Solstice

by Lorence Alison

  I lurched toward Steve, who stood guard by the semi. “Do something!”

  He rounded on me, looking both surprised and furious at my presence. Rain dripped off his eyelashes, his lips, the ends of his hair, and he had to be as freezing as I was, but I could see the heat rising into his face all the same.

  I pointed to the boys fighting on the ground. “Break them up! They’re going to kill each other!”

  Steve glanced at the fighting guys, then back at me. “You do something, Adri. This is your mess. You started this nightmare by spreading the rumor about that dead guy on the beach, and now everyone’s gone apeshit.”

  “Steve!” Elena cried. “Don’t talk to her like that!”

  I pointed at Steve. “Uh, first of all, I didn’t go around telling people. And second of all, are you seriously going to blame all of this on me? Don’t you think this concert’s complete lack of organization is why everyone’s panicking?”

  “No. No.” Steve’s face was gnarled and ugly. He pointed a soggy finger at me. “We could have fixed this. We had it under control. But the panic—it’s because of you. You should have never come. You ruined everything.”

  “Steve!” Elena cried. “Whoa! Settle down!” She looked truly flummoxed. I wanted to tell her that this was Steve’s true personality. The mask was off.

  Steve rounded on Elena, sticking out his lip. “What? I’m just saying what we’re all thinking.”

  I gasped. Was that what Elena thought? But Elena shook her head fast. “No,” she said. “You’re not.”

  A second figure stepped behind Steve and clapped a hand on his shoulder. Zack Frazier had a poncho on, but he still looked wet and miserable. “Reel it in, man,” he said sharply. “This isn’t Adri’s fault.”

  Steve snorted. “Are you kidding me? You want me to reel it in?”

  “Reel. It. In,” Zack growled.

  Steve glared at him through the driving rain. “And what if I don’t want to, big shot? What are you going to do?”

  Whack! It happened before I even realized what went down: Zack’s hand flying out through the darkness and connecting with Steve’s jaw, the sound of bone on bone, and then Steve falling sideways and landing with a plop in the mud. Elena screamed. She fell to her knees and started working on Steve’s face, dabbing at the blood on his lip, trying to shield him from the rain.

  I pushed my soggy hair out of my eyes. Oh dear. Steve was going to be extra pissed now. And Elena was going to take his side again.

  “Ow,” Zack said, cradling his fist. He glanced at me sheepishly. “I didn’t realize that hitting someone hurt.”

  I blinked hard. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Yes, I did.” He shrugged. “My cousin’s been getting on my nerves for days.”

  I tilted my head up to the sky. The rain had slowed, stopping as quickly as it had started. Someone had broken up the guys fighting on the ground, though now they all sat in the mud, drenched and pissed.

  Zack was still looking at me. “None of this is your fault. You’re not the only one who knew that boy died. My workers did, too—and they’ve been gossiping about it all day. So did the boy’s friends. I should have known it was something we couldn’t keep under wraps.”

  I nodded, surprised at Zack’s levelheadedness.

  “And you’re right.” Zack’s bright blue eyes met mine. “This show—it’s a disaster. Of course that’s why people are panicking. I’m panicking. Nothing is where it’s supposed to be. Nothing has come in on time. Food … shelter … it’s like no one got my messages, and a couple of people have outright lied to me, saying things were delivered when they weren’t.” He glanced over at Steve, who was still twisted on the ground, milking his injury for all it was worth. “My cousin owes you an apology. You have nothing to do with why everything’s gone downhill. He should never have said that.”

  I tried to conceal my surprise. Maybe, just maybe, Zack wasn’t the rich, entitled, clueless jerk I thought he was. Maybe he wasn’t even the enemy. He just sounded overwhelmed and frazzled. But not … evil.

  But then, who was evil? I thought again about the T-shirt in Paul’s trailer. And then I shivered. Did I dare tell Zack? I needed to tell someone.

  I stepped closer, feeling my heart pounding again. “There’s something you should know,” I murmured. I cleared my throat, looking at Zack. “That Paul guy you hired? I stumbled on his trailer in the woods.” It was easier to describe it like that instead of something I’d purposefully set out to do. “I needed to use the bathroom, so I went inside. And then … I found something. Eric’s shirt. It was covered in blood. It was like he was … hiding it.”

  Zack’s eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t seem that surprised. Then he leaned closer. “As I recall, Eric didn’t have a shirt on when we found him.”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Which would mean that Paul encountered him before we did,” Zack said, brow furrowed.

  Or this is all a setup, I thought. But Zack looked so earnest.

  “Regardless, this is evidence, and it’s serious,” Zack said. “Maybe this wasn’t an accident after all.”

  I felt a gush of relief that he was taking me seriously. Zack was going to deal with this before it got out of hand. And suddenly I felt almost … safe.

  But then I watched as his face clouded, and then closed, and then shifted into a look of dismay. “What?” I cried. “What’s wrong?”

  His hand flew to his head, and a shower of raindrops dripped onto his shoulders. “Shit,” he said. “Shit, shit, shit. I just realized we can’t go to the police.” His voice was empty and haunted. “Because you know whose family is the head of law enforcement on this island?”

  “Who?” I cried.

  I saw doom in his eyes. “Paul’s.”

  16

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN PAUL’S?” I cried. “He’s a police officer?”

  Zack raked his fingers through his hair. “No. But his father is. And his father’s father. His family has long roots on this island. Paul’s father would never accept that Paul killed a man, even if we had empirical proof. He’d look the other way, and he’d force his deputies to do the same.”

  “So what are we supposed to do?” I threw up my hands. “Paul holds the answers!” I stepped closer to Zack, feeling brave. “Eric’s family will want to know what happened. They’ll argue against the theory that he got drunk and fell off a cliff. They’re going to demand an autopsy and bring forth evidence that he was an experienced rock climber. We can’t conceal this forever. Otherwise it’s a way worse PR nightmare than what’s happening already.”

  Zack peered around the dark festival site. The rain had stopped, and now people stood in miserable, shivering clumps. Suddenly another fight erupted, this time between two girls wearing waterlogged Chanel fanny packs. The girls fell to the muddy earth with a thump and started rolling, every few seconds letting out screeches and expletives. A Solstice worker timidly tried to pry them apart, but one of the girls lashed out at him, slashing his forearm with her perfectly manicured, square-edged nails.

  Zack stepped forward to stop the fight. The girls looked annoyed, but then, when they saw who was standing above them, flew into a rage. “You,” one of them said. “You are the devil.”

  “Please,” Zack said, raising his hands in surrender. He looked so small all of a sudden. Okay, yes, Zack was evil for duping everyone into attending this festival … but what if he’d been duped, too? What if he was telling the truth about all the details being in order just days before the festival beginning? What if he was legitimately baffled about why no food or toilets or lodging or anything had shown up when people had assured him everything was taken care of? Maybe Zack was a victim.

  He turned to me, suddenly looking more resolute. “Let’s go, Adri. We’re going to go over Paul’s father’s head on this—to the authorities.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Should we take a bus there, or…?”

  Zack squinted at the sky. Thick c
louds obscured the moon. “We probably wouldn’t make it with this bad weather. But we could try calling them from Marx’s yacht.” He took my hand. “You’ll explain to the police what you saw in Paul’s trailer? What you know about Eric?”

  Looking back, I realized how bizarre the moment was: A billionaire genius was holding my hand, needing me. But I gave Zack a shaky nod. “Of course. I’ll do whatever you need me to do.”

  “Good.” Zack’s gaze was steely. “But listen, let’s try and keep this between us right now, okay? No panicking. No telling anyone else—people are already up in arms about the death as it is.” Then he glanced at Steve and Elena. “And let’s not tell them yet, either.”

  Steve leaned against the luggage semi, muttering. Elena rubbed his back and cooed in his ear.

  “I don’t know how your friend can take it,” Zack said quietly. “My cousin can sometimes be a real douche.”

  I wanted to grin. Zack was totally speaking my language.

  “He always overreacts,” he went on. “He’s irrational, and he takes things out of context. And he already doesn’t like Paul—he gets wind Paul might’ve killed someone, and he might try and be the hero and kill the guy himself.” He rolled his eyes.

  I offered a wary smile. “Sure. The secret’s safe with me.”

  But as if on cue, Elena looked up at us, a suspicious crease forming on her brow. She glanced from Zack to me and then to Zack again, then broke away from Steve and padded over, using a soggy piece of cardboard as an umbrella.

  “What’s going on?” she asked me. “You guys have weird looks on your faces.”

  “Um, nothing,” I mumbled. I didn’t want to look at Zack for fear I’d give something away. “Zack wants to go back to Marx’s boat. To, um, make a phone call. About the state of the festival. Do you want to come with?”

  Elena kept staring. I could tell that she knew I was keeping something from her. I prayed she wouldn’t interpret this as me acting superior. I didn’t want to go down that road of misunderstanding again. So I leaned closer and murmured, “I’ll explain everything soon, I promise.”

  “Well if you’re going back to the yacht, I’m coming, too.” She marched back over to Steve, grabbed his arm, and whispered something into his ear. At first, Steve shook his head, zinging an angry look in my direction, but then he heaved a dramatic sigh and started walking toward us.

  “I can barely breathe,” he said through gritted teeth to his cousin. “Because some asshole decided to punch me in the face.”

  We started across the field. Every few steps brought another agonizing vignette of festival hell. More drunk people. More cold, scared, despairing people. We came upon a girl squatting on the ground and clutching her arm, a look of worry in her eyes.

  “Are you all right?” I asked her. I crouched down and used the flashlight app on my phone to look at her arm. She had a huge wound—from what, I have no idea. Blood seeped to her elbow and into the grass. She stared at it almost numbly, like she was maybe in shock.

  I pointed it out to Zack. “We should get her to the medical tent.”

  The girl scoffed. “I already went there. All they had was rubbing alcohol.”

  I felt Zack wilt. “But … they told me they’d have more supplies by tonight. They promised.”

  The girl twisted her mouth. “I guess it’s a promise they couldn’t keep.”

  Zack stepped back, the agony clear on his face. He extended a hand to help the girl up. “Go see my buddy Allen.” He pointed out a Solstice worker a few paces away who, unlike many of the others, seemed to still be doing his job, talking to the festivalgoers with his hands on his hips, handing out water bottles. “I gave him some emergency gauze for his backpack. He’ll dress the wound. I’ll call a real doctor and get you cleaned up.”

  The girl nodded and headed toward Allen. Zack stared at her receding back and shook his head. It was one thing to think a YouTube star had duped all of us, but it was another to understand that he’d been duped, too. Zack had really tried to make this place safe … and it had blown up in his face. Had Paul orchestrated this? Maybe he’d called up all the vendors and told them not to deliver? But why would he have such a vendetta against Zack in particular? It just didn’t make sense.

  We made it to the edge of the stage, where the trail down to the water’s edge picked up. As I turned, I noticed a bunch of concertgoers had followed us—probably wondering where the great Zack Frazier was going, because obviously he was too good to suffer on the concert grounds with everyone else. They looked at me suspiciously, too, and I could see the annoyance in their eyes. I felt a flood of guilt. It wasn’t fair that I got to leave. I was no better than anyone else, yet I was going to a yacht where there was real food, private bathrooms, even cell service.

  I bit my lip, wishing I could offer someone in the crowd my place on the yacht—the girl with the arm wound, maybe, or a tall, skinny guy who was sitting on the ground, rocking back and forth, seemingly traumatized by everything that had happened. They deserved it. But then I remembered: I needed to be on that phone call with the police. I was the only one who’d seen what was in Paul’s trailer. I glanced at Steve, hoping that he’d have empathy for the suffering crowd and offer to switch with someone, but—surprise, surprise—he pretended like they weren’t there.

  We turned, heading for the little stairway that would lead to the craft that would take us to the yacht. But just as Zack started down the steps, we heard a scream. Torchlight bounced off branches, the sparse grass, our faces. Three people ran over their dunes, their cries so disjointed and harried it was hard to tell what they were saying. They awkwardly carried something in a tarp. When they set it on the ground, still screaming—I could now make out the words oh my God, oh my God—the tarp fell heavily with a thud.

  My heart thudded, too. There was something so familiar about that shape under the tarp. When I looked at Zack’s expression, his face was a mask of horror.

  We moved away from the steps. Zack pushed to the front of the crowd, ordering the Solstice workers to keep everyone else back, too, but it was too late—seemingly the whole festival had stampeded over to the fallen bundle in the tarp, desperate to know what was under there. The boys who’d carried it from the woods were trying to tell a story, but they were so overwrought, their words came out in mangled pieces: “… we found him … I don’t know how … all the blood.”

  Something large and heavy clogged my throat. I stared down at the object on the ground as someone handed Zack a torch. Zack stood over the shape and started to lift the tarp away. The moment I saw the creamy swath of skin, a few tendrils of hair, a few curled fingers, the palm soaked in blood, I knew. I sank to my knees, my scream mingling with everyone else’s.

  It was another body.

  17

  I WHEELED AROUND, frantically searching to make sure Elena was okay. She stumbled for me, her face contorted with terror. We held each other, screaming, and I suddenly knew, unequivocally, that she finally believed there was something very wrong with this festival. I didn’t have to convince her anymore. She was seeing it with her own eyes.

  “I think I know who might know something about this,” I whispered, my voice dry.

  “What?” Elena’s eyes were large and round, visible even in the darkness. “Who?”

  I glanced back at Zack, who stood over the body.

  “Madison!” someone screamed over and over. The name echoed from one person to another like a game of telephone: Madison, Madison, Madison. Someone named Madison was now dead, and no one knew why.

  Solstice workers made a wall behind Zack to keep people from mobbing the scene, but people panicked all the same. Some were crying. Some were screaming at Zack, begging for answers. Some were trying to take a swing at Zack. This was chaos, I thought. Pure anarchy.

  “Adri.” Elena shook me. “What did you mean? Who knows something about this?”

  “I think … Paul,” I answered, squeezing my best friend’s hand. “The local guy who’s b
een helping with the festival. I think he knows more than he’s letting on.”

  Elena backed up from me, her eyes wild. “You think he’s killing people?”

  A sick feeling welled in my stomach. “I don’t want to believe it. But I think Paul has some answers.” Then I made the mistake of staring at Madison, who wore a green romper and an armful of bangle bracelets and was facedown, just as Eric had been. Her fingers were bent and twisted. I could see the blood on her neck, face, and arms. The same blood was evident on the T-shirt of Eric’s that was now crumpled up in Paul’s trailer.

  Why was that shirt there?

  “I want to go home,” Elena cried. She dug her nails into my skin. I could feel her wet tears on my bare arms. “Adrianna. We need to go home. Now!”

  “I know.” I hugged her tightly. “Let’s get to the yacht, okay? Zack wants to call the police. Maybe we can call your dad, too.”

  Elena nodded. “Maybe he can get us a helicopter.”

  Steve, having overheard us, snorted sarcastically. “You think it’s going to be that easy? Everyone’s trying to leave. Everyone’s booked a helicopter. Face reality, Elena.”

  Elena wheeled around and stared at him. “I don’t see you offering solutions!”

  I reared back, startled by her venom. Steve looked shocked, too—and then hurt, and then pissed. But there was no time to be petty. Everything suddenly felt so serious.

  Zack trudged back to us, a beleaguered look on his face. “Okay. I have some people guarding the … body.” He said the last word reluctantly, a sick look washing across his features. He pointed toward the shore. “Let’s get to the yacht. We need to make that call, now. We can’t have anyone else hurt.”

  I glanced over his shoulder and watched as a few Solstice workers cordoned off the area where Madison’s body lay. The boys who’d carried her corpse over the dunes sat curled up on the ground; a few Solstice workers crouched next to them, treating them for shock. It was the most kindness and care I’d seen in the workers since we’d arrived. A few more workers wrapped Madison back in the tarp, and then lifted her and marched off toward the semi that held everyone’s luggage. They were taking her to the ferry, I presumed, but they weren’t just going to walk right through the grounds, were they? If there was anyone at the concert who didn’t yet know about the murders, there wouldn’t be in a few minutes. But maybe the Solstice workers didn’t care anymore. We were all in this nightmare together.