“He wasn’t on the boat,” Chat added quickly, “because he and Danika had a fight, and she came to pick him up early. But”—he paused—“what’s more important is that, well, Trey thinks someone else was on the boat that night. That someone else was driving the boat. He’s just never been able to prove it.”
“I don’t understand. What do you mean someone else? Why didn’t Trey say anything?” Augie could only think of Leah then, her heart racing.
“It’s... complicated.” Chat shifted on the box. “That’s why I’m here this summer, though. I’m trying to help. Ever since Trey told me everything, I’ve been, I don’t know, obsessed. I wasn’t able to stop thinking about it. So when I was looking everyone up online, and I stumbled across Danika’s nanny ad, I took it as a sign. I thought, if I could get to Aldon Lakes, maybe I could find some way to help. Or, at the very least, I could tell Trey Danika was happy. He worries about her all the time, misses her. He hasn’t talked to her in years.”
Chat half smiled. “I really did need a job, too. For what it’s worth.”
Augie suddenly stood. “You need to talk to Leah. This is too much.”
Chat rose to meet her.
“I know, I know. Augie, hear me out. I promise, I’m only trying to help. And, even more...” He turned more serious. “I know it sounds crazy, but I think I’m close to the truth... to being able to prove who was really driving the boat that night.”
Augie’s body felt lighter, as if filling with air.
“Who?”
“Joshu—”
But it was then—before he could finish—that they heard the chaos from outside.
28
The moment Danika noticed Cooper was missing, she also knew Chat and Augie would be gone. That feeling was back again—the same one from the start of summer: a deep, blooming dread.
Danika had been tracking the two of them all night. She’d watched Augie work, watched Chat sift through the party—but she’d eventually lost track of them. She was too disoriented and drunk. Now, she set her cocktail down and stood up from her table, thinking only of Cooper. She spun in a circle, the decorations and fake animals and lights blurring around her.
She tried to be rational. She asked Bill if he’d seen him. She asked the Birches. She asked the Schmidts and Andersons and Harrisons.
“I saw Chat.” Holly stepped forward. “He was talking to that girl.”
Holly raised her eyebrows, and Danika knew then that despite never telling Holly about Chat and Augie, Holly sensed what was going on. Probably, she knew Danika better than she thought. Danika felt suddenly grateful for her.
“Come on,” Holly said. “We’ll find him. We’ll find Cooper.”
Danika looked out to the Club, the pool.
She screamed his name.
29
As the commotion outside grew louder, Chat took off, bursting out of the cage and down the hall, Augie close behind. They spilled onto the top of the patio into the cooling night air. Down by the pool, people were running about, tearing at decorations and pulling chairs from tables, worried voices rising.
“What’s going on?” Augie stopped TC as he rushed by with a phone to his ear.
“It’s that Crawley kid again. He’s missing, like at the start of summer.” He cringed as his phone buzzed. “Mr. Dryer is freaking out. Mrs. Crawley is absolutely losing her shit.”
Chat tailed TC down the stairs to the pool deck, but Augie couldn’t move. All she could do was watch as the DJ cut the music and tapped the microphone, telling everyone to please stay calm and that Cooper had last been seen near the duck toss wearing a white shirt and white pants. The announcement only seemed to incite more panic, because everyone scrambled faster, grabbing their own kids, rushing away from Mrs. Crawley—who was now in the center of it all, moving in a hurricane of white.
Augie rushed inside to help. She remembered how Cooper hadbeen found hiding in a closet earlier that summer, how Liss had been the one to find him.
Chat hadn’t been watching Cooper. He’d been with her. Augie couldn’t ignore her own budding guilt as she searched. If something happened to Cooper—she pushed the thought away.
Augie opened every closet she saw, pawing through the library and dining room and ballroom, but found nothing.
“No luck?” she said to Aida as she returned to the kitchen out of breath.
“Danika is straight up losing her mind.”
