Edie got a bad feeling from the bored woman for leaving her friends like that, barely acknowledging them. Then again, if these women were her friends, it was possible that they were just as fake and shallow.
“Well, Cassidy, what do you want to do?” Apricot asked.
“I kind of just want to hang out here for a while. You can go do whatever, but don’t leave without me, okay?” Cassidy said.
“I would never!”
Apricot kissed the top of Cassidy’s head and walked off toward the water.
Edie was obsessed with the idea that someone had dumped sand on someone as a joke and she was looking around the fire to attempt to identify which person seemed immature enough to do that just for views, but there didn’t seem to be anyone around the fire who disqualified themselves.
Scanning the beach, something caught her eye. A small unmoving figure next to the fire. People danced around it, blocking Edie’s view momentarily, but it still didn’t move. It looked to her like a small child staring directly into the flames.
“Do you see that?” she asked, aware that the child couldn’t possibly be real and that she was still very high, but something about the sight chilled her to the core.
“See what?” Cassidy turned to look.
“I think there’s a kid standing next to the bonfire.”
Rose sat up.
“I don’t see anything,” Cassidy said after a moment, but it didn’t sound like a throwaway comment. She sounded concerned, and her eyes searched for something in Edie’s face.
Edie squeezed her eyes shut. Upon opening them again, the figure disappeared. She leaned back against the seat of the tub and laughed. “Ha! Guess I’m just seeing things.”
But her residual doubt mixed with the champagne in her belly, and all the lightness she’d felt earlier melted away as the nameless anxiety fully destroyed her buzz. Edie kept smiling, as though she could convince herself that she wasn’t suddenly feeling ill.
“We saw a kid, too, earlier,” Cassidy said.
“Really?” Edie asked.
“Yeah. Well, I mean, the creepy thing is that we didn’t see them at the time, but later when we were watching a video we took in our villa, there was some kid peeking in at us through the back door.” Cassidy’s fingers were already flying over the phone screen to retrieve the video from Instagram. She paused the video with her thumb and extended the phone slightly for Edie and Rose to see.
On the screen played a ten second clip of Daisy, backlit but her features still slightly visible in the dark, walking around in the villa with a text box that read “WTF??” The woman seemed to be giving a tour, then stepped out of frame and the video ended. Edie couldn’t understand what she was supposed to be looking at.
“Wait,” Cassidy said, sounding confused. “I don’t know what’s happening. There was a shadow standing right there when Apricot showed me this at dinner. A little kid was standing right there on the porch.” She pointed to the glass door in the video when the woman stepped away from it. Edie didn’t see anything.
“Maybe your friend was just playing a prank on you,” Rose said, settling back into her seat in the tub.
Edie remained upright, back straight as a board. She hoped they were playing a prank. It wasn’t any funnier than pouring sand on someone, but at least she wouldn’t have to keep trying to convince herself that she hadn’t seen something in the bonfire.
“Why would Apricot have posted it asking what the fuck it was and edited it to take something out? That doesn’t make any sense,” Cassidy said.
She began tapping around on the screen of her phone again. Edie fixed her gaze on the bonfire. Something touched her arm and she jumped.
“Are you feeling okay?” Rose asked. Her fingers gently squeezed Edie’s arm.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s just the drugs,” Edie said. A tense silence fell over the tub, barely broken by the rumble of the jets.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” Rose asked.
“Yeah, yeah, just, you know, coming down now.”
Apricot’s hands hit the side of the tub, breaking her run, and startling Cassidy.
“Party in the woods, let’s go!” she shouted.
“What?” Cassidy asked.
