“Don’t you leave me down here, Tress Montor,” Felicity orders, somehow maintaining an edge of authority even though she’s helpless.
“It’s okay. It’ll be okay,” I tell her. “I’ll lock the door.”
It’s a dumbass thing to say, and not only because I put the lock on the inside of the door. I don’t know why I’m comforting the person I’m specifically trying to keep on edge. But I am, and I keep doing it. “I’ll be back,” I call over my shoulder as I walk away, Felicity’s pleas following me.
I emerge into the kitchen to find Brynn crying and mixing water and beer into a Solo cup. I freeze, more alarmed at the sight of her than I would have been if the cat was waiting patiently for me, tail curled around its front paws.
“What the fuck?” Brynn says when she spots me, eyes going to the basement door as it clicks shut behind me. “I mean, what the actual fuck?”
“I—”
I’m trying to formulate an answer when I realize it’s a rhetorical question. Brynn isn’t asking me why I was in the basement. I don’t think she even cares. She cracks another beer and foam sprays onto the bright green leotard she’s wearing. I recognize it from the livestream; she’s the person feeding Ribbit his drinks.
“You’re watering it down,” I say, surveying the mess of empty cans and water bottles strewn across the counter.
“Yeah,” she says, wiping tears off her face. “He’ll die of alcohol poisoning if I don’t. And they’re just . . . they’re just . . . they’re letting it happen.” She starts crying again, full sobs wracking her body as she hangs over the porcelain sink, tears falling against mold that has crept up the sides.
“Not even just letting it happen,” she goes on. “They’re encouraging it. Did you see this?”
She pulls out her phone, showing me the comments under the livestream.
Ask him if he’s ever killed someone
Tell him to whip it out
Is he a virgin?
Fake news
Ask him if he’s ever killed someone
That last one from the same poster, insistent.
“Hugh sent me this screen cap from his phone.” She flips through some pics, smiling photos of her and Felicity; a group shot near a bonfire; Gretchen’s dog, posing in a Halloween costume as a skeleton.
“Look,” she says, pulling up a shot of a messages app with over two thousand unread notifications. “Somebody posted Hugh’s account info, and he’s getting questions from all over the world. It’s . . . it’s . . .”
She’s shaking, and I take her phone from her. Not all the comments are enthusiastic.
Somebody stop this
If you’re there please, someone help him. This is wrong.
Does anyone recognize where they are? Somebody needs to get out there.
Everybody chill. This is obviously all staged.
Those kids are not okay! Do you see the ones that are passed out?
They aren’t passed out—look at the puke, look at their skin. They’re sick.
Jesus Christ somebody call the cops
There’s concern but it’s all the same. Somebody—somebody else—should do something. Comments are coming fast and hard. I can’t keep up, and Brynn’s phone shakes in my hand when a screenshot pops up, the upper-right-hand corner circled in red with an arrow pointing to four dark paws, leaving the shot.
What the fuck is THAT? Did anybody else see that????
Yawn . . . Staged
I hand Brynn her phone back. “I’ve got to go.”
“Go where?” she snaps. “No, you’ve got to help me.”
“Help you?” I ask, truly flummoxed. She’s currently double-fisting watered-down beers to take to Ribbit. I don’t see how I’m needed. But Brynn’s back in control of herself and giving me orders like I’m a freshman on the volleyball team.
“Everybody’s puking their guts out,” she says. “We need to get water into them, keep them hydrated. If you see anybody lying down, turn them onto their side so they don’t asphyxiate on their own puke. I’ll be back,” she says, pointing one red cup at me, her eyes narrowed, “and if I find out you went downstairs to sell drugs instead of helping me, I swear to God, I’ll call the cops myself and we’ll all be fucked.”
I’ll be way more fucked than anybody else, but Brynn doesn’t need to know that. “Okay,” I tell her, hands in the air in surrender. “Okay, I’ll start . . . watering people.”
I wait for her to disappear into the front hall, the kitchen door swinging into place behind her, then take the servants’ stairs up the back—the same path the cat must have taken to avoid being seen. I stop, unzip my backpack, and pull out a flashlight. Ribbit didn’t run bulbs up the back staircase, and I can’t see anything once I’m more than a few steps high. The walls are close and tight here; the servants not rating the open, expansive staircase from the front room.
Sure enough, muddy prints precede me. I wave my light, following as they lead me to a kid wearing a ragged Red Hot Chili Peppers shirt. He’s on his back, one shoe loose and dangling. I prop him up, feeling the heat of his skin, and lean him against the wall.
“Mom?” he asks.
I flash my light upward, following the prints, then back at him. There are bright spots on his cheeks, and his eyes are glittery, unfocused. I debate for a second, then remembering Brynn’s threat, hoist him over one shoulder. I’m almost to the bottom when he loses his beers. Warm now, his vomit splatters over the back of my legs and into my shoes.
So much for karma.
I prop him in a chair at the table and put a bottle of water in front him, uncapping another one to rinse myself. My shoes and socks are a lost cause, so I take them off and roll up the ends of my jeans before I go after the cat again, now barefoot, like him. I reclaim my bag and flashlight on the stairs, stalling when I reach the top.
Once I walk out there, I’m on camera for the whole world. So far, I’ve avoided being on-screen and can plausibly deny it if anyone says they saw me at the Allan house tonight. But there are enough phones out there with enough angles that as soon as I walk out into the light, my presence can be confirmed.
I slide down, back against the wall as I crouch, and check my phone. The livestream is still going, and I can hear Ribbit’s voice from my hiding spot, seconds before what I see on-screen as the delay catches up.
“Six inches, I mean that’s pretty average, right?”
There’s some nervous male laughter, but it’s suddenly interrupted by the double front doors swinging open. I hear the bang of one connecting with the wall, followed by the light trickle of plaster falling to the ground from the impact. The person livestreaming swivels to the disturbance and there’s Gretchen Astor, her Cleopatra costume torn and wet, her face a dark smear of ruined mascara.
“Guys.” She hiccups and holds up a dismembered tail. “Something ate my dog.”
Chapter 42
Felicity
Something runs across my foot, and I jump, the involuntary movement sending a spike of pain up my leg. Tress gave my ankle a decent tap right around the twenty-fifth time I said fuck you, and I’m paying for it now. Pain is a constant in this new version of my life, one that, technically speaking, only just began but has superseded everything that came before it.