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CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

LIBBY AKANA

The first time Libby ever saw Stella Maldonado was at the campus swimming pool. She wore a tiny bikini and brimmed with confidence. This girl wasn’t pretending—faking it like Libby had been doing for so long.

She watched as Stella rolled her eyes at the boys who were showing off, doing cannonballs and acting like idiots, trying to get her attention.

The girls too took note when Stella emerged out of the pool dripping, like a scene from some nineties movie.

Libby wore a cover-up and hadn’t gone in the water since the group of shirtless frat boys planted their flag in a cluster of lounge chairs. She pretended not to notice when Stella took a chair next to hers. Libby nearly looked behind her when this girl—this effortlessly cool girl—spoke.

“Hey, don’t you live in Campisi?”

“Yes. I’m Libby,” she said, the way her dad taught her. Firm eye contact and a thrust of her hand for a shake.

She thought she’d blown it when Stella smirked, took her hand, mirrored her stiff tone, and said, “Stella Maldonado.”

There was no other idle chitchat—the where are you from? what’s your major? talk. Instead, Stella just said, “I have some vodka in my room.”

Libby was taken aback. She didn’t drink in high school… well, maybe a beer she nursed at parties. But she also didn’t hesitate to head to this cool girl’s room.

Libby Akana’s first act of rebellion.

And over the next week—drunk on vodka, intoxicated by living on her own without the cloud of her brother’s illness, inebriated by the spell of the cool girl—Libby felt euphoric.

She’ll never forget those early days at SCU.

She didn’t think things could be more perfect. Until she met the tall, quiet boy who appeared at her first capstone meeting. Felix Goffman with his soft voice and old-fashioned name.

Libby thought it was kismet when Stella was assigned to the same group.

She was infatuated. With them both. Before then, she’d never thought of herself as a follower. But follow she did.

And she wasn’t the only one. Felix followed Stella too, hung on her every word, positioned himself to be near her at the dining hall, at parties, at study group.

They were a love triangle, even though none of them had hooked up. Libby and Felix were under the spell of the exotic girl from the Upper East Side with her talk of speakeasies, summers in the Hamptons, parties in Brooklyn.

The three were inseparable. But things started to change. Felix sulked when Stella would disappear at a party to make out with a guy—or a girl. Libby sulked because Felix was sulking. And Stella was oblivious to it all. Oblivious that she was the sun they orbited. Oblivious to the green-eyed monster growing in Libby, oblivious to her anger that Felix was entranced by Stella. Then Stella began to pull away, become a follower herself, in the throes of an obsession herself. With a junior she met at Rave in a Cave. Someone Stella talked about the same way Libby and Felix spoke of Stella:

She’s so cool. Totally herself.

She’s so wild. She poured a beer on this guy who got too handsy.

She’s so brave. She shoved this girl who called me a bitch.

Then: “My friend said she could score some psychedelics. She says it’s the only way to really open your mind. Want to come?”

“I’m not sure,” Libby had said. It was a big leap from vodka to psychedelics. But she was losing Stella, losing Felix. Since meeting this friend, Stella barely responded to any of Libby’s texts. Seemed to be avoiding her. So this invitation was big. Big!

“Suit yourself, Libs. Felix?”

“Ah, yeah, okay. I’m all for opening my mind.”

Stella kissed him on the cheek and that sealed the deal.

“Okay,” Libby said, “I’m in.”

“You’re going to love her. I’ve told her all about you guys.”

The plan was set. Tuesday night at Panther Beach.

Libby spent the entire week with her stomach in knots. She plotted how to back out without disappointing Stella. Then she decided that, maybe with her mind opened, she could tell Felix how she felt about him. Maybe she’d overcome the fear of him saying, I’m sorry, I don’t think of you that way.

Maybe the drugs would give her the courage she needed.

Tuesday night, they ran into Blane and Mark in the common area of the dorm.

“Bonfire party? We’re in.”

When the four of them arrived, Stella was the only one on the beach, dancing to her earbuds. She looked like a snake being charmed, the way she moved in the firelight.

Libby remembers Blane and Mark’s faces when Stella’s friend—the girl Stella basically dropped Libby for—arrived. Libby isn’t proud that she took pleasure when Mark said, “You? No way. I’m not partying with this chick.”

Blane said, “She’s crashy.” They said the girl had made the posts about Mark’s father. The posts about them all, the Creep Lists.

Stella defended her friend, said they were being dramatic. But Mark and Blane stormed off.

Libby and Felix, of course, took Stella’s side. Libby isn’t proud of that either, or that she drank too much of the cheap vodka and took the psychedelics. That she did indeed ask Felix to walk with her on the beach after Stella and her friend passed out. That she began to tell him how she felt, only to be interrupted by the sound of Stella’s scream.

And right now, just a few nights later, she’s not far from that very spot again.

But this time, she’s being marched at gunpoint to a sea cave where she will die.