Simon walloped her in the side of the head with his fist, sending her sideways to the ground. She could immediately feel her skin split and the warm rush of blood. Her ears roared. Simon kicked her in the abdomen, her money-making ovaries heaving. This sobered her up enough to grasp that she’d lost. She wasn’t getting the drugs or the money.

  Katie and Ariel were screaming, “Stop! No, stop!”

  “Get up.” Simon pulled Carmen upright by her hair. She felt like a limp marionette hanging from strings. Her scalp was on fire. Her eyes were sparking white. “All of you. Up. Get up now.” Simon swung his gun at Ariel, Katie, and Ellie.

  Katie was staring at her with big, questioning eyes. “What did you do, Carmen?”

  Did Katie ask that just with her eyes? Or was she actually talking? Carmen put her hands up in front of her. “No, they had nothing to do with it. It was just me, Simon. I needed money. I saw it when I helped Marie after she twisted her ankle. I took it. Just me. Please, please, leave them out of it.”

  Ariel was keening now, adding an even worse layer of panic to what was happening.

  “I told you all to get the fuck up. Tell me where my shit is or I start shooting your friends one by one until you do,” Simon growled at her.

  “No, no, please. It’s in the woods.” Carmen choked out the words. “I hid it.”

  Simon got them into a single line, pulling Carmen’s arm roughly, while Marie kept her gun on everyone around the fire. “Let’s go get it.”

  “They don’t need to come with us, they don’t know anything—” Simon shook her back and forth by her hair.

  “I don’t fucking believe you,” Simon shouted down the back of her head, then pulled her upright again, twisted her around, and aimed the gun at Ellie’s head.

  “I can kill this one now. Is that what you want?”

  Ellie was remarkably calm.

  “No, no, please don’t.”

  “Then shut the fuck up and do what I say.” He dragged her forward. “Any of you try to run and I will kill Carmen. And then I will kill each of you slowly and painfully.”

  They were all moving now. They walked away from the safety of the ceremony, across the lawn, past the house, toward the paths. No one stopped Simon. He kept her at the end of the line (how poignant), in what felt like a death march into the woods. Away from the light of the fire, Carmen felt as if she were being swallowed whole by darkness. Her eyes felt crossed. Simon’s grip was a vise on her bicep. She felt small, child-size, compared to his rage, his gun.

  Katie was in front of her, mindlessly whispering into the night air, “What did you do, Carmen? What did you do? Who do you think you are? Who do you think you are?” But then Carmen realized it wasn’t Katie but a snakelike hiss cycling through her own head.

  Ariel kept up her pitchy weeping. Simon told her to shut up, his fingers flexing tighter around Carmen’s arm. “Which way now?” he asked her, thrusting the gun harder into her ribs. She’d hardly noticed, but the manicured, wood-chipped path had split into two.

  Which way? Carmen didn’t know. She felt so turned around. She thought she could hear the lake but couldn’t figure out where exactly it was. Everything looked so different at night, and she was feeling so woozy. The piney smell of the woods was like a stinging resin flicking into her eyes. Sweat was gathering on her nose; waves of heat were rolling up her back. She was trying hard to swallow down the bile crawling up her throat.

  “This way,” she managed to reply with a surprising level of confidence. Simon grunted, jabbed her forward with the gun. A few minutes and they hit another divide in the narrowing trail. “Here,” she said, and led them down the left trail. When the path split again, Carmen almost admitted she was lying, that she didn’t know where she was, but then she spotted the lake through the trees, moonlit and gleaming. But it was still too far away; it was all the way at the bottom of a thickly treed slope.

  She wasn’t anywhere near the spot where she’d sunk the drugs.

  What was she going to do? Keep everyone hiking through the woods until it was obvious she didn’t know where she’d put the cocaine? Try to buy time and keep Simon’s spirits up by mumbling that it must be there somewhere, like she’d just misplaced a set of keys?

  The earth was shifting; the forest kept rearranging itself. Everything looked the same. Every little dip and opening toward the lake looked identical. When the trail they were on wound back to the previous trail, Simon pushed the others out of his way and got right in Carmen’s face.

  “Stop playing games! Where the fuck is it?”

  Think. She’d never felt so stoned in her life. She lifted her finger and pointed in the vague direction of the lake.

  “In the lake? Are you fucking kidding me?” Simon’s arms were out, and he pressed a fist hard into his forehead. “You’re telling me you put $350,000 of cocaine in fucking water to just … what? Float away? Putain! You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”

  “It’s wrapped in plastic. I made sure it wouldn’t get, like, wet.” Carmen’s tongue had gone woolly. She was using filler words, and no one trusted anyone who used filler words. “They’re, like, tied to a tree with rope.”

  Simon’s veiny forehead was slick with sweat. He winced and scratched his ear with the gun. “Where in the lake? Where?”

  Carmen gazed around, but nothing looked familiar. “I can’t see properly. Could I have the flashlight?”

  Simon moved ahead of them, handed it to her, then aimed the gun at her head. “Any of you bitches move and I’ll shoot her, okay? Understand?”

  Carmen waved the flashlight around, feeling the barrel of Simon’s gun pressed into the back of her skull. She couldn’t see Xs on the trees. The trees themselves looked like stretched, funhouse versions of trees. Her friends were giving her pleading looks. “There. That’s the tree. It’s down there.”

  “You lead, and if it’s not there, you die.”

  She was lying, of course. She really had no idea where she was.

  And then Katie started puking.

  KATIE

  Bewildered, her legs hardly working, Katie kept telling herself none of this was really happening. Her vision was pixelated as if everything she was seeing were a mere suggestion. Tree branches were floating over her head, bright and vibrant as peacock feathers. She would blink, and the trees shifted into black antennae reaching up into the night sky. She’d blink again and she could see the trees expanding and contracting like giant lungs. Her own breath swirled in front of her, like a zigzaggy light show. She knew what she was seeing wasn’t real, so maybe Simon wasn’t either. It was just a bad trip that would be over soon. It was too discordant with the spiritual purge she wanted so badly. Now she was being taken hostage for something she could hardly grasp.

  How could Carmen steal drugs? Fucking Carmen and money. She would have lent her more than a paltry three grand. She would have lent her ten grand or twenty or thirty or whatever it took to talk her out of something so dangerous. How could she have put all of them in such danger? Ariel was blubbering in fragmented, teeth-chattering sentences that sounded like the start of a prayer, “Dr. Dave … Dr. Dave … save us … please, please save us. I know you can hear me.”

  Why was Ariel praying to Dr. Dave?

  Dr. Dave wasn’t going to save them.

  Katie’s thoughts spun frantically. We should be able to take him. There are four of us and only one of him. And a gun. But don’t think about the gun. A distraction. She had to distract Simon and then maybe her friends could get away. She had this odd, puffy-chested urge to be the hero again. Just like when she’d played Shelby Spade, she’d be the one to spin things around in a few compact minutes and make everything right again.

  Plus, she was planning to turn herself in tomorrow anyway. Who cared if she died? And if she didn’t, wouldn’t it work in her favor to be the one who’d saved her friends from a homicidal drug dealer?

  Katie doubled over and started to throw up. She didn’t even have to really fake it; her gut was churning. Simon grabbed the flashlight back from Carmen, and as he moved toward Katie, she stood back up and screamed, “Run! Ruuuuun!”

  Simon whipped around and waved his gun, scanning the flashlight over everyone’s faces. They all just stood there. Carmen swayed back and forth, Ariel continued her pitchy wail, and Ellie stepped backward but then stopped. Katie had misjudged how close they all were. How hemmed in they were by the steep incline of trees on their left and the drop toward the lake on their right. Simon could easily pick them off one by one as they slowly scrambled either up or down. The tea had completely distorted her sense of space.

  “Are you fucking stupid? Tabarnak! Any of you run and I’ll kill you.” Simon grabbed Katie in a headlock and shouted down the back of her head as he dragged her forward. She kept her eyes clamped shut, expecting a bullet to hurtle into the back of her skull, Simon making an example out of her. She could hardly breathe. “Next time, I am just going to start shooting. It’s the last time I say it. You understand me? I will kill all of you. Now just get me my fucking blow. I’ve had enough of this bullshit.”

  “Simon, Simon, it’s okay. It’s down there.” Carmen had her hands out, as if she were standing on a balance beam. She pointed vaguely down a narrow bushwhacked trail that sloped toward the lake. Simon grunted, kept his arm around Katie’s neck in a stiff choke hold, pressed the gun even tighter against her head, and dragged her along in awkward tandem. “Come on, all of you. Go down there. If it’s here, you can all go, but if you try to run, I will kill her, and as I already promised, I will find each of you and kill you too.” He gestured for them to go.

  Simon was walking backward, using his gun to point at each of them. Suddenly, Simon grunted, and the flashlight whirled. He was dragging Katie down with him. He let go of her as they fell. A gun blast rang out. A flock of birds shot out of the trees. Ariel screamed. A rancid odor burst into the air.

  Something hard jabbed Katie in the back. She rolled onto her side.

  The flashlight had dropped and spun fully around, illuminating what they’d tripped over. It was Lily.

  Katie was within kissing distance of her corpse.

  Her face was cement gray, and her flat, dead eyes were aimed skyward. Her lips were puffy, and it looked like an animal had been gnawing at her nose and her ears. Her torso was bloodstained; her dried-up shirt had several slits down the front. Her ropy, braided hair was fanned around her head like a rake stuffed with leaves.

  Seeing the body was too horrible. Something inside Katie snapped. She was a murderer. She had to get away from it. Without thinking, she ran.

  No, no, no.

  ELLIE

  Ellie moved quickly. She slid forward, grabbed the flashlight, and hammered it into Simon’s head while he was down, once, twice. She heard a splotchy cracking noise like his skull was giving way. His grip on the gun loosened. She grabbed it and shot him in the head.

  She flopped down, heaving, trying to catch her breath.

  Of all the potential ways Ellie thought this weekend could end, this was not one of them. Never did she think she’d be giving a police statement about being held at gunpoint by some Quebec Mafia couple and led into the woods because Katie’s idiot friend stole cocaine from them. This was never on her list of possible ways the weekend could go wrong. The entire time she was being led into the woods, she knew they had to do something. If Carmen gave him the drugs, he would kill them all because that’s the way these things went. She wondered if the other three would do something. Anything at all? Or would it all be left to her? And then Katie had tried and failed, of course.

  And Lily. Her body had finally been found. Poor thing. She had to have died a slow, slow death, her organs shutting down one by one as her legs came to a stuttering stop, until she dropped and went to black all alone. She saved them in the end. Sweet irony.

  If Simon hadn’t tripped over her body, they would probably all be dead. Now what?

  The police would come. They would take statements for something she’d never planned for. And where is Katie?

  Surprisingly, the flashlight still worked. Ellie picked it up again and passed the light over Carmen. Still clutching the gun with her right hand, her finger twitched over the gun’s trigger. “I think I’ve been shot.” Carmen held her hand out, and it was slick with blood.

  “Oh, thank you, thank you, Ellie. Oh my god,” Ariel’s voice squawked out of the dark, jangling Ellie’s nerves again. She resumed her blubbering—or maybe she’d never stopped—and Ellie had only managed to tune her out while bashing in Simon’s head. Her unrelenting, watery panic was like cutlery squealing against a dinner plate.

  She couldn’t see Katie anywhere. “Where’s Katie? Which way did she go?”

  Carmen looked around from where she was splayed out. “I don’t know.”

  “Katie? Where is she? Did you see her, Ariel? Kaaaatie? Kaaaatie?” Ellie called out into the darkness. She weaved her flashlight back and forth into the trees. Nothing. Katie was gone. She had taken off like a coward. She had left all of them behind and run away.

  “Ellie, what happened to your accent?” Carmen was trying to stand up. Everything went suddenly quiet. Even Ariel paused in her whiny weeping.

  “My accent? Whatever do you mean?” Ellie said with Emma Watson precision, but she knew it was too late.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. I keep slipping up at the last moment. Now everything is fucking ruined. Again. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t try again. Not after putting in all of this effort. All of this time. No. No. Not unless.

  “Yeah Ellie, it was like you didn’t even have an accent,” Ariel said. The sound of her flat, nasal Minnesotan accent announcing Ellie’s moment of failure did something to Ellie. Two full days of looking at Ariel’s insipid face, of listening to her distort Dr. Dave’s mantras into something she would probably turn into a bumper sticker and slap on whatever candy-colored hatchback she owned back home, was too much.

  Unless.

  Again Ellie adapted to this new situation. Took control.

  Carmen was up now in a kneeling position, one hand pressed over her hip.

  Ellie felt the gun in her hand. Carmen was already, at the very least, grazed by a bullet. It would all be stitched up so perfectly. She tilted her head back, allowed herself a second to look up at the universe smiling down at her.

  She turned and aimed the flashlight at Ariel. In one swift movement, Ellie brought the gun up and shot Ariel in the face. Her stupid bald head—what had she thought she was proving?—snapped back. Her face didn’t even get a chance to register surprise. Her body slammed to the ground.

  “Gawd, I’ve wanted to do that all weekend.”

  CARMEN

  “What the fuck! What the fuck? Why did you do that?” Carmen screeched. Ellie emitted a harsh cackle, and Carmen scuttled backward.

  What the fuck was happening?

  Ellie pivoted toward her. Under the silver glow of the moon, she looked gruesome. Her features had turned steely. Spritzes of Simon’s blood stippled her face. She cocked her head slowly like she was getting something out of watching her reaction, and then she slowly lifted and aimed the gun at Carmen. The tea, the tea made Ellie deranged. She’s hallucinating some other scenario right now that’s making her homicidal.

  Carmen ducked low and took off into the bushes. Ellie got off two missed shots that brought up the ground around Carmen, then another that chipped a tree just ahead of her. The glow of the flashlight switched off.

  Carmen weaved through trees, going deeper and deeper into the woods. The bullet hole in her side was pumping blood as she ran. Branches slapped at her face and arms. She couldn’t really see where she was going. It was so dark. She focused on dodging low-hanging branches and the trees themselves so she didn’t run headlong into one and knock herself out for Ellie to come up and shoot her execution-style. She was so focused, she nearly went off the side of a rocky ledge, her legs braking, her body practically rearing into reverse.

  The crunch of feet. The flashlight beam turned back on. Ellie was on the move. Hunting her down.

  Carmen crouched down behind a frail bush growing out of a rock and watched the flashlight move in the opposite direction, stop, and slowly pass over tree trunks behind a large stump. Keep going, keep going. Carmen couldn’t breathe.

  The flashlight swiveled around and started to move toward her.

  Carmen had nowhere to go. She was trapped on a ledge.

  She inched forward and looked down at the lake. It was inky black except for the reflection of the moon scything the surface down the middle.

  Another pop, pop of the gun. Bullets whizzed by her.

  She had no choice. She had to jump.

  Fuck.

  She hurled her body off the ledge into the lake. The bullet hole in her hip searing white-hot pain as she hit the cold water.

  Ellie got off a few more missed shots, water splashing up like sparks.

  Carmen tried to keep herself submerged underwater so Ellie couldn’t see her. She tried to guess at how many bullets might be in that gun. Ellie kept turning the flashlight on and off, to confuse Carmen where she might be, forcing her to swim around in circles, frantically paddling away from the strobe of lights.

  Ellie didn’t have such good aim when her target was moving instead of just standing there, thanking her. She heard Ellie shout, “Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

  Her prim English accent was completely gone now. In its place was a West Coast grinded drawl.

  Who is this woman? Who is Ellie? This wasn’t the tea. Someone doesn’t lose their accent just because they took a hallucinogen.

  She’d had no reaction when she saw Lily’s body, or when she’d hammered Simon’s head in with the efficiency of a carpenter banging a nail into a board.

  The flashlight continued to flick on and off.

  On then off.

  The only thing that even made sense was that Ellie wanted the cocaine. Simon had said how much it was worth, and in a split second, she’d decided she wanted it for herself. Or maybe she’d been in Simon and Marie’s cottage too? She’d take $350,000 over a marriage with Nate and a sister-in-law she clearly had to put up with, and she was willing to kill them all for it. So she really was a gold digger; Katie—if Ellie didn’t kill her first—would feel so vindicated.

 

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