The After Girls (20 page)

“Sydney!” She heard a voice behind her. Startled, she let go of Carter’s hand and turned around.

It was Ben.

“Have you seen Ella?” he asked. His face looked tense, strained, like he was trying to push away thoughts that he didn’t want to have.

Sydney shook her head. “I haven’t seen her all night. I texted her but she didn’t answer.”

“I can’t find her,” Ben said. “After your set, we went to get food, and we were standing in line together, and then I turned around, and she just wasn’t there.”

“Maybe she went to the bathroom or something,” she said.

Ben’s face softened for a minute. “I looked all around. I couldn’t find her. Maybe you could go in and check?”

“Sure,” she said, even though her blood was already pumping faster.

“You need me to do anything, dude?” Carter asked.

But Sydney shook her head before Ben could answer. “I’m sure she’s just in the bathroom,” she tried to sound confident. “Don’t worry about it.”

And she grabbed Ben by the arm before Carter could protest. Having Carter with them would only make it worse. Then it would be a search party, and she was sure that Ella had just gotten distracted or gotten caught in the bathroom or that the barbecue didn’t sit right with her or something.
Nothing’s wrong.

She and Ben pushed through the crowd and finally made it to the clearing. Behind them, people cheered as Broken Brothers finished a song.

“Did you call her?”

“Of course I called her,” he said, and the strain was there again. “Straight to voicemail. Her phone’s probably dead.”

There was a set of skeevy public bathrooms near the river. “Be right back,” she said to Ben, and Sydney pushed through the line of girls and didn’t bother to stop and explain. She ignored the protests, walking inside. Water pooled on the bottom of the tile floor.

“Ella,” she said loudly, walking down the aisle, looking under each stall for a pair of sandals she would recognize. A pair of sandals she’d known for years. “Ella?” she called again. Nothing. Suntanned girls came out of the stalls and pushed around her.

“Ella,” she tried one more time. There was no reason to worry. There was really no reason to worry. They were being ridiculous. But she knew she hadn’t thought that there was any reason to worry about Astrid either. And now she was dead.

Sydney walked outside, and Ben’s face fell when he saw her.

She shook her head, without bothering to explain. “Come on,” she said. “We’ll check everywhere. Don’t worry,” she said. And she said it so convincingly that she almost believed it herself.

The craft stalls and tables were deserted. The vendors had long stopped selling. Most of the tables were turned over, in the process of being packed up and carted away. A few stray artists were still putting up their stuff. Still, they walked the length of it, calling Ella’s name. Nothing.

There were three stages, and they pushed through the crowds of each one. They didn’t bother to find Carter again. Sydney’s heart beat faster with every face she saw that wasn’t Ella’s. Nothing was happening, she told herself. Nothing bad was happening. But that was the thing. That was the shittiest part of it. That feeling she’d had once, that feeling of safety, that feeling that bad shit happened to other people, not to you, that was gone. That had left quickly with Astrid. Bad things did happen. Bad things happened every day. There was no reassuring yourself that everything would be okay. Because if Sydney had learned anything this summer, it was that it sure as hell wouldn’t.

The food was set up near the edge of the woods. It was after they’d retraced their steps multiple times that they saw it — an opening, a clear one, a path, into the thick woods — and she knew beyond a doubt that Ben was thinking the same thing that she was.

He was the one to speak first: “Does that lead to your cabin?” he asked.

Yes, she knew. Yes, of course. Because they’d taken that same path a million times to get to the river. To tube and sun and talk about things that now seemed so meaningless, so trivial. Because she knew that Ella had been obsessed with that damn cabin since those photos had appeared. Because she’d been obsessed with anything Astrid might have left behind since she’d gone and left them.

“Yes,” she said, her voice surprisingly calm. And she walked forward, away from the lights and the music and the sounds and the smells of the fair.

Straight into the thick and heavy darkness where she knew Ella would be.

Ella hadn’t intended to leave. But she’d definitely seen red.

Ben had been in line, ordering more sweet tea, and someone stepped on the back of her heel, and when she turned to cast an annoyed glance, she forgot about the redneck behind her. That was when she saw the red, glistening in the light of the moon and the stage and the corndog machine.

She turned back to Ben, but he was already up at the front, paying, and then the red was gone, disappearing into the woods, and she knew that she didn’t have a whole lot of time, and before she could even remember making a decision, she was pushing through the crowds and drowning out the music and focusing all her senses on that one point in front of her.

She knew that Ben would freak, and Sydney would definitely think she’d lost it. She would have texted, but her phone was dead. She felt a chill as soon as she stepped into the woods. There were no lights now — she didn’t have her flashlight. She didn’t have anything. But up ahead, she heard the light rustle of leaves. She knew that someone was out there.

Her heart pounded as she pushed through the brush and tried to stay on the path. She didn’t go this way as often, and never in the dark. The sounds of the woods were amplified now that she was away from everyone else — the flutter of wings, the clicking of cicadas was so loud, she felt like it would overtake her.

She stopped to see if she could still hear the rustling. It was silent up ahead. What if she really had lost it?

But in moments she heard loud thuds. Ella broke into a run, pushing leaves out of her face, moving only by the light of the moon.

“Stop,” she screamed. “Wait!”

Branches scraped against her, and the goosebumps prickled on her arms, on the back of her neck, even on her calves, as she ran as fast as she could.

The crackling thuds turned softer, reaching the clearing. Ella quickened her pace, and she was almost there — God help her, she was almost there — she was terrified, but she couldn’t stop — and she could see the faint light of the clearing and that flash of red, but before she could get out, her toe caught on one of the roots — and she wailed in pain as her knee hit hard, sharp rock.

She heard the rustling again. Running. Leaving. Why oh why was she always leaving?

Ella ignored the pain, grabbing a branch, and she was almost up, almost ready to keep running, keep chasing until she got an answer, but then the branch gave way, and she lost her balance, tripping forward, into the clearing, and for an instant she saw the cabin — its door wide open, beckoning — until her foot caught another root and she was stumbling again, her body twisting as she fell, her head hitting the ground with a thud.

And in an instant, everything went black.

• • •

She didn’t know how long she was out, but when she woke up, she was on the ground, staring up at the stars. Right away she remembered why she was here.

She pulled herself up to a sitting position and carefully drew her knee towards her chest. Pain shot through her body and from the eerie light above she could see that her shin was covered in blood. Her head ached.

Slowly, carefully, she stood up. She knew she should turn around right then and head back to the fairgrounds to find Ben and Sydney. But she didn’t know what time it was. She didn’t even know if they’d still be there.

Her whole body ached now, and she needed to sit down. Just for a minute. Just to get herself together.

She walked slowly towards the cabin, each step sending knifelike pain through her leg. She reached the porch and pulled the door open. She walked in, dragging it shut behind her.

Ella ambled her way over to the cabinet — she could at least light some candles and figure out what to do next. Chills ran up and down her spine as she inched forward, one hand on the wall, darkness surrounding her completely. The smoothness of the photos of Astrid guided her way.

There was a smell. One she couldn’t place, but one she knew that she knew.

And then she wasn’t touching the photos anymore. She felt it, the cabinet, their cabinet, the rough-hewn wood and the crack down the middle. She found the handle and pulled, and she felt a pain, a dull, solid pain in her toe as something landed on her foot. She knelt down, slowly, hanging on to the handle so she wouldn’t fall, and she found something smooth, round and cylindrical, then skinny at the top. She held it up to her nose and sniffed. An empty wine bottle.

Ella put the bottle down, and felt her way to the candles. She fiddled with the matches, and then she struck one, and all of a sudden there was light before her. She lit the candles as quickly as she could and then shook out the fire of the match.

Lifting one of the candles up, she turned around, gasping as she realized where that smell had come from. There were flowers everywhere. Some in pots, some strewn about the perimeter of the room. White flowers. Pink flowers. Frilly, ugly, and cheap. The perfect flowers for a girl who always pulled for the underdog — who preferred stale, candy-dish candy to chocolate; bad horror movies to anything with an actual plot.

The flowers that everyone kind of hated. Well, almost everyone.

They were carnations. Astrid’s favorite.

The door of the cabin was open when they got to the clearing.

Lights flickered from inside.

Sydney ran in as fast as she could and screamed when she saw Ella, lying there, curled up on the ground, surrounded by a circle of candles that made her skin look pale and ghoulish. But that wasn’t the worst part. It was the flowers. All around her. Everywhere.

Astrid’s flowers. The ones she always said never got their due. The ones she thought were so pretty even though no one else ever did. Carnations.

In a flash, Ben was behind her, pushing her out of the way. He knelt down next to Ella, knocking the candles over. Wax spilled across the floor.

Ella’s eyes flickered open. She looked startled, as if coming out of a dream.

“Hey,” she said. “Hey.” She started to sit up.

Ben had his arm around her, but his voice was stern. Angry. “Are you okay? Why did you just leave me like that? We were worried sick.”

“I’m fine,” Ella said, looking at Sydney now, too. “I’m fine.”

But Sydney shook her head. This was bad. This was really bad. She’d known Ella was upset, she’d known that she was having a hard time dealing with everything, but this? She’d turned this cabin into a tomb, with flowers and candles and her lying right there in the middle. It was sick.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “Why the flowers?”

“What do you mean?” Ella asked. “I didn’t put them here.”

Ben looked at Sydney then, his eyes questioning. Scared.

“How did they get here then?”

“I don’t know,” Ella said. She stood up now, with Ben’s help. “They were here when I got here.”

“And the candles?” Sydney asked. “They were just sitting here, too?”

“No,” Ella said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I got them from the cabinet, and I lit them.”

Sydney looked at Ben, trying to get a read on what he thought.

“What?” Ella asked. “Why are you guys looking at each other like that? You think I did all this? You think I put all this here?”

Ben stared at Sydney for a moment longer before turning back to Ella. He was questioning her, just like she was. It was written all over his face. Ben had never been a good poker player — he wore his emotions like his state championship ring — out in the open, for everyone to see.

“No,” Ben said finally, and his voice was soft and trying to be comforting but it came off as patronizing. Sydney knew that Ella would hate that. “No we don’t. But you’ve been gone for almost two hours. What have you been doing?”

Ella looked at Sydney then, her eyes imploring her to believe her, to stand up for her, to explain to Ben all of the other kooky stuff that had been going on. But she couldn’t. Maybe if this was the only thing, maybe it would have been easier to take. But the flowers, the phone call, this new claim of a
message
, and now the obsession with the journal — none of it made sense. What if this was just Ella’s twisted way of dealing with Astrid?

Sydney looked down. At her feet and the cracks in the wood floor beneath them.

What if this, the flowers, the photos — all of it — had been Ella the whole time?

She looked back up and Ella was still looking at her, but differently this time. Defeated. She turned back to Ben.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to run off. I thought I saw something in the woods, and I was only going to be gone a minute, and — ”

“What?” Sydney asked. “What did you think you saw?”

Ella looked at Sydney, then back at Ben. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I thought I saw someone I knew.”

Jesus
, Sydney thought.
Good God almighty she’s losing it.

“And then I fell, and I came here to rest — ”

“You fell?” Ben asked, his voice rising to panic.

“Yeah,” she said. “Trust me. I’m okay.”

“Did you hit your head?” Ben asked.

“Yes, but — ”

“Geez, Ella, you could have a concussion.”

“I don’t have a concussion,” she yelled. “I’m
fine.
”

“Fine,” Ben said, throwing his hands up and taking a step back. “You don’t want me to help. I get it. But maybe instead of just disappearing you could have actually told me where you were going or why you were leaving and not have left us freaking out — ”

“I’m sorry,” Ella yelled again. “Okay? I’m sorry. I can’t change it now.”

Ben looked at Sydney, obviously asking for some help.

But she didn’t know what to say, what she could say, that would convince Ella that they couldn’t go on like this. So she knelt down, grabbing a bunch of the flowers, then another. It was the only thing she could even think to do.