Chapter 84
Lucy’s house is humongous, but I have never been jealous of her. Our house isn’t exactly small, but hers could probably fit at least one and a half of ours in it. I wondered what it might be like to have to call your mom on your cell phone to figure out what room she was in when she was in the same house as you….
We watched a couple of movies with the boys over and then they headed to Wes’s house for the night. While they were definitely my best guy friends at school, the fact that they were immature almost-sixteen-year-olds was kind of annoying compared to the seventy-five-year-old man I’d been hanging out with recently. Every time they told a fart joke or started talking about some stupid video game, it was all I could do to keep from rolling my eyes. Emma talked about video games, too, but it was different when she did it. That was just part of being Emma, not super annoying like when they began squaring off over levels of games like they were life and death.
“Are you okay?” Lucy asked, once she’d returned from walking the boys out. “You look… perturbed.”
“Sorry,” I muttered, squeezing a pillow against my stomach. “I guess Milo and Wes have just taken on new interests that don’t interest me.”
Lucy laughed, like she knew what I was saying. “Yeah, but they’re still cool.”
“I guess so.” I disagreed, but there was no use in saying that. “Should we head to your room?”
“Maybe we should straighten up a little bit first?” Emma suggested. There were pop cans and half-empty popcorn bowls everywhere.
“Nah, someone else will get it,” Lucy assured us. I thought it must be nice to be able to leave a pile of trash in your wake and not have to concern yourself with it, and I thought about the fact that I’d never seen Lucy do a chore in her whole life, even though Sandy didn’t live with them or come by every day. There was no sense in arguing, though, as they were already headed up the stairs to the main floor. I followed, whispering an apology to the universe for giving in to the temptation to be a slob.
Once we were upstairs, both of the other girls grabbed for their phones, likely checking their messages, which I thought was silly since we’d had our phones with us the whole time and pretty much everyone who would’ve messaged us was with us. So… I grabbed my phone out of my back pocket and slouched down on Lucy’s couch, about a foot from her. Emma took the chair as usual.
I had no messages, which didn’t surprise me, so I opened up one of my social media apps. I was scrolling through pictures of people’s dinners and a few friends’ shots of what they were wearing to go out with friends or on dates when an annoying news pop up got in the way. I realized pretty quickly, however, they were talking about the killings in the Caribbean, so I enlarged the news report and turned the sound on, not bothering to think about the fact that my friends had no idea why this would be of importance to me.
“A night club where two tourists were slain just days ago is now being reported as the last known location where nineteen-year-old Sandra Stephenson was seen last night. Stephenson was reportedly separated from her friends at around 11:00 PM local time….” I was no longer listening to the reporter, however, because in the background, they were showing some grainy footage from inside the club again, and something caught my attention once again. Only this time, it wasn’t just a feeling or an impression, it was a pair of familiar eyes. I screamed, and the phone slipped from my hand, landing on the floor between my feet with a thud.
“What is it?” Lucy asked, sitting up quickly and putting her arms around me. “OMG, Cass, are you okay?”
Even Emma was alarmed. “Cassidy? Are you all right?”
“No, I’m fine,” I said, taking a few deep breaths. “I’m fine. It’s just… one of those silly pop up things where you’re supposed to look closely at a car or something and then a ghost jumps out at you.” I tried to laugh, like it was all just a silly joke, but they were seeing right through me.
“Nuh uh,” Emma began as Lucy reached down and picked up my phone. “You were watching a story about the murders in Cabo. We could hear it, Cassidy.”
“Yeah,” Lucy said, pausing the video on my thankfully unharmed phone. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I replied, taking my phone out of her hand. “It’s nothing. I just…”
“Lied to us,” Emma shrugged.
“Well, that’s that I thought it was,” I said defensively. “I saw something weird in the video. You mean, it’s not one of those?” I had no idea where I was going with this. They could clearly tell I didn’t know either.
“Let me see it, and I’ll let you know,” Lucy replied.
“No,” I quickly said, stashing my phone in my back pocket. “It’s not a big deal. I just… I thought I saw something scary. It’s stupid.”
“Okay.” Emma shrugged again and looked at me like she was done talking about it.
Lucy looked more puzzled. She stared at Emma for a moment and then turned to me. “Whatev,” she said.
I took a deep breath, thinking about how glad I was that neither of them had pressed the issue when I saw both of them typing into their phones furiously and realized what they were going to do. “Oh, come on, girls,” I said, wondering which device I should lunge for first. “It really isn’t a big deal.”
“I’m sure it’s not,” Lucy replied, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder as she continued, “so we’ll just have a look-see, umkay?”
