Chapter 26

26

I mention smell a lot. Smells evoke emotion and memories. They linger. They perfume. And then there are smells like the one we had in the house with us now. Smells that speak of danger and decay. Some scents whisper. This one screamed. It kicked the smoke away like it was nothing.

There was a stash of N95s on a shelf. Liani and I put these on, shoving paper towels in the gap, and we could still barely stand to open the lounge door. She bent over, fighting back a retch. I thanked the power of whatever I had been given—the weed was at least keeping my nausea at bay. I went over to the tarp and kicked it open slightly, exposing the hand that had come out.

It was slightly clawed.

"See that?" I shouted to her.

That was enough. Liani nodded, clasping the N95 to her face. We backed out, slammed the door, and ran out into the rain, trying to wash that odor and the experience away.

"It looks like she was grabbing at something," Liani said, gasping. "Or holding something."

"If it was the necklace, it's either in there..." I tipped my head back toward the building. "... or it's out here."

"I'm never going back in there."

"And if it's out here, I don't know if we'll find it," I said.

"Of course we will," she said. "Come with me."

She ran through the driving rain in the direction of the lagoon, slipping and sliding over the muddy lawn. Once we got to the shed, I knew what she was doing.

She pulled the metal detector from the back.

"Should we use that in this weather?" I asked.

"Probably not," she replied. "We're going to anyway. I've got rubber boots around here. Maybe I can ground myself."

We were quickly joined by Riki, then by Tom, then by Van. Everyone mashed into the tiny space.

"Who's with April?" I asked.

"Well, they ran after you," Van said, "and there was no way I was staying with her."

"So is she back at the playhouse alone?"

"Forget about her," Liani said, pulling on the boots. "Where's she going to go?"

"She could take the Jet Ski," Riki said. "Or try to, even though it would be dangerous."

"I took the keys out when we were prepping," Tom said. "Safety precaution. So, where do we look first?"

"The patio," I said.

We pulled the cover off the fountain to use as an improvised group umbrella. We each took a corner, with Liani in the middle with the metal detector, and shuffled across the lawn, slipping and sliding as we went—a human amoeba, slithering toward the burning house.

"Record this," Liani said. Tom and Van both whipped out their phones and got the search from different angles.

Liani began sweeping the detector over the stones. I became the searcher on the ground while everyone else tried to keep the flopping tarp above us and flash their phones and cameras. She got several beeps for old beer bottle caps, which I picked from the mud. She got a solid one at the edge closest to the house. I pulled back a stone and dug my fingers into the mud. There was a little flash of smooth pink. The ground didn't want to give it up at first, but I clawed at it and fought the suction. It came loose.

It was a slender pink box, rectangular in shape. Though it was stone, it was almost translucent, like a salt lamp. There was a small silver clasp and hinges that had weathered a bit, but it looked solid. I opened it and saw a plastic bag with papers inside. At any other time this would have been the most exciting thing to ever happen, but it was not April's necklace. That was the only thing in the world that mattered at the moment. I thrust it over to Riki, who accepted it, wide-eyed, and tucked it inside her hoodie.

"The basement," Tom said. "It might be in there? We can't go back in there, can we?"

It was possible, but I hadn't seen anything glinting down there earlier. It wasn't worth the risk.

"The tarp with the body in it came open when we were running," I said. "On the lawn."

So we ran again, our strange little tarp creature with ten legs, through the rain. We worked from the public basement door that we'd just come out of and made a sweep of the area. The ground was so steep and slick that we were all slipping and falling, the tarp coming with us. Liani kept going, swinging the detector back and forth over the ground.

Of course we would not find it. Of course this was all a hallucination. This was what happened when you had an edible. Maybe this summer had not happened at all. Of course it never happened. I had never burned down Juan and Carlita's house, never gone out with Akilah, never come here. I was back at home, tooling around in the Smart Car, serving up hot bottoms.

Except the thing was beeping again. This time, Van went for it, because he had slipped and was already on the ground.

"Look what I found," he yelled up to us.

He was holding a gold necklace with a letter A .

We made a run back to the playhouse, but now that we had breathed the clean air, we couldn't stay. Clearly, April had decided the same because she was nowhere to be found. It was unlikely she had run back into Morning House, which meant she was in one of the outbuildings.

"The boathouse," Tom said. "Has to be."

The place with the only means of escape. And it was where we found her a few minutes later, standing near the Jet Ski. The lockbox was open.

"Now what?" Riki said. "You can't push us anywhere and you can't burn the whole island down. What's the move?"

" Why are you doing this to me? " April screeched.

"Because you killed our friend," Liani said, her voice low and controlled. "Because you killed Dr. Henson."

"Your friend? He cheated on you all the time and you did nothing . He didn't want to be with you. I don't even know why he was. And you..."

This was to Van, who was the most sober I'd ever seen him, leaning against a rack of canoes.

"... you didn't even care. You let him do anything."

"But he never did you, honey," he said. "Yeah, Chris was kind of a dick in some ways, but he always called it like he saw it. He said he made out with you once because he was trying to be nice. And this big fight with Riki—you made sure that happened. Why was that? Because Riki also knows bullshit when she sees it?"

"Sounds about right," Riki said.

"I'm leaving," April said, tears pouring down her face. "You're all crazy. I'll swim."

"You won't," Liani replied. "You've never made it on a clear day. You won't get ten feet tonight."

"I'll do it!"

"Okay." Liani shrugged. "Do it. I'm not getting you out. You go in, you get yourself out. Let's see it. Good luck."

April looked down at the water of the empty slip. It slapped the sides of the dock. Outside, the water was a gaping mouth that would eat her whole.

There was no road left for her.

It's hard for me to describe what April became next. Now that she was exposed, she seemed to twist. Her fury pulled at her features.

"It was an accident! He was wasted. He... We were talking. He was... yelling at me. He... I didn't even do anything. I just pushed him back a little."

"Let's say that's true," Liani said. "What about Dr. Henson?"

"It wasn't my fault. She..."

She dissolved into gasping tears and collapsed down onto the dock. She continued to scream about what we were doing to her, while we all watched. This went on for some time. Tom wandered out at some point, then returned.

" Last Chance is here," he said.

I walked to the doorway and looked out at the still-burning remains of Morning House and started laughing uncontrollably.