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Phoebe

Then

It’s Christmas.

Our last night in Jagged Rock. Tomorrow, we’ll drive to the closest airport and fly back to Sydney, where we’ll spend two more nights before returning home.

It’s time to implement the plan I came up with the other night after talking with Declan.

My reflection watches me from the dirty bathroom mirror, as unfamiliar as a stranger. Dark circles hang below my eyes, my cheeks concave. I’ve lost so much weight since I arrived here, since things began to crumble. My eyes, while always big, now look massive, staring back at me blankly.

I thought if I could convince the others I was the person I wanted to be—confident, brash Phoebe—I would somehow turn into her. But all I did was cause more problems, hurt more people. And now I’m back at square one.

The quiet, beaten-down outcast.

This is what you deserve , my brother’s voice whispers in my ear.

I shake my head violently. I need to start over, for real, to make it stick this time. For the sake of the baby growing inside of me. And the only way to do that is to get away. From the others, from Jagged Rock.

“Oh,” Claire says as she opens the bathroom door. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were in here. You were so…quiet.”

She’s tried a few times to get my advice on Declan, why he’s withdrawn from her. She even slept in our room last night for the first time in weeks.

All I can tell her is that he’s grieving Tomas. He’ll come around. It doesn’t satisfy her, but I’m not really her friend after all, am I? I’m only something of convenience, a person she turns to when she doesn’t have anyone else.

And I don’t want to be that person anymore.

“Are you going to the dinner tonight?” she asks.

I wish I could say no—that I could leave the others, and especially the person who put me in this situation, without so much as a goodbye—but it’s part of the plan.

***

So here I am, sitting at a long table filled with people who won’t catch my eye.

We’re in the room off the Inn’s lobby. The one equipped with a subpar kitchen and a wide expanse of space.

I snag a seat across from Declan, who shoots me a small smile. The others pretend not to notice when I sit down. A quiet buzz of conversation traverses the table, gliding directly past me. It’s like I’m back in high school. The one no one dares to acknowledge, let alone talk to.

A few bottles of wine sit together in the middle of the table. Two are empty, having already made the rounds. And there’s a static in the air, a looseness, as everyone leans into the intoxication.

Something rumbles in my stomach. Not from hunger, but something else. Anxiety. An ominous tension bubbles in my gut as the minutes tick by.

Out of nowhere, raised voices break through the wall from the lobby next to us, sending a hushed silence over the table. Without warning, Nick Gould’s massive form shoves through the door as he emerges into the room red-faced and seething.

Despite myself, I flinch. He yanks the chair at the head of the table away, but before he can sit down, Randy comes rushing in after him.

“You can’t do this,” Randy says, his greasy hair standing on end, his eyes wild.

“Do. Not. Tell me what I can or cannot do.” Nick’s voice fills the entire room, and Randy flinches.

“But I was dependent on that money. Those bookings. I’d made plans.”

“Enough,” Nick booms.

And that is that. Randy looks as if there are a million more things he wants to say, but Nick is done, his body turned away from him, facing the rest of us.

Nick holds up his water glass, which looks miniature in his hand. “Merry Christmas,” he snarls towards the rest of us as Randy slinks off back to the front desk.

None of us have any idea what’s happened, what we’ve just witnessed. But on autopilot, we raise our glasses anyway—mine filled with water, like Nick’s, everyone else’s with wine—terrified of what his reaction will be if we don’t follow suit.

Moments later, as if on cue, two people walk in, hands laden with food. Locals the program apparently hired to cook for us. They deposit the food on the table, not sausages for once, but plates stacked high with reddened beef, bowls of roasted vegetables, a side of fried potatoes.

I feel my stomach flip. I know I need to eat, but I don’t think I can force any of this down. In contrast, the others at the table eagerly pass the plates and dig in, ravenous. Crowns of broccoli and burnt edges of meat tip over from the bowls with their tipsy handoffs.

“I’d like to make a toast.” Nick’s gruff voice once again cuts through the conversation, and we all halt. “I know this wasn’t the experience some of yous had hoped for. And I know we’re still upset about Tomas. What happened was a horrible accident, but I hope that—”

A loud, upbeat tune blasts through the room as Nick scrambles for his phone. “Goddammit,” he says, although I can tell he’s relieved to be spared the rest of his speech. “This is the school. I’ve got to take this.”

As Nick hurries out into the backyard, an excited hum returns to the table.

“What do you think that was?” Ellery asks.

“I heard Tomas’s mother is suing Hamilton. That the college is cancelling the Adventure Abroad program,” Josh says.

All eyes shift to Hari, her fork raised halfway to her mouth.

“I can neither confirm nor deny.”

Josh continues. “Based on that showdown we just witnessed, I’m guessing Randy wasn’t too happy about the news.”

“It’s not right.” The comment comes from two seats down on my side of the table. Adrien, her words sluggish. Clearly, she’s hit the wine hard already. “Randy shouldn’t be punished for what happened to Tomas. The only person at fault is her.”

She extends her long manicured finger in my direction in front of Claire, and I resist the urge to grab it and snap it back.

“It was an accident, though,” Ellery says. I would be grateful, but she says it halfheartedly, as if convincing herself. Adrien acts as if she doesn’t hear her.

Keep it together, Phoebe , I say to myself. Just let it slide . But Adrien’s finger doesn’t move, and every second it remains pointed in my direction, my rage grows.

“Get your fucking finger out of my face.” The words come out like a growl.

Adrien finally lowers her hand, but before I can feel any relief, her mouth is open again. “He would never have gone in that water if it wasn’t for you. And all for what? Because he tattled on you? Because you were jealous of me and Kyan? Because—”

“Oh, honey, you flatter yourself. As if I could ever be jealous of you and this. ” I let my eyes graze over Kyan.

The remark escapes my mouth before I can think better of it, and within seconds, chaos erupts. Kyan shouting, Ellery trying to calm everyone down.

Adrien, hand wrapped tightly around her glass of red wine, stands up so abruptly that her chair falls backward. The noise must alert Randy, who flies through the door of the room, curiosity clearly piqued.

“Whoa,” he yells, which startles Adrien, who spins around quickly. Too quickly. The wine flies out of her hand and directly into Randy’s chest, dousing his white shirt—one of those horrid pieces you get from souvenir shops that reads FBI: Female Body Inspector —in red. It looks like he’s been shot.

And suddenly, everything falls silent.

“Get out!” Randy’s yell alights the room, his face the same shade as Nick’s mere minutes ago. “Ya fucking bitch, get out!” For a second, I think he’s going to lunge towards Adrien.

“Don’t you dare talk to her like that,” Kyan says, his voice cold, inching towards Randy.

Randy instinctively takes a step away from Kyan, which I can tell makes him even angrier. “Get out. Get the fuck out of here. You privileged pieces of shite.”

And then he’s gone, leaving us standing there.

Adrien’s eyes turn once again to mine, but before she can say anything more, I take Randy’s advice and leave the room.

***

I run, past Nick who’s absorbed in his phone call and oblivious to this latest drama, and I keep going, until the sounds coming from the Inn are only whispers.

When I finally stop, I look up, taking in the stars glittering in the night sky. I play Adrien’s words back in my head.

He would never have gone in that water if it wasn’t for you.

And suddenly, I picture Tomas’s face. His round tan cheeks pursed in a smile, his dark eyes wide behind his glasses.

A beautiful, generous man. One whose life I ripped away from him.

And I start to cry. A tear or two at first, until it avalanches into a torrent of emotions, so strong that it drives me to my knees.

“Phoebe?”

There’s a part of me that wants it to be Claire, giving me one last chance to make things right. To get our relationship back to where it once was. To give me a friend again.

But it’s not.

“Are you okay?” Declan asks, his face illuminated by the stars. And then, when he sees my face, “Oh, Phoebe, no. You didn’t deserve that.”

“I do deserve it. All of this was my fault.”

“Hey,” he murmurs, pulling me into him so that my nose is buried in the wool of his sweater, a shield against the evening chill. I inhale deeply, the woodiness of his scent hitting me like aromatherapy.

And then I pull away, bringing my face up to meet his.

There’s a part of me that knows this is wrong. So wrong. He’s with Claire. Even if we’re not close anymore, I can’t do this to her.

But the thought flees as soon as his lips touch mine.