“Melanie, why?” I hear my mother cry. She’s pleading with me. I don’t understand. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“She didn’t know,” I hear my father say. He tells me to go inside. My nanny waves me in with one hand, the other covers her mouth. My mother wails. It’s a guttural scream, one like an animal might make. The kind you never forget.

I watch as my father comforts her. “She’s just a girl, darling.”

“She could have alerted us.” She throws up her hands and then when she can’t figure out what else to do with them, she covers her face. I watch as my father rubs her back. He uses small circles. I’m old enough to know my shapes. “She could have done something, Charles. You know she could have.”

I look on from inside the window that overlooks the backyard. There are men in jackets, men taking photos. Police people are talking to mommy and daddy.

My sister’s lifeless body lies beside the pool. She looks like she is sleeping. But I know she is not.

“Watch me jump Melly. Watch me.”

“You’re not supposed to,” I said. “Mommy and Daddy are sleeping.”

She climbed higher on the diving board. “You’re such a baby,” she teased. “Who cares?” She bounced. “I’m a big girl. I can swim,” she told me, her knees knocking together. Once. Twice. Three times. Her face lit up with that Cheshire cat-like grin she used on mommy and daddy. “Not like you.”

“I’m telling.” I meant to run inside. I meant to, but I couldn’t look away.

“You’re such a tattle-tale.”

“Am not.” I folded my arms across my chest and looked up at my parent’s bedroom window. Tiffany was going to be in so much trouble. Mommy never got mad at Tiffany. Not like she did me. For this, she would. Finally.

“Do you dare me?” My sister held out her arms for balance. She pretended she was walking a tightrope the way we did when our bedroom floor turned into lava. “Come on, you big baby,” she laughed. “Jump with me.”

I shook my head. “Mommy will be mad.”

“Dare me then.”

“Fine,” I said. “I double-dare you.”

Her eyes shifted. “If I do it, what will you give me?”

I thought about it. Tiffany had so much. She was a good girl, mommy said. Not like me. “My donut. I’ll save half for you.”

I could see the wheels turning in her mind. We were waiting for Daddy to wake up. If we were good girls and watched cartoons so mommy and daddy could get extra sleep, Daddy promised he’d take us for donuts. Mommy didn’t like him getting us all sugared up. But sometimes Daddy won.

“The whole thing,” Tiffany said. She expected me to say yes, I could see it in her eyes. That was the thing about my sister. She had a way of making you do things.

It would make mommy happy if I wasn’t all sugared up. “Okay,” I relented. She smiled like she was in on a secret I wasn’t privy to. And then she jumped. I waited for her to come up. I watched the water. I stood on the side looking in. It took a long time. And then she was asleep forever.

“Get up, sleeping beauty,” the male voice orders. I wasn’t sleeping which is how I see it’s Mark standing over the trunk. I’m exactly what you’d call surprised. I curl into myself. “She’s naked,” he says. “Why is she naked?”

“I didn’t do it,” Adam confesses, holding his palms up. “She’s pretty hammered. Just started dropping her clothes all over the place.”

“You.” I blink rapidly peering at Adam. “You did this?”

“Wonderful,” Mark says. “Now Beth really is going to kill me.”

Adam shrugs. Mark sighs. They both stare at me in my birthday suit. “You know she hates it when I bring work home.”

“Tom should be on his way.”

“Where are we?” I ask. Make a note of your surroundings. My eyes feel like they’re matted shut. It’s dark out. My mouth is dry. I feel like I’ve bathed in my own saliva. My head feels like someone has it in their fist and they’re squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing. It doesn’t hurt. But there’s pressure. So much pressure. “I need water.”

“Shut up,” they say in unison.

The two of them chat amongst themselves. I’m not the praying kind, exactly, but I say a silent wish that the video uploaded to Instalook. With my luck, it’ll probably get flagged on account of me being topless.

“Come on,” Mark says. “Let’s get you covered, before my wife kills me.”

Adam lifts me from the trunk.

“Am I going to die?” Obviously. The trunk is about as far from first class as it gets. They don’t put you there without reason. You have to earn it.

“If you don’t shut up,” they say, again in unison. Mark finishes. “You might.”

Fuck. I reach for the phone. My fingers brush it, but as I’m lifted, they’re forced to let go. It’s like one of those claw games where you try to win stuffed animals. It just slipped right through my fingertips.

I try to make a break and turn back for it. It’s no use. Adam’s grip tightens around my forearm. They’ve closed the trunk.

“I need to get back in there,” I tell them. “I forgot something.”

“Your shoelaces?” Mark laughs.

I’m not wearing shoes.

It’s a humid, cloudy, moonless night. Which is better than the alternative, on account of my nakedness. The further we get up the walk, the more I recognize where we are. Beth’s lake house. I’ve seen the photos on Instalook.

Inside, Mark tosses a robe in my direction. “Beth will be down soon.”

I’m sober now. But I could use some alcohol to numb me up, if only to touch the outer edges of my consciousness. I have a bad feeling about being here. I have a feeling I know what this is. They’re going to human sacrifice me.

“Sit,” Mark orders, once I’ve dressed in the robe. It’s not so hard to get people to do what you want when you’re holding a gun. “I hear you’ve been snooping around…”

“Me?” I motion toward my chest and then shake my head. “No.”

“Here,” he says, handing Adam the gun. “Just in case she tries to run.”

“There’s something I need to know,” Mark informs me. “Is it you who is the liar, or is that husband of yours in on this too?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He makes a clucking sound with his tongue meant to convey his disappointment. “And to think we’ve given you so much. Look at you, looking like a Barbie doll. And this is how you show your appreciation?”

“I’m flattered at the comparison,” I say. “But I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Beth comes down the stairs. “Finally.” I straighten the robe. “Now things should start making sense.”

But then nothing makes sense because Beth crosses the room and backhands me. “After all I did for you.” She hits me again. And again. She has a way of making her resentments felt. When my tongue touches my lip, I taste blood.

She’s been crying. I can tell by the way her chin quivers.

“Maybe we should talk about this,” Adam suggests.

“What’s there to talk about?” Beth sniffles. She can’t decide whether to be sad or angry. The struggle between her lack of control and her attempt to suppress it is disappointing. I’m embarrassed for her.

“She’s a liar,” Mark says. “She put the whole project at risk.”

“What project? Can someone tell me what’s going on?” I pull my lip between my teeth and suck the blood away. It can be dangerous to ask a question when you already know the answer.

“What the fuck?” Beth inhales deeply. She’s staring at her phone. Her eyes meet mine for a second, and then she looks over at her husband before finally settling on Adam. “You didn’t bother to take her phone?”

Recognition registers on his face.

“She Instalook Live’d from the trunk.”

“Fuck.” Mark runs his hands through his hair. “Where’s the phone?”

“Don’t worry,” Beth says to him. She exhales loudly. “Her location settings appear to be off and thank God I’m an admin on her account. I deleted it.” I watch as she holds up her screen, on it a vague outline of my face. My lips are moving, but nothing is happening. Beth laughs and shakes her head slowly from side to side. “It wouldn’t have mattered anyway,” Beth laughs. “She had the sound off.”

Adam paces. “So what does this mean?”

“It means nothing,” Beth assures him.

“Hey,” I say. “Twenty-thousand people were in queue to watch that.”

“It’s basically just her face in the dark,” Mark says as he glares at Beth’s phone. He shakes his head and then crosses the room. “Twenty-thousand. Unbelievable.” I watch as he fishes a magazine from the coffee table. He holds it up to my face. “Recognize this guy?”

I do recognize that guy. “No,” I say.

“His name is Richard Fisher. Richard is the head pastor of Divine Life.”

“So?”

“So, you slept with him.”

I should say nothing. Silence is rarely misunderstood. Instead, I cock my head. “And?”

“And—Richard Fisher just so happens to be one of our biggest competitors.”

“You’re a church. How can you have competitors?”

This time it’s Mark who hits me.

“And this guy, Elliot Walls…” He holds up another photo. “You slept with him too.”

“Jesus.” Adam rubs his jaw.

“Do you know who Elliot is?”

I shake my head.

“He’s the finance manager at All Saints.”

I roll my shoulders. It was cramped in that trunk. “Okay?”

“What I think Mark is trying to say,” Adam tells me. “Is that you’ve fucked all the competition.”

Beth stands over me. I brace myself for what I know is coming. Out of everyone, girls always fight the dirtiest. “And what I want to know is…why?”

“It’s not personal.” I wait for her to hit me again. It’s coming. I can see it on her face. Now doesn’t seem like the time to bring up the fact I can’t feel any pain. “They’re philanthropists. They donate to my parents charity.”

“How convenient,” Mark says.

“Really, more of a coincidence,” I say.

“I have to run,” Adam says. This gets everyone’s attention. Especially mine. He nods at his phone. “The wife is expecting me home for dinner.”

“That’s fine,” Beth replies, dismissing him. Then to everyone but me she says, “Tom will be here soon. We’ll let him handle the traitor.”

“I’m not a traitor,” I say. “I just really like sex.”

“Shut up,” they all say.

I watch Adam leave. He doesn’t even say goodbye. Fair weather friends. They’ll get you every time. I should have known better. I thought he might help me. I thought my charm would work on him. Clearly, it didn’t. I feel like something very bad is going to happen.