9. Elody

9ELODY

Blood. There’s blood coming out of his head and into the cracks between the terrace stones. His eyes are open, his neck is all wrong, twisted, and I can’t stop looking. My brain won’t put it together. Last night, Cole was alive and doing a shot out of my boobs, and now …

Oh my god. Cole Bryan is literally dead.

My stomach drops, and I close my eyes, feeling like I might puke up all of last night’s champagne.

“What happened?” Zane asks, panicked.

“I don’t know. I walked out here, and he was just…” McKayleigh starts to sob.

“The balcony,” Max says.

I open my eyes and look at him. Max is even paler than usual, staring up at the third floor.

“The door was open.” He swallows. “He must have fallen.”

Max might not have the best judgment—I mean, he didn’t even try to make out with me last night—but he’s right. Cole, or his body, the body, whatever we’re supposed to say now that he’s dead,is right under the balcony, like he just climbed right over the railing and jumped. Like he was just doing another one of his stupid cannonballs into the pool.

“Shit.” Max’s eyes go wide behind his glasses, like he’s just now realizing what’s actually happening. “Cole wasn’t in his bed this morning. The bathroom door was shut, so I figured he was in there. But maybe … maybe he fell last night.”

“Did anyone see anything?” Kira asks. “What happened after me and Corinne went to bed?”

I don’t like the way she’s looking at me, like she thinks this is somehow my fault. I cross my arms. “Um, I don’t know? We were all pretty wasted.”

Then I remember: early this morning, when I was sleeping on the couch, I woke up to the sound of the back door sliding open. It was still dark outside, but I could see Kira walking in all sweaty in her workout clothes.

“Weren’t you out this morning?” I ask her.

Her Bambi eyes get bigger. “I just went for a run. I didn’t…”

“You ran past a literal dead body and didn’t even notice?”

“It was dark. I went out through the back and down along the beach. I didn’t see him.”

“I didn’t either.” Zane pulls at his man-bun. “When I was meditating this morning, I mean. I was on the back patio. I couldn’t see the terrace.”

Aaron sizes him up. “Defensive, aren’t we?”

“Okay, hold on,” Graham says. “We don’t need to accuse each other. We just…” He looks at the body and flinches. “We need to figure out what happened.”

“I don’t think that’s a mystery, Discount Troye Sivan,” Aaron says.

Logan walks a few steps away from the group and puts her hands on her knees, like she’s going to be sick.

“When did everyone see him last?” Kira asks.

“Zane and I went up to our rooms around two. Cole and everyone were still downstairs.” McKayleigh grips her cross necklace like she’s on the witness stand or something. “I went right to sleep.”

Of course she did. Probably after brushing her hair a hundred times and reading her Bible, or whatever it is Christian Girl Autumn clichés do at night.

“Same,” Zane says. “I didn’t see anything, either.”

“What about the people who slept downstairs?” Kira looks at me. “Was Cole there, too?”

I try not to roll my eyes. What is she, some kind of girl detective all of a sudden?

“Yeah,” I tell her. “We all passed out a little after McKayleigh and Zane left. Cole was snoring a lot, and it woke me up, so I told him to shut up. Then he went upstairs. And I guess that’s when he…”

Oh my god, did I accidentally send Cole Bryan to his literal death?

Kira looks between the rest of us. “But did he seem drunk enough to … to fall?”

“I don’t know.” Graham scrapes at his nails, chipping the black polish. “I mean, yeah, he was wasted, but people don’t just fall off of balconies.”

“What, you think he jumped?” Aaron asks.

“No!” Graham closes his eyes. “I don’t know. This is so messed up.”

“I saw him.” Corinne’s voice is so quiet that, for a second, I think I imagined it. “Around three thirty, maybe? I got up to go to the bathroom, and he…” She takes a breath. “Cole was coming up the stairs, and he looked … I mean, we all saw him last night, but he could barely even walk in a straight line. I thought he might have been on something besides alcohol. I asked him if he was okay, if he needed help, and he lashed out. Said no one even knows who I am, so why would he need my help. So, I just … let him go. I thought he was going up to his room.”

God, this whole thing is so depressing. I try to imagine what it must have been like, just letting go of the balcony and flying into the air, but I can’t. Like, actually can’t. Even blackout or high, I don’t think I’d be that reckless. I’m pretty sure my basic self-preservation instincts would stop me. There’s no way I’d go over that railing unless …

Oh my god.

“Okay, but what if he didn’t?” My heart starts to pound. “We were all drunk last night, but none of us, like, fell off the balcony. Graham’s right. That doesn’t just happen.”

Max looks sick. “But why would he … why would he do that on purpose?”

“I don’t know.” My heart is going faster and faster, and my mind can’t keep up. “Maybe he was, like, super depressed about getting canceled, or whatever. Or maybe…”

I stop. Because there’s only one other option, but there’s no way. There’s no fucking way.

“Maybe someone pushed him,” Aaron reads my mind, with a twisted little laugh.

“Oh my god,” McKayleigh whimpers. “Oh my god.”

“Okay, but who would do that?” Zane asks. “Like, why?”

“I don’t know, because they’re psycho?” I look at Logan, who’s still standing away from the group. “I mean, we all saw what happened at dinner. Maybe you wanted to, like, finish the job.”

She turns around. “Sorry, are you high?”

“Why not?” McKayleigh jumps in. “We all know how much you hated him.”

“That doesn’t mean I yeeted him off the third fucking story!”

McKayleigh takes a step toward her. “What’s your alibi, then?”

“I was sleeping,” Logan says. “In the same room as you, might I add.”

“Okay, well, maybe you got up. I was asleep all night. How would I know?”

Logan backs up. “This is insane.”

“You hated him!”

“Oh, like you two were so tight?” Logan laughs. “You wouldn’t be caught dead near Cole if you weren’t literally trapped on an island with him! He never got invited to Bounce House parties because you said, and I quote, ‘Cole Bryan could make God go back on the whole no-more-flooding-the-earth thing.’”

McKayleigh opens her mouth, caught. “I—”

“Zane and Graham, too. You guys used to talk shit about him all the time. I mean, did anyone here actually like Cole?” Logan looks around the group.

No one says anything. Logan holds up her arms, like, See?

I mean, she’s got me there. Cole was fun, I guess, but last night, he said four different things about my boobs that made me want to slap him in the face, even drunk. But that doesn’t mean I wanted him dead.

“Okay, no.” Kira shakes her head. “No, we’re not going there. None of us had any reason to … to hurt Cole. He was really drunk, and this was just an accident.”

The way she says it, it sounds so obvious. Because duh. Cole was wasted. Corinne says he could barely walk in a straight line. It’s totally possible that he just lost his balance and fell, and we’re all just freaked out and in shock. No one here is an actual murderer.

But then why do I feel like we all believed it just now?

“We need to call Tilly,” Corinne says.

She starts walking back to the house, and as we follow her, I try to make myself calm the hell down. This was an accident. It was a sad, dumb accident. But I still can’t get it out of my head. I don’t know any of these people well enough to be, like, 100-percent sure they’re not a murderer. Yeah, Cole probably fell, but then why does it seem so possible? One of us sneaking up behind him, just one quick shove …

I’m so caught up in my head that I run right into Max when he stops in the living room. Which would normally be, like, an exciting moment for me, but then I see his face. He’s looking at the outlet by the TV, where Corinne’s crouching, staring. Except …

“The phone,” she says. “It’s not here.”