When we decide to go eat lunch back in the village, I could nearly kiss the safe, flat ground. Daisy chose an outdoor café with tiki lights and Mayan-themed masks dangling from umbrellas. We gather around a long picnic table, and I barely concentrate on the menu. My nerves have fried from all the anxiety, and the craving for a release irritates my skin. It’s like someone keeps pinching me, and my mind just respondsgo to the bathroom. Release. Release and you’ll feel better.I hate it.
And I know that I can’t do it anymore. Time to make better choices or at least ones that do not involve ditching a table of girls to masturbate in the bathroom. Thinking the words actually causes guilt to surface. Yeah, I want to avoid that shame. Besides, Lo says I have to earn phone sex. Giving into the urges the day after I make a commitment to stop will award me zero points.
So I try harder.
I take a deep breath and train my eyes on the menu, debating between fish tacos and a chicken enchilada. The girls start discussing boys in their grade and successfully ignore Ryke and me since we have nothing to add to the conversation.
The sun causes my forehead to bead with sweat, and one of the girls complains about needing a fan moved out here justto cool them down. Ryke orders an extra pitcher of water to shut them up.
As the waiter leaves, Ryke nudges my arm and asks in a low voice, “How was Lo?”
“Mean,” I reply. “But good mean, I think. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah. With Lo, it does.”
I wish he was here in Mexico with us. Maybe next year or during spring break we can enjoy a trip together. If he’s at a place where he can be surrounded by alcohol, that is. Him, sober. Me, not as compulsive about sex. It sounds quite nice even if it’s a little hard to picture.
“Hey, has anyone seen Daisy?” Cleo asks.
I look up from my menu and glance frantically around the table, noticing her empty chair.
“I thought she went to the bathroom,” Harper says.
“I just came back from the bathroom. She wasn’t there. I checked the stalls,” Cleo tells us.
My head whips to Ryke, my eyes bugging. And he immediately says, “Calm down. She’s probably around here somewhere.” He rises from the table. “I’ll go ask the hostess if she’s seen her.” He slips his wayfarers off and enters the café with stiff shoulders. I see his muscles flexing a little from his red tank. At least if he finds her with a guy, he may be able to intimidate him with pure brawn.
I dial Daisy’s number, trying to push away nagging thoughts about how we’re in a foreign country. And even though we’re staying in the touristy parts, anything can happen. Daisy takes French in prep school. Not Spanish. If someone kidnaps her, she won’t be able to understand what’s going on.
My anxiety peaks at the fifth ring.Pick up!
The line clicks. “Hi, it’s Daisy. Not Duck and not Duke. Definitely not Buchanan. I’m a Calloway. If you haven’t misdialed then leave your name after the beep, and I’ll call back when I return from the moon. Don’t wait around. It may take a while.”BEEEP.
I cut the line off rather than leave her a scathing message. She’s probably just talking to someone at the bar or something…oh God.
“She’s not texting me back,” Katy grumbles. A couple of the other girls say they can’t reach her either.
“That’s not like her,” Harper says, her brows cinching in worry. “She’s a fast texter.”
“Do you think she got Natalie Holloway’ed?” Katy whisper-yells.
“You didnotjust use her name as a verb,” Cleo chastises.
Ryke returns and throws a wad of bills on the table. His pissed and worried expression unsettles my stomach, a combination that I do not like right now. “Girls.” He motions for all of them to rise. “Leave your drinks. We have to call a cab.”
I shoot up from the table and walk briskly beside Ryke as we go to the street to hail multiple cabs. “What happened?” I ask. “Where is she?” Cars swerve in and out of the long, touristy strip, and yellow taxi vans pull to the side to collect us. The air is thick with humidity, and the palm trees jut up from the grassy center median, leaning crookedly. Even amid a supposed tropical paradise, something has to go wrong.
He rubs the back of his neck. “The hostess said she saw her leave with a man?—”
That’s all I hear. I turn to bolt down the sidewalk, about to run and scream her name at the top of my lungs.
Ryke grabs my arm and tugs me back. “Before you go call the fucking Coast Guard,” he says roughly, “I think I might know where she is.”
“How?” I ask, fear poking me in the lungs.
He motions for the first group of girls to climb into the nearest van. “Get in,” he tells them. “Tessa, you too.” The Katy Perry girl pouts, obviously hoping to ride in the same taxi as him. But from what Ryke told me,sheis the one he wants to stay far, far away from.
“Ryke!” I shout. I need answers. Daisy is my baby sister. The girl who trailed Rose and me like a little shadow. We pretended to believe in Santa Claus for five extra years just for her. I can’t lose her to Mexican drug lords or kidnappers or rapists or fucking anything. Not on my watch. I’d do more than call the Coast Guard. I’d get the Marines, the Army, the Air Force, para-fucking-troopers. I’d have twenty choppers flying around the country for her. Maybe that’s excessive and they have better things to do. But I don’t care.
