Idocare about standing up for myself, though. And it’s been a long time coming, but I’m finally able to do it.
“I’m so, so sorry, Summer,” Chloe says again, looking like she’s about to start crying. “It meant absolutely nothing, I swear. That was the only time it happened. And I’ve been trying to make it up to you. That’s why I came out here. I figured out why you were here when I saw your Instagram, and I thought if I could just help you along, maybe it would help make up for what I did.”
She opens her eyes wide, the way she does when she’s trying to win someone over. It normally works, too. But not this time.
“Will you forgive me?” Chloe asks when I don’t say anything.
“I’ll think about it,” I say coolly. Then, without another word, I get up and go to sit next to Alex, who raises his eyebrows in a question.
“Everything okay?” he asks, as Rita calls over the waiter to order yet another round of drinks.
“Yup,” I say, smiling at him confidently. Everything’s fine.
The evening wears on. Chloe spends a few minutes sitting on her own, looking shell-shocked, before slinking off to her room. Gerald tells us some stories about Margot, who was, he says, “Quite a looker”. Julian makes sure the drinks keep magically being replenished. Alice has a bit too much and has to be talked out of trying to do a wheelie on her scooter. Alex and I exchange cautious glances, which gradually get bolder until we somehow end up sitting as close as possible, my leg pressed against his thigh, and my brain working overtime as I try to figure out how to bring up the subject of What Happened on the Beach, and its even more fascinating sequel, What Happens Next?
I never quite manage it, though. Instead, I have another drink, and — on Alice’s insistence — give them a quick preview of one chorus ofShallow, which everyone agrees is much better than Lady Gaga’s version.
“You’ll knock ‘em dead, Summer,” says Julian.
“It’s a shame that Bradley Cooper isn’t here to sing it with her,” muses Alice.
“That’s it,” declares Gerald, who’s back to his old self again. “I’ve had it trying to keep up with young Summer and her love life. I thought we were trying to get her together with Alex here, not Bradley whatshisface?”
My shoulders tighten with tension as I sneak a look at Alex, but he just laughs good-naturedly. “I don’t think you’d be saying that if you’d heard my singing,” he says. “It’s like the sound a cat makes when it’s trying to cough up a hairball.”
That’s all it takes for everyone to immediately start urging him to give us a song, and the last thing I remember after that is the hotel security guard hauling Gerald down from the top of the table when he offers to sing one instead.
I wake up what feels like several hours later with my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth and a thumping in my head that it takes me a few seconds to establish is my own heartbeat, and not the hotel disco.
I’m officially never drinking again.
I struggle my way out of the bed sheets and stagger to the bathroom, where I almost fall into the toilet when I try to sit down and realize the seat’s been left up.
That’s weird.
Why would I have raised the seat?
Did I throw up in here? Is that it?
I run my tongue experimentally around the inside of my mouth, but all I can taste is the sickly aftermath of the cocktails Julian kept ordering for me. Anyway, I might have been a bit tipsy, but I’m not so drunk I wouldn’t remember throwing up, so I lower the seat again with a crash and head back to the bedroom, where I walk straight into the dressing table, which someone has moved to the opposite side of the room for some reason.
Rubbing my eyes, I look around, squinting in the darkness.
Everything has been moved.
The bed, the sofa, the dressing table, the wardrobe…. At some point between me heading out to dinner and coming back, someone has snuck into my room and moved everything, just to mess with me.
I bet it was Chloe. Chloe did something bad… didn’t she?
Or… what if it was Jamie, trying to get back at me for … wait: why is Jamie mad with me again? Or is itmethat’s mad withhim?
“Aaargh!”
There’s a sudden roar as I stumble into the sofa and pitch forward, landing on top of a pile of blankets that whoever broke into my room must have left there. At first I think the roar is coming from me, and I clap my hand over my mouth in an attempt to stop it, but the noisekeeps on going, and now the blankets underneath me are moving around, too, as if there’s something underneath them that wants to throw me off.
I jump up, screaming in fright, then screaming even louder when a dark shape rises up from the shadows on the sofa, its arms reaching out for me, and a weird hissing sound coming from its terrible lips. I turn around to run for the door, but it’s too late: The Thing’s hands are on me, and before I can even think about wriggling out of its grasp, it speaks.
“Shhh, Summer! You’re going to wake everyone in the hotel.”
