“You some kind of hustler?” Jason said, pulling a five out of his pocket.
I shook my finger at him, laughing. “Would I tell you if I was?”
“Good point,” Nick said, adding his five to the pile.
Chad got up and said, “This blows. I’m gonna go see whether Mandy wants to come out and play.”
“Seriously?” I said. “It’s pissing rain out there.”
Chad leered and grabbed his crotch.
“Stupid ass,” Jason said when Chad was gone. “Hope Warren busts him.”
I hadn’t been sure what to make of Jason, but my feelings toward him warmed a little. When it came to Chad, at least, we were on the same page. “Unless Warren has the same idea,” I said. “Sneaking out after Claire starts to snore…”
“Gross,” Nick said. “You really think Mandy would be into it?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. She gets off on that shit, right?”
“I wonder.” Nick looked at his hand and smiled. “Not that I know much about girls.”
We played for a couple of hours. Jason won the pot. Turned out he was more of a hustler than I was, but Nick was really hard to read too. When we decided to turn in, Chad still wasn’t back. It was getting pretty dark outside, and the rain was getting harder too—it sounded like thunder on the cabin roof. I sure wouldn’t want to be out there in it.
“Maybe he got lucky,” Nick said.
Jason snorted. “Or he fell in the ocean and forgot how to swim.”
The guy was growing on me.
MONDAY
TEN
Caleb
When I woke up the next morning, it was early—just past six o’clock. I slipped out of bed and went down to the beach with my sketchbook. The water was calm after the rain overnight, and the sky was a clear pale gray, like it had been washed clean. I sketched for a while, letting my mind clear. I love early morning—how quiet it is. I lost track of time, but eventually my stomach started to growl with hunger. I glanced at my watch. Almost eight, but the breakfast gong hadn’t sounded. Or I’d sketched right through it.
Then I remembered that Chad and Tara were supposed to be cooking breakfast. Something told me we’d be eating cold cereal if I didn’t get Chad moving. I made my way back to the cabin, and there he was, sound asleep on top of his blankets, fully clothed and still damp-looking, with his pillow over his head. He groaned when I prodded him with my foot and reminded him that he was on breakfast duty.
“The hell with breakfast,” he said. “I hate breakfast. Tara can handle it.”
“Your funeral,” I said as I left.
I was almost at the dining hall when Imogen came flying out the door. She looked as if she had just leaped out of bed—hair wild, makeup smudged, plaid pajama pants and a wrinkled blue T-shirt. Bare feet.
She stopped running when she saw me. “Have you seen Tara?” Her breath came in gasps; she was seriously out of shape if running a few steps made her hyperventilate. Mind you, physical fitness probably wasn’t high on her to-do list.
“Tara? No. Why?” I realized why Imogen looked so different: the usual bright-red lipstick was missing.
“She’s gone. She was in the cabin last night with us, and this morning she was gone.”
“Maybe she got up early to explore. That’s what I did.”
Imogen shook her head. “No. She was stoked about being on breakfast duty—buckwheat pancakes with blueberry sauce—so there’s no way she would have been late for that. And Chad isn’t in the kitchen either.”
“Yeah, about that,” I said. “Chad’s in bed. Dead to the world.”
“Why am I not surprised? Claire’s in our cabin, trying to calm Mandy down—she’s acting like it’s all about her. How she wasn’t nice enough to Tara, how if she’d just reached out…” Imogen rolled her eyes. “Like that would have helped. Alice was the last one to talk to Tara, and she’s feeling really bad because she heard a noise in the night and didn’t get up to investigate. Rahim and Warren are searching the island right now. I guess they want to make sure Tara’s not sitting on a log somewhere before they call for help. Not good PR for INTRO if they lose a kid on the third day.” She paused to catch her breath. “Claire sent me to get you guys to help check all the buildings. Can you get the others to help? Alice and I will stay here in case Tara turns up.”
I nodded and headed back toward the guys’ cabin. I remembered Tara telling me that she was always afraid. I wished I’d asked her, Afraid of what? Herself? Somebody else? Was she really suicidal? Or was she just hunkered down somewhere, avoiding group therapy? If so, I might join her.
“Tara’s missing. We need to help look for her,” I said when I opened the door to the guys’ cabin.
Jason sat up and rubbed his face. “Missing? Like…what? Sorry, man. I’m not awake.”
“She wasn’t in the cabin this morning when the other girls woke up,” I said. “And no one has seen her since last night. Warren and Rahim are out running around the woods. Claire’s dealing with Mandy, who’s freaking out. We need to search the buildings.”
Nick grunted and staggered to the bathroom while Jason pulled on his jeans. Chad remained where he was, face down, pillow over his head. I yanked the pillow off and said, “Get up.”
He rolled over and smiled up at me. A slow, lazy, try-and-make-me grin. “Maybe she followed her boyfriend to wherever losers go after they off themselves.” He yawned and stretched his arms over his head. “All that shit about it not being her fault. Chick like that was lucky to get laid even once. Dude probably killed himself because she was so damn ugly.”
I grabbed his T-shirt and hauled him to his feet. Rage surged through me. One punch. That’s all it would take. Maybe two. I wanted to see fear in his eyes. I wanted him to hurt. A little blood would be a bonus.
Chad smirked. “Gotta work on those anger-management issues, man. I’m sure Rahim would be happy to give you some private sessions.”
“Let’s go, Caleb,” said a voice at my side. Nick laid his hand on my arm.
“Saved by the fag. How ironic,” Chad muttered and fell back onto his bed.
“Let’s go,” Nick said again. “Jason, you coming, man?”
Jason came out of the bathroom. “You’re an asshole, you know,” he said to Chad before he strode out the door.
Chad laughed and flipped Jason off.
“There are only two outbuildings,” I said when we were outside. “Jason, can you check the one near the girls’ cabin? Nick and I will look in the one behind the staff cabin. Meet you back at the mess hall.”
Jason nodded and jogged away. Nick and I made our way to a small shed that turned out to contain axes, machetes, shovels, pickaxes, handsaws, safety goggles, flashlights—everything we would need for clearing brush, I guessed—but no Tara.
Jason returned and reported that the other shed was full of stuff like kayak paddles, life jackets, rope, a ladder, a generator and some tools—hammer, pliers, screwdrivers. Nothing strange. No Tara. When he mentioned rope, though, I had a sudden vision of Tara swinging from a tree in the dense woods, her feet still blue. How many ways were there to kill yourself on this island? Drowning was probably out—she was terrified of water, she’d said. Had there been any poison in the shed? I didn’t think so, but she might have taken something from here, found a spot deep in the woods. Ended the pain.
Or she could have smuggled something from home. Pills or a razor…there were so many ways to die.
I swallowed hard. “We should do a perimeter search. Check out the shoreline. Maybe she got stranded by the tide or something.” Even though Rahim and Warren were already searching, we couldn’t just stand here and wait.
Nick nodded. “Okay. How about Jason and I go west from the dock and you go east?”
I took off at a run, almost twisting an ankle on the slippery rocks, calling Tara’s name. I could hear Jason and Nick doing the same. On cop shows, searchers move methodically, examining the terrain and looking for microscopic clues. Maybe I s
hould have done that, but all I could think of was covering as much ground as possible, looking behind every pile of driftwood, hoping to see Tara huddled down smoking a cigarette, maybe, or reading a book of poetry—she seemed like the poetry type. Not missing, just AWOL.
But she wasn’t anywhere I looked. I had to turn back once I came to a rocky outcropping topped with dense brush. Short of swimming around it, there was no way to get to the other side.
The gong rang as I made my way back along the beach. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Emergency meeting in the dining hall. That couldn’t be good. Or could it? Maybe Tara had turned up, wondering what we were freaking out about. Or maybe this whole thing had been some bizarre test that the counselors had come up with. An experiment to see how we’d cope under stress. Maybe Tara had never really been missing at all. I started to run again, arriving back at camp just as Nick and Jason appeared from the other direction, shaking their heads.
It was pretty clear, once we got to the dining hall, that there wasn’t any good news. Tara was nowhere to be found. Not on the west side of the island, not on the east, not in the woods, not anywhere. And, worst of all, one of the kayaks was missing. How had I not noticed that?
We stood around, basically saying the same things over and over. Everyone looked worried. Mandy’s eyes were red from crying, Rahim was biting his cuticles, and Claire was so pale she looked ill. If this was something the counselors had cooked up, they were awfully good actors.
Even tough-guy Warren was shifting from foot to foot, gnawing on his bottom lip as he tried to sound calm. “She can’t have gone far,” he said. “We’ll find her, I’m sure. Maybe she just went for a paddle and got farther away than she meant to.”
“She would never do that,” I said.
“Never do what?” Claire asked.
“Go out on the water. She was terrified of drowning.”
“That’s true,” Alice said. “She told me the same thing.”
“Well, a kayak is gone, so that’s where we’re going to start,” Warren said.
“Shouldn’t you call the coast guard or something?” Jason asked.
“We think that’s premature,” Claire said.
“Premature!” Alice yelped. “She’s MISSING! As in GONE! Don’t you even care that she might have killed herself? You people are unbelievable! Especially you, Warren. You used to be a cop. You know better than this. This place should be shut down!”
Claire smacked both hands down on the table in front of her. “Stop it! Alice, sit down. We have the situation under control. Caleb, please go and make something for us to eat. Rahim, you can help him. Cereal, toast—it doesn’t matter. We’re all hungry and tired and overwrought. Let’s not make this worse than it already is. Girls, set the tables. And someone go and get Chad.”
“Unless he’s missing too,” Imogen said.
“We should be so lucky,” I said.
“Don’t be so mean, guys,” Mandy said. “It’s not funny. What if they’re both dead? What if there’s, like, a serial killer on the island?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mandy,” Claire said. “That kind of hysteria helps no one. I’m sure Tara is fine.”
Her words fell into a sudden awkward silence. I looked around at everyone standing there in the dimness of the mess hall. For a second I imagined sketching this scene—all those open mouths, those wide eyes, those pale, worried faces. The fear.
I didn’t think anyone believed that Tara was fine.
“We should at least be out searching,” Alice said again. “While we wait for the coast guard or the cops or whatever. Who you should already have called.”
She might have been annoying, but when it came to speaking truth to power, the girl was fearless. I couldn’t help respecting that.
“Warren and I will continue the search while you eat,” Claire said. “We have procedures in place for emergencies like this, I assure you. I need you all to stay calm and let us do our jobs.”
“Procedures. As if,” Alice said.
“Not helpful, Alice,” Warren snapped. “Claire and I will search. Rahim will stay here. Are we clear?”
“But if you don’t find her—”Alice persisted.
“That’s enough, Alice,” Warren said. “Claire, let’s head out. You good, Rahim?”
Rahim and I made a pile of toast and set it out on the tables with butter, peanut butter, jam and bananas. When Chad slouched into the room and sat at one of the tables, no one spoke to him. No one offered him a piece of toast.
He yawned loudly. “I could murder some pancakes right about now.”
Alice yipped—that’s the only word for it; she sounded like a baby coyote—and threw a piece of toast at him. Hard. It hit him on the shoulder and bounced onto the table.
“Dude, what is your problem?” he complained. “I didn’t do anything. Well, I slept in, but since when is that a crime? And it looks like you guys figured it out.” He picked up a knife and spread peanut butter on his toast. “Tasty,” he said. “Is there coffee? I need me some java.” He winked at Alice, and she looked as if she was going to have a seizure.
“That’s enough, kids,” Rahim said. He turned to Chad. “Tara is missing, Chad, and everyone is understandably upset.” Then he looked around at the rest of us. “Being anxious and frightened is normal in a situation like this, but let’s try to stay calm. Anxiety is directly related to your self-talk, so try to be aware of your thoughts. This is an opportunity to practice new ways of coping. So—circle time.”
He pulled out a chair and sat down, gesturing to the rest of us to leave the mess of dishes and move into the group area. His authority should have been seriously undercut by the Kiss the Cook apron he was wearing, but soon everyone, even Chad, was sitting in a circle. Claire was gone. Maybe that helped. Maybe she was doing the right thing and calling the cops, but I doubted it. She and Warren were probably searching our cabins, looking for clues—or, just as likely, looking for something they could use to shift the blame to us and cover their own asses. A joint, which they’d find easily enough in Chad’s stuff. A condom. A bottle. Some pills. A journal. A sketchbook like mine. Which she would never find.
ELEVEN
Alice
I had this awful gut-sinking feeling about Tara. Maybe it was because of the way Caleb had guessed that Tara was suicidal, way back before we even got to the island. Or maybe it was because of how totally messed up and sad Tara had been in group the day before, when she talked about Noah.
Those scars on her arms didn’t exactly shout resilience.
Or maybe they did. Maybe that was exactly what they represented. Maybe those scars were evidence of how she’d managed to survive whatever crap had happened in her life.
Still, no matter how you looked at it, there was something fragile about Tara.
Rahim had us all in a circle, talking. Processing what has happened, he said, which made no sense because we had no clue what actually had.
I let the voices wash over me. Blah, blah, blah. It was mostly Imogen and Mandy doing the talking. And Rahim, of course. None of the guys had much to say. I sure didn’t. I couldn’t even stand listening. Because I’d heard something during the night, and I hadn’t bothered to sit up, let alone check if everything was okay. I’d just rolled over and gone back to sleep.
It could’ve been anything—a tree branch falling, a door banging in the wind. Only now I wondered if it was Tara leaving the cabin to go…well, to go do whatever it was she had done.
Beside me, Mandy crossed her legs. “I can’t even imagine how I’d deal if someone I loved threw themselves in front of a train.”
“Jesus Christ.” Caleb stood up so abruptly that his chair fell over backward with a crash. “This is so messed up. Why are we just sitting here when someone is missing?”
“Warren is out on the water. He’s going to circumnavigate the island,” Rahim reminded us. “And Claire is rechecking the buildings.”
“I’m going to help look,” Caleb said.
“Me too,” I said, jumping to my feet.
“I’ll come with you,” Nick said.
Rahim let out a sigh. “You’re all worried, and you feel a need to take action—”
“Yes! Which is what you should be doing!” I said. Yelled, really. My voice just came out that way. “Why the hell hasn’t anyone called the police? Or, I don’t know, someone official. Someone who can get a proper search party together.”
“Yeah,” Jason put in. “Even if you don’t give two shits about Tara, you’d think you’d be covering your own asses here. You’re going to get the pants sued off you. Don’t you have some kind of emergency plan?”
Rahim blinked rapidly and ran his fingers through his hair. “Look, let’s give it a little longer. If Warren comes back and he hasn’t found her, I’ll talk to him and Claire and suggest that we use the radio to call for outside help.” He wiped his hands on his shorts. “In the meantime, let’s pair up and check around the camp again.”
I wanted to get out the door before he could change his mind. But once we were outside, we stood around staring at each other in the cool damp air. The thing was, we were on an island. A small island at that. There weren’t a lot of places Tara could be hiding, and they’d already all been checked. And a kayak was gone, so obviously she’d taken it…
I clenched my hands into fists.
It didn’t make any sense. I mean, I wanted to get the hell out of here myself, but no way would I attempt to get to the mainland in a kayak. And I was a strong swimmer, and in good shape. Tara was scared of water. And she wasn’t stupid.
If Tara had left in that boat, it wasn’t an escape attempt. It was suicide. But I couldn’t see her doing it either way.
I heard footsteps. Someone was coming around the corner, heading up on the path from the water. I caught my breath.
But it wasn’t Tara. “What are you all doing?” Claire demanded. “Where’s Rahim?”
“We’re going to search again,” Caleb said. “In case we missed something.”
“And then Rahim’s going to call for help,” I added. “I mean, if Warren doesn’t find her…”
Blood on the Beach Page 6