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He knows I’m uncomfortable.
Thought I’d come up and surprise everyone.” Then he winks.
like a bite of something too sweet—something that’s almost good, for a half second, but it’s too much and false.
his new job is working as an alcohol distributor for a brewery in Sacramento.
also not naive. I step past him, toward my tent, and there it is—Guy’s hands slip around my waist.
“Hey,” he murmurs, and holds me in place.
“Let me go.” I say this calmly and politely, reaching to pull his hands off. And one hand does, lifting from my waist—but only to catch my wrist, pinning my arm to my body. The taste of beer is stronger now, and my heart rate is a physical force. “Guy. Stop.” Guy twists me, pulls me closer. His mouth against my ear as he says, “Remi, come on. I told you, you need to lighten up.”
The fight in me fading because I can’t stop him. “Get off of her,” a voice almost screams, and suddenly Guy’s hands are no longer everywhere. The last flame of fight inside me reignites, and I shove out wildly, my palms connecting with his chest, and scramble backward. Far enough back to see Maeve’s curly hair as she drags Guy away from me.
“She’s crying, you asshole.” Eliana says this, and I blink in confusion. Where did Eliana come from?
“Leave, Guy. Or I’m calling the cops.” Then she pulls out her phone.
he lunges at Eliana, reaching for her phone.
But Guy falls weird, not straight back like I did. The side of his head cracks against the rim of the firepit, and he crumples to my feet.
Guy groans—a low, loud wail—curling onto his side as he clutches his head.
Guy pulls his hand back from his head, and the lantern light shines against the blood slicking his fingers and palm. Stumbling to his feet, he says, “You’re dead. All three of you are dead. When my dad hears about this—” “Oh, shut up,” Eliana interrupts. “And sit down before you pass out and hit your head again. We need to call an ambulance.” “And the cops,” Maeve adds from beside me, and she wraps an uncharacteristically protective arm around my shoulders. “You assaulted Remi.”
I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment and sag against Maeve, fully aware of how that can’t happen.
He grabs his bag off the bench and stumbles backward, disappearing into the shadows between the trees. “What,” Eliana says flatly, “a stubborn asshole. But if he wants to run off into the woods with a concussion and a head wound, fine!”
On a good day, I’m rarely okay, and today is not a good day.
“I’m fine,” I lie after a moment and force an awkward smile.
“Guy isn’t the person we should be worried about.”
“Head wounds bleed easily,” Maeve says casually, and I lift my brows in concern. “What? I dated an EMT
Remi’s right. We should find him. And call the cops. We’re not letting him get away with this, are we?”
I force myself to focus on my surroundings, on the now, so I don’t think about what happened.
Rarely have I ever seen Eliana scared, but she is. She’s terrified. “Remi, please?” Eliana’s voice cracks a little. “You realize that this looks really bad for you too. He’s in your tent—” “Yes, I’m not an idiot,” I snap. “But if we were responsible, shouldn’t we call the cops? Like, now? It was an accident.”
“Last we saw him, he was alive,” Eliana says fervently. “We don’t know if we were responsible. We were even trying to do the right thing, going after him when he was injured.” “That’s true,” Maeve says, and nods along. “We are not the bad guys. Why don’t we call the cops in the morning? Say we returned from the fireworks and found him passed out in Remi’s tent. We saw the beers, assumed he’d been drinking . . . accidents happen all the time.”
Poor decision-making and cracking under pressure: that’s me.
“You both heard that noise before we found him too? I didn’t imagine that?” “I heard it,” Maeve says, and now that they both mention it, I remember a thunk, a splintering noise that echoed in the trees before we stumbled across Guy.
“Almost like you care about me or something.” “Would that be so shocking?”
Because I’ve never really seen or felt my sister’s care before. My entire life, all I heard from Eliana was that I overreacted, that I was too sensitive, that I needed to get out of her way. Maeve forgot my last four birthdays, never returns my phone calls, and once tried to make out with my college boyfriend. It’s depressing that this might be the first time that I can remember when my sisters have chosen me. When they’ve put themselves in harm’s way to help me, rather than look the other way because it’s more convenient.
Sure, what happened tonight was an accident. And we tried to help Guy, we really did. But none of this would’ve happened if it weren’t for me.
No, this isn’t your fault. You’re not responsible for what Guy did.
spent an entire childhood being told I overreacted, when in fact, my reactions were fine. Normal, even.
“I lied when I told you Chad wanted partial custody of the kids. He wants full custody, which the lawyers have told him is impossible unless I can be proven as an unfit mother. That’s been his little side project over the last month,”
I got a parking ticket last week, and I swear, the man acted like he’d won the lottery.”
if we’re not responsible for Guy’s death—and it wasn’t an accident in the dark—then someone else is. Someone else killed him.
what I’d been since birth: Anxious, happy to hide in the shadows, the easy target. The one who never, ever fought back. A human doormat.
don’t know when that stopped. When I became so fine with my mediocrity. Because that’s what I am: mediocre. Maeve is social media famous. Eliana’s a successful CPA and a mother of two. And I’ve never escaped my sisters’ shadow.
My entire life, I’ve been the dramatic kid, and not in a fun, theater-camp way like Maeve. My knee-jerk instinct as an adult is to not voice my discomfort, to not tell anyone. To not cause waves, after a childhood of rocking the calm seas that my parents tried to cultivate.
the only person awake is Salli—
Then Eliana shuffles out but leaves the tent flap unzipped, then stands up. “Guy’s gone.”
The tent is empty.”
The air mattress where we dumped Guy last night is empty, strewn at an odd angle across my small tent. No body, no sleeping bag.
Not like I checked him for a pulse, but Eliana did. And Eliana’s never wrong.
Guy was dead, no question about it. And, unless my life has taken a supernatural turn, is probably not a zombie. Which means someone moved Guy’s body. But who would move him? What would be the point of moving him? Unless . . . unless whoever finished him off last night took him from my tent.
“I’m just trying to figure out what the hell is going on. I’m freaking out.”
I’d be more worried if you were calm right about now,”
There’s a reason why I loathe Finch Family Functions to my core. Because, historically speaking, they never end well for me.
the Finches are rowdy extroverts, and I am . . . the exact opposite of that. Something always goes wrong—
and it’s always my fault—and usually ends in my stress tears after Eliana sna...
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Their surprise was a half-day zip-lining course, which would’ve been fun if I weren’t afraid of heights.
I had a panic attack, and Eliana yelled at me for me being both thankless and selfish; then Maeve took off with a cute local and stranded us without our rental car.
