The Escapes
ITINERARY
DAY ONE:
DEPARTURE!
DAY TWO:
AT SEA (SWIM, SUN, CHILL!)
DAY THREE:
NASSAU, BAHAMAS (PLACE YOUR BETS!)
DAY FOUR:
KEY WEST, FLORIDA (CHEERS TO THE SUN!)
DAY FIVE:
ARRIVE AT GRAND CAYMAN
BREAKING NEWS ALERT—4/16, 10:08 A.M.
AN UNFOLDING TRAGEDY AT SEA
We have just learned in an exclusive report that Giselle Haverford, the eighteen-year-old daughter of Senator and likely presidential candidate Robert Haverford and stepdaughter of popular lifestyle blogger Britney Michel Haverford, has gone missing from the family yacht, The Escape. Giselle Haverford reportedly went overboard under suspicious circumstances late last night or early this morning after departing Key West, Florida. The yacht is currently en route to Grand Cayman, where our sources tell us at least one passenger is expected to be taken into custody. More on this story as it develops.
Day 5
APRIL 16—LATE MORNING
Latitude, longitude: 19.952696, -82.953878
80 nautical miles off the coast of Grand Cayman
What have I done?
“Don’t leave this room.” The first mate releases the arm he’s been using to keep me steady on the long, vertigo-inducing walk back to my stateroom from The Escape’s bridge, where I sat and listened in shock as Captain Hjelkrem radioed the Coast Guard to report Giselle overboard. Overboard. This can’t be real. Can it? My pounding hangover is suddenly gone, replaced by something else. Something far worse. Confusion. Disbelief. Horror.
I nod, throat tight, doing my best to stay upright as the Haverford family’s yacht thuds across the churning waves. “I won’t,” I manage to croak out. Where would I go, anyway? We’re in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, miles from shore. There’s nowhere to go except straight down into the water.
I’m struck with a horrifying image of Giselle, hair floating on the surface as she disappears beneath the dark waves. A slender hand, reaching out and grasping the empty air for help that isn’t coming.
A memory? Or just my imagination?
Does it even matter?
Because Giselle is gone, and I’m to blame.
My eyes well with tears.
The first mate backs into the hallway with a sad shake of his head and clicks the door shut. An eerie silence fills the room, save for the sound of my ragged breathing. I am completely and utterly alone, trapped in a prison of my own making.
I sink onto the edge of my bed, staring in disbelief at my trembling hands. Hands I thought I knew. Pale and freckled. Long fingers, thick like Mom’s. Chewed-down nails. I try to picture these hands, placed squarely on Giselle’s back, and I don’t know what to think.
What if they were right about me? What if I’ll do anything to get what I want?
The mahogany walls of my stateroom begin to close in around me like a fist squeezing shut. In less than two hours we’ll arrive in Grand Cayman, where Giselle’s family—and the police—will be waiting. For me.
I try my best to conjure up an image of what went down on the top deck last night. But there’s nothing. Just a black hole where a memory should be, and a persistent, nagging guilt that chews at my core. An unspoken truth, gnawing me from the inside out.
We take a wave, hard, and the Egyptian cotton robe next to my bed sways ominously on its gold hook. Another wave and the tray of cold coffee and stale croissants on my nightstand crashes to the floor. I jolt, heart pounding against my rib cage like a spooked horse trying to bust free of its stall. Something inside me breaks along with the coffee cup; the last bit of hope that this has all been a bad dream. That I’ll wake up and discover Giselle reclining on a lounger under the bright blue Caribbean sky, green eyes dancing with mischief, a dazzling smile lighting up her suntanned face.
Tears roll down my cheeks as the cold reality of what’s happened sinks in. I swipe them away and hobble to the veranda in search of air, wincing with each step on my freshly bandaged foot. I fix my eyes on the distant horizon, a curved line of deep blue that divides the sky from ocean, life from death. It’s the only thing keeping me oriented now that up has swapped places with down, left with right.
A flurry of activity and voices erupt on the deck above me. I can hear the other girls, their words carrying on the breeze from the open balcony doors of the primary suite. I strain to listen, hoping desperately for good news. Some sort of miracle. Reports of a fishing boat that happened by and plucked Giselle from the deep water, and now she’s wrapped in a thick towel drinking warm coffee from a metal thermos with a gruff old fisherman, laughing and plotting her revenge.
“Look at these Polaroids. I can’t believe she kept them,” I hear Vivian say. “Oh,
I remember this. See?” Her voice cracks. “Last year when we dressed like M&M’s for Spring Spirit Week. Giselle had to be different and be a peanut one, and—” She chokes back a sob.
“They’ll find her, Viv,” Emi says. “They have to. She’s Giselle Haverford. I bet every Coast Guard boat and helicopter in a hundred-mile radius is out there now, circling the last place her cell phone pinged.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Vivian sniffles. “We can’t give up hope. She’s always been so strong. If anyone could survive this, it’s Giselle.”
I want to shout up to them, tell them how sorry I am. How I’d do anything—anything—to make this right. But the words sound hollow, even in my own mind. I can’t make this right. Maybe if I hadn’t always been so busy trying to make things right, this never would have happened in the first place.
“I have her necklace,” Vivian says, her voice cracking again, and I picture the gold heart-locket necklace that always dangled from Giselle’s neck. The crew found it this morning, broken and snagged on the dented third-deck railing. Ripped away as she’d tumbled into the water from the deck above.
I swallow hard to keep myself from throwing up.
“Let’s go upstairs and start the vigil,” Emi says.
“What about Maggie?” Vivian asks, and my back stiffens at my name.
Emi scoffs. “What about her?”
“Never mind,” Vivian says. “I don’t know what I meant. I guess I’m still in shock. I can’t believe she’d do something like this. I liked Maggie, you know?”
“Yeah, well, so did Giselle,” Emi answers. “And look how that worked out.”
An automatic bubble of annoyance springs up in my chest, because of course Emi would say that. She’s never liked me. But I push it back down, along with a deep sense of shame. Because this time, Emi’s right.
“She really had me fooled,” Vivian says, then pauses. “Hey, what are you looking for?”
“Giselle’s journal,” Emi answers. “I saw her put it under here, and now it’s gone.”
Icy terror spikes through my veins.
The journal!
I hurry back into my room, heart stuttering as their voices fade away, and punch in the combination to the small safe in my closet. The metal door springs open like an old-fashioned jack-in-the-box, minus the creepy clown. I jolt back in horror.
There’s the journal, still locked tight, just like it was when I stuffed it inside two days ago. It sits right on top of two freshly bundled stacks of hundred-dollar bills that I also shouldn’t have. The corner of a fake passport pokes out from beneath the cash.
And underneath that, a letter written on elegant cream linen stationery, carefully folded in thirds, tucked into a matching envelope with a broken wax seal. If only I had left that stupid thing alone. Now it sits there like a bomb on its final countdown to detonation.
Ticktock. Ticktock.
My head feels like it’s detached from my body and is floating away. A tiny balloon in the big blue sky. A tiny person in the big, wide ocean. I should dump this all overboard. Destroy the evidence.
But I can’t. Not without knowing what Giselle wrote.
I yank the journal from the safe. The pink sequined cover is rough against my palms, and I try to imagine Giselle buying this thing on purpose. It reminds me of something that twelve-year-old me would have picked up at a buy-three-get-three-free sale at Claire’s. Back when I’d save up my chore money to get myself some cheap lip gloss, scrunchies, and unicorn jewelry that turned my skin green after three days.
I slump onto the bed, journal dropping onto my lap, and put my head in my hands.
I wish I could go back in time. Be the person I used to be. Before Giselle. Before Prep. Before this trip. Riding my bike up and down the country roads, slaying imaginary dragons with my foam sword and plastic shield, fighting evil to protect my kingdom. Stretched out in the back of my truck with Allison, fingers entwined, the starlit sky above us a canvas of infinite possibilities. The places we’d go. The people we’d become.
I don’t know you anymore, Allison said when I ran into her last fall, the first time I’d seen her in months. Tears shimmered in her blue-green eyes. You’ve changed. The hair, the clothes . . . everything. You’ve become a totally different person.
Maybe I have. But people don’t really change overnight, do they? It happens in degrees, so small you barely realize what’s going on. Until before you know it, that foam sword is shoved away in the closet, dented and chipped, lost beneath the broken Barbie dolls and clothes that don’t fit anymore. And the one person you swore you’d never be without is somewhere, alone, on the other side of a wide ocean.
Or what if we don’t really change at all? What if growing up is little more than a peeling away of our protective layers, bit by bit, to get at our true selves?
What if this is who I really am?
A liar.
A thief.
A killer.
I tug at the journal’s lock, desperate for answers. It doesn’t give. I grit my teeth in frustration. There has to be some way to get this open.
Wait! The bobby pins Emi used to secure my updo back in Nassau . . .
I rush into the bathroom, ignoring the stabbing pain in my foot, and grab one from the discarded pile on the counter. The thin metal easily yields as I bend the pin open. I snap it in half and peel away the plastic coating, then sit on my bed and shove both points into the lock.
Scrape, twist, scratch, twist.
Nothing happens.
I wiggle the pins harder, sweat beading along my hairline as I struggle to find the internal latch.
Scrape, twist, scrape, twist.
I’m about to give up when it finally catches. The lock pops open with a click, and I blow out an anxious breath. I press the journal open and start to read.
Dear Mom . . .
Mom? I swallow down the lump in my throat. I shouldn’t be invading Giselle’s private thoughts like this. Haven’t I done enough already? But no, I need to carry on. I need to know what Giselle knew.
Who she told.
Dear Mom,
I’m not exactly sure where to start. This journal was Dr. Richard’s idea. He handed it to me during our last session before school started. Said I could write to anyone. Myself. You. An imaginary friend. Just let it all out, tell my story. If you swallow a secret, he said, it will slowly eat you away from the inside.
I’m afraid it’s too late for that, though, isn’t it?
What I really need is YOU, not step-monster Britney. I don’t understand how Dad could replace you so quickly. Not even a year and he already has a whole new family—new wife, baby—POOF! As if the first family never existed. Never even counted. How does someone do that?
It’s September and I’m back at school, which is a relief after spending the summer “bonding” with Britney at that wellness spa in Colorado. It was fucking awful. Meditating and daily breathing exercises with Miss New Age has got to be its own special brand of hell. She even got Dad to do some sort of healing cleanse with crystals, which is totally ridiculous, right? This is DAD we’re talking about. I mean, c’mon, if he really thinks some hot blonde half his age loves him for his glowing aura (and not because she can totally picture herself as First Lady), well, he’s even further gone than I thought.
For the first time ever, I drove myself to Prep. Five long hours from Manhattan to New Hampshire alone with my thoughts. Dad had gone back to DC early to meet with his advisers. Step-monster Britney stayed home (thank God!) because she was too exhausted from her so-called work and taking care of the new baby (despite the fact that Knox’s nanny, Josie, does everything from feeding him to putting him to bed to waking up at night when he cries).
When I got here, I unloaded the car on my own, hauled my bags inside and up three flights of stairs. It was weird. No Dad giving me a hearty slap on the back as we dumped my things in the dorm with a “Give ’em hell, Giselle!” No you, dabbing your eyes with a tissue, telling me how proud you were of me and to not forget to call and write back!
Why didn’t I ever write back?
I’ve saved them all, you know. Your letters. The ones you sent every week, written on your special linen stationery with your initials monogrammed on top, envelopes closed with a red wax seal. It was so old-fashioned and corny, but you said there was something special about a real letter. Something you could hold on to, not like an email or text.
So, I’ve put them all into a drawer in my desk here at school. That way I can read them whenever I want. And maybe even pretend you’re still here. I wear your locket every day. You know, the special one Abuelo gave you for your quinceañera, mi corazón—my heart—engraved inside. I’ll never take it off.
Anyway, after I finished putting my things in my room, I went down the hall to Emiene’s. Viv was already there, flopped on a fuzzy turquoise papasan chair, her suntanned legs slung over the edge. Emi was unpacking her camera gear from a huge Louis Vuitton suitcase and piling it on her desk.
Giselle! Emi said, arms loaded with camera lenses. You’re here, finally!
Vivian popped out of the chair and wrapped me in a hug. I couldn’t help but stiffen a little as the last year came back to me in a rush.
OmigodGiselleLookAtYou, Viv said, her words gushing out in one breath. You look ah-mazing! AH-MAZING!! Like, I think you lost fifteen pounds this summer. I mean, not that you didn’t look incredible before, but wow.
Emi set down her camera gear and came in for a hug, too.
I missed you, she breathed into my ear. The Hamptons sucked without you. I can’t believe you left me on our last summer together, bitch.
I know. I missed you, too, I said, voice catching in my throat. She had no idea how much I would have preferred a carefree summer of bonfires on the beach and lazy days in the sunshine. Instead of . . . ugh, I don’t even want to think about it, let alone put it in writing.
When Em released
me from her iron grip and went back to unpacking, I squished in next to Viv on the papasan. Okay, I said. Let’s hear about Paris!
Viv launched into a tale of her summer spent hooking up with this hot Parisian guy named Raphael who zipped her around the cobblestone streets on his Peugeot and introduced her to baba au rhum and took her to the French countryside (all documented in loving, sunlit detail for her gazillion Instagram followers, of course).
Emi filled me in on everything I’d missed—the new summer people who’d moved in and how a candle shop (seriously, candles?!) had taken the place of our favorite ice cream parlor. The only good thing about the summer, she said, was that she’d had a lot of free time to compile footage for her film school application to USC.
I know you’d laugh, Mom, because when I was little, I always said I couldn’t wait to grow up and be bigger, faster, FREE (like that time I ran off in the park chasing a butterfly when your back was turned, and you were so mad but crying with happiness when you found me, remember??). Still, as soon as Emi mentioned college, this unexpected sense of bittersweet longing tugged at me, knowing that next year everything would change. Even more than it already had, which was saying something. No more huddling in our rooms together on the first day of school, complaining about our dorky uniforms and talking about our crushes. No more us—me, Em, Viv—the three amigos, the three musketeers, or whatever it was our teachers called us over the years. Three best friends, always and forever: Emi, the filmmaking and loyal-as-hell daughter of a Nigerian supermodel and Greek shipping magnate; Viv, the blond bombshell with brains and a talent for documenting her extraordinary life for maximum likes.
And me, Giselle Haverford.
The princess. The queen bee. The perfect smiling face in Dad’s campaign commercials. The girl whose eleventh birthday was featured in a four-page spread in People magazine, radiant as she blew out the candles on her giant (but tasteful!) eleven-tiered cake and hugged her celebrity godparents. The girl who is envied—and maybe even a little feared—as she looks down from her perch atop Andover Prep’s glittering social heap.
Of course, that’s all a lie, isn’t it?
I’m not that person anymore.
I’m not sure I ever was.
And let’s face it, the three amigos began to splinter apart the day Britney stepped into my life and took over yours.
I really wish I could have known you better, Mom. I wish I’d asked you more when I had the chance. About my grandparents and the uncle who died before I was born. About your childhood in Miami and my abuelo’s life in Cuba. About your hopes and dreams and the design career you gave up so you could play the role of the perfect political wife and be my mom. Now it’s too late. All I can do is write these pretend letters.
Letters that no one will ever answer.
But maybe that’s for the best.
Because two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.
Day 5
APRIL 16—MORNING
Latitude, longitude: 19.808054, -82.601259
90 nautical miles off the coast of Grand Cayman
Never again.
I know, famous last words and all that. But seriously. I never want to see another bottle of Cristal in my life. I don’t care how fancy it is or how many “notes of pear” it contains or how effervescent the bubbles might be. After last night, I’m swearing off champagne for good. My head pounds. I can hardly remember coming back to my room and climbing into bed. Still in my bathing suit and cover-up, apparently.
My stomach heaves. I throw back the covers and rush to the bathroom, attempting to steady myself over the toilet as I regurgitate last night’s mistakes. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, fairly certain I just barfed up my spleen and flushed it out to sea.
I slump to the floor. I’ve never felt anything like this. Not even the morning after that all-night party in the field behind Kyle Parker’s house, which is the only other time I’ve gotten drunk. It was mud season, that glorious time of year when every dirt road in Vermont turns to quicksand. Allison and I got stuck three times driving to that party, and I worried we might have even worse luck trying to get home. We were already going to have a hard enough time explaining the mud splatters on Alli’s jeans from when she tried to push my truck free while I stepped on the gas (an idea that seemed a lot better before we tried it). But having to explain to Alli’s control-freak parents what we were doing with a bunch of camping gear and a cooler filled with cheap wine five miles outside town—instead of sleeping over at each other’s houses like we said we’d be doing—would be far, far worse.
As it turned out, Allison’s parents wound up being the least of my worries.
I shake my head.
Bigger and better things, I tell myself.
Bigger and better things.
But first, I’ve got to make it off this yacht in one piece, which seems pretty questionable at the moment. I drag both hands over my face, trying to wake up. I swear, it’s like I’ve been drugged or something. Then I remember the rounds upon rounds of sickly sweet rum runners back in Key West that came before the champagne. How many of those did I knock back? At least three. What on earth was I thinking? I never should have let myself lose control like that. Especially around Giselle. Did I do anything stupid?
A chill creeps up my spine as little snippets of last night’s debauchery flit across my mind—Giselle, champagne bottles, smashing glass. All at once I go from cold to hot, then cold again, and a pounding starts up in my head like someone’s cracking a mallet against my skull. From the inside.
Bam, bam, bam.
Ugh, make it stop.
Bam, bam, bam.
“Maggie! Are you in there?”
It takes a minute to realize that the pounding is actually coming from the door to my cabin. And it’s not my cabin steward, ...
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