What if I disappear? What if I never existed?she thought. The walls felt like they were closing in on her. Was this what people in sinking ships felt like? Could they see the water rising around them and hope that they could swim out of it but know that there was the real possibility that the waters of the ocean would claim them?
Panic crept up her chest into her throat and sat waiting to be released as a scream. Edie covered her mouth to keep her fear inside. She stood from her chair and started to pace the room, reviewing everything she knew with as much detail as she recalled. Then, a realization struck her so hard that she stopped walking and dropped her shoulders, which had climbed to sit next to her ears.
“It’s so fucking obvious,” she said out loud.
Cassidy didn’t stir. Edie took three quick steps to the loveseat and shook the other woman awake.
“Cassidy, it’s morning. We’ve got to go.”
“Where are we going?” Cassidy asked, screwing her face up against consciousness and rubbing her eyes.
“The woods.”
Cassidy still only opened her eyes just enough to scowl at Edie, and a look of surprise widened her gaze. “Did you shave your head?”
“What?”Edie’shandrushedto her head, where she should have found her braids, but instead her fingers found a thin layer of curls, cropped close to her scalp. She felt violated and couldn’t help from patting her hands around in search of any single plait. “What the hell?”
A tingling cold crept into her raised arms and brought goosebumps to the surface of her skin. “I didn’t even fall asleep,” she whispered in disbelief.
“Do you believe me now about my tattoo?”
Edie let her arms drop. She nodded slowly. “I already believed you. I’m sorry.” She stepped away from Cassidy and glanced at her then quickly away. “That’s why we have to search the woods.”
Cassidy sat up in the loveseat. “Why?”
Edie looked at her dead on and took a seat on the coffee table in front of her. The light from between the blinds to the back porch fell in a bright line between Cassidy’s eyes.
“What separates us from everyone else?”
“Perfect teeth and rich parents?” Cassidy suggested, deadpan.
“I’m being serious. What makes you and James and me different from everyone else? What can you think of?”
Cassidy chewed her lip and thought, then shrugged. “We had people that disappeared on us.”
“I mean, yeah, but James didn’t know Apricot and Rose before he got here, so he didn’t lose anyone close to him. If he had forgotten he’d met either of them the day after he did, that would almost make sense.”
“What do you think it is, then?” Cassidy asked. As she moved, the beam of light hit her eyes. She stood and walked to the blinds to open them, then stopped. “Everything was going fine until that kid faked his death or whatever,” she sighed. As she said it, Edie could tell something dawned on her. She slowly turned to verify that Edie was thinking the same thing.
“You saw Ryan LeHane fall, didn’t you?” Cassidy asked.
Edie nodded. “And so did you.”
“But Apricot didn’t see it, and Daisy wasn’t there.”
“Rose didn’t see it happen, either. But James did.”
Edie felt an electricity in knowing that Cassidy stumbled upon the same train of thought but couldn’t tell if the shocks in her body stemmed from fear or excitement. “That’s why we have to go back.”
“What do you expect to find, exactly?” Cassidy asked as they trudged through the sand together.
“I don’t know,” Edie replied. “Maybe that’s where Rose is, and Apricot and Daisy. I mean, maybe there’s a chance that they’re still here somewhere. People don’t just disappear.”
Yet, the expanded distance between the villas and the tents they passed compared to the day before suggested otherwise.
Normally, she felt at home walking through warm, sugar-soft beaches like this one, but now she felt like every step took a greater effort than the last. All around them, people laughed and shouted and filmed every second of their experience for viewers around the world to show off their vacation in the sun. It all felt wrong to Edie. The sun didn’t deserve to glisten so beautifully off the blue water, and people didn’t deserve to be so happy when everything around them was totally different than just days before. It should have been cloudy and desolate. There should have been a tropical storm coming to put them all out of their blissfully ignorant existence. Instead, the skies remained clear, and the only dark clouds hung over Edie and Cassidy.
“Tattoos and hair also don’t just disappear,” Cassidy said as they neared the place on the island where the two coves came together. Another stand-up paddle board yoga class floated on the calm water.
