Page 31 of Here for a Good Time

Antonio now has his hands up, and both women are using him as a human shield as they slowly walk backward.

“You shoot, and your friend here loses his pretty little head,” Bleached Hair tells us, the knife that was previously pushed into her skin now pressed deep into the back of Antonio’s neck, her other arm braced tightly across his chest. Pixie Cut is holding the second knife, the sharp tip aimed at us.

“What the fuck happened?” I scream at Leila, although now I notice that there’s blood dripping down one of her elbows.

“I got distracted by the shots! I’m sorry! Let him go!” she yells.

She tries to take one step forward, but Antonio yelps as Bleached Hair shoves the blade deeper into his skin. “One more step, and you’ll have to watch him bleed out on this beach,” she says, lips twining into a sneer.

“Shoot them!” Leila tells us.

“We can’t shoot them!” I say, watching in horror as Antonio’s figure moves farther away. “What if we miss? We could hit him!”

“You have to do something!”

“Please! Help me!” Antonio cries. I’m crying, too, and I’m shaking so much that I don’t actually trust myself to hold a loaded weapon, but I’m also too frozen to put it down.

I look at Zwe, and although he’s still got a solid grip on his gun, his finger is nowhere near the trigger. There’s no way he’s firing a shot either, clear or not. We never talked about whether we’d actually shoot them, because this hadn’t been part of the plan.

“We have to run. Try to zigzag,” Zwe commands, dragging me away from the water and back toward the trees.

“Keep your head down,” he orders, and I try my best, the three of us trying not to stumble as we rush across the sand while shots still ring out from every side.

I try to turn around at one point, and catch one last sight of Antonio’s figure being forced toward the resort.

Our pace picks up once we’re on solid ground, the adrenaline keeping the pain in my ankle at bay. We round the corner of the farthest bungalow, and, in the safety of its shadow, stop, leaning against the wall as we gasp for air.

It isn’t until Zwe yells “Fuck!” that my senses rush back, like at last someone’s unmuted the TV.

“He’s gone,” I mumble. I don’t sit so much as fall to my ass, warm sand scattering around my thighs. “They took him.”

“I’m sorry,” Leila says, falling down beside me.

“I’m so, so sorry. I wasn’t expecting the shots.

Or… I thought we’d be closer to the boat by the time anyone spotted us, or that the people on the boat would’ve helped us or…

” She takes in a shaky breath. “I don’t know.

I don’t know what I was thinking. Antonio—” She stops on a hiccup.

Zwe is the last one to join us on the soft ground. “What do we do now?” he asks.

“I—” I start, but nothing else comes out. “I don’t know,” I whisper. Part of me wants to laugh because this is it, isn’t it? We’re screwed, and there’s no way out, and what do you do in situations like this except laugh at the universe?

“Me neither,” Leila says.

“Do we… wait?” Zwe asks.

“For what?” I say, giving in and letting out a dark laugh. “Death?”

“The silver lining is that they saw us.” I peer at him, confused.

“The supply boat,” he explains, gesturing with the rifle at the water.

Then, as though realizing that he’s still holding a death weapon, he gently lays it down and continues gesticulating with his hands.

“They saw us, and now they’re going to get help. ”

“But what if—” I swallow, not wanting to say it out loud, as though we’re not all thinking the same thing. “What if help doesn’t arrive before they find us?”

“Then we make sure they don’t find us.”

“We can’t stay here, though,” Leila says.

She points up at the sky where the clouds have multiplied and gotten more opaque.

“That storm’s definitely arriving tonight,” she says, also pointing to the shore.

“The water’s already coming up. We need to get to higher ground.

The woods will become dangerous when the storm hits.

Maybe we can sneak into another building in the resort and wait out the storm there. ”

In fight-or-flight situations, I am very solidly a “flight” individual. If I were on my own right now, I’d take the ostrich route and bury my head in the metaphorical sand and wait for an act of divine intervention that would end this whole thing. Deus ex machina me, baby.

But I have adrenaline and fear pumping through my system, and as soon as Leila suggests we get to higher ground, anger coils its way up my spine.

“Another building in the resort?” It’s the first time in days that I can be loud, because at this point every fucking one knows where we are and what we’re trying to do so what’s the point in being quiet—and boy, do I take advantage of it.

“You mean like the reception hall? The one I suggested earlier that you wrote off?”

“That’s not fair,” she says. She grinds her molars, the action making her sharp cheeks even more angular. Seeing her angry causes my own previous anger to evolve into unfiltered, stinging infuriation. She’s mad at me right now? “We all agreed to go for the supply boat.”

“No, you said that’s what we should do. I said we should free everyone first, and that the supply boat plan sounded too risky. You were the one—”

“No, we said we would vote on it and you said—”

“Will you both shut the fuck up?!” Zwe roars, stunning both of us into silence.

“Who the fuck cares? Antonio is gone! They know we’re still here and we’re trying to escape!

They know the supply boat spotted that something was wrong!

They’re going to be coming after us even more quickly than before, and we need to get moving now.

And I for one refuse to babysit grown adults who have suddenly regressed to being toddlers, so whatever stupid, petty rivalry is brewing between the two of you right now, both of you need to squash it immediately.

Jesus, who needs armed enemies when the two of you are ready to push each other off of this island yourselves? ”

I’ve been mad at Zwe before, but I’ve never felt whatever I’m feeling right now toward him, like I’m this human pinball machine of emotions.

I march several feet away, deeper amongst the trees, because I refuse to let either of them see me cry.

The thing is, I feel like a toddler. I’m angry and sad and I just want to go home to my bed and hug my mom and dad. And I want my best friend.

As though he read my thoughts loud and clear, Zwe appears beside me.

“Go away,” I say, my tears placing my words on shaky stilts.

“We need to get going, Poe. I know you’re scared right now, but Leila says it’s not—”

I whip my head around so violently that my tears streak down my cheeks. “Don’t you patronize me.”

He flinches, like I turned and slapped him. “I’m not patronizing you.”

“I don’t care what fucking Leila says. Did she send you over to placate me? Because I’m the injured, whiny little kid who won’t stop crying about wanting to go home?”

“Nobody thinks that,” he says with a scoff that makes me want to push him into the water. “And if you think we’re thinking that, then that’s just you projecting your own insecurities.”

I open my mouth, stopping myself in time for a voice to step in and ask if I really want to say it. I decide I do. “You’re just like him. You don’t think I can do anything, do you? That whatever ideas I throw out are just stupid, half-baked ones that aren’t actually practical.”

A wrinkle forms between his thick brows as he deciphers my words, and I watch in real time as they land. “Vik,” he says, my silence all the confirmation he needs. “You think I’m just like Vik because I’m calling you out on your unfounded and frankly bordering-on-misogynistic—”

“Misogynistic?!” I yell.

“—contempt toward Leila?”

“You think I’m not capable of anything!”

He throws his hands in the air. “When have I said that?! Tell me one point in all of this when I’ve told you that you couldn’t do something!”

“That’s why you didn’t move in with Julia, right?

Because you don’t think I can survive living on my own?

And you didn’t tell me that you broke up with Julia, or why you broke up, because then I’d realize you’re still living with me even though you don’t want to and I’d feel guilty over it, and you thought I couldn’t handle that either! ”

It’s the thought bubble that’s been hanging over my head ever since I found out the reason for their breakup earlier. Still, even I’m not prepared for the gut punch it is, for both of us.

He considers me with an emotion whose resemblance to hatred frightens me.

“That’s not even remotely close,” he says at last, voice so still it takes on an eeriness.

“I didn’t tell you about my breakup because you were so goddamn preoccupied with your own crap that I knew you wouldn’t care.

But you already knew that. That’s why you booked this trip, right?

Because you know what a shitty, self-absorbed friend you’ve been lately? ”

If my words were a punch to the gut, his are a stab to the jugular.

Because he’s right.

Because I’m not mad at him.

Because I’m mad at myself.