“We thought we lost you!” her blond friend breathed, wobbling slightly in the sand. The red Solo cup in her hand was nearly empty.
“Here I am,” he said weakly, looking at me apologetically. “I’ll see you tomorrow!” he mouthed as they pulled him away.
“Okay!” I gave him a wave and an encouraging smile, which he replied to with a grimace, but I was sure he could take care of himself. At least, I hoped so.
Left alone again, I knocked my fists together, wondering what to do next. I checked on Darcy, hoping she might be getting bored, but she was staring up at Joaquin, rapt, as he gestured his way through a story. I let out a sigh and was about to turn away when I noticed Lauren, Krista, Kevin, Fisher, and Bea sitting facing the fire, drinks in hand. The flames cast dark shadows on their faces, and the tongues of flame made their eyes glow red. Not one of them was talking. Instead, they were all staring at me, unreadable expressions on their faces.
His face. Nell’s face. Spattered with blood. Glaring down at me. The flash of a knife. The twisted branch of a tree overhead. Someone screamed.
I sat down hard on the nearest cooler, gasping for air. Another flash. The scream had just been some random girl, running away from a couple of boys in the surf. I pressed my hand to my forehead and told myself it wasn’t real.
I focused on the hard cooler top beneath my thighs. The surf crashing in my ears. The warmth of the fire against my skin. It brought me back down to earth, but all I wanted was to be back at the house, reading my book in the safety of my third-floor room.
I pushed myself up, walked shakily over to Darcy, and touched her shoulder.
“Can we go now?” I asked quietly. “Please?”
“Rory, we just got here,” she said. Joaquin sipped his drink, studying me.
“Come on, Darcy. I came with you, now I need you to come home with me,” I whispered.
“Everything okay?” Joaquin asked, stepping closer to us.
“Rory,” Darcy said through her teeth, wide-eyed.
“But I—”
“If you want to go home, go. I’ll be fine,” she said a bit more loudly.
I stared at her. Right. Sure. She’d be fine. But what about me? I didn’t exactly relish the idea of walking back alone.
“We’re five steps from the house,” she said quietly, her tone placating. “Don’t worry. I won’t stay too late.”
I turned and looked up the beach at our house. It wasn’t really that far, and all the homes between here and there had lights on their back decks. Besides, if something happened to me, someone at the party would hear me scream. Hopefully.
“All right, fine. I’ll go. But be careful,” I said, leaning in toward her ear.
“God. Chill out,” she replied. Then she turned back to Joaquin. “So how exactly did you get into lifeguarding?”
I glanced back at the fire, an
d my eye fell on Tristan. Olive was talking to him, but he was looking right at me again, studying me, as if trying to read my thoughts. My heart started to pound in a shallow, fluttery way, and part of me wanted to just go over there and talk to him. Ask him what was with all the staring. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Maybe he wasn’t really staring at me. Maybe he just liked to stare. And all I’d do by confronting him was bring more attention to myself and come off like an egotistical idiot in the process.
So, instead, I turned my back on him and headed up the beach alone, my chin tucked into the high neck of my sweatshirt.
I’d gone about fifty steps when a gray mist started to swirl around my ankles. My heart skipped a startled beat, and then my feet entirely disappeared from view. The air around me seemed to be moving, curling in and out, undulating. Heart in my throat, I whirled to look back at the fire, but it was nothing more than a dull, glowing ball in the grayness. I couldn’t make out a single face, a single figure. The fog had rolled in and distorted everything.
I turned around again, feeling utterly disoriented, and quickened my pace. I couldn’t see more than two feet ahead, so I veered right, looking for a landmark. A set of stairs came into view, leading up to one of the houses, but it wasn’t ours.
The laughter came out of nowhere.
I froze in my tracks, and a chill sliced down my spine. The sound prickled my ears. It was exactly like the laugh from my nightmares. Exactly like Steven Nell’s.
“No,” I said under my breath. “No.”
It came again, closer this time. Cackling. As quietly as I possibly could, I started to run. The sand beneath my feet made me stumble and I reached out, ready to fall, but my hand hit something hard. A scream rose in my throat until I realized it was just a railing. A railing to another set of stairs. I had no clue whether it was our house or a neighbor’s, but at that moment I didn’t care. I tore up the steps, taking them two, three at a time. All that mattered was getting inside. Getting away from him.
As I reached the top of the stairs, I heard the laugh again. It hovered in the mist, nearly on top of me. I scrambled across the wood planks and found that I was on the deck to our house. After fumbling for the key in my pocket, I managed to slip inside and close the door behind me, turning the lock as fast as I could. The gray fog swirled against the windowpane as I backed away, leaving a wet trail of condensation. Just on the other side of the glass, the mist moved in tiny, bursting pulses. As if someone was out there, standing just inches away from me, breathing slowly in and out. In and out.