Authors: Gretchen McNeil
So much for that.
“WHAT HAPPENED?” VIVIAN SNAPPED. “IT WAS
just working.”
“Hit refresh,” Kumiko suggested.
Meg was a step ahead of her, but each refresh only brought the same result:
No internet connection established
.
“We must have lost the signal,” Meg said. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” T.J. said. “We wouldn’t have even thought of it if it weren’t for you.”
“Dude, let me try,” Nathan said. Meg stepped aside and Nathan immediately started opening up network windows and connection diagnostic tools that she didn’t even know existed. “Sometimes maintaining a connection is tricky. If it’s working, I’ll figure it out.”
Meg wasn’t exactly hopeful, but she appreciated Nathan’s enthusiasm nonetheless.
“I told you it wouldn’t work,” Vivian said. She sat down in the window seat and crossed her legs.
“You really are a know-it-all, aren’t you?” Kumiko said.
Vivian thrust out her chin. “Well, somebody has to be the voice of reason.”
“You think you’re the only one here with a brain?” Kumiko was fired up. “At least Meg had a good idea and was trying to be helpful. You just put on your bossy pants and think that makes you superior. Get over yourself.”
Vivian slowly stood up and held her head high. “At least I’m not slutting my way through the weekend.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Did she just call you a slut?” Gunner said.
“It means,” Vivian said, planting her hands on her hips, “if you two weren’t sneaking around—”
“Nobody’s sneaking,” Gunner said slowly. “T.J. offered to sleep on the sofa.”
Meg cocked her head. T.J. slept in the living room last night? She could have sworn he was the first one on the stairs after she discovered Lori’s body.
“I’m just saying,” Vivian continued, “that if you’d slept in your own room last night maybe Lori wouldn’t be dead.”
“That is
it
!” Kumiko lunged at Vivian, but T.J. stepped between them.
“Okay, all right,” he said. “Fighting won’t get us anywhere. We need to figure out what we’re going to do.” He turned to Nathan. “Anything?”
“Nope,” Nathan said. He closed the lid to Meg’s laptop, stood up, and pulled on the network cable. It snaked out from behind the bookcase in the corner of the room by the bay window. “Looks like it goes through the wall.” Without another word, he ran out of the living room into the kitchen.
“What the hell?” Vivian said.
The door to the patio slammed and from the bay window Meg saw Nathan stick his head out the side door that led to the backyard. He paused, then dashed out into the rain.
Six bodies crammed onto the window seat as they gazed out the window. Rain lashed at the pane, turning the view outside into a blurry, impressionist mess. It was kind of like looking through a kaleidoscope as Meg watched Nathan’s disjointed form pick something up off the muddy ground.
“What’s that?” Vivian squeaked, pushing herself right up to the window pane. “What’s he got?”
Meg saw a flash of yellow in Nathan’s hand and held her breath. The yellow network cable.
Nathan paused for a moment. Meg watched as he looked up toward the roof, then spun around and jogged back into the house.
Without a word, everyone sprinted into the kitchen.
“Well?” Vivian demanded. “What happened?”
T.J. tossed Nathan a towel, and he immediately started drying his face and hands. “Nothing. No go.”
“Really?” Kenny asked.
“Sorry, dude. Looks like something sheered the cable in half. A branch or some debris. It’s totally jacked.”
“Can’t we plug the laptop directly into the satellite?” Vivian asked.
Nathan shook droplets of water from his hair. “Are you going to climb up on the roof and do it?”
Vivian pursed her lips. “Do I
look
like I’d climb up there?”
“Didn’t think so. I’d say we’re screwed.”
They were, kind of. No phone, no internet. And the closest town was across the channel. Meg thought of the houses in Roche Harbor that she could see from the garret window, lights twinkling in the distance.
Lights in the distance. Duh, how could she have forgotten? “The Taylors’ house!” she blurted out.
Vivian glared at her. “Who?”
“The house across from us,” Meg said. “Maybe they have a phone.”
“Of course!” Kumiko said. “They had a raging party last night.”
“The weather’s crap,” Nathan said, wringing water out of his thermal T-shirt. “Do you think we’d make it across?”
“Gunner and I can try,” T.J. said.
“On it.” Gunner bolted back through the living room toward the foyer, T.J. at his heels.
Meg followed with everyone else close behind. T.J. and Gunner pulled raincoats off the pegs on the wall while Meg cracked open the front door. The rain blew horizontally across the front yard in sheets so thick they obscured the view of the Taylors’ house. The structure seemed to come and go between gusts of wind, as if it were fading in and out from another dimension.
“Are you sure it’s safe?” she asked. She pictured a giant wave washing T.J. and Gunner out to sea and her stomach knotted up.
T.J. pulled the hood of the coat low over his head. “We’ve got the footbridge. We’ll keep one hand on it at all times. Should be fine.”
Nathan stood behind Meg and opened the door wide. “Dude,” he said, pointing down at the isthmus below the house. “I don’t think so.”
Meg’s eyes jumped to the roiling sea. A savage wave crashed over the tiny strip of land, temporarily submerging it. Then the water was sucked back out, and the isthmus emerged from its cover. Meg caught her breath.
“The bridge is gone.”
“Shit,” T.J. said. He pushed out onto the porch for a better view.
“That is not good,” Kumiko said.
T.J. turned and walked back into the house, stripping off the yellow rain slicker. “Completely gone,” he said. “The storm must have destroyed it.”
Vivian stuck her head out the front door. “You can get across without it, right? The waves aren’t that bad.”
“Are you insane?” Kumiko pulled her back inside. “Without the bridge even a small wave would suck you under.”
“But we can’t just sit here.”
“Then you try it.” Kumiko folded her arms across her chest. “Be my guest. I’ll watch you. From up here.”
“Kumiko’s right,” Kenny said calmly. “There’s no way we’d make it.”
Vivian’s eyes practically popped out of her head. “You mean we’re stuck here?”
T.J. nodded. “At least ’til the storm lets up.”
Meg gazed into the downpour. A lull in the wind and rain exposed the outline of the Taylors’ house across the isthmus. It seemed so close, so comforting, and yet they couldn’t get there. She slowly closed the door and leaned her forehead against it. None of her ideas had worked. They were trapped.
“What do we do now?” Kumiko asked. She had Gunner’s hand gripped in her own.
“We should take her down,” Kenny said quietly. It wasn’t a question, and though his voice was soft—barely above a whisper—Meg got the distinct impression that Kenny was trying to contain his pain. She didn’t want to see him unleash.
Apparently, Vivian wasn’t worried about pissing Kenny off. “Take her down? Are you insane? That’s a crime scene. The police will need to investigate.”
“Last time I checked, suicide wasn’t a crime,” Kumiko said.
Kenny was resolute. “We can’t just leave her there.”
“Why not?” Vivian asked.
“It’s disrespectful.”
“It would be disrespectful to move her. What if we destroy evidence?”
“Calm down, CSI,” Kumiko said.
Meg thought of Minnie huddled on the floor in the garret. While she appreciated Vivian’s point—God help her—without any way to contact the police and without any idea of when Jessica might arrive, it seemed too horrible to leave Lori’s body hanging there. What if they were stuck on the island until Monday?
“I agree with Kenny,” she said. “We should take her down.”
T.J. nodded. “Me too. Anyone else opposed?”
Nathan, Gunner, and Kumiko shook their heads.
“Fine,” Vivian said. Her face flushed red with anger. “But I’m not taking any responsibility for this. If the police ask me, I’ll tell them it was your idea and I tried to stop you. You’ll all get in trouble. Not me.” And with that, Vivian stormed off down the hall.
“If she stomps off every time she doesn’t get her way,” Kumiko said, smiling after her, “can I have permission to disagree with every single thing she says?”
“That shouldn’t be hard,” Meg said.
“Now what?” Gunner asked.
T.J. looked at Meg. “Do you really think we should take her down?” Even though he’d effectively taken leadership of the group, he still seemed intent on her input. Meg wasn’t sure why, but she kind of liked that. And while she had a split second of panic when she realized that everyone was waiting for her answer, she was excited by the idea that T.J. cared what she thought.
Meg swallowed. “Okay.” They couldn’t just leave Lori hanging there. It wasn’t right. “Let’s do it.”
IT TOOK JUST ABOUT EVERYONE’S HELP TO LOWER
Lori’s body down to the ground floor of White Rock House. The rope had been flung up over the top rafters of the tower, with one end tied securely to the banister at the bottom of the garret stairs. It was a knot worthy of a sailor, and Meg was surprised Lori had been able to both secure the knot and loop the rope over the rafters in what must have been a distraught state of mind.
The guys gradually lowered Lori’s body while Meg and Kumiko waited at the bottom of the stairs. Meg had found some old sheets in a linen closet that they could wrap the body in. She and Kumiko spread one out on the floor while the body crept downward.
The horror of Lori’s suicide was nothing compared to seeing her body descending from above. It jerked and wiggled like a marionette as the guys strained against her weight. Inch by inch, the dark figure grew larger as it approached, the tangled hair hanging lank around her face. The beams at the top of the tower creaked and groaned as the body twisted slowly, rotating first to the left, then unwinding more rapidly before twisting back again.
Meg’s stomach lurched as Lori’s dangling feet passed over her head. She stepped back and dropped her gaze, unwilling to see the lifeless eyes again. She waited until she heard the sound of the body touching down before she dared look up.
The guys at the top of the tower must have felt the change in weight and eased up on the rope, letting it slip through their hands. All at once Lori’s body crumpled to the floor, lifeless and rigid. Meg and Kumiko scampered out of the way as the rope cascaded down from above.
“Sorry,” Ben called from the top of the tower. “Everyone okay?”
“Yeah,” Kumiko said. “We’re good.”
Everyone except the dead girl
, Meg thought as she brought a second sheet over to cover Lori up.
Her body lay facedown—left arm caught beneath her, right arm twisted unnaturally at the shoulder. She looked like a doll that had been taken apart and put back together with all the parts reversed. The noose still encircled her neck and the rope had draped itself over her body in a series of loops and turns as it fell.
Meg unfurled the sheet and draped it over Lori’s body, then together, she and Kumiko folded the top and sides over to form a kind of mummified bundle.
Ben, Gunner, and T.J. gathered at the bottom of the stairs, with Nathan trailing behind. “Should we say a prayer or something?” he asked. “Seems like we should.”
“Know any?” Kumiko asked.
“Heh,” Nathan laughed. “No.”
“We’re here to say good-bye to Lori Nguyen,” Kenny said from the top of the first flight of stairs. He had taken possession of Lori’s mourning. “Never again will we see her smile. Never again will we hear her voice. I wish—” Kenny caught his breath, smothering a sob. He paused and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I wish we’d gotten to know each other better. We could have been …”
His voice trailed off. Meg saw Nathan shift his feet uncomfortably as he glanced up at his friend, but he didn’t say a word.
“Well, whoever did this, whoever caused this …” Kenny said after a pause. “They’re going to pay.”
Meg winced. It was the second time in less than a day someone had mentioned revenge. Meg realized that Kenny was upset, but couldn’t he just accept that Lori had killed herself instead of looking for someone else to blame?
Vivian poked her head out of the study. “We should move her in here. Then we don’t have to look at her.”
“Is she really that clueless?” Meg said under her breath.
“Apparently,” T.J. said.
Kenny took Lori’s head, Gunner and T.J. held her legs, and Nathan propped up the middle as Vivian guided them into the study. She kept up a constant stream of directions. “Don’t knock over the lamp. Be careful of her head. You’re too close to the desk. No, the other side.” Meg was amazed at her energy. It was sort of pointless and negative, as if just being in charge was the most important thing in the world, and yet she appeared to have an endless supply of it.
“Is it gone yet?”
Everyone turned. Minnie stood on the second-to-last step. While everyone else was still in their pajamas with coats and sweatshirts thrown over them against the cold, Minnie was fully dressed in jeans and platform flip-flops with a long-sleeved cashmere sweater. She seemed to have recovered her poise after the frantic search of the garret, but Meg couldn’t help but cringe at her friend’s total lack of empathy in the current situation. Kumiko and Gunner exchanged a look that bordered on disgust, and Meg could practically feel Kenny’s glare burning a hole through Minnie’s skull.
“Her name,” he said, in that same soft tone that gave Meg a creeping feeling up the back of her neck, “was Lori.”
“Oh,” Minnie said. She seemed vaguely aware of her misstep. At least that was something. “Sorry.”
“Right,” T.J. said, changing the subject. “Let’s go sit down. We need to figure out what we’re going to do next.”
Meg picked at a piece of bread with some room-temperature butter smeared on top, ripping off little pieces, which she forced herself to eat. Most of the people gathered around the dining room table weren’t faring much better, though the tragic events of the day hadn’t dampened Minnie’s appetite.