Page 55 of Reckless Girls

“What the fuck,” I breathe.

“Lux?”

Nico is coming down the stairs behind me, and he quickly takes in the destruction.

“Do we have a backup?” I ask as he brushes past me to survey the mess.

“No,” he says, tersely. “This was it.”

He’s quiet for a moment, then quickly brings his fist down on the counter.

“Motherfucker!” he roars, and I instinctively jump back, my heel crunching yet another piece of plastic.

“It had to be Robbie, right? Itoldyou we needed to be worried about him!” I feel panic rising in my chest and my mind starts spinning.

“Is this really the time to play I-told-you-so?”

I stare at Nico. “That’s not what I’m doing. I’m trying to remind you that sometimes I’m actually right about shit, and maybe you should’ve listened to me instead of acting like I was fucking crazy.”

“Well, clearly you weren’t crazy, and he is, okay? Are you happy now?”

“No!” I’m shrieking now, but I can’t stop myself. “I’m nothappy.” Robbie washere, in our boat, among our things. He’d been watching and waiting for a chance to enact some kind of petty revenge.

“Nico!”

We hear Jake shouting, and we rush up to the deck. Brittany and Amma look between us and Jake on the deck of theAzure Sky,his hands cupped around his mouth.

Like Nico, he’s scowling, his shoulders tense, and I know without even asking that Robbie got their stuff, too.

“How bad?” I call over.

“Fucking mess,” Jake calls back, then waves at us with one arm. “Come on over, let’s talk.”

The four of us pile back into the dinghy, Nico’s movements jerky and rough, and then we’re all on the deck of theAzure Sky. The happy drowsiness of the afternoon has completely vanished, all of us standing stiffly, arms crossed, looking around. He could still be out there somewhere. Hiding out on the other side of the island. Waiting for us in the jungle.

And now we have no way of getting help. No contact at all with the outside world. We don’t have a radio, and neither does theAzure Sky.

All of us are completely cut off.

“We have to leave,” I say, and all five heads turn in my direction.

It sucks to cut the trip short under these circumstances, but it’s obvious to me that we can’t stay, not when Robbie could still be lurking, and is clearly dangerous and destructive.

“Lux, calm down,” Nico says, placing a hand on my shoulder.

I recoil. “Calm down? Seriously?”

He frowns. “I’m just saying that panicking isn’t going to help us right now.”

“She’s not panicking,” Eliza says, coming to wrap an arm around me. “She’s being sensible. We don’t have radios, for fuck’s sake, and clearly this guy is more unhinged than we thought if he’s willing to do something like this.”

“I get that,” Nico says. “But Lux always does this. Acts like the fucking sky is falling.”

The words are like a punch to my gut. “What are you talking about?”

“And besides,” he goes on, shoving a hand through his hair. “It’s not safe to be on open water with no radio. If we get into trouble, we’re fucked.”

“We’re fuckednow,” I remind him, but he shakes his head.