“I’m fine, I just needed some air. How wasted are you?”
Tangles of her hair stick to the sweat on her forehead as she laughs a little too loudly. “Okay, maybe a teensy bit, but we started doing shots and—” She shoves her bottle in my hand. “Come on, drink with me.”
“I can’t, it messes with my pills,” I mumble.
“Fine, more for me.” Keely knocks back a huge swig. I’ve never seen her drink so much. Two summers ago, before I started my medication, Keely and I stole four of my dad’s beers and two of my mom’s wine spritzers. It was more than enough to get us wasted. We hid in my bedroom all night and laughed our asses off at videos of cats running into walls. Though it was one of the only times I ever drank, I had a lot of fun—but that Keely was different than this Keely. This Keely can’t even stand up straight.
“You’re not going to be sick, are you?” I ask.
“Don’t give me that, Liv,” Keely slurs. “I can handle myself, trust me! You’ve missed out on a lot.”
Ouch. Obviously I missed out on a lot, but it still hurts to hear. Keely keeps drinking from the plastic bottle. Mine must still be on the boat—not that I care.
When the door to the houseboat flies open, voices shout and cackle as Miles falls onto the deck with a dopey grin on his face. He’s probably as wasted as Keely.
I’m happy to see my childhood friends again, but I expected our first night together to be a little more . . . personal. They’re both right in front of me, yet there’s more distance between us here than when I was 450 miles away.
“There you guys are.” Miles jogs down the dock, and his sandals squish against the sand when he hops off. The smell of stale beer and cologne radiates off him. Judging by the huge wet patch on his shirt, he got involved in one of the drinking games. Miles doesn’t need to know I ran into West; he might get upset if I bring him up again.
“Hey.” I rub the goosebumps off my arms at the cool breeze from the sea. “Can we go now? I’m not really feeling this.”
“Aww, okay.” Keely pouts but hooks her arm to mine, then Miles’s. “Come on, Miles, you’re stuck with us.”
Relief washes through me as we leave the beach. The last thing I wanted was to go back to that party, I’m not in the right headspace to meet everyone again.
A fenced path leads us to the suburbs. Coral Park connects us to Keely’s neighborhood, so we follow the curved pavement until we reach a field surrounded by the backs of houses. Stars slice through the sky, and ropes dangle off the wooden posts of the playground, bathed in the navy hue of night. Miles, Keely, and I used to climb to the very top of the jungle gym and feel like we were on top of the world. Looking at it now, it’s barely taller than me.
West slinks back into my mind. Right over there, behind the set of slowly creaking swings, is the last place we spoke before my fall. He was thirteen with his friends, I was eleven and by myself. He’d been ignoring me for a while, but I was a brave, persistent child. Nothing like who I am now. Under the afternoon sun, I’d jogged over to him and asked if I could play soccer with them until Miles showed up. The other guys laughed, and West just said, “Go away, Olive. You can’t hang out with us.”
His friends laughed. Anger, embarrassment, and confusion cluttered my mind. I called him a jerk and stormed away, vowing I would never talk to him again.
That was a lie, of course, because I attempted to follow him on Instagram a year later.
“Hey, Earth to Olivia, are you there?” Miles says, and I snap from my reverie. His eyes burn a hole through me.
“Sorry, what’s up?”
“It’s nothing,” Miles mutters. “I was just trying to ask you about New York. Isn’t living in the city crazy?”
“Define crazy?”
“That winter lantern festival looks amazing. Ever been?”
“No, I haven’t. But it is really pretty.”
Dana and her friends went last year. Their profiles were illuminated with pictures of the lantern animals while I was taking a homework break in my room. Maybe Miles was expecting me to become some city girl with a super exciting life, like Dana Long and her penthouse apartment with an indoor pool, but I’m not like that at all. I don’t even have friends, not real ones. Just girls who talk to me because we’re on the same volleyball team. Miles needs to know the truth, but Keely saves me by shouting a WOO at the top of her lungs, so loud birds flock from a tree nearby. She spins in a circle with her hands in the air.
“Look at all this space!”
“She’s really drunk,” I tell Miles.
He laughs and puts his hands in his pockets. “Yep, that’s Keely Myers for you.”
“She does this a lot?”
“Oh yeah. Officer Myers’s daughter is one of the biggest drinkers in town and he has no idea about it. Isn’t that hilarious?”
“No? Not really.”
“I don’t mean she’s a joke or anything!” Miles saves. “Not at all! Keely’s great.”
“Okay . . .”
We’re halfway through the park, on the path that snakes through the grass. Sidewalk chalk hopscotch has been drawn on the concrete, and it reminds me of when Miles, Keely, and I got in trouble for scribbling stick figures because you aren’t supposed to vandalize public parks, even if it’ll wash away with the rain.
A high-pitched scream erupts. Up ahead, Keely falls into the grass and scurries back on the heels of her hands.
“Keely!” I run at her, Miles beside me, but we stop in our tracks. A rotten, putrid smell permeates the air, so pungent it oozes into my nostrils like some kind of chemical. I know that smell. Rats get killed in the city a lot, and their tiny bodies create enough stink to fill an entire alleyway when they roast in the sun all day.
Torn-up, fluffy lumps of flesh are scattered at the leg of the bench beneath a flickering street lamp. Broken bones, shreds of skin, bloodied fur.
Squirrel carcasses.
Three of them have been mutilated, like they’d been dissected in Science class. Their chests were sliced open, rib cages pulled apart, tiny organs splayed onto the ground. It’s way too clinical to have been done by another animal—no, this has a human touch, exactly like the report my mom had worried about. Some pieces of skin are uneven, like the person who did it messed up partway through. Maybe got angry.
“They say that’s how serial killers start out,” Mom says in the back of my mind.
Miles helps Keely to her feet, and she balances herself on yellow Converse. It’s like the drunk has been slapped right out of her. “God, that scared the shit out of me,” she says. “What kind of freak would leave this here?”