“Did you sleep?” Apricot asked, and sounded genuinely concerned. She propped herself up on her arm to get a better look at her friend.
Cassidy shook her head.
“Did you ever hear from Daisy?”
Cassidy shook her head again. “The last time I called, it went straight to voicemail, so I think her phone is dead.”
Apricot flopped back down on the couch. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”
“Me, either.”
“I mean, I don’t want to be in this villa anymore,” Apricot said. “I can’t believe I was even able to fall asleep. I get the creeps just being in this room.”
Cassidy stretched her arms above her head. “It’s daylight now. It’s probably safe to leave.”
“Probably safer out there, as long as we don’t climb any waterfalls,” Apricot said.
“You know, it’s just like Daisy to run off with some guy and let her phone die,” Apricot said as she reached for her orange juice at the restaurant called the Fruit Stand, which appeared to specialize in juices and salads. “If she’s not back by the time they have a plane ready for us, I’m leaving her here.”
Cassidy felt exhausted from lack of sleep and more on edge with Apricot’s selfishness than usual. Daisy was more Apricot’s friend than Cassidy’s, and yet here Cassidy was, being the more caring and responsible friend, again.
“I don’t think they’re going to send any planes for us,” she said, and pushed around the dragon fruit and cantaloupe on her plate. Images from the night before were too fresh in her mind and her stomach raged against even the idea of food. “We need to stick together, which means we need to find Daisy. She’s in just as much danger as anyone else is. Maybe more, because she was in the villa when that thing was, too.”
Apricot’s eyebrows raised in skepticism. “She’s a big fucking girl on a little fucking island but yeah, sure.”
Cassidy scrolled through the feed on her phone as Apricot continued to eat. Her screen was full of sun-kissed smiles and sandy butt selfies. Her vision glossed over the photos, barely perceiving them as anything more than visual drivel. She merely scrolled without any idea of what else to do. She wanted to make a video about the wholesituationbut didn’t know what to say. It’s not like she was exactly having a good time and didn’t really want to memorialize that for the world.
Across the table, Apricot also scrolled, a paper straw for her mimosa sitting loosely in her lips. Her eyes caught on something and she let out a barking laugh.
“Well, turns out Daisy’s phone isn’t dead, she’s just fucking ignoring us,” Apricot said, leaning forward and turning the phone screen to Cassidy.
Daisy walked along the beach in slow motion, back to the camera. She coyly looked over her shoulder toward the viewer, her hair and skirt flowing in the wind which blew off into the ocean.
“When was that posted?” Cassidy asked. Apricot turned the phone back to herself and tapped around.
“About thirty minutes ago. I wonder if there’s something wrong with my phone. My stupid boyfriend hasn’t texted me back, either.”
Cassidy shook her head. Daisy probably didn’t know about Ryan LeHane’s death, but she still could at least send a text to the friends she came with and let them know she was okay or ask them why they were trying to call so much when it was an unwritten rule to never actually use the phone as a phone.
“Barb and my parents haven’t texted me back, either. Maybe we need to connect to Wi-Fi …” Cassidy trailed off as a thought struck her like a slap in the face.
Daisy probablydidn’tknow about Ryan LeHane’s death, very few people on the island likely did, aside from the people at the waterfall the previous night, because the festival hadn’t addressed it at all. She understood why they wouldn’t want to put it all over Twitter that someone died during their festival, but they should at least say something to the rest of the people on the island. The festival-goers deserved to be kept up to date and told when their planes were coming to get them, but there was total silence on even the festival app up to this point.
That’s it,she thought. She opened TikTok and primped her limp hair in the selfie camera for a moment before tapping the red circle at the bottom of the screen.
“Okay, so I wasn’t sure if I should talk about this or not, but no one else seems to be, so I guess I have to.”
Apricot perked up from her phone but said nothing.
“Last night, Apricot and I went to a party on a different part of the island. It was low-key—and it wasn’t sanctioned by the festival, I should say that. But like, we were in this pretty cool area with a waterfall and so everyone was just hanging out, but Ryan LeHane climbed up and … I dunno, maybe slipped? There’s some weird stuff going on, and I think someone might have been up there with him,” she rushed over this admission, hearing how crazy it sounded to say it out loud. “I just can’t understand why no one is talking about this, whether or not it was an accident. And we’d like if the island would say something and let us know when they’re going to let people leave if they want to.”
Cassidy tapped the DONE button on her screen and set to work creating a caption for the video. She tagged the Island Xperience in hashtags and used their handle and also tagged Ryan’s handle in the description. She thought about tagging Daisy but decided that optically that wouldn’t look great to everyone trying to understand the situation.
“All right. Let’s go find Daisy,” Cassidy said. She didn’t wait for Apricot to agree or disagree before standing and walking out of the restaurant.
“How?”
“You said it yourself; this is a small island. It might take all day, but what else are we going to do?”
