Phew.
I dig a fingernail under the lid of the tin and open it.
No.
No!
I slam the tin shut and open it again, blinking as hard as I can. I do it over and over.
It doesn’t help.
The tin is empty.
4
Lucien
I’vebeenlockedinmy room for hours. After the initial hysteria of my discovery had me opening my bags and dumping everything in them onto the floor, I managed to calm myself enough to sort things into neat piles. Since then, I’ve systematically searched every item I packed twice. I’ve turned out pockets and patted down hems. I’ve shaken out the wigs and feather boa I brought for the murder mystery night, and I’ve gone so far as to search the boxes the games came in with a fine-tooth comb, even though they were unused—and unopened—when I packed them.
I’ve cried three times, and I’ve used every swear word in the English language at least a hundred times each.
I’ve had a cold shower, washed my hair, brushed my teeth, and changed into the lightest pair of cotton pants I packed and a tiny tank top.
I’m still warm.
Eventually, hunger and an urgent need for coffee coax me out of my room, so I slink down the hall, speeding up when I see Branson on his phone on the porch. He doesn’t see me because he’s pacing up and down, waving his hands as he talks.
I crank up the coffee maker and raid the fridge.
It’s psychosomatic,I tell myself as I shovel food into my mouth.It’s too soon. It’s not a symptom. It can’t be a symptom, unless…
No. It’s the hangover.
Obviously, it’s the hangover. I’m always hungry when I’m hungover.
It takes three cups of coffee, a tub of yogurt, an entire container of strawberries, and two bowls of leftover curry to sate my hunger.
I’m a little shaky afterward, but that’s the hangover too. I get the worst hangovers. Seriously, the night before is never worth the day after. I need to start remembering that.
Branson is still on his call, so I creep past the windows that look out onto the porch and head down the hall to my bedroom again. I perform a last panicked, cuss-laden search of my possessions.
When it proves unsuccessful, I bundle my clothes into the closet and kick the games, wigs, and feather boa under my bed in a mix of despair, disbelief, and choked horror.
The entire time, my cheeks burn with what I can only hope to God is humiliation.
As the day wears on, my humiliation increases exponentially. It must because the twin stripes of heat that have burned my cheeks since this morning have expanded, spreading down my neck and leaving my upper chest lightly coated in perspiration.
I make two more furtive trips to the kitchen, consuming an inordinate amount of food both times. It does nothing to cure the humiliation and barely staves off my hunger.
At around four in the afternoon, the few lights that are on in dimly lit corners of the house flicker off, and the hum of the fridge falls silent.
Oh fuck.
Branson was right.
The power has gone down.
A generator growls to life, and the hum of the fridge starts up again. A few essential lights come on, but it’s darker and quieter in the cabin than it was before. Outside, snow falls steadily. The silhouette of pine trees has morphed into something stark and sculptural. Deciduousbranches blanketed in a thick white cloak make me feel like I’ve been dropped onto a different planet.
