Chapter 5
The room is perfumed with the scent of black coffee, which I realize is because I have dropped both cups from my hands.
A dark stain is blooming on the red carpet as I stand frozen.
My shoes are splattered in coffee.
My leggings, from the knees down, are covered in coffee.
The floor where I stand is covered in coffee, just beyond the little hallway of Hugh’s room, where his bed had just come into
view.
And there Hugh is.
Face down under the pristine white covers now covered in blood, one lifeless arm reaching out from beneath the sheet.
I stare at the motionless arm and the back of Hugh’s silvery head for a full five seconds, then sprint, one hand clasped over my mouth.
They will know what to do.
They will . . . they will fix this.
They have to fix this right NOW.
The fifteen seconds from bedroom to library last a blink. I’m out of breath as I burst through the door.
Gordon is seated beside the chessboard, playing a game with himself.
Jackie is standing at the large bookshelves, one of the books in hand.
Neena is in the midst of adjusting the purple scarf around her neck as she drapes herself across a bookshelf, Crystal taking
her picture.
Ricky is staring intently, morosely, at nothing as he sits by himself in the wingback chair.
And Nash is standing stiffly with his back to the door, looking out at the deep blue sea beyond.
All of their heads, except Nash’s, turn sharply toward me.
“Penelope?” Neena says. “What is it?”
“Call somebody!” My words tumble out between raspy breaths. “Come quick! Something’s wrong! Something terrible . . . has happened to . . . to . . . Hugh!”
And then when I’ve officially given over the words, I feel an immense pressure on my chest, and tears overcome me.
For a moment there is stunned silence, and through the blur of tears I see Jackie look to Gordon, Crystal to Ricky, Neena
at Nash, and Nash, looking incredibly piqued, clenching his fists and breaking off to stare back out the window.
Neena shifts her gaze to Gordon.
And with now not one but two women pressing their gazes hard on him, he unsteadily stands.
“Oh! How awful!” he cries out in a pained voice, dropping the king chess piece in his hand. “I’ll find someone . . . right
now!”
He races out the door and shuts it behind him.
I turn to the others.
“We can’t stand here. Let’s go!”
I rub the tears from my vision.
“C’mon!” I yell again, and this time several people jump up.
Getting them to move is like one of those frustrating dreams, though.
One of those dreams where you are being chased and need to run but your legs are Gumby’s and moving like they’re stuck in quicksand. No matter how hard your heart is racing, you
can’t get them to work.
It takes an eternity to get them just to stand.
“Let’s go!” I’m flailing my arms, trying desperately to get the group to move faster.
But they are molasses, slowly getting up, gathering things.
Nash doesn’t even move.
“Are you all serious?” I scream. “FINE!”
I turn in my panic and violent frustration and rip open the door, making to rush back to Hugh myself, to face him and see
what can possibly be done, when I feel a strong grip on my wrist.
I turn to see Ricky gripping me by the shoulder, and in my stunned surprise, I feel my feet being dragged with him back inside
the room.
The door clicks shut behind him.
He gruffly turns me around.
Everybody has shifted their position to face Neena, who stands up from the couch now in her beacon of purple. She smiles nervously
at me.
Her fingers are steepled together. “Okey dokey,” she says in her singsong voice. “We tried but we can’t do this. Somebody call Hugh and tell him it’s off.”
Crystal pops her phone from her pocket and strides to the corner of the room.
“What?” I say. My gaze is moving madly from face to face around the room.
Neena walks to me.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” she says, putting a hand on my shoulder. “You must have had such a fright. In my defense, I told him this was a terrible idea.”
“A . . . what?” I say.
“I told you all,” Nash growls lowly. He looks so guilty and defeated he barely makes eye contact with me before breaking away.
I’m still sobbing, I realize belatedly.
I hadn’t realized it was so loud until I see Neena putting a hand on my shoulder, but it bounces up and down against my choky
breaths.
Jackie wordlessly hands me one of her handkerchiefs.
This is the equivalent of a hug from her, given she despises emotion (probably because at least half of her characters die
of polio in any given book). And I’m pretty sure she cares about her vintage handkerchiefs more than the lot of us.
She winces slightly and moves away as I blow my nose.
“This is all . . . all some kind of . . . game?” I say, my heart refusing to slow down as it pounds in my chest.
“A horrible idea of a game,” Neena says, pursing her lips. “He thought it might be good for . . .”—she hesitates—“the ship. Play a sort
of live-action murder mystery game.”
“People like to know if they are in a murder mystery game!” I say. “That’s kind of a key factor.”
“And there’s his fault, I know.” She tsks. “We all told him it was a bad plan. He was just so convinced.”
“And you didn’t stop him?!” I cry out. My tears are rapidly evaporating.
She shrugs. “Well . . . he bound us to it. It’s not like we really had a choice.” She pauses. “Oath wise.”
Again with the mysterious rules of being The Magnificent Seven.
“You do realize that’s the kind of thing people in cults say, Neena. This is real life. My real life.”
“Yes,” she hedges. “But . . .” Her words wander off in a but we’re part of The Seven, and we were bound—what really could we do?
I can’t argue with her.
You can’t argue with crazy.
“If he had wanted to bind you to murder, would you all have blindly followed along with that too?” I cast a fiery gaze around the room, landing indignantly on Nash.
“There’s more to it than you know. He was very insistent,” Neena jumps in. “And really, at the end of the day, it wasn’t hurting
anyone . . .”
“It hurt me! It traumatized me! Gah!” I rub my eyes. “The image of him dead is going to be brandished into my nightmares forever. Thanks, guys. Successful authors are freaks.”
They’re all wincing before me now.
Like the guilty little ducks they are.
Neena looks especially sorrowful. “We’re so sorry, Penelope. He only broke the plan to us last night. We didn’t hardly have time to think.”
I roll my neck.
He probably messaged them after dinner. Right when he played me with all that nonsense about someone being after him.
He was messing with us all.
“I hate to see you angry, honey. Especially after how well you were doing after yesterday’s breakthrough.”
“What breakthrough?” Nash says.
“From The Incident,” Neena continues in a hiss.
“What incident?” Nash says.
“She was angry then too,” Jackie points out.
“But that was a different angry,” Neena trills in a tone that says don’t butt in, Jackie. “That was constructive rage—”
“And this is . . . unconstructive rage,” Jackie says slowly, scrutinizing me as if I’m a lab rat that she just can’t quite
understand.
“I don’t know,” Crystal says, “she was pretty ragey yesterday in an insane woman stealing boom boxes kind of way.”
“Who stole a boom box?” Nash interrupts.
“Well, you can’t blame her with everything that went on with Michael,” Neena says, ignoring him.
“What happened with Michael?” he says louder.
“I don’t know,” Crystal says, her phone still pressed to her ear. “I’ve dated plenty of guys and haven’t once tried to toss
speaker equipment.”
“I don’t have any RAGE!” I cry out. “I’m a totally rational person.” I fling my hands toward the door, where my boss just pretended to be dead. “This is a TOTALLY RATIONAL RESPONSE!”
Crystal, whose hand is now to her lips as though really trying to think it through, looks to Jackie. “Noooo,” she muses. “If
I were in her place, I don’t know if I would really fling the door open like that. Feels a little unhinged to me. What about you, Jackie?”
“I walked in on my aunt dead once,” Jackie replies cooly. “I didn’t need to make a whole scene over it. It’s a bit—”
“Pretentious?” Crystal says.
“I was thinking self-absorbed. But I approve the synonym.” Jackie gives a curt nod.
“One hundred and seventy-one thousand people die . . .” Ricky says slowly, drawing a chill breeze to the back of everybody’s
neck, “every day.”
Nash takes off his hat. “What happened with Michael?” Nash says louder, this time craning his neck in the air.
“No answer,” Crystal announces, pocketing her phone. “I’ll just go get him.”
“No, if anyone sees him first, it’s me,” I say, wiping the last remaining tear vigorously from my eye with the palm of my hand.
I hand the handkerchief back over to Jackie and stalk out into the hall.
The rest of the group trails after.
Waiting at the subway with a mysterious package for Hugh for research was one thing.
Diving through terrifying sea tunnels was one thing.
Baking an apple pie with arsenic and then taking a bite and spitting it out before it killed me to see if I could really “taste
the poison” was one thing.
Playing with my heart for sport is another.
Gordon jumpstarts from playing the little Tetris game on his phone as he sits on the ground.
Guiltily he pockets his phone as he stumbles to standing. “Called them! They’ll be here any minute!” he trills.
Neena gives him a stern look. “For goodness’ sake, you had one job!”
“I’m going to kill him for this!” I announce, stomping down the hall. “And I’m going to kill all of you for going along with this!”
“Hugh’s very persuasive when he has a plan, Pip,” Neena says.
“Don’t care.”
“I don’t think it’s really fair to pin any of this on us,” Jackie says.
“You know what, Jackie?” I say, spinning around, “I found that vintage Rosenthal Sanssouci replacement dinner plate you were hunting for—”
“Oh?” she says, her voice rising. “With the gold trim?”
“And was planning to give it to you for Christmas,” I continue, “but no more! No vintage Christmas plates for you, Jackie!” I raise my finger, announcing as an afterthought as I swivel back around, “No Christmas presents for any of you!”
The shuffling behind me is loud as we march by door after door.
Heads are bowed.
They deserve it.
I’m an excellent gift giver, for the record.
They should be highly disappointed that my incredibly thoughtful gifts they receive year after year will be no more.
“To be fair, Penelope,” Neena says, “we never thought you’d be, well, quite so upset.”
I halt.
Turn.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“But of course that’s our fault,” she continues hastily as she cinches her robe tighter around her. “It’s just . . . with
a missing note . . .”
I raise my hand. “I’m sorry, Neena, but Hugh being dead on the mattress with pools of blood on the sheets around him is anything
but unconcerning. Of course I would react this way. Any sane human should react this way—”
“Blood?” Gordon interrupts. “No, he was just going to be missing. Leave a note.”
“What do you mean there was blood?” Neena says, stepping closer to me, her eyes growing wide in alarm.
“I mean there were pools of blood!” I cry out. “Pools.”
We all stare at each other for one long moment.
Then Neena pushes me aside.
They all, for that matter, push me aside and race toward the door.
“Hugh?” Neena calls out loudly, heedless of the volume of her voice or the time of morning. “Hugh, come on now! It’s time
to give it up—”
And then she, and we, all skid to a stop as we reach the door and bump directly into the rough blue uniform of a man backing
up.
“Out of the way,” he says gruffly, and then in our collective horror we see on the stretcher the figure of a man outlined
by the cover of a white sheet, running all the way up to, well, to . . . Hugh.
“That’ll do it,” another man in uniform says, snapping a pencil into a notebook and pocketing it in his back pocket.
The gurney moves another foot or two backward and then the officer calls out, “Wait,” and takes a couple of steps forward.
He covers Hugh’s face with the sheet; the lifeless, bloodied face that every single one of us has known for what feels like
forever.
The officer pats the metal of the gurney, and the man continues moving it out of the room.
And that’s when Neena faints directly into Gordon’s arms.