The island, p.12
The Island, page 12
“I think we should strike that question from our lexicon for the rest of the trip – yeah, Jody?” Ari said, giving me a gentle nudge.
“Yup,” I nodded, hoping that if they stopped asking I could try and keep a lid on things, at least until we got home and I could sort through everything in private. It at least felt possible for me to do that now, which was an improvement on before when I’d just wanted to hide and let whatever happened, go on without me.
“We were about to ask if you wanted to head over to the stage,” I said to Carla, who was still looking between Ari and I with mild curiosity. “See if whoever’s playing is any good?”
“Sure. Sounds like a plan, I’m all blissed out and ready to vibe,” Carla smiled, stretching her arms over her head and attracting attention from a passing group of guys. Intentionally or not, I wasn’t sure. She didn’t so much as glance their way as we left the domes anyway.
We headed over to the stage area, stopping to buy some drinks on our way. The bars were no less busy than they had been before. If anything the lines were longer. People must have used up their contraband alcohol on the first night and were now stuck buying drinks. Still, standing in the queue gave me some time to settle myself and people watch instead of obsessing about my mum.
As we wandered away towards where the music was being played, sipping on sticky pink cocktails I noted the size of the crowd by the stage, which was smaller than last night. It was still fairly early and people were probably scraping themselves back together after the night before I decided. Besides, the pyrotechnics and light show wouldn’t start until it was dark again. Right now it was comparatively tame.
The act on stage was a girl group, three women in sparkly silver outfits. Two with tinsel wigs. The music was upbeat pop but it wasn’t in English so I had no idea what it was about. It sounded like it was German. It was a good song and if I was alone in my room I’d probably have thought nothing of dancing to it. But in broad daylight amongst all those strangers I felt stiff and awkward. Ari and Carla had no trouble dancing to it though. Everyone else there was, so why was I still feeling so tightly wound and anxious? I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
I was still in my head after twenty or so minutes of trying to look like I was having fun. So much so that when someone grabbed my shoulder from behind I whipped round in shock and nearly dropped my drink.
“Sorry!” the girl from that morning, Evie, said. “I thought you were Roisin.”
“You haven’t found her yet?” I asked, though obviously she hadn’t if she was still looking. Much less grabbing me.
“Haven’t found her, no,” Evie was saying. “I’ve asked around, given out my number, even managed to track down a security guard out by the front gates and told him about her but no one’s called me yet to say they’ve seen her. Just a bunch of prank calls and some well wishes.”
“Sorry. I hope you find her,” I said. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.” Though what that would be I had no idea. It just felt like the right thing to say.
“Yeah, thanks. I’d better find her,” Evie sighed, “can’t exactly leave without her.” With that she left me standing there, my insides like dirty snow – messy and grim. I turned back to Carla and Ari, managed to get their attention by catching their hands as they danced. They pulled me into their routine, twirling me between them until I struggled to a stop.
“What’s up?” Carla asked, raising her voice over the music. She glanced at Ari. “If we’re allowed to ask?”
Ari rolled her eyes. “You can ask, just not all the time – right, Jody?”
“I just ran into Evie again,” I said, still turning over our brief conversation. Something in it was needling me, a stone in my shoe that I couldn’t shake.
“Has she found her friend?” Carla asked.
“No, but she grabbed me because she thought I was Roisin and I thought that was weird, kind of? Do you think we look a bit alike? As in, could you mix us up if it was dark and you were maybe a bit drunk?” My heart was hammering as I realised what felt wrong, what had my skin prickling. It was mad, paranoid, but nevertheless it was what I was thinking.
Carla and Ari exchanged one of their familiar ‘Jody’s losing it’ looks. Then Ari shrugged.
“I suppose. Yes. I wouldn’t even have to be drunk to be honest – when I saw her picture this morning I thought you could be related. Not like twins or anything but cousins, sisters even.”
“Why?” Carla asked. “What are you getting at? And why do you look so freaked out right now?”
“It’s just, when I saw Evie just now and she thought I was her friend, Roisin, I realised she went missing last night. Which is when I saw, or thought I saw…Nick,” I said, already feeling stupid even as I tried to explain. “And maybe…that’s connected? Like, perhaps he tried to corner her or something – thinking she was me – and she freaked out and left the festival too fast to tell Evie about it?”
“Jody,” Ari said, after a second of surprised silence. “I thought we agreed it was probably just some guy who looked like Nick? Now you’re saying what, that he came here and he did something to that girl because she looked like you and he got confused?”
I felt the weight of her doubt like a physical pressure. It made me flush and trip over my words as I tried to justify my theory to her and to myself.
“I-I’m not saying he came here intending to do something like that,” I said, wilting further under her disbelieving look. “But, he was always unpredictable, like even he didn’t know what he was going to do. If he saw her and thought she was me, especially if like Evie said, she was with some other guy…maybe he flipped out and scared her enough that she just ditched the festival.”
Again they were silent, the sounds of the stage and the crowd swamping us. I was shunted to the side slightly by a wind milling arm and nearly lost my footing. When I righted myself, Ari and Carla were still staring at me. Their expressions held a mix of concern and pity. I knew before either of them spoke that they didn’t believe me. Really, I shouldn’t have expected them to. It was an insane idea. So why couldn’t I let it go?
“Jodie…” Carla said, finally. “That sounds…”
“Crazy,” I said, so she didn’t have to. I felt embarrassment flare up the back of my neck, adding to the heat of yesterday’s sunburn. Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something to it. I wasn’t just paranoid, it felt very much like someone was out to get me. Or maybe that was my anxiety talking, using my trauma against me? It was hard to tell, I needed someone else to decide for me. Someone who would listen and not immediately try to dismiss everything to make me feel better.
Someone who wasn’t either of my housemates.
“He won’t even know we’re here,” Carla said, clearly trying to reassure me. “I thought about it after we talked last night and there’s no way. None of us told anyone where we were going, right?”
I nodded reluctantly and saw Ari do the same, even as she ducked away from a girl riding her boyfriend’s shoulders through the crowd. I desperately wanted to get away from the concert and talk about this somewhere else.
“And our socials are private so, even if we posted about it, which I haven’t – Nick wouldn’t be able to see it. So, how could he know where we are?” Carla finished, looking pleased with herself for constructing this neat parcel of logic. “The best he could have done, or the worst I guess, would be coincidentally winning tickets and coming here and then randomly spotting you amongst like, a bajillion people, and then confusing you with someone else and scaring her. But that’s…I mean unlikely isn’t even the word, right?”
“But it could still have happened,” I protested, weakly even to my own ears. “And what if he did find out we were coming here and he didn’t need a ticket – he could just get a boat and…” I cut myself off, I was being ridiculous and I could see it on their faces.
“Still, hardly likely is it?” Carla pressed. “Jody, I know that it freaked you out and it is really sketchy that Evie hasn’t managed to find her friend yet but it’s just not possible for it to be related to Nick. He’s not here, OK?”
I wanted to argue, but I nodded, defeated. She was right, they both were. There was no way for Nick to know where I was exactly. Him being at the festival at all would take some doing, let alone him being involved in the disappearance of a girl whose friend just happened to ask us about her. I was being ridiculous and I felt like it.
Still, I couldn’t silence the part of me that knew, unshakeably, that Nick was anything but predictable – I’d never been able to see the worst of his behaviour coming. The last time I’d assumed I knew his limits, he’d tried to coerce me into a threesome and trapped me in our flat. I’d learned the hard way not to put anything past him. But my friends obviously didn’t have the same experience as I did. I couldn’t make them understand just how far Nick might go to teach me a lesson.
Carla gave me a sympathetic look and put her arm around my shoulders, encouraging me to dance. I felt even less like dancing than usual but, I tried. Ari twirled and raised her drink up high before downing the whole thing. I promised myself that I was done bringing up Nick. It wasn’t fair on Ari and Carla and it wasn’t fair on Evie’s missing friend either. If she was in real trouble the last thing she needed was for me to start muddying the waters with my own issues. I only hoped that Evie had managed to get her face out there to everyone. Someone at Lethe had to know where Roisin was. She couldn’t have just vanished.
Chapter 13
After a nice, lengthy break from the chaos near the stage to queue for some food and more drinks, we came back in the evening. It was the same sort of mix of European bands we’d never heard of before performing their own stuff with covers sprinkled in. I wasn’t a great judge of music but it sounded good to me. We’d managed, with some trial and error on quantities, to balance the disgusting free booze with some bottles of fizz from the bar. It was at least a drinkable mixture, after you got the first two down at least. Consequently I was feeling fairly chilled out, all things considered.
Night crept in and stole the heat of the day away. I was glad of it, as it had become overbearing as the day wore on. The night was balmy and the stink of rubbish died down without the sun beating down on us. It didn’t get too cold – it felt as if the heat of the day was radiating out of the compacted ground under us. Warm as a freshly baked cake.
The stage lights flashed pink and lilac over us and white, starry pyrotechnics fizzled overhead. Everyone around us was having fun, cheering and shrieking for the bands or the pretty explosions. I wasn’t sure. I was just blurry enough around the edges to not worry that there were people around, to just sway to the ballads that came on as the night progressed. It was lovely, magical even. I wasn’t sure if it was the booze or the herbs from the hookah, or if Carla had finally despaired of me enough to spike my drink with beta-blockers, but I was actually relaxed. Every so often I’d be struck by the thought that I was having fun, and get surprised all over again. Proud of myself.
As we stumbled towards our tent after the final song I was actually giggling. We had our arms around each other like characters in The Wizard of Oz, skipping down our own dusty yellow dirt road. I didn’t even feel that tired which was amazing in and of itself. The alcohol had dulled the aches in my feet and back from standing for hours. It felt like I could carry on all night. Still, when we passed a cluster of tents where a party seemed to be in full swing, my stomach flipped over. I could feel Carla pulling towards the voices and music, dragging me with her.
“Oh, Carla, come on – I’m exhausted,” I lied, not wanting to get caught up with a bunch of strangers. I was feeling relaxed for the first time in ages and I didn’t want to ruin it with awkward socialising away from the roar of the music and the anonymity of the crowd.
“Just a quick one,” she insisted, having caught the eye of a guy amongst the happy, dancing throng. “You’ll sleep better.”
I looked to Ari for support, but she was nodding her head to the dull thump of the music and fishing the half-empty water bottle of booze out of her bag. Unless I wanted to head back to the tent on my own like the party-pooper I was, I was staying for a drink. Or two, judging from the way Carla was prowling after the guy that had caught her interest. It didn’t seem like this would be over soon. I’d just have to make the best of it and try to stay out of everyone’s way.
I turned back to Ari but found her gone too. She was a few metres away, talking to two girls in the same kind of dark clothes as her. She’d found her people. Unfortunately that meant I’d lost mine.
I was looking around for a handy corner to stand – sort of a hard ask in a field – when I noticed someone looking at me. He was standing by a folding table topped with cans and cups. The neighbouring tents must have dumped all their booze there to share out. It was the guy from that morning, not the furious one who’d grabbed me but the one who’d rescued me. He lifted his hand and gave me a casual wave, then invited me over with a nod of his head. The back of my neck flushed but I went anyway, the alternative was too awkward to consider.
“Hello again,” he said, once I got within conversational distance. “I’m glad you didn’t decide to leave after what happened this morning.”
“Me too, actually,” I said, surprising myself. Despite having cried a lot since we’d arrived and the fact that I currently felt more out of my depth than ever, there were moments where I’d actually had fun today. I hadn’t thought that could happen in a place like this. A few days ago I’d never thought I’d have fun again.
“Is this your first festival?” he asked, offering me an unopened can of cider from the table, which I took automatically despite not being a cider fan. At least it gave me something to do with my hands.
“That obvious is it? Yes, it is. I’m not usually one for gigs or camping or travel so this is a lot of new stuff for me.” I opened the can to stop myself rambling on any further, but he laughed like I’d told a joke.
“I know what you mean. It’s such a weird combination of things isn’t it? Especially here with the beach and the ‘activities’ they have. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.” He held out his hand. “I’m Andrei, by the way. We didn’t really have time to talk this morning. Are you here with friends?”
“Jody. And yeah, I’m here with my friends, Carla and Ari.”
He nodded. “Good, I was worried you’d be on your own after that thing this morning. I’m here with my brother, Ivan. But he’s always off doing his own thing. I only really came to keep him out of trouble – which is obviously going really well, because I haven’t seen him in a while.”
I laughed. “Well, you tried.”
“I did,” he smiled. I noticed that his teeth were slightly crooked on one side. That more than the curly dark hair, tattoo and ripped t-shirt made him appealing. A small touch of the adorable. I pushed that thought away and felt my neck burn all over again. What had gotten into me? Was it the alcohol or the fact that he’d rescued me, twice now if it was possible to be ‘rescued’ from an awkward social situation.
Andrei gestured to the people around us, now dancing to several different tracks on different phones. “I sometimes feel like I’m missing something when I’m somewhere like this. Or like I got an extra bit of something – too much self-awareness maybe, or perhaps I just take myself too seriously.”
“I get what you mean. I hear ‘dance like no one’s watching’ and I think, ‘OK, but how’ you know?” I said, trying to make a joke out of it, even though it was true.
He nodded, waved a hand in a ‘there you go!’ gesture. “I’m always telling myself ‘no one cares that much about you’ but it never seems to sink in. Have you been to the beach yet?”
“Yeah, it’s a bit…” I was still looking for a diplomatic way of putting it when he broke out another blinding smile.
“A bit shit, right?”
I laughed. “Mmmhmm. I wasn’t expecting it to be so…industrial. All the bricks and concrete and stuff.”
“And the smell,” Andrei said. “I’ve caught it a few times now, around the camp. Like rotting garbage?”
“Yes! What is that about?” I said. “I thought that on the first day. The festival had barely started and there was this smell like the bins were already full and had been for ages.”
“It’s the island,” Andrei said, looking pleased with himself for knowing this. “I was talking to some local guys at the beach earlier. This island, or whatever it is now that there’s a bridge connecting it to the land, it used to be a landfill.”
“A dump?” I frowned, disgusted but also worried. “But that means we’re like, on top of tonnes and tonnes of rubbish, all rotting away and making gasses and stuff? Is that even safe?”
“Who knows? I think they do build on them. I’ve heard of it but I’m not sure about just dumping earth on top and letting people camp here. If we can still smell it maybe it’s not buried deep enough. Still,” he took a drink from his own can. “The tickets were free.”
“The prize of a lifetime,” I said, eyebrow raised.
Andrei laughed. “It’s lucky though, both of us ending up here. When you think about how many people wanted to win tickets.” I felt my heart flutter a little. Was he flirting with me? He was smiling a lot and we were very close together. I was terrible at judging this kind of thing. Maybe he was just a bit drunk and being friendly? He was definitely too good looking for me. A pang of realisation hit me; he was probably interested in Ari or Carla and had seen me with them. I was used to being the ‘approachable one’ in the group. It had been that way before, when we went out at uni.
Yet, as we talked a while longer about everything and anything – the music, the weather, the bus situation and the likelihood of the festival happening again next year – he didn’t bring up Ari or Carla once. He was just talking to me. I got the feeling he was glad to have someone to talk to, just like I was. Someone who wasn’t part of the crowd or the party. Someone in a quiet corner that wasn’t a corner.
