18. Kira

18KIRA

When the timer stops, I feel half a second of relief before I understand what this really means: they’re listening. Logan asked them to stop the clock, and they did. I don’t know who—Tilly, the Sponsor, whoever else might be behind this—but someone’s watching. They can hear us, they can see us, and they still haven’t sent help.

“What are you doing?” Zane asks slowly. Carefully. Like Logan is a land mine that might go off if he steps the wrong way.

She holds up the papers she pulled from her pocket, her eyes locked on him. “I found these in my bags earlier. Do you want to tell them, or should I?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Madison.” Logan unfolds the first paper. “And Bella.” She opens the next one. “And Abby.” She opens the last one and holds them all up.

Zane moves toward her. “Whoa, okay. Can we take a step back?”

“Why? If we’re gonna vote, we should have all the facts.” Logan starts to pass the papers around, handing one to me.

It’s a printed screenshot of some DMs from last December, six months ago. The messages are between Zane and a girl named Madison.

DECEMBER 11, 2:02 PM

ZANE: Hey what kind of alc are you and your friends feeling for tn?

MADISON: omg haha you don’t have to do that

ZANE: you’re the guests!! I’ve gotta

ZANE: plus I’m the only legal one here lol

MADISON: okie whatever you want! Surprise me;)

ZANE: yes ma’am

DECEMBER 12, 3:18 PM

MADISON: hey … soooo last night was fun

MADISON: would you wanna hang out again some time?

DECEMBER 14, 9:42 PM

MADISON: omg my friends literally won’t stop telling everyone how they went to a bounce house party lol why is high school so annoyingggg

DECEMBER 16, 2:01 AM

MADISON: sorry if I’m being annoying haha but idk after the other night I thought maybe you felt something?

DECEMBER 17, 3:45 PM

MADISON: hello???

My stomach drops when I see the bottom of the page. It’s an Instagram post from Madison’s account, dated the same week. In the picture, Madison is posing in front of a HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner and holding two silver balloons shaped like the number sixteen.

Oh my god. Zane, a twenty-two-year-old adult, did this to a sixteen-year-old girl. A newly sixteen-year-old girl.

Corinne looks up from the paper she’s holding. “Zane, what the hell is this?”

He reaches for it, but she shifts away and reads the messages out loud.

“Zane to seventeen-year-old Bella: ‘what are you doing?’ Bella: ‘about to shower.’ Zane: ‘without me, frowny face?’”

Aaron laughs. “Holy shit.”

“Ew,” Elody says.

“It’s the same thing with Abby,” Max says, reading the third paper. “You sent her flirty messages for days, bought her alcohol, paid for her Uber to get to the Bounce House, and then ghosted her after the party. She’s sixteen, too.” His face darkens. “And this was only last month.”

Zane makes a garbled noise. “I didn’t—”

“Go ahead.” Logan’s eyes are blazing. “Talk your way out of this one.”

Zane sidesteps, snatching the paper from my hand.

“Hey,” Max interjects. “Don’t—”

“Let me see.” Zane’s eyes dart back and forth over the page, a vein bulging in his temple. Then, suddenly, a calm look comes over his face. “Fine. You made some fake texts and printed them out. Nice, Logan.” He tosses the paper on the ground with a dry laugh. “Sorry, but I’ve never seen or heard of these girls in my life.”

“Bullshit,” she says.

“We all know you have anger issues, but this is beyond crazy. I didn’t touch those girls. I don’t touch any underage girls.”

“You didn’t touch them?” I ask, heart pounding. “Or you’ve never heard of them?”

Zane stares at me, caught, and turns to glare at Logan. “Do you see what you’re doing here? Like, do you want to ruin my life? I didn’t do this!”

“Yes, you did.”

“Logan, you lived in the Bounce House when I supposedly sent some of this stuff. Are you saying that you knew this was happening all along and waited until now to bring it up? Because that would be pretty messed up.” At her silence, he laughs. “See? She doesn’t know shit.”

“Fine,” Logan spits. “Maybe I was too stupid or naive to realize what was going on back then. But I know now. I know what you’ve been doing.”

Zane stares her down, almost daring her. “How? What actual proof do you have?”

“I know,” Logan repeats, hard and unrelenting even through the tears in her hazel eyes, “because you did the same thing to me.”

Zane’s face goes slack, mouth hanging slightly open, and for a moment, I forget to be afraid. All I feel is anger reaching out from my center, growing roots and thorns. Because I’ve been in this industry since I was twelve, and that’s more than enough time to learn what men in power think they can do to girls whose biggest crime is believing they’re special. I know, because my parents have done all they can to make sure it doesn’t happen to me—but that doesn’t mean I haven’t seen them, the sleazy “managers” in my DMs promising me everything I’ve ever wanted in my career, if only I do what they say. The adult men who thought they had every right to tell me how my fourteen-year-old body looked in a leotard.

Next to me, Max starts to reach for his camera, but then Zane laughs. Hard, like this is all a hilarious joke.

“I’m sorry, you guys know I believe women, but come on. That’s insane.”

“You started DMing me a few months after I turned seventeen,” Logan says. “You were twenty-one.”

“What kind of DMs?” I ask.

A smug, superior look washes over his face. “DMs asking Logan to join the Bounce House because I liked her work. Strictly professional.” He looks at Max and adds icily, “I appreciate the concern, man, but you can put away the camera.”

“You lured me there,” Logan says. “You told me you’d make my career.”

“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure I did exactly that. I didn’t lure you anywhere. I gave you an opportunity.”

“And then I wouldn’t fuck you and you made my life a living hell!”

The room goes silent, a held breath. Zane and Logan stare each other down, poised like they might lunge, and I know. I know right away that Logan is telling the truth, and Zane’s about to do whatever he can to twist it against her.

“What are you even talking about?” he asks.

“My birthday,” she says. “Don’t try to gaslight me right now.”

Zane laughs weakly. “Where’d you get that from, an Instagram infographic? Don’t throw words around when you don’t understand them. Gaslighting is a real issue.”

His superior tone shoots disgust through my veins like poison, and I can’t contain it anymore.

“It seems a lot like what you’re doing right now.”

Zane gives me a dismissive sigh. “I know you’re trying to be supportive, Kira, and I respect that. But honestly, you met both of us yesterday. You don’t know anything about this.”

“Then let Logan tell us,” Corinne says.

Zane holds up his hands in a go ahead gesture, like she needs his permission.

Logan takes a breath.

“As soon as I got to LA, it started. You know, little touches. Flirting. Never anything big enough for me to be sure it was real, that I wasn’t just reading into things. But then…”

Zane starts to speak, but Logan gets louder.

“Don’t fucking interrupt me,” she says.

“I’m just—”

“Let her finish,” I tell him.

Zane shuts his mouth.

“Things escalated slowly. Little touches turned into cuddling when no one was around. Eventually, he told me he was into me, but we had to wait until…” Logan closes her eyes for a moment, like she’s steeling herself. “On my eighteenth birthday, we kissed. And then … he wanted to have sex. I wasn’t ready. I told him that, and—” She stops, wiping away a tear with her fist, but she doesn’t look broken. She looks like she’s ready to burn it all down. “He got mad. Throwing shit, screaming. Telling me I led him on. I was fucking terrified. Eventually, he just slammed the door and left, but that wasn’t the end of it. He started icing me out of everything. Tried to turn everyone against me.” Logan looks at Graham. “Why aren’t you backing me up on this? You know I’m telling the truth.”

Graham looks genuinely confused. “I—I don’t know if I can get into this right now.”

“Get into it,” Logan demands.

“Logan, I don’t know what happened. You wouldn’t tell any of us. All I could see from my perspective was that you were into Zane. And obviously that doesn’t mean you owe him anything. But Zane told us…”

Graham looks to Zane, whose jaw tightens, but he nods for Graham to go on.

“Zane told us that you tried to hook up on your birthday, but he shut it down, and that’s why you were acting weird. He said you needed space, so that’s why we kept our distance.”

Logan blinks fast, and I can see the anger vibrating inside her, like she’s seconds away from exploding.

“That’s not what happened,” she says. “He lied.”

Graham swallows and looks at Zane. When he speaks again, it’s quiet, like he already knows the answer but needs it not to be true. “Those girls you’ve been bringing to our parties. You always say they’re in college. Was that a lie?”

Zane’s jaw tightens.

“Shit,” Graham hisses into his palms. “I’ve seen you take some of them into your room, Zane. That’s—”

“Fine,” Zane cuts him off. “Maybe a few of them tried to hook up, or whatever. I don’t see why that’s such a huge deal. It’s not like I had sex with any of them.”

That look on Zane’s face. I’ve seen it before on Ms. Tammy, on McKayleigh. It’s a look that refuses blame, that reflects it back on you like blinding light in a mirror. Just like them, Zane thinks he can get away with anything because he can. Because life hasn’t taught him anything different.

“The reason it’s a huge deal,” I spit, “is because you’re clearly taking advantage of a screwed-up power dynamic. I don’t care what happened. It’s wrong. It’s disgusting. And illegal, by the way.”

“Oh my god, that isn’t—” Zane’s eyes dart to Elody, who’s slouched on the couch, picking at her nails. “How old was the oldest guy you’ve ever dated?”

She shifts, almost surprised, and then shrugs. “Like, thirty, I think?”

“And how old were you?”

Elody rolls her eyes. “Seventeen. But don’t drag me into this.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Corinne asks. “You’re still trying to make excuses for an inexcusable thing.”

“I’m just saying,” Zane argues. “Logan’s eighteen. Even if we did hook up, which we didn’t, it’s not—she’s not some helpless kid!”

“Sorry, Zane, but that’s bullshit,” Max says. “You’re older than her, just like you’re older than all of those girls. You have a huge following. They’re still in high school. You’re a full-fledged adult.”

A small part of me loosens. Finally, one of the guys in the room is actually calling Zane out. The bar for men is truly underground, but I’m glad Max is backing the rest of us up.

Zane groans, covering his ears like the little kid he insists Logan wasn’t. “Those messages aren’t real!”

“Funny,” Corinne says sharply. “You didn’t say that about the designs McKayleigh stole.”

“There were pictures,” Zane argues. “Actual proof. It’s not the same thing.”

“I think we all know what the Sponsor had on McKayleigh was real,” I tell him. “And I sure as hell believe this, too.”

Quiet settles over the room, heavy and solid. No one argues, because by now, it’s clear: we all know Zane is lying. Even Graham—head hanging, kneading the beanie in his hands. His silence is an answer.

“So that’s it?” Zane’s nostrils flare. “You all believe Logan, but not me? Do you see how messed up that is? You’re going to vote for me. You’re going to vote to leak all this stuff, to ruin my life, and all you have to prove it is some stupid DMs and one half of the story!”

“To be fair, that’s not exactly how the legal system works in this country,” Aaron says.

“See?” Zane grumbles. “At least someone here isn’t batshit.”

“Sorry, to clarify, I still think you’re probably a perv.”

“Two people are dead!” Graham’s face is skeletal and panicked. “For all we know, that’s what ‘canceled’ means here. Do we really want to keep playing this game?”

For a second, I let myself consider it. Two people are dead. McKayleigh died right after we voted for her. How do we know that whoever we vote for next won’t end up dead, too? What if that’s the real game here?

But no. That’s not what this is. There has to be some shred of logic here, some explanation. There always is, if you look hard enough.

I shake my head sharply. “What happened to Cole and McKayleigh was an accident.”

“Then why haven’t they shut this down?” Graham asks.

I don’t know.The words die in my throat, useless. None of this makes sense. But there has to be something we can do besides play this terrible game, dancing like puppets on the Sponsor’s strings.

“What if we don’t vote?” I realize, feeling the slightest trickle of hope. “They can’t keep doing this if we all refuse.”

“Yeah, right,” Zane scoffs. “How do we know they won’t leak all this stuff anyway?”

“Interesting.” Max raises an eyebrow. “I thought those DMs were ‘fake.’”

“Get that smug look off your face, man. There’s a folder with your name, too. All of you.”

As much as I’m starting to hate him, I know Zane’s right. But whatever’s in my folder, there’s no way it’s as bad as what they had on McKayleigh and Zane. It can’t be, because I haven’t done anything like that. Still, the thought is enough to send fear crackling through me.

“I think we should vote,” Logan says.

“But what if they—”

“Leak our shit?” she cuts Graham off. “Exactly. If we don’t vote, they might leak everything. If we vote, at least we’re not just sitting back and watching it all go to hell.” She looks, fearless, at Zane. “We get to decide whose stuff gets leaked.”

Corinne takes a deep breath. “I want to vote.”

I stare, surprised. “But…”

“They’re listening to us,” Corinne says. “Logan asked them to stop the timer, and they did it. They stranded us on purpose. Something seriously bad is going on here, and Logan has a point. I … I think the safest thing is to follow their rules.”

Elody twists a lock of hair tightly around her finger. “To be honest, I don’t really want to find out what happens if we don’t.”

Seeing the others’ faces, I know the decision has been made. I want to argue, beg them to hear reason, but I’m starting to wonder if they’re right. We’re trapped here. Powerless.

Well, maybe not completely. Because there’s still one thing we have the power to do, and looking at Zane, his slow, spiteful nod, I can tell he knows it, too.

“Seems like your minds are made up, then. You want to vote?” He looks at the camera, and fear twitches in his face, like he’s staring into the mouth of a beast. “Let’s vote.”