Chapter 27 #2
A wave rushes the shore, wrapping around our calves, and we both shriek at the bolt of cold, running hand in hand toward safety.
Breaths quick and bright, we glance at each other, and, in a moment of understanding, we race back toward the ocean, chasing the wave as it melts away, screaming and giggling as we go.
When our toes touch the retreating tide, another wave heading toward us, Darcy wraps her arms around my middle, and I hug her back, both of us tripping our way through the shallow water. The froth clears after another break, and something in the water catches my eye.
I untangle from Darcy and lunge as it starts to tumble out toward the sea, dropping to my knees and catching it just in time.
“What is it?” she asks, raising her voice over the wind.
Clutching it close to my chest, I push to standing. Rolling the smooth piece of sea glass between my thumb and forefinger, I hold it up in front of Darcy, her identically colored eyes shining behind it. She smiles as she looks at it.
“The ocean made a little piece of you I can keep with me,” I say. Something in her gaze shifts, smile fading, lips parting as she looks at me.
I’m not sure I like that look, whatever emotion is behind it. I shift my gaze away before I actually have to read it, continuing our walk down the shore.
“Not to be a broken record,” I say, after a few minutes of silence, “but if you really didn’t take my phone, that means I’ve lost it. I either need to find it or get a replacement soon.”
I expect Darcy to say something about helping me look at home or letting me use hers to contact my mums and let them know I won’t be easily reachable for a bit.
Usually, she’s quick with a solution, like she can read my thoughts and already knows how to solve my problems. But her silence hooks my attention, and I look at her.
Her eyes are fixed on the sand.
“Darcy,” I say quietly. “Are you sure you don’t know where my phone is?”
She lets out a shaky breath. “Don’t be mad at me,” she says, face still turned away and features creased with guilt. “But I did sort of … hide it.”
The annoyance is sharp and swift and tinged with mortification. I stop in my tracks, and she does too. “Why would you do that?”
She finally looks at me, eyes pleading. “Because you’ve been so stressed, and you had surgery and I wanted you to have a few days of the outside world not bothering you.”
“You had no right to do that,” I snap. “It’s stressing me out more not knowing what’s going on. What’s being said.”
“And I think that’s pretty damn unhealthy,” Darcy says with a raised voice.
“Well, I didn’t ask your opinion, did I?”
“You’re getting it anyway.”
“All I want from you is my phone.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s mine and I want it. End of story.”
Darcy scoffs. “What good will it do you?”
Heat flares across my cheeks. “None. But that stupid fucking phone is all I have.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”
I glare at her. “It’s not, actually. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“Understand what? How much you like torturing yourself? It’s sick, Cubby.”
I fist my hands in my hair. “No. You know what’s sick?
How I’ve lost any control over my life. I have no say in what stories are told about me, what people think, who I’m supposed to be dating, in love with, toying with.
What I wear. How it looks. How none of it is good enough.
The only thing I have is staying on top of the judgment, knowing where I stand from one second to the next by scrolling those stupid apps.
Otherwise, they’ll eat me alive. They will tear me apart to the point I cannot recover.
If I don’t know what’s being said, how am I supposed to live my life? ”
“A life isn’t meant to be lived for the approval of others,” she yells, color flooding up her neck and across her chest.
“Lovely sentiment, Plato, but this is the real world, one that raised us on filters and social media and constant validation from strangers on the internet. I find it funny that you’re suddenly so far above that when you encouraged me to play into this shit to begin with.”
“Because I see it killing you,” she says, getting in my face. “Believe it or not, it’s pretty easy to parse out the danger of something when the person you care about most in the world is falling victim to it.”
“You’re so full of shit. Give me my phone.”
She shakes her head slowly, face twisting in disgust. “Fine.” She fishes through her bag, then shoves it against my chest, walking away.
I fumble it for a second, then get a grip. A part of me wants to drop the damn thing, use my heel to dig it into the sand for good measure, chase after Darcy, and tell her, rationally, I know that she’s right but emotionally, I can’t figure out a way to stop this brutal spiral.
But I don’t. Like the wasted-away husk that I am, I start to click, doing my obsessive rounds of checking apps.
Googling my name as I trail after Darcy along the beach as she marches toward the car, my eyes glued to my screen, the blue light fueling my manic obsession to absorb everything I’ve missed the past few hours.
What shows up makes my stomach drop, mouth going dry and pulse pounding at my temples. The headline reads: D-list diva status: The cringey drama continues.
My vision fuzzes at the edges. I click through and start to read.
While Cubby Clark—lead singer of Tea Time Tantrum—primarily has any claim to fame due to the men she’s dated, that hasn’t stopped her from fully embracing diva status, walking out on a Philadelphia show one hour before the start time and canceling the next night’s performance without even a performative Notes App Instagram apology.
The band has further canceled their next four scheduled shows.
Clark’s team put out a blanket statement about one of the band members needing a break due to a health concern, but it isn’t hard to read the signs that Clark is throwing a tantrum of her own …
A fist squeezes around each lung, my chest pulling sharp and tight as I try to breathe past the mounting anxiety.
“Fuck,” I whisper, scrolling through my notifications. I’m tagged in countless reshares agreeing with the article. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” My throat closes up, stomach pinching.
“I can’t watch this anymore.”
I glance up, then flinch to find Darcy on me. She rips my phone from my hand.
“Hey!” I lunge forward, trying to get it back, but my legs are wobbly and head woozy.
“You’re rotting away,” she says, sidestepping me. “I refuse to watch you keep hurting your own feelings.”
“Hurting my own feelings? What are you on about? It’s the trolls on the internet hurting my feelings.”
“You’re the one looking.” She runs down the slope of sand toward the ocean, and I chase after her. “You’re the one seeking it out. Searching your own name. Looking at Connor’s profile.”
“I … I’m tagged in most of it.”
“Then change your privacy settings!”
She stops suddenly, and I rip past her, tripping over my feet as I try to turn mid-run, the sand giving out beneath me.
Darcy’s a woman possessed, blue eyes blazing in the sunlight. She cocks her arm back, and I gasp as I see—like a waking nightmare—what’s going to happen next.
With more force than I thought her small frame capable of, she chucks my phone, the screen lighting up with a notification as it leaves her hand, creating a brilliant arc across the afternoon sky. Landing in the Atlantic Ocean with a plop.
I stare for a moment, mouth gaping, then I barrel into the surf. The water cuts me off at the stomach as I trip into a hidden deep spot. I whip around searching for my phone, ducking under the waves and opening my eyes in the murky water to try to find it.
It’s no use.
“Are you mad?” I screech, resurfacing and turning to Darcy. I start marching—as much as one can march in waist-deep freezing water—toward her.
“You’re the one that’s sick,” she yells back. “I’m not letting you torture yourself anymore.”
“Do you have any idea what you just did?” I scramble onto the shore, hands clenched into fists at my sides as I stalk toward her. Darcy has the decency to look a bit scared. She moves backward, away from me.
“I did you a favor.”
“A favor? A favor? That phone had all our draft lyrics on there!”
Darcy’s eyes go absurdly wide, darting about as she continues to back away from me. My pace picks up. “I … er … Did you not save them to the cloud?”
“I’m going to wring your neck!” I lunge for her and she tries to maneuver away, but I clip her shoulder, knocking us both off balance.
We tumble together, falling to the sand and rolling down the slight incline back toward the water. Darcy ends up on top of me, and she presses my swinging arms to the ground, face centimeters from mine.
“Let me go so I can strangle you,” I growl, squirming beneath her. I end up digging myself deeper into the sand.
“No.” She presses more of her weight into my wrists. “You know what? I don’t even care about the lyrics. I don’t,” she says over my gasp of outrage. “I would erase every song in the world if it meant bringing you back to me.”
I pause my thrashing, heart hammering up to my throat. “W-what?”
Darcy is silent, gaze searching mine. She shakes her head, closing her eyes and letting out a soft breath that dances across my skin. Suddenly, she pushes away from me, rolling off my hips to sit on the sand. “I miss you, Cubby,” she says, voice jagged.
“I’m right here,” I whisper, dragging my eyes from the sky to cautiously look at her. She stares at the shoreline, face lined. “I’ve been right here.”
She shakes her head again. “You know that’s not true. You’ve gone somewhere. I feel like I can’t reach you.”
My gut twists like a wet dishrag, shame dripping through me. I sit up, facing her, features fixed in anger. Anger is easier than shame. “Well, sorry I’ve been such a fucking drag. Didn’t mean for my feelings to be such a buzzkill.”