Dangerous Girls

“Lighten up.” I sigh. “You’re not still pissed about the room thing?”

“It’s not a room,” Mel complains. “It’s, like, a closet with a pullout bed.”

“You could share with AK and my brother,” Chelsea calls from inside the tiny cubicle. There’s a flush, and she emerges, finger-combing her long, salt-bleached hair. She barely glances at her reflection, bare-faced with her dusting of freckles. But then, she doesn’t need to. Chelsea has that whole natural, beach beauty thing down cold. Even during icy Boston winters, she always manages to look like she just strolled in from a surfing session in the sun. “Although,” she adds with a smirk, “you’ll have to deal with all their gross boy underwear lying around.”

“That’s not the only thing they’re trying to lay,” I quip. Elise laughs, and high-fives me.

“Maybe they’ll let you watch,” she adds to Mel. “You might learn something.”

“La, la, la!” Chelsea protests, covering her ears. “What’s the rule?”

“No talking about your brother and his sex life.” Elise sighs.

“Or his lack of one.” I grin, but Mel is still sulking. She turns to Elise.

“I don’t know why I can’t just share with you.”

“Because I plan on having fun,” Elise grins, “Like with that dark-haired guy, the one in the VIP booth.”

“They have a VIP booth here?” Chelsea laughs, trying to rinse her hands under the sputtering tap. Her wrists are full of knotted yarn bracelets and exotic beads, fraying until they’re barely hanging on. “They don’t even have running water.”

Elise just applies a coat of gloss red lip balm. “He’s cute, I’m telling you. I think I’ll have him come back to see the house. The view from my bedroom . . .” She winks.

“Elise!” Mel protests, like clockwork, “You don’t even know him. He could be a ra**st, or murderer, or—”

“Stop with all the buzzkill,” I interrupt.

“You need a drink,” Elise agrees. She hops down and links her arm with Mel’s, giving me an exasperated look over her head. “Two drinks. And a hot, sweaty local guy.”

“I’m not—”

“Interested, we know.” Elise steers her out, back into the club.

We chorus in unison, “You’re not that kind of girl.”

Melanie pouts. “You say it like it’s a bad thing.”

Elise rolls her eyes. “No, we say it like it’s a dull thing.”

Back on the floor, Elise points out her target for the night. He’s lounging with some buddies in the corner: he’s handsome, in his early twenties maybe, with a bored nonchalance that just screams rich kid.

“Cute, right?” She grinds against me, flashing flirtatious looks over at the guy; pulling me in to nuzzle at my neck.

I laugh. “He looks like trouble.”

She grins back. “Just the way I like them.” And then she’s gone, ducking through the crowd toward the guy. I watch her go. Within seconds, she’s smiling and laughing with the group, that one guy giving her an approving grin.

Tate reappears next to me. “Where’s Elise?” he yells to be heard.

I shrug vaguely, but Tate looks across the floor to where she’s already angled, cross-legged in the booth with them, leaning in to talk to her prospective conquest. Her hair glows purple and red under the lights, tanned legs long and bare under her skirt. I smile, watching her at work. She’s gorgeous; no man would stand a chance of resisting.

“I don’t like this. We should stick together,” he yells again, frowning.

“Relax!” I slide my arms around him, pulling his lips down to mine. “Elise is a big girl. She can take care of herself.”

THE HEARING

“I didn’t do it!”

I leap up, the words flying from my lips the moment the lawyer steps into the holding room. “I didn’t do it,” I say again, gripping my hands together as if I can save myself from drowning. “This is all a mistake.”

Even as I say it, I can hear how cliché it sounds, like I’m stuck in the nightmare of one of those trashy soaps I would watch with my mom as a kid. I swallow back the hysterics, try to sound calm and collected. “You believe me, don’t you? You have to make them see.”

The lawyer’s name is Ellingham, and he’s all jowls and receding hairline, an international law specialist Tate’s dad flew in from New York. He doesn’t speak until the guard closes the door behind him and we’re alone in the small room. Then he places his briefcase on the table they’ve bolted to the floor and finally looks at me.

“That doesn’t matter, not today.”

I stare back in disbelief. “Of course it matters! They’re saying . . . They say . . .” My voice breaks.

“Today is a simple bail hearing,” he explains, unclicking the stays on the briefcase. It’s leather, expensive. Everything about him is expensive: The crisp shirt, the designer linen suit, the heavy fountain pen he uses to sign the top sheet of the papers. In the prison, they have me wearing an itchy canvas jumpsuit, but my dad brought clean clothes for the hearing. I’ve never been so happy to wear a simple white tank top in my life: the cotton soft against my skin, smelling like our old detergent. Like home.

“This hearing isn’t to argue your case,” Ellingham warns me. “You’ll go sit, state your name, and then enter your plea. Sign here.” He offers the pen.

I sign, awkward in handcuffs. “Can you get them to take these off?” I ask hopefully. My wrists are ringed with red and bruises now, but I’m lucky: the first court appearances had me in leg shackles too, and I flushed with shame to stumble across the room like a drunk freshman trying to walk in heels.

He shakes his head. “Not right now, but once the judge grants bail, you’ll be released.”

“Then we can go home.” I feel a sob of sheer relief at the prospect, and fight to swallow it back. I can’t be the girl weeping in the courtroom, I know. I have to be strong.

“You mustn’t leave the island.” Ellingham looks at me as if I should know all this already. “It’ll be a term of your bail. You have to stay until the trial.”

I nod eagerly. Anything to get me out of jail. They’ve kept me in isolation since the arrest, five long days when I’ve seen nobody but unfriendly guards and the distant sight of other prisoners as they march me between the exercise pen and my cell. It’s too hot to sleep, and I spend every night huddled on my bunk on the thin wool blanket, counting cracks on the ceiling and waiting to wake up and find this is all a dream.