.
Careful to not touch the dried blood, I shut the drawer, hiding the evidence from view.
Racing back over to the door, I open it to reveal Fiona looking anxious and tired.
“I wanted to check on you. See how you’re holding up,” Fiona offers, tucking pink locks behind her ear, eyes gazing over my shoulder, scanning the room.
Her makeup is immaculate despite our situation.
The layer of soft brown eyeshadow on her lids is perfectly blended, and the winged tip of her eyeliner is as sharp and crisp as a fall day.
I imagine her in her room, recording on her phone: “Here’s how you make a chic hurricane-ready look! Perfect for day or night! Even works for sabotage and murder!”
Maybe I’m being harsh. I don’t know that Fiona is involved with Elena’s disappearance.
“I’ve been better,” I admit when I realize she’s been staring at me expectantly for several seconds. “Want to come in?”
“Same.” Fiona sighs, glancing over her shoulder. “Okay, I’ll sit for a minute.” She moves into the room, hovering near the bed. Is it my imagination, or is she studiously ignoring the bathroom, refusing to glance over there?
I close the door to my room with a gentle snap, and before I can stop myself, I’m blurting it out: “There aren’t any…ghosts on board, right? Like you’ve never seen anything weird?”
Fiona crosses her arms. “This again?”
“I thought I saw someone who looked like Elena. Just now,” I say bleakly, keeping a close eye on Fiona’s expression.
Fiona pales, but shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Charlie. I’ve never seen anything like that on Empress. Are you…okay? Are you sure what you’re seeing is, you know, there?”
No, I’m not, and that’s the problem. I first saw the…apparition in the crew quarters right after finding Elena’s phone, and now I’ve seen her again in my room. I glance over at the end table where Elena’s phone is hidden. Coincidence? Or somehow related?
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I-I keep seeing things.”
“Has that ever happened to you before?” Fiona asks, leaning against my bed.
“No. Kind of? I don’t know,” I ramble. “When I was working on the book I would see the characters so strongly in my head. I could picture them splashing in the water with us when we’d swim. But nothing like this. Nothing like what I’ve seen here.”
“Well,” Fiona continues, cocking her head and smiling tiredly at me. “Have you ever had a new job sprung on you, immediately moved in with a bunch of coworkers, and gotten trapped by a freak storm in the middle of the ocean?”
“Um, no. First time for that.”
She nods empathetically. “Exactly. And that whole thing with Sage; I’m sure that’s been weighing on you too.”
You can say that again, I think bitterly.
“You’re saying it’s stress,” I reply instead.
“I am,” Fiona confirms. “Give yourself a break. When I was days from being kicked out of my apartment, I thought I saw shadowy figures everywhere. Turns out, it was just my mind trying to cope with a high-pressure situation.”
Fiona might be right. I’ve never experienced anything like this before, and it would make sense if I was also having a delayed reaction to Sage’s death.
“I really thought it was real,” I whisper. “I saw Elena’s social media. She looked like her…”
Fiona sighs, steps closer to me. “Look, I know you’re curious, but there’s no story here.
The day Elena left was hard for all of us.
Even Trey and Carl. They were there too, and they both loved her.
We all did. You can’t blame us if we don’t want to talk about it or dwell on it. Can’t you relate to that?”
“I understand,” I reply, but my mind snags on something Fiona said.
“Even Trey and Carl.” So everyone trapped on this boat right now was also there when Elena “left.” But did she leave? Or did someone kill her? There is dried blood on Elena’s phone. I can’t ignore that.
Everyone on board right now is a suspect.
I need to be cautious about what I share with people, even Fiona, who I like. I can’t let anyone know I’m suspicious about Elena’s disappearance.
Quickly, I change the topic. “What about you? How are you doing with all this?”
“Ugh. I don’t know if you noticed, but Carl and I keep fighting,” Fiona confesses, sighing loudly again. “We’ve been…rocky.”
“I’m sorry. I hope things get better soon.”
If we were real friends and not tenuous work colleagues, I would be twisting with agony knowing that Carl is hooking up with Ashley behind Fiona’s back.
Once, I saw the guy Sage was dating at a Brady Street bar, aggressively making out with a lean blond.
That night, back at the apartment, I warred with myself, wondering how to tell her.
When I finally did, sitting Sage down on the couch her father bought us, handing her a preemptive glass of wine, Sage had laughed.
“We’re not serious,” she said, tossing back the cabernet anyway. “He can kiss whoever he wants. I certainly am.”
That was how Sage operated. She took everything lightly.
Nothing sunk in past her skin, nothing stuck to her.
Everything would work itself out, and it would work out in her favor.
Maybe it was a mindset cultivated from growing up wealthy, from always having a safety net to fall back on.
It was how she distanced herself from me so swiftly and completely after announcing her book deal.
“We’re different people,” Sage had whispered in the doorway of the apartment.
It was one of the last things she said to me in the space we shared for two years.
She had come back to grab her remaining belongings—all the small things that the movers hadn’t already packed up and transported to her fancy new riverside apartment.
“I’m sorry it had to be this way, but I know you’ll never be able to move on from this.
It’s better we go our separate ways. You feel things too deeply, Char. You don’t know how to let go.”
She was right, in a way. I hadn’t been able to let go.
I obsessed over her book from afar, scouring internet forums about legal action, hoping there was something, anything I could do.
When it became clear A Song of Scales and Salt was a freight train, no stopping it, I still didn’t release the hope that maybe, one day, Sage would come to her senses and tell the truth.
It was the only thing I could think about.
The other books I read for @ChaptersWithCharlie felt like memories I had already forgotten; the posts I wrote about them using Sage’s voice were perfunctory and uninspired.
I was waiting for Sage. I was waiting for her to do the right thing, honoring our friendship.
She never did.
Only when Sage died was I finally forced to let it go. The truth could never come out, or so I thought. The regret and despair, the finality of the situation, crushed me. I gave up, decided to pivot. Find a different job. Put publishing, and my former best friend, behind me forever.
“Carl and I will be fine,” Fiona replies, snapping me back from the memories.
“Is he okay?” I ask, remembering Carl in the bridge earlier. “He might be coming down with something. He’s been coughing a lot. Wheezing. Does he have asthma?”