Farah surprised everyone by throwing her arms around Kayla and beginning to sob into her hair.
“Uh,” Kayla said, startled. “There, there.” She patted Farah on the shoulder. “It can’t be that bad.”
“Yes, it is,” Farah wailed, still clutching Kayla. “I’m going to have to go to Isla Huesos Community College. Then I’ll have to live on this stupid island forever, like my dad. And there isn’t even a Gap, let alone a Sephora.”
After uttering the word Sephora, Farah sagged in Kayla’s arms, her eyes closed.
“Farah?” Kayla cried, giving the girl a shake. “Farah? Aw, dammit. Someone let this girl have way too much mystery drink.”
“What do we do?” I asked worriedly, as Frank hurried over to take Farah’s limp body from Kayla. Perhaps not surprisingly, no one seemed to notice that the girlfriend of the party’s host was unconscious.
“I’ll call nine-one-one,” Kayla said, sounding dubious. “But I’m pretty sure an ambulance won’t be able to get out here with that storm surge. Besides, there’s a standing evacuation order for all low-lying areas. Category Two hurricane or higher, it’s considered ‘remain at your own risk.’ First responders aren’t supposed to put themselves in harm’s way for these areas until storm waters recede due to the risk of debris. At least, that’s what my mom told me.”
“Guess it’s a nice cold bucket of water in the face for you then, missy,” Frank said, throwing Farah, fireman-style, over his shoulder.
“Uh,” Kayla said. She had her phone out and was dialing. “That’s not how we do it in this century, Frank. We put overdose victims in recovery position on the floor so they don’t choke on their own vomit, then check their pulse and breathing until the ambulance arrives.”
“What fun is that?” Frank asked, disappointed.
“The bedrooms are that way,” I said, pointing down the hall. “See if you can find an empty one to put her in.”
Frank nodded and stalked off, Farah’s head bobbing along behind him, her bright copper-colored hair swinging like a horse’s tail.
“Busy,” Kayla said, indicating her phone. “If they won’t come, and she doesn’t come around soon, we might have to take her to the hospital ourselves in Patrick’s car. Not that I care about her,” she added hastily. “But unlike the rest of these losers, I don’t consider death a reason to party.”
I looked in the direction she was staring, at the girls who were shimmying on top of the coffin. Suddenly, I realized I recognized two of them. One of them was Farah’s best friend, Serena … SerenaSweetie, she called herself online. The other was a girl named Nicole, who’d complained about the Rector Wreckers — Seth and his friends — vandalizing the house next door to hers during last year’s Coffin Night. She and Serena had begun to dance suggestively with each other, drawing a crowd of excited male admirers.
This was one reason no one had noticed their friend Farah passing out and being carried off to a back bedroom by a six-and-a-half-foot-tall stranger with a six-inch scar down one side of his face. Lucky for Farah, that stranger had nothing but good intentions.
“Yeah,” I said to Kayla. “I know what you mean. Keep trying to reach nine-one-one. I’ll go get Alex and then find you guys so we can get out of here. Coming here may not have been the best idea after all.”
Kayla nodded, then walked swiftly — her phone still pressed to her ear — down the hall in the direction Frank and Farah had disappeared while I turned to go in search of Alex. Who knows? Maybe he’d found something, and the perilous journey out to Reef Key wouldn’t have been a complete waste of time —
“Pierce? Pierce Oliviera?” bellowed an all-too-familiar voice.
16
I say, that when the spirit evil-born
Cometh before him, wholly it confesses;
And this discriminator of transgressions
Seeth what place in Hell is meet for it …
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto V
Pierce!” Bryce, Seth’s not-very-bright football-playing friend, was really happy to see me. “Pierce Oliviera!”
He pronounced my last name wrong, but since most people did unless I corrected them, I let it go. With Bryce around, no one could kill me. Bryce had a neck thicker than an ordinary person’s thigh and an IQ about as high as the temperature, but he was a fan of my dad’s, and I was pretty sure he’d object if anyone tried to murder me in front of him.
“Hey, you guys,” Bryce said excitedly, as he dragged me towards the rear of the room. “Look who I found! Zack Oliviera’s daughter. You know, Zack Oliviera, that guy who runs the big oil company?”
“The one that sells all the stuff to the military?” a guy I didn’t know asked.
Seth and his friends had pulled some of the deck furniture inside. Now they were sitting on it so they could watch Cassandra in all her fierce glory, as if the sun loungers and chaises were seats in a theater, and the storm was something being shown on a screen in front of them, in IMAX.
“That’s the one,” Seth said to his friend, with a lazy grin.
Bryce hadn’t been weird or creepy about demanding that I come to the back of the room to say hi to Seth. He’d simply seized my hand and refused to release it, the way an excited puppy would grab the pant leg of a new visitor.
“Come on,” he’d said, when I’d insisted I was leaving. “You can’t come all this way and not even say hi to Seth. He’s gonna be so disappointed. Besides, you hafta come look at the storm. It’s so cool!”
It was at that moment I saw Alex appear at the top of the stairs leading down to the basement. Our gazes met, and he froze, recognizing Bryce.
I had no idea whether or not Bryce was one of the people who’d been present when Alex had been murdered, but I saw my cousin shrink back into the shadows of the stairwell, attempting to conceal the file folder he was holding in his hands. He’d found something in Seth’s dad’s business office … something he didn’t want anyone to see him leaving with.
That’s why I said, in a voice I hoped was loud enough for Alex to hear, “Sure, Bryce. I’ll go say hello to Seth.”
“Great,” Bryce said happily, and he dragged me across the room to where Seth and his friends were sitting.
“How are you doing, Pierce?” Seth asked, rising from the chaise lounge on which he’d been sitting. “Glad you could make it. What’s that thing you’ve got on? A whip? Kinky.”
He leaned down to give me a kiss hello … a kiss hello that didn’t feel any different from any other kiss hello I’d ever received, except that Seth was standing so close that I could smell his scent: freshly applied deodorant and expensive body spray and whatever detergent his mom — or, more likely, housekeeper — used to launder his clothes. It was so different from the way John smelled — of the wood smoke from the fireplace in his room and something else, something distinctly John — that for a second I felt such a wave of longing for John wash over me, I could hardly speak.
Then Seth leaned away, and I couldn’t smell him anymore, and the wave of longing for John was gone. It was strange.
When I glanced behind me, I could see that Alex was gone, as well. I wasn’t sure if he’d made it out of the stairwell and out the front door, or if he’d slunk back down into the basement. Whichever it was, he appeared to have escaped.
“Sorry,” I said to Seth. “I didn’t see you over here.” It was a small lie, but one I hoped he would buy. “But I did talk to Farah. She doesn’t seem to be feeling too well.”
Seth looked puzzled. “What?”
“She’s passed out,” I explained. “My friend had to carry her into one of the other rooms. We’re trying to call an ambulance, but you might want to —”