“To prove that it’s not the phones,” he said. There was a finality in his words and Edie’s blood ran cold.
“If it’s not the mobiles, then what is it?” Edie asked. James hung up the call with Edie and kept his head down, as if deeply considering what he wanted to say next.
“We can’t call off the island,” Cassidy said. “I tried calling my dad last night and couldn’t get through. Apricot couldn’t call her mom.”
The words settled between the three of them. Laughter and fake screams broke out in the distance just over the whisper of the ocean, but their own silence felt heavy.
“There has to be some way to call off of the island,” Edie finally said. “What if there’s an emergency?”
“There was an emergency, and no one did anything,” Cassidy said.
“Oh, they did something, just not the right thing,” James insisted in a knowing tone.
“There’s the medical pavilion. We could try to tell someone there or get them to call. And there has to be some sort of coordinator on the island to get the bands here every day since the artists are only here to perform,” Edie said.
At once, they all pulled up the Island Xperience app on their phones and tapped around.
“There’s an emergency number listed at the bottom we could try to call,” Cassidy said.
“Good luck with that,” James scoffed.
Cassidy gave him a cold look that burned into the side of his face, and Edie joined her. He saw them in his periphery and backpedaled.
“No, you should call, I’m sorry. We need to do whatever we can,” he said.
Edie scanned the map on the app. “It looks like there’s a first aid tent by the landing strip, but I don’t see anything else administrative.”
“Let’s just go there. They have to be in contact with someone else there that they can direct us to,” James said.
“Hold on,” Cassidy said, “let me see if this emergency number on the app works. If it does, then we can tell them what’s happening instead of talking to more people on the island that might be part of whatever cover up is going on.”
Cassidy stood between Edie and James with her phone resting in her palm as it rang and rang and rang and finally disconnected. When it did, all three of them slumped their shoulders and sagged under the burden they alone seemed to hold on the island.
“Well, looks like it’s up to us meddling kids to figure it out,” James said. “Let’s go, gang.”
“Okay,juststicktothe facts. Daisy is missing and someone—we don’t necessarily know who—fell off the waterfall on the first night. Don’t mention the changing videos, shadow figures, or a coverup, okay?” James said.
He wanted to be taken seriously, but he was also still hoping to write some sort of splashy investigative piece that maybe VICE would pick up, and he didn’t want the women to say too much and ruin his chances of that.
The medical tent consisted of a white banquet tent with plastic windows and fabric doors. Inside sat four empty cots and a single desk where two people in white shirts that read MEDIC across the back watched something on a laptop together. One of them was a Hispanic guy with close-cropped hair, and James thought to himself that even the medics on this island were good looking. The other medic stood a head shorter and was heavily tattooed and beach blond.
“Can we help you?” the shorter of the medics asked.
“We want to get in contact with someone off the island,” Cassidy said.
“Who do you want to get in contact with?”
“The American embassy,” James said.
The medics exchanged looks and the blond one rose to standing.
“Why do you need to contact the embassy?” he asked.
“We’ve tried contacting security already, and I was told there is a central tent to contact the people running the festival, but I can’t find it,” James explained.
“Yeah, there’s no central tent for them. It depends on who you want to talk to,” the second medic said. “But why do you think you need to contact the embassy?”
“There was an accident the first night, up in the woods. I tried to make a report and was turned away and told that the Bahamian police were taking care of it, but I haven’t heard anything since then. Do you know anything about all that?”
