27. Elody

27ELODY

I step back, away from the bathroom and what’s inside. I was right. I was right, and I convinced myself it wasn’t actually a scream, just another nightmare like the ones that used to make me run down the hall before Mom shoved me back to bed, telling me I’d ruined her sleep.

Corinne turns the shower off, and all of a sudden it’s creepily silent.

“We need to find Aaron and Logan,” she says.

Kira takes a towel and covers Graham up, looking away as she does. Like she’s so nice and good that she can’t handle it. Then, she looks at me.

“You only heard one scream last night?”

“I don’t know, I thought I was dreaming! And you—” I stop when it hits me. “Maybe we should talk about how you weren’t in the room with me and Corinne when I heard the scream. What’s that all about, babe?”

A nervous look washes over Kira’s little cartoon-deer face, and I’m being petty, but there’s a part of me that likes it. Seeing her squirm.

But Corinne speaks before Kira can answer.

“Guys?” Her eyes are trained on the corner of the wall, and looking up, I realize what she’s looking at.

“What the hell?” I breathe.

Both of the security cameras are wrapped with dishrags from the kitchen.

“We need to find Aaron and Logan,” Corinne repeats, starting down the stairs.

Obviously, none of us wants to be stuck here with Graham’s literal body, so we follow. On the second floor, Kira runs down to Logan’s door while Corinne bangs on Aaron’s, calling his name.

He cracks it open, looking like he just woke up. “What?”

“Graham’s dead,” I tell him. “Someone stabbed him in the shower.”

Aaron frowns. “Very funny.”

When he realizes I’m not joking, he drops the stupid sarcastic look.

“Oh my god.”

Logan’s door opens, and she sticks her head out, hidden in her hoodie. “What’s…”

“Graham got stabbed. Keep up, babe.”

Kira shoots me an offended look, and I glare at her. It’s not my fault I’m trying to act chill as a coping mechanism, or whatever. Also, I’m definitely not the girl she wants to mess with today. Not when I could get her in big trouble.

Because here’s a secret: I lied to Kira earlier. Well, not lied—I just didn’t tell her the whole truth, which is that after I woke up and saw that she wasn’t in our room, I didn’t go back to sleep. I waited, like, twenty minutes for her to come back, wondering if I should, you know, make sure she wasn’t dead, because I’m a nice roommate. But she didn’t come back. So I went looking.

And then I saw the light in the pool house. I saw them kissing in the window like they didn’t even care who saw.

“No.” Logan pulls off her hood like maybe it made her hear me wrong. “No. That’s…”

“Proof that one of us is an actual murderer?” I dig my nails into my palms. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

Corinne walks to the staircase. “We need to search the island. Now.”

“There’s no one else here,” Max says.

“Well, there’s only one other alternative, isn’t there?” Corinne turns around and lets that hang over everyone like a giant, terrifying storm cloud, just as thunder booms outside. The timing is so perfect, it’s stupid.

“We need to search the island,” she says again.

“What exactly do you think we’re going to find?” Aaron’s voice gets higher. “Sorry, but four people are dead. Graham was stabbed. What about that seems unclear to you? One of us is killing people!”

“Can we just—” Corinne’s voice breaks, finally losing it. “Can we search the island?”

Kira starts to pace, like she needs to be moving at literally all times—or maybe, I don’t know, like she just stabbed someone and she’s feeling a little guilty. Just a thought.

“Okay,” she says. “If someone else were hiding out here, where would they go?”

“The boathouse,” Max says. “Or…”

“Or the pool house.” I stare at him, watching his face for a sign of, like, anything.

I could do it. I could tell everyone about their little pool-house hookup and have people going after them like a real-life Twitter mob. I don’t know if sneaking around and making out in the pool house makes them murderers, but it’s enough to make people suspicious. But there’s this tiny little part of me that wants them to tell everyone themselves. I want to hear them say it to my face.

Or maybe I just want to watch them panic.

A sick, angry feeling twists around inside of me, and I start for the stairs. “Okay, so let’s go to the pool house, then.”

Max doesn’t say anything. Neither does Kira. They just look at each other, like guilty little liars. The angry feeling in my stomach gets even sharper, like it’s growing teeth or something, and I’m not going to stand here anymore and watch them. I walk down the stairs, and everyone follows me. Outside, thunder cracks over us, and the rain starts up again, light and misty.

When I open the pool-house door, we all see it. Max and Kira’s little hideout. Pillows and a blanket on the floor, like a sleepover. Like summer camp.

I want to scream.

Aaron steps inside. “Oh my god.”

“Someone’s been staying here,” Corinne says.

“Wait.” Kira steps to the front of the group. “It was me. I slept in here last night.”

Max is getting so red, I can’t even help myself.

“Alone?” I ask. “That’s, like, so dangerous. And also weird, no offense.”

Max coughs. “I was, uh … I was here, too.”

Forget screaming. I want to stab him.

Actually, I guess I shouldn’t say that, even if it’s just for dramatic effect.

Aaron looks between them and cracks up. “Oh, perfect. That’s great. What is this, some kind of Bonnie-and-Clyde situation?”

“What? That doesn’t even make sense,” Max says. “Why would we—”

“There was no one here last night but us,” Kira says. “Let’s keep looking.”

Looking at her now, I try to imagine her really doing it, taking a knife and shoving it into Graham’s back. Sure, Kira can be intense, but I don’t know if she’s capable of anything worse than forcing people to do cardio. But Max … there’s something dark in him, under all the messy hair and glasses.

Something like what’s inside of me.

“We should check the boathouse, too,” Corinne says, turning and leading the way outside.

We walk past the terrace, down the beach, and onto the dock, stopping when we get to the boathouse door. Because I think we all just remembered what—who else is in here. The water sloshes at the dock underneath us, and the rain is getting heavier again, probably making my hair look like a frizzy mess. I run my fingers through it, and then I remember that I probably shouldn’t give a crap, because there’s a literal murderer on the loose.

I dig my nails into my thigh, to the birthmark just under the hem of my shorts, and try to focus on the dull sting.

“I don’t think I want to go in,” I say.

“Me neither,” Logan echoes.

Kira steps forward. “I’ll go.”

“Me, too,” Max says.

Of course. I could shove them both into the water.

Not in a murdery way, because again, I’m not the one literally killing people.

“Okay.” Corinne takes a sharp breath. “Let’s go.”

The three of them walk into the boathouse, leaving the rest of us out on the dock. Holding my breath, I peek inside, but there’s nothing except for the useless boat, other random boat crap, and the tarp in the corner. The shape underneath it.

I step back onto the dock, closing my eyes and forcing myself to calm down.

Max comes back out. “There’s no one in there.”

“No shit, Spielberg,” Aaron mumbles.

“We can try the house again,” Kira says, aimed at Corinne. Clearly, she’s trying to be supportive, but at this point, she sounds like a human version of the worst kind of toxically positive Instagram post. Good vibes only! Murderers only win if you let them kill your shine!

“What’s the point?” Logan says. “We can see the whole island from the house. Unless someone’s been hiding up in a palm tree for two days, we’re not finding shit.”

Corinne breathes out shakily. “She’s right. There’s no one else here.”

“Let’s just do another loop around the island,” Kira tries.

“There’s no one else here!” Corinne erupts, her voice breaking. She sinks to a crouch like she can’t stand anymore, and says again, quieter, “There’s no one else here.”

For a few seconds, we’re silent, no sounds except our breathing and the water under our feet. Water for literal miles, like it’s going out to the end of the earth, or something. Like there’s literally nothing else in the entire world except for this island and us.

“So that’s it, then,” Max says. “We’re alone.”

I can see it on everyone’s faces, like when you first realize you’re a little too drunk. When you stand up, and suddenly it goes from a warm, bubbly feeling to the floor wobbling under your feet, like you’re moving through water, everything hitting you in the same second.

One of us is a murderer.

And one of us still has the missing gun.