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CHAPTER SIXTY

THE FIVE

The water is up to their chests now, the sea cave dark, with only a ray of filtered moonlight coming through the small opening. They’re just silhouettes in the darkness.

“We need to get out of here,” Blane says. “Fuck it—I’d rather take my chances than die like this.”

“There’s only one path out,” Libby says. She moves into the splinter of light. Her makeup, still smeared from the tape covering her eyes, bleeds down her face. “And he’s out there. He’ll shoot…”

Mark says nothing. His wound might be infected; he’s taken a turn for the worse and is slumped against a rock.

“He can’t shoot us all,” Blane points out.

“But the waves,” Libby says.

She’s right, of course. All of their options are bad ones. Stay and risk drowning; leave and risk getting shot or sucked out to sea.

They’ve gone around and around and the decision has been to sit tight, tread water, and hope by the end of high tide there’s a gap at the top of the cave, enough air to survive.

“So we just wait to die?” Blane asks the group.

Another wave pounds the rocks and more water gushes into the cavern.

At last, Stella breaks the quiet: “I’m sorry.”

This seems to awaken the group, if only because Stella isn’t one for apologies.

Stella continues: “I told Natasha things—I didn’t think she’d post about them on Rizz.”

It’s a moment before anyone responds.

Felix’s voice pierces the gloom. “You told her I was a stalker? That’s why she posted that? You said I—”

“I didn’t mean it the way she posted about it. I didn’t say ‘stalker.’”

“Well, how’d you fucking mean it?” Felix says, his voice laced with pain.

“She told me she had a stalker, that she was being harassed. I told you guys what happened to her with him. So I joked that… I said you could be a bit—I don’t know—smothering. I was only trying to connect with her about what she was going through with her real stalker.”

“Whatever,” Blane says. “But what the hell did Mark and I do to deserve her posting that he was a creep, posting about his father, saying I was an enabler of shit?”

“I didn’t tell her any of that. She said she met you at a party. That Mark told her about his dad. That she overheard you both talking shit about her. Calling her crashy .”

“So she accuses Mark of being a creep?”

“I told her to take the first post down. She actually got mad at me, and included me on the second post as one of the enablers.”

“And you stayed friends with her,” Blane says, his tone filled with disgust.

“She apologized. I told you guys she’s been through some serious shit. She took the posts down.”

“So what did I do, Stella?” Libby demands.

Stella is quiet a beat, then says, “I don’t know. I told her you were, like, perfect and she—she seemed like she was jealous of that or something. I don’t know. But I told her she needed to take down the Creep List posts. That it was uncool. That you were my friends. And she took them down. I thought if you got to know each other…”

Another stretch of silence continues as they process it all.

Then, Blane: “So it’s your fault. If she hadn’t posted the Creep Lists, we wouldn’t have pulled the prank with the fake blood. She wouldn’t have run off when she came to. She wouldn’t have wandered into this cave and…”

“It’s not Stella’s fault,” Felix interrupts. “It’s mine.”

Before anyone asks, Felix wades toward the cave’s small opening. Another breaker pounds the rocks and he’s pushed back. But he grabs the jagged wall and forces his way toward the moonlight.

“I’m going to make this right,” he calls back to them. “I’m going to try to stop him. Just hang on.”

Before he disappears, he says, “If something happens to me, tell my mom I love her.”