I pulled my feet up in front of me on the hard wooden chair, wrapped my arms around my knees and sat there, watching everyone else eat: Warren shoveling soup into his mouth, Claire taking a delicate bite from her sandwich, Rahim fussily picking the green onions out of his bowl. Chad belched loudly. That guy was everything I despised wrapped up in one ugly package. I stood up. My heart was pounding like I’d sprinted a mile. Pounding so hard it felt like it was trying to get out.
What the hell was wrong with these people?
Imogen turned around in her chair and looked at me. “Hey. Alice.”
To my horror, my eyes seemed to be leaking. What the hell? I never cried in front of other people—I’d had a show-no-weakness motto since I was a little kid. I swiped my hand across my eyes roughly. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. This is totally messed up.”
I looked down at her dark brown eyes, her glossy red lips. Her chin was lifted in her usual defiant don’t-mess-with-me pose, but she was reaching a hand toward me. “I have to get out of here,” I said.
“Want me to come with you?” She pushed her chair back.
I hesitated. I wanted to be alone, but I didn’t feel safe. We had no idea what had happened to Tara. We were trapped on this island. And ever since I’d seen the blood on the log, I couldn’t get the image out of my mind.
“Yeah,” I told her, taking her outstretched hand in mine. Her nails were painted black and bitten to the quick. “Come with me.”
We were walking toward the door when Rahim spotted us. “Where are you two going?”
Chad wolf-whistled. “Gonna get some action, girls? Can I watch?”
Imogen’s hand was still in mine, but I didn’t let go. “Some of us actually give a shit about Tara, asshole. Some of us, believe it or not, have a little more on our minds.”
“Yeah. Plus, even if we were hooking up, just thinking about you would be enough to put me off,” Imogen said.
“Ooh,” Chad said. “That hurts.”
Claire put down her sandwich. “Everyone stays with the group. This is a therapy program, not some do-whatever-the-hell-you-want, all-inclusive resort.”
Imogen pulled her hand out of mine and whirled around to face Claire and the others. “It’s been really therapeutic so far,” she snapped. “I mean, I know I’m feeling better already. How about you guys?”
“Oh yeah,” Nick said. “Feeling more heterosexual every day. Though that could just be Chad’s presence. An excellent point you made there, Imogen. Chad could be like a poster child for aversion therapy. My parents would probably be all over it. A week with Chad and anyone would swear off guys for life.”
“Oh my god! Aversion therapy? Is that a thing?” Mandy asked.
“It was a joke, Mandy,” Nick said. “Ha-effing-ha.”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Claire ordered. “There’s no need to be—”
“No need to be worried?” My voice came out in a squeak. I forced it down an octave. “Shit scared? Freaking out? Tara is missing and may be dead, the radio is broken, we’re trapped on an island in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. Nothing to worry about there.”
“As Claire said, Warren’s going to take a kayak out this afternoon,” Rahim chimed in. “Right, Warren?”
There was a long silence, and people turned to look at Warren. He was sitting at the table, staring into his empty soup bowl.
“Warren,” Claire said. “Are you okay?”
“Sorry, I…” He yawned. “What did you say?”
“Rahim was telling the group that you would be taking the kayak out…” Claire began.
Warren started to get to his feet, then sat back down. “Uh, I’m not feeling so great.” He put his elbows on the table and held his head in his hands. “Dizzy.”
“Maybe you should go lie down,” Claire suggested, putting her hand on his arm.
“Maybe you should quit telling me what to do,” Warren said, his words slurred.
Had he been drinking? Pretending to be out looking for Tara but secretly downing a few? Or more than a few by the sound of him. I wondered where his booze was stashed.
Claire looked like Warren had slapped her—frozen and shocked. Rahim got to his feet. “Come on,” he said to Warren. “Take a break, huh? If you’re not feeling well?”
“Stuff to do.” Warren stood, took a step and staggered, off-balance.
Rahim grabbed his arm. It looked ridiculous—he was half Warren’s size. “I’ll get the kids working on the brush. Let’s go, buddy.”
We watched Rahim lead Warren out of the mess hall, with Claire trailing along behind. Warren was weaving along in a big S curve—he couldn’t have passed the walk-a-straight-line test if his life depended on it—and it made me furious. I wanted the counselors, all three of them, to act like functioning adults. They were holding us captive here, and they needed to get us out of this mess.
SIXTEEN
Alice
Caleb and I cleared the table and did the dishes. He kept shooting me these puzzled, kicked-puppy looks, like he had no idea why I was doing my best to avoid him. By the time Claire and Rahim returned, everyone was sitting around talking in the same old circles: what could’ve happened to Tara, what were we going to do.
“Warren’s lying down. He’s feeling pretty sick,” Rahim said, taking a seat at the table.
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked. Not that they were going to admit Warren was drunk, but I wanted to see what kind of excuse they’d make.
“It looks like food poisoning,” Claire said. There was a tiny pause while people took that in—and then everyone turned to look at me, Caleb and Imogen.
Caleb held his hands up. “Hey, not our fault! The soup was already made. All we did was heat it up and sprinkle a few green onions on top.”
“Anyway, everyone ate it,” I added. “Not just Warren.”
“You didn’t eat anything,” Mandy pointed out.
I glared at her. “How would you know?”
“I was watching, because I thought you might have, like, an eating disorder or whatever. You didn’t even taste the soup.”
“Seriously, Mandy?” I was sick to death of people thinking I had an eating disorder just because I was kind of scrawny. “Here’s a public service announcement for you: people actually come in different sizes. Fat, skinny, in between, whatever. Who cares.”
“Sorr-eeee,” she said, like she wasn’t in the least.
“Anyway, you ate it, didn’t you?” I pointed out. “And you’re fine.”
“Just a few mouthfuls. I didn’t pig two bowls of it like Warren did,” Mandy said. “It was gross.”
“I hope we aren’t all going to get sick,” Rahim said to Claire. He’d lowered his voice, but it was still loud enough for us to hear.
“God.” Claire ran her hands through her hair. “That’s all we’d need.”
Imogen stood up. “Can we not do the mass-hysteria thing, please? We don’t even know that it’s food poisoning. Personally, I thought Warren looked like he’d had a few drinks.”
I turned to her gratefully. “That’s what I thought.”
“Warren has not been drinking,” Claire said stiffly. “INTRO is a dry camp. Alice, alcohol is your issue, isn’t it? And we know you have substance-abuse issues, Imogen. Don’t you think it’s possible that the two of you are projecting?”
“Alice made the lunch,” Mandy said. “So of course she doesn’t want to think it’s food poisoning.”
Rahim clapped his hands together. He’d picked up that habit from Claire, apparently. Like one person clapping at us wasn’t annoying enough. “It’s time to clear some brush,” he said.
Twenty minutes later we were gathered outside the mess hall, dressed, as instructed, in long pants and long-sleeved shirts. The general idea was skin protection, but Mandy had her top three buttons undone, revealing the edge of a lacy bra, and the shirt knotted around her waist, baring a navel ring and several inches of tanned skin above her ultra-low-rise jeans.
Rahim was kitted out in one of those khaki vests with a gazillion pockets and zippers. He looked like he was all set for an African wilderness safari or something. There were a couple of cardboard boxes by his feet, and a pile of dangerous-looking implements. His forehead was shining with sweat.
I felt embarrassed for him. The brush-clearing mission was Warren’s thing. I bet Rahim didn’t have a clue what he was doing.
“All right!” he shouted. “Everyone ready to get started? Grab a pair of gloves from this box here…”
“Like we have a choice,” Imogen muttered to me as we rummaged through the gloves. I kept pulling out left-handed ones. It was gross, sliding my hands into the damp rubber and wondering how many other people had worn them.
Rahim picked up an enormous pair of red-handled scissors and handed them to Jason. “We’ve got three sets of these, uh, these…”
“Pruning shears,” Chad said.
We all stared at him.
“What?” He looked around the circle indignantly. “I had a summer job as groundskeeper at a golf course, okay?”
“Great!” Rahim said. “So a pair for you, then, and Jason and Mandy.”
He bent down and picked up two machetes. “Caleb and Imogen, you two can take these.”
Machetes? “Seriously?” I blurted. “Uh, I mean, is that really a good idea?”
Rahim looked at me, head tilted to one side like he had no idea what I meant.
Imogen and I exchanged glances. I didn’t want to tell Rahim about the note—not here in front of everyone. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because, despite the evidence that he was hiding something, I still wasn’t convinced Caleb was dangerous. On the other hand, maybe he was. I couldn’t just let Rahim give him a weapon… “Um, Caleb is here because he assaulted someone,” I said desperately. “And you’re going to hand him a machete?”
“Because the guy was beating up my mother,” Caleb said, taking the machete and scowling at me. “You think I should’ve stood back and let him hit her?”
“I didn’t say that. But…” I trailed off. I didn’t blame him for hitting the guy, but I couldn’t exactly admit that now. I couldn’t even imagine someone hitting my mother. Of course, she carried a gun. But I had a black belt in karate, and I wouldn’t hesitate to use it if someone was hurting her.
“There were extenuating circumstances,” Rahim said. “And I have the utmost faith in Caleb’s ability to move on from that… incident.”
Caleb looked at me. I couldn’t meet his eyes. I swallowed hard, folded my arms across my chest and said nothing.
“And who’s left…? Nick and Alice. Uh, how about you two take these hatchets?” Rahim held out two of the tiniest hatchets I’d ever seen. Not that I’d seen a lot of hatchets—the tools I was familiar with were more along the lines of food processors and coffee-bean grinders. These hatchets didn’t look like they’d chop down anything much sturdier than a dandelion, and I couldn’t help wondering why it was me and Nick who got them. I mean, the gay guy and the really small girl? Or was I being paranoid?
It really sucked how hard it was to tell sometimes.
Nick and I took the hatchets. I studied mine. It looked like a toy ax, or one of those bizarrely gendered tools—they might as well have made it pink and called it a Ladies’ Hatchet.
Rahim wiped his palms on his khaki pants and carefully pulled on a pair of gloves. He looked more like a surgeon than a bushwhacker. “Let’s get started.”
I hoped I’d be paired with Imogen, but she ended up with Caleb, which I was not happy about, and I ended up with Mandy and Nick. At least I wasn’t with Chad. He and Jason went off with Rahim. Our groups started out pretty close together, but as the afternoon went on we began to spread out.
None of us knew what we were doing. Mandy and Nick cut low-hanging branches, and I chopped at the underbrush with my hatchet, which wasn’t really the right tool for the job. A power mower or Weedwhacker would have cleared the path in a fraction of the time. I had a feeling, though, that the path wasn’t the point. They could have got a contractor in to do that. No, this was somehow supposed to be therapeutic.
I wasn’t feeling it.
“So,” Nick said at one point. “What’s going on with you and Imogen?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “We’re friends.”
“With benefits?”
I shook my head, my cheeks hot. “No. Anyway, even if we wanted to hook up, it’s not like you ever get a minute of privacy here.”
“What are you talking about?” Mandy said. “Imogen and Alice?”
“Yeah, why not?”
Mandy furrowed her forehead. “Well…uh, nothing.”
I could practically see the thought written on her face. But they’re both girls! I glared at her and whacked viciously at a shrub that was apparently made of Kevlar.
Eventually the conversation turned to the inevitable: Tara.
“What do you think really happened?” Mandy asked.
The blood on the log. The note. I hesitated, wondering if I should tell them. I couldn’t imagine either Mandy or Nick having anything to do with Tara’s disappearance. But Imogen and I had decided not to say anything to anyone yet…
I was opening my mouth to reply when a scream shattered the silence.
We froze for a second and then began to run through the brush in the direction of the sound. My heart was hammering, my breath shallow; thin branches whipped at my face as I ran.
I spotted Jason, Chad and Rahim first, also running—and then I saw Imogen. She was crouched on the ground, sobbing. Caleb was standing beside her, his machete dangling from his right hand.
“I hit her,” he blurted out, letting go of the machete. “I—she just—”
“Oh my god, Imogen!” I dropped to my knees beside her. She was clutching her upper arm. Blood trickled from between her gloved fingers.
Nick knelt beside me. “Let me look,” he said. “How bad is it?”
“I didn’t mean to,” Caleb said. “It was…she just…I…”
Jason picked up the machete from where it had fallen and took a few steps backward, away from him. “What the hell happened?”
Nick pulled Imogen’s hand away from her arm. The gash was bad—three inches long and bleeding heavily. “She needs stitches,” Nick said, looking at Rahim.
Rahim shook his head, clearly out of his depth.
“Right,” Nick said. “I guess basic first aid will have to do. I’ve done the Red Cross courses.” He pulled off his shirt, folded it a few times and pressed it tightly onto the wound. Imogen whimpered, and I rubbed her back in slow circles, not knowing what else to do. “Hold your arm up,” Nick said. “That’ll help slow the bleeding.”
There was a crash behind me. “Oh shit,” someone said.
Mandy had passed out. She was lying there with her half-unbuttoned shirt and bare midriff, white-faced and sweating amid the dead brown pine needles and green ferns.
Rahim squatted beside her, took off his safari vest and draped it over her. “Looks like she can’t handle the sight of blood,” he said. “It’s a common autonomic response. Fainting, I mean. It’s called vasovagal syncope—”
“Shut up,” Chad said. “No one gives a shit.”
I held Imogen’s arm in the air and wondered if Rahim was going to pass out too. His face was ashen, and his lip was beaded with sweat.
“I’m so sorry,” Caleb said. “Imogen? I am so, so sorry. Are you okay?”
She nodded but didn’t look at him.
I turned on Rahim. “What the hell were you thinking?” I said furiously. “I mean, a goddamn machete? I told you not to give him a—”
“It was an accident,” Caleb protested. “She stepped right in front of me just as I was lifting the stupid thing.”
Blood was soaking through the shirt pressed against Imogen’s arm, turning the light blue to a dark purple. I gripped it harder and thought again of the blood on the log.
And the note signed by Caleb.
“Did I pass out?” Mandy asked, sounding like her usual self. She propped herself up on her elbows, avoiding looking toward Imogen. “Sorry. How embarrassing.”
Rahim helped her into a sitting position. “Very normal,” he said. “Very common. A lot of people have trouble with blood.”
Mandy made a face. “Don’t talk about it.”
“Maybe we should do something?” I said. “Like, get Imogen back to the mess hall where we can take care of her?”
“Absolutely,” Rahim said. “Can you stand up, Mandy?”
He held out a hand and helped Mandy to her feet. Chad was at Mandy’s other side half a second later, swooping in to put an arm around her. “Here, lean on me,” he said.
Imogen was the one who was injured and bleeding, but were they rushing to help her? Nope. It took a half-naked girl to provoke their chivalry, apparently.
“Hey.” Jason leaned down, whispering into my ear so only Nick, Imogen and I could hear him. “I’m thinking that leaving all these machetes and hatchets and shit lying around isn’t the best idea. So I’m gonna take them back and make sure they’re locked the hell up. Okay?”
“Good idea. And keep him away from us.” I pointed at Caleb, who was still standing there, his arms hanging uselessly at his sides.
“Can you guys manage…” Jason gestured at Imogen.
Blood on the Beach Page 9