WHO: Hope Llancaster and Isabella Clermont. WHEN: Early morning, April 9th, 2019. WHERE: Outside of the hotel on the way back toward Shipwreck Cove. SUMMARY: Hope and Izzy briefly talk about what happened to them. Izzy's realizing that she's actually dead. WARNINGS: Depression, talk of loss, feels.
After trying to get out of the hotel room dozens of times, Izzy finally gave up.
It had been a long night as she sat near her sister’s bed, watching the hours of the clock tick by. Waking her sister had been an impossibility, though the dogs seemed unsettled and anxious with her appearance. What had happened earlier in the hotel with Jungle Boy was one thing. Staff paying no attention was understandable sometimes when it came to excessive amounts of money. But Veronica showing up and then paying her no mind? Her hands passed through her twin instead of gently drawing her attention, which hurt the most because it didn’t make sense.
And then there was Simon. She couldn’t pick up her own dog, who seemed confused as he settled near her feet and stared up into her eyes, whining.
It had been hours of softly weeping until the hurt turned numb and she had nothing left to give. In the end, she rose when her sister did, following her from place to place, calling softly in the hopes that something had changed and Veronica would somehow hear her.
When she didn’t, Izzy followed her sister out of the room and into the hotel. She felt a bitterness swirl in her chest as she accepted that something was truly, deeply wrong. Her sister might ignore her for a few minutes, but never this long. And there had never been a time that Izzy’s cries hadn’t softened Veronica’s hardened exterior.
She split from Veronica and headed for the elevator. As before, the buttons didn’t respond to her touch, so she waited until someone else pushed the right floor. She tried, in vain, to speak with several others on her way out of the hotel, but found the same was true of them—no one would answer her. No one could hear her.
She held her arms tightly against her chest as she walked toward the pathway that lead to the jungle. An all-too-familiar ache chased her through the low-hanging branches and woven roots as she navigated herself back to the beach where she’d left her friends.
She paused just long enough to collect herself, letting the sobs settle into her throat and wiping at her face, once she’d reached sand. She sighed in relief when she recognized her friend standing not too far away.
“Hey, Hope,” she started, stopping short as she swallowed the bubble of grief that started to wiggle to the surface. “It’s—Can we talk?”
Hope had gone back to the beach looking for her friends. The sky was dark but that didn’t seem right, because in her estimation, only a few hours had passed. She was confused and disoriented. Thoughts swirling with the bitter taste that Jack had put in her mouth when he first said the words that Hope didn’t want to be true.
She was still trying to come to full grip with it. Sometimes her fingers slipped, but she held on just enough that the conversation would replay after awhile.
Her eyes were filled with tears that she refused to cry when she looked at one of her nearest and dearest friends. A friend that had definitely not been refusing as hard as Hope had.
Hope’s response was the look on her face. The sadness. The confusion. The relief that Izzy was standing there. She nodded hard and swallowed, but not before she opened her arms.
Izzy wrapped her arms around Hope and clung to her. The breath seemed to have left her lungs--it was a sickening gratitude. She wasn’t alone. But that was the worst of it. She wasn’t alone. The way Jungle Boy had panicked earlier, the choking feelings that came and went, how the bell hadn’t worked and the staff were ignoring them..and then Veronica’s sadness at the bar and the failure to reach her in the suite. It wasn’t hard to understand. She’d seen enough movies.
She was dead. Hope was dead. Jungle Boy was dead. Oh, god, Benji was dead. That was the only option, right? What else could it possibly be?
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, once she’d found her voice again. “I’m so sorry for everything.”
Hope clung back just as tight. She imagined the walls back home to keep her breath from rattling in her chest. “It’s not your fault,” Hope said. She ran her hand through Izzy’s hair over and over. Hope hadn’t processed what had happened to them at all, not really, but she felt no anger or resentment toward Izzy. It wasn’t Izzy’s party. “Someone did this to us.”
Izzy couldn’t let go. After everything, she needed someone to say that things were going to be okay. Of all people, Hope was the person she trusted to do that. She finally took a step back at Hope’s words, however, to look at her. “What do you mean?”
Hope kept her hands on Izzy’s shoulders. “We’re young. We’re strong. We’re fit. We’re smart. I don’t see you or me or Alisha doing anything that dangerous. If it happened to everyone on the beach…. I can’t buy an accident, Iz. The groups are too different. The smart kids would have all made it. Or the hicks. Or it would have just been the dumb jocks being stupid and jumping off a cliff or something. It wouldn’t have been all of us. Not if what happened to us was an accident.”
This information rattled around inside of Izzy’s head for a minute as she stared at Hope. All she could think about was that she had dragged her friend here. She’d begged her to come. Now they were dead. It took her a minute because she didn’t often think about her friends having babies, but the idea that this wasn’t an accident made it even worse. Izzy’s eyes welled with angry tears and her mouth straightened into a firm line as she tried to hold herself together. “I—” If Veronica were here, she would know what to do. She always did. Angry and frustrated and hurt and scared, Izzy’s image faded and disappeared. Hope stared at the blank spot where her friend had been, and then folded her empty arms close against herself. She stood straight, picturing a stone wall being built brick by brick and that the stone wall was her. Hope would not crumble. She could not crumble. Hope was the only one there to hold herself up.
It took a few minutes, but Izzy flickered back into existence and solidified, looking around as she tried to anchor herself. “I wish I hadn’t dragged you here,” she said quietly. “I wish we had picked somewhere close to home or somewhere that you didn’t have to—” Izzy pursed her lips and offered a hand toward her friend. “I guess it’s up to us to figure out the who, the what, and the why.”
Hope hadn’t gone anywhere. Where did you look for a friend when a friend vanished on you? But she didn’t take the hand. “We need to figure it out in the next two days,” Hope said. “And then I need to get home.” She had to get home before anyone realized something happened to her. “It’s not your fault. I don’t blame you. But I have to get home.”
Her voice broke. “No one’s going to take care of her if I don’t go back.”
Izzy crossed her arms and nodded, frustrated and hurt. As Hope broke, some part of her did, too. It was a fury that rippled up through her chest and spun wild circles inside of her. She shook with indignation as she tried to keep herself from letting loose the emotions that plagued her. She thought of Patience, the tiny, happy baby that she’d forced her friend to abandon in Colorado. And now they were both dead. Hope was never going to hold her baby again. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, if she could have, and steadied herself, though her voice wavered as she spoke. “We’ll get you back home,” she said. Even though she knew otherwise. “Somehow.”
Hope wanted so badly to believe it that her exhale was sharp like a weight was being lifted and she nodded vigorously just before she wrapped her arms around her friend. But as she placed her head on Izzy’s shoulder, a part of it was to obscure the look in her eyes. The deep empty glassy look of a girl with no tomorrow. Someone who, despite how straight she kept her spine or how tight she pursed her lips, knew that if she ever looked down she’d be swallowed up by the scope of her loss.
“We’re going to be okay.” Hope nodded and swallowed. Even though she didn’t believe it and knew Izzy didn’t either. “We’re going to be okay,” she said. Even though neither of them were.