Delete that, I type to Skylar, going back to my phone as Emily turns around in her seat, staring out at the forest of trees before us.I wanna kill someone else.
The text starts to send, the little blue line moving across the top of the screen until it gets to like 80 percent and then stops, because I lose the cell signal again just then. Just my luck. The message doesn’t send.
I hold down on the last message until the option comes to delete it.
Courtney
I wheel around, blenching in fear, in anticipation of pain, bringing a hand to my face to cover it. My ears ring, the sound of my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.
Cass and Mae stand in the great room, just inside the front door, the scant light coming in from the plastic miniblinds leaving bands across their faces and arms. My knees sag in relief because it’s Cass and Mae, and not the same person who did this to Emily.
I hurry from the screened-in porch and to them, seeing drops of blood on the great room floor when I come at it from this angle, which I hadn’t noticed before. “What the hell are you doing here?” I ask, breathless, in a forced whisper. I step in front of them, forcing them to stay far enough back that they can’t see the body or blood, lashing out at them because I’m scared, because Emily didn’t cut herself with a knife by accident. Someone killed her and from the sprays of blood on the wall and bed, it was violent and unrestrained. “I told you girls to stay and wait for me. You shouldn’t be here,” I snap brusquely, the hysteria in my voice coming out as anger, looking down only to realize that I’m gripping my phone so hard in my hand that my knuckles have turned white.
Mae’s face is ashen. Her body trembles, her eyes looking past me though my body blocks the view. Cass stands behind her,wrapped in guilt and shame. “I’m sorry,” she says, her lower lip trembling, because it’s not like me to get mad or to yell and swear at her in front of someone else, if at all. Her eyes meet mine, widening and filling with tears. “I tried to stop her. I told her we weren’t supposed to leave, that we were supposed to—”
I don’t let her get the rest out. I shake my head and she goes quiet. All I can think about is getting these girls out of the cottage, of not letting them see what I’ve just seen, of getting them somewhere safe. If they see Emily’s body or the blood on the walls, floor and quilt, they’ll be traumatized. They’ll have nightmares. They’ll never forget it. The image of Emily’s discolored, misshapen body on the floor, surrounded by blood, will be embedded into their minds and will stay with them their whole lives. A defining moment.
But Mae, I realize as I look at her, standing ghost white in the great room, has already seen it.
Is your mom in the cottage, Mae?I asked earlier and she nodded. Yes. Emily was there. Mae saw Emily dead. It’s the reason for her anguished scream, it’s what sent her running back to us in the first place, and I think of what it would have been like for her, skipping innocently, obliviously in through the front door with her pillow tucked under an arm, smelling of pancakes and syrup with her hair mussed up and sleep in her eyes, eager to tell Emily about the sleepover—only to find her mother like this. Mae would have gone to her. She would have touched her, maybe shaken her and tried to wake her up. It wasn’t her own blood on Mae’s hands. It was Emily’s blood.
“Your mom is hurt, Mae,” I say, going to them, wrapping my arms loosely around their shoulders in an effort to steer them out of the house. My voice is quiet because I don’t know who is in the cottage with us. I don’t know if we’re safe. I don’t know if we’re alone. I don’t know if whoever killed Emily is still here, watching and listening. I don’t know if the others are alive or ifthey’re dead. My voice trembles as I whisper, “We need to go back to our place and call someone to come help her.”
“But you have your phone. Can’t you just call?” Cass asks, motioning to it, trying to be helpful, but she’s not.
“There is no signal,” I lie, dropping my phone back into the pocket of my robe, and Cass believes it.
“Hurt how?”
“I don’t know, honey. We’re going to call an ambulance so someone can come help her. Let’s go.”
“Where is she?”
“On the screened-in porch. Come on, let’s go. We need to go call for help.”
With effort, I turn Mae’s body around so she faces the door. I put a hand on her back, pressing her forward, and she goes, following Cass, who moves backward, walking in reverse so that it’s Cass, still facing into the cottage, who sees him first. From where I stand, I see the reaction on Cass’s face as if in slow motion—the way her eyes bulge as she sucks in a sharp breath, the blood leaching from her cheeks, turning them white, her whole body going rigid—before she releases a bloodcurdling scream, the kind you only ever see in horror films.
My legs go weak. My heart thuds in my chest and up my neck, making me feel dizzy and flush.
I shouldn’t look. I know in my mind that I shouldn’t because there is something horrible behind me. I should push the girls in the opposite direction and run far away from whatever has Cass so scared.
But instead I turn back by instinct and see it for myself, pressing my hands to my mouth to hold in a scream.
Reese
Emily and Nolan aren’t on speaking terms by the time we finally arrive. The air in the car is charged, like gasoline vapors flow invisibly around us. Just one spark would make the whole thing explode.
Nolan is angry. He drums his thumbs against the steering wheel in time to the music (when what he’d rather do, I think, is hit someone, maybe her), which is no longer Emily’s music but his, something techno and electronic that he no doubt picked just to piss her off, which is almost exactly what they meant in their marriage vows when they promised to love and cherish each other forever.
Or not.
Emily, on the other hand, is sad. She gazes out the window, her reflection visible in the side mirror. In it, her eyes are empty. She hasn’t spoken for twenty miles, not a word.
“What’s wrong, Mom?” Mae asks.
“Nothing, honey. I’m just tired,” Emily says, not looking back.
The last thing Nolan said to her before she went quiet, between his teeth so we wouldn’t hear, though still, I did: “This trip would have been a lot more fun if you just stayed home.”
