24. Logan

24LOGAN

When they lift Zane’s body, his arm lolls to the side, the one with the tattoo of the I Ching hexagrams that I used to think were a sign of how wise he was. An old soul. Both of us. That’s what he used to say, when his hand lingered a little too long on the small of my back, blurring the line between thrilling and wrong.

Wise.I almost laugh. Zane’s tattoos never made him wise. Just a culture-appropriating dickhead.

As they move him to the back patio, I don’t watch. I sit on the floor, hugging my knees to my chest and staring at the spot where he died. I stay that way until everyone comes back in.

“Where is he?” I ask.

“Under the awning,” Kira says. “Out of the rain.”

The room is heavy and silent except for thunder rumbling overhead. What is there to say for someone who may not deserve mourning?

“I think we should keep looking for the gun,” Corinne says.

We’re not going to find it. Already, I know. Still, we turn the house upside down. We go through all the bags again, searching every room, every drawer, under every cushion. We search until night falls, the storm clouds rolling over us as the whole island turns from purple-gray to blue-black, like a bruise in reverse. We search and search until we do what we should have done hours ago: give up and make dinner.

As the rest of us sit with our sad plain pasta at the kitchen table, Aaron stares out the window, watching Graham. He’s been out on the front terrace since before they moved Zane, bent over his guitar. Rain falls, just a drizzle for now, but the clouds threaten worse.

“Where the hell is he hiding it?” Aaron wonders. “There’s no way it’s not him.”

Graham’s voice floats through the window, raspy and thin. It’s the kind of singing voice that isn’t necessarily good, but hard to stop listening to, emotion rubbing it raw. Back at the Bounce House, it annoyed me so much, his nonstop singing. Now, though, it feels like an old nostalgic song, the kind you sing along to, drunk and warm.

“We already looked through his stuff,” I say. “He didn’t have it.”

“Neither did anyone else,” Aaron argues. “But the gun’s still missing, isn’t it?”

I try to imagine Graham sneaking into the closet, stashing the gun. The thing is, I can believe it. Even before everything went to shit, Graham has always been anxious, the kind of guy who likes to know the earthquake-safety plan and where all the emergency exits are. But if Graham has the gun, then we can relax. Because as scared as he may be, I don’t think he has it in him to actually shoot.

But then I never knew my friends as well as I thought, did I?

Thunder rips through the sky, and the rain starts to pick up, wind whistling against the window.

The front door swings open, and we all jump. Graham walks in, his guitar case strapped to his back.

“Got a Grammy winner already?” Aaron sneers. “Let’s hear it.”

Graham doesn’t answer. He just shakes out his hair, wipes his pale face with his hands, and walks to the stairs, humming and tapping out chords on his thigh. Ophelia flashes through my head, like from Hamlet, one of the last things I read in English class before dropping out. Ophelia with her mad songs and flowers, sinking to the bottom of that shallow river, like she doesn’t even care enough to stop what’s coming for her.

I stand and move toward him. “Graham.”

He doesn’t turn around.

“You shouldn’t be alone right now,” I almost beg.

He stops, finally, and looks at me. I try to remember the last time we hung out for real, before everything went wrong. There were so many nights curled up around a video on his phone, sharing headphones and laughing so hard we cried. Nights of drunk dancing, spinning and spinning under disco lights until it felt like the glow was coming from us. But I don’t remember the last thing we did together before everything happened. Before Graham started to hate me like the rest of them.

I think I see his eyes start to water, but he blinks, and any feeling there hardens to nothing.

He shakes his head. “I can’t trust anyone but myself.”

With that, he turns and stomps up the stairs, leaving me at the bottom. There’s nothing else to do but drift back to the table like a ghost and sit. The rain pummels the windows now, dripping down the glass like blood.

“We need to keep thinking of other ways out of here,” Corinne says, always in plan mode. Maybe it should be comforting, that determination, but it’s starting to feel pointless, like this thing is so twisted that even the best plan couldn’t untangle it.

“What are we gonna do?” Aaron asks sarcastically. “Swim for it?”

“We could signal for help,” Kira says. “An SOS. Maybe a fire, or something.”

Elody makes a face. “What is this, Girl Scouts?”

“It’s a good idea,” Max says.

Elody smiles at him, an icy look in her eyes. “Of course it is, babe.”

God, it’s so obvious how bad Elody has it. How jealous she is. I still don’t get it, why Max, but I recognize the look on her face. That hunger. Like she’d kneel at his feet for scraps, eat out of his hand. Like she isn’t so far out of his league, it’s ridiculous. Like she’d kill for any touch at all, as long as it says I see you.

“We just have to get through the next couple of weeks, right?” Kira says, clearly trying for encouraging. “That’s how long filming was supposed to take. That’s how long my parents are expecting me to be gone without my phone.”

Max nods. “Same.”

“People will start to notice something’s off soon, won’t they?”

“Yeah,” Aaron says, “assuming we survive that long.”

Fear claws at my stomach. “That’s not funny.”

Aaron shrugs. “Wasn’t supposed to be.”

Except it is. It’s pretty fucking hilarious, actually, now that I think about it: that I’m here, and this is happening. That even Elody Hart, unrealistic male fantasy made flesh, is still letting a skinny, kind-of-attractive white guy make her feel like shit. That I could be home with Harper watching old seasons of Drag Race but instead I decided to come here, so far away, without even telling Mom and Dad where I am, because it’s not like they’d care anyway.

“Logan?” Kira asks. “Are you okay?”

She’s probably concerned because I’m currently laughing my ass off, so hard it hurts and tears blur my vision.

I suck in a breath. “It’s just funny.”

“We have to stay calm,” Kira says softly. “Someone’s going to realize something’s wrong. They have to.”

“What about your followers?” Corinne points her fork at Kira. “Elody, Max, and Logan, too. You guys have huge followings.”

Aaron is visibly pissed to be excluded from that, which sends another snorting laugh through me. Of all the times and places to be butthurt about followers.

“And they can be pretty intense, right?” Corinne goes on. “Someone will notice you’re not posting.”

“I mean, yeah, I have a few stalkers, or whatever,” Elody says. “But I have posts scheduled for the next three weeks. People won’t know until then.”

Kira slumps. “I have scheduled posts, too.”

“And my followers don’t exactly give a shit lately,” I mumble.

Corinne drops her fork into her bowl, defeated. I don’t blame her. Our followers might literally be our only hope. People who don’t even know us. People who can turn on us like a summer storm.

“It’s kind of brilliant, honestly,” Aaron says. “A remote island, no phones, no telling anyone where we are … they got us all to sign a contract for the perfect setup for murder.”

“Okay, but you could say that about all reality TV,” Kira says. “My Dance It Out contract gave the producers the right to do basically whatever they wanted, and we wouldn’t be allowed to sue.”

Aaron scoffs. “Yeah, sure. This is all normal reality-TV stuff. Except for the three dead people.”

I don’t feel like laughing anymore. Actually, I feel like screaming, like I can’t be at this table for one more second or I’ll explode. I stand, scraping my chair back, and everyone’s heads whip toward me.

Like they think I have a gun.

Tightening my jaw, I walk to the trash can and empty my bowl. I stare at the mess inside, meat and garbage and empty bottles, the smell sickly sweet. Like death. Closing the can, I rush to the sink, grip the counter. Count my breaths, like my therapist told me to, when I could still afford therapy. When I wasted all of my sessions, tossing my new influencer money at my problems and hoping they’d just go away without me trying. My therapist always told me to go easy on myself, but she wouldn’t say that if she knew any of the real stuff. The things I never told her.

“We haven’t gotten any more messages.” Kira looks at her watch. “We also didn’t vote last time, and they haven’t said anything. That’s a good sign, right? Tilly and whoever else could be on their way as soon as the storm passes. Maybe they’re done playing this game.”

“Yeah, if Tilly’s even the one behind this,” Aaron says. “Because like it or not, someone slipped Zane the peanut oil, and my money’s on vampire Shawn Mendes.” Aaron juts his chin over to where Graham was, and then looks at me. “Or you.”

I don’t even have the energy to fight him anymore.

“Someone will come soon,” Kira says again, less convinced.

“We shouldn’t get our hopes up.” Corinne’s quiet certainty feels like fingers on the back of my neck.

“Why not?” I ask.

She stares up at one of the cameras, the red blinking light in its black void. “Games don’t end until somebody wins.”

TRANSCRIPTION: NIGHT TWO, 10:45 PM

(RECORDING FROM WATCHES #5 AND #7)

[KNOCK.]

GRAHAM

[Whispering.] Logan.

[LOUDER KNOCK. DOORKNOB RATTLES.]

GRAHAM

[Louder.] Logan, come on.

[DOOR OPENS. SMALL SILENCE.]

LOGAN

I thought you were only associating with guitars now. [Pause.] Wait, are you okay? You look—

GRAHAM

Who did you tell?

[FOOTSTEPS. DOOR CLOSING.]

LOGAN

Okay, first of all, don’t say that so loud. And we already talked about this. I didn’t tell anyone.

GRAHAM

Yeah, but that’s the thing. I’ve been thinking about it, andit doesn’t make sense. [Lowers voice.] Because someone knows. Someone wants to kill us for it. So either you told someone, or …

LOGAN

Or what?

GRAHAM

Or it’s one of us.