No Accident

by Laura Bates

Genres: YA Mysteries & Thrillers

Synopsis

No matter how you try to hide it, the truth will always come out . . .

When a small plane crash ends with a group of seven teens washed up on a deserted island, their first thought is survival. With supplies dwindling and the fear of being stranded forever becoming more of a reality, they quickly discover that being the most popular kid in high school doesn't help when you're fighting to stay alive.

And when strange and terrifying accidents start to occur all around them, the group realizes that they are being targeted by someone who was on the plane, and that the island isn't their only danger. A terrible secret from a party the night before the flight has followed them ashore—and it's clear that someone is looking for justice. Now survival depends on facing the truth about that party: who was hurt that night, and who let it happen?

"Laura Bates is one of the most important feminist voices we have and The Trial is engaging and clever, thought-provoking and thrilling. I inhaled it in one sitting." — Louise O'Neill, author of Asking For It

Praise for THE BURNING:

"A haunting rallying cry against sexism and bullying" — Kirkus Reviews

"Emotionally charged...powerful." — Booklist

"A painfully realistic, spellbinding novel." — Shelf Awareness

 

Read more

Release date: December 6, 2022

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Print pages: 237

Content advisory: This book deals with issues including rape, coercive control and sexual bullying

Sample

Day 1

A flaming sock.

It seems like such a ridiculous thing. But that’s what Hayley is looking at as she lies flat on her back, staring at the bright, blue sky. A smoldering gym sock, twirling in slow motion, trailing a smudge of smoke as it floats gently down toward her.

Hayley tries hard to swallow but there is something wrong with her throat, with her eyes. She can’t move her arms or her legs. She isn’t meant to be here—this isn’t right. Concentrate, Hayley. You aren’t here, you can’t be. You’re on a plane. Think back.

Bing!

The seat belt signs were turned off and Brian was first out of his seat, lumbering down the aisle toward the bathroom next to the cockpit. The back of his neck looked even paler than usual beneath his ruddy curls, freckles standing out like a smattering of fawn paint drops flicked off a brush.

“Actually, Brian, please take your seat for a moment.” Coach Erickson ushered him back toward the rest of the team. Hayley saw Brian’s eyes bulge a little. Was it just the artificial overhead lights or did he look faintly green?

“I really need to get in there, Coach,” Brian mumbled, gesturing toward the bathroom door.

“This will just take a moment, son.” Coach Erickson grinned, clapping his weathered hands to attract everyone’s attention. Brian collapsed reluctantly into a free seat, cradling his stomach.

Erickson ran a hand through his thinning hair. Graying now, but the same floppy cut he’d sported since the grainy photos in the school trophy case that showed him lifting the all-state high school basketball championship cup forty years before. His face had leathered since, decades of working outdoors sending tiny red thread veins crisscrossing his nose so he looked permanently flushed with enthusiasm.

From her seat over the wing, Hayley twisted to look toward the back of the small private plane. May and Jessa were fast asleep, their backs pressed together, knees drawn up. May’s glossy black hair spilled forward over a blanket clutched in her arms. Jessa’s long, plump twists were draped over May’s chest as her head lolled back onto her best friend’s shoulder. Across the aisle, Shannon was looking out the window, her back poker straight, one foot automatically rotating and pointing through a complicated series of flexibility exercises.

The boys looked vaguely disinterested. Jason was lounging back in his seat with his legs stretched out across the aisle, playing a game on his phone. Elliot was sitting a little apart from the others, as always, bent over a

sketchbook, his eyes flicking up and down at the other kids as his hand moved quickly back and forth across the page. Brian looked like he was focusing all his energy on keeping his mouth closed.

“Guys, I need your attention for a second.” Slight irritation flashed across the usually placid face of the coach. He put his fingers in his mouth and let out a shrill whistle so that all eyes swiveled toward him. May and Jessa reluctantly disentangled themselves, yawning.

“Jeez, you guys. Do we need to talk about what happened last night?” There was a sudden silence, the air practically crackling. Jason shot a glance toward Shannon, who continued to look doggedly out the window. Hayley thought she saw Jessa jerk as she sat up straighter. Elliot’s hand froze on the page.

Erickson gave a sly smile. “Oh-ho, you think a coach doesn’t know what happens on the last night of tour? You think this is my first rodeo?”

Brian convulsed slightly and started fumbling in the seat pocket in front of him for a sick bag. Hayley watched curiously as May leaned toward Jessa and whispered loudly, “Where did you go last night? I lost you halfway through the party…”

Erickson beamed and waved his hand dismissively. “Hell, you can all relax. What goes on tour stays on tour and all that. I know about the ‘rave.’” He sketched quote marks in the air with his fingers, and Hayley cringed for him as his shirt rode up a little, exposing a hint of late middle-age spread. She’d never seen anyone look less like they knew the details of what happened at a “rave.”

“I just wanted to tell you all how proud I am of you,” Erickson went on, smiling at them. “I know not all of you are here, but I’ve already said a few words to the players who went back on the other flight. Of course, we’re very grateful to the Angel family for extending the use of their company planes.” He nodded toward Jason, who grinned and tipped a small bag of salted peanuts into his mouth.

Erickson cleared his throat. “Now, I know the off-season prep tour isn’t the be-all and end-all of tournaments, but it’s an important lead-in to our main season, and you showed up and gave it your all. Ladies”—he tipped an imaginary hat to the back of the plane—“your enthusiasm and athleticism were outstanding, as always. A team is nothing without its cheerleaders. And guys…well, what can I say? Not many of you know this, but this is actually my very last tour. I’ll be retiring at the end of next semester.”

Hayley watched Coach Erickson carefully, her chin resting on a cupped hand. Were his eyes getting a little misty? Erickson was a “drop and gimme twenty” kind of coach, the sort of old-school educator who’d never owned a cell phone and believed there was no problem in life that couldn’t be solved by a brisk run and a hot shower. She began to reach for her notebook. That was a good line. There’d be a tribute in the school paper, maybe even a piece in the local press. “Drop-and-gimme-twenty coach comes to the end of his last lap.” She should get that down before she forg—

It happened so suddenly, it was like a light going out. One second, Erickson was talking, his back to the cockpit door, the students staring at him from several rows away. The next, everything moved at once. The seats dropped out from underneath them as if they’d been snatched away by an invisible

hand. The windows that should have been to the left and right were suddenly on the ceiling, then spinning around to appear beneath her. Backpacks, water bottles, plastic food trays, shoes, paper cups, phones, magazines—everything was whizzing through the air like the inside of a snow globe, flying debris smashing into elbows and scratching faces. Limbs crashed and tangled into each other, spines bowed, heads whipped helplessly from side to side.

The noise was deafening. A crunching, screeching shriek of grinding metal; the roar of machinery; the din of alarms all blaring at once. And over the top of it, screaming and screaming.

There wasn’t time to think. No time to wonder what was happening, to process or brace or react. There was only sensation. The lurching, roiling lightness in the stomach. The clench of panicked eyes flashing open, scrunching closed, and sharp scratches sparking hot and angry against the face and forearms. A strange sort of emptiness in the brain, like air pushing against the inside of your skull. No real pain, not yet. Then darkness.

And, presumably some time later, a flaming sock. Floating down toward Hayley as she lies on her back, unable to move. There isn’t any sound. It’s like watching a muted TV. The sock drifts in and out of focus. Hayley blinks, and it has fallen away somewhere else, the screen all blue again. Then a shadow obscures the blue and she thinks, ludicrously, that the signal has gone, but then her eyes begin to sting and she realizes it is smoke.

When it hits the back of her throat, it’s like the world has been turned back on. She chokes and starts to retch, acrid fumes thickening in her mouth, her eyes streaming. She vomits, her head twisting automatically to the side. She finds that she can move and that her whole body is throbbing with pain.

The shock feels like a heavy blanket, weighing down every limb, clouding the air around her, making it almost impossible to see. Slowly, Hayley raises her head, her neck screaming in protest. She lifts a hand to shield her eyes from the white glare of the sun and registers distantly, as if she were looking at someone else’s fingers, that there is a deep wound across the back of her wrist, that her skin is streaked with something black and sticky, that one of her fingernails is ripped and half hanging off. The hand is shaking.

There is sand everywhere. Grittiness in her eyes, between her teeth. Granules between her fingers, prickling the backs of her knees.

In the years afterwards, when Hayley thinks back to that afternoon, she will only ever be able to see it in snatches, like photographs laid out in a line. Moments and sensations, jumbled and out of order, some so vivid she can taste them, others so alien she doesn’t know if they really happened at all.

Black skin a yard or two away, streaked with red. Jessa. A jam-like sticky goo on the side of her arm, every muscle in Hayley’s body straining not to look at it.

A twisted carcass of metal, unrecognizable. Wires hanging like streamers. Little fires crackling with sparks.

Bodies scattered in the sand. Some moving. Some not. Shannon’s narrow, sheet-white face inches from hers, her hands gripping Hayley’s shoulders, shaking lightly, her voice, distorted like she’s underwater, saying something.

Relief like a liquid gush when Shannon moves to Jessa, puts two long fingers in the hollow under her chin, and says, “There’s a pulse.”

The weirdest sensation of hysterical laughter somewhere deep in her chest as she watches Shannon bending over Jessa, and a singsong voice in her head

intones, “A head cheerleader never cracks under pressure.”

Stumbling to her feet, a clean, hot pain flashes through Hayley’s ankle and she drops to the ground again, crawling now instead.

Elliot is sitting up, spitting into the sand. He looks at her, nodding mutely and waving her past with a blood-streaked hand as she moves from body to body, the sand burning her knees raw.

Sobs, shuddering, screaming grind into Hayley’s ears like someone scraping the inside of her head with a metal spoon. She wants them to stop so she can think, so she can breathe. She isn’t here, she’s on a plane. She is meant to be on a plane.

May sits up slowly, the side of her face sharply grazed. Her pupils are like lagoons. Jessa’s body shakes and convulses as she screams, her arm sticking out at the wrong angle, black oil running down it and mixing with blood and torn skin.

One day, when she thinks back, Hayley will remember how her Girl Scout first aid training flashed into her mind as she knelt next to Jessa. How strange it felt to remember a smiling nurse in mint-green overalls, a blue plastic dummy on the floor.

Brain numb. Clogged, heavy with cotton wool. Something about breathing? And circulation? ABC? Or ACE? But that smooth, clinical blue plastic had looked nothing like this. It wasn’t meant to be ugly and dirty, sand and blood and a mess like congealed pudding. It was meant to be clean and pleasant. Time for mistakes and starting over and asking for tips. Do I put my hands here or here? How many breaths again? Comforting, firm hands on top of hers, mint overalls swishing.

Someone says they need to set Jessa’s arm and holds Jessa down. Elliot pulls, like ripping at a butcher’s carcass. Hayley feels useless kneeling there, trying to remember her Girl Scout acronyms. She holds Jessa’s other hand instead, letting her grip hard, painfully squeezing sand into Hayley’s open cuts.

Even years later, she will know that the noises Jessa made then caused Hayley to vomit again and again onto her own feet. But her brain won’t let her remember them.

Time moves strangely. She knows they are on a beach. She knows that the front of the plane is missing, that there is no sign of Coach Erickson or the pilot. She can’t remember how she knows this or who told her. Her ankle throbs and rages and when she tries to walk again; she still can’t get very far. Sometimes she looks down and sees, to her surprise, that her arms and legs are shaking.

She doesn’t know how long it is before Jason staggers out of the line of trees along the top of the beach, dragging Brian’s motionless body.

“He’s alive,” he says grimly, preempting the unasked question on all of their faces.

Jason lets Brian slump limply to the ground and runs to Shannon, wraps her in his arms, stroking her long, curly dark hair like a child. “My baby,” he murmurs. Seeing the two of them entwined like that makes Hayley feel terrifyingly alone. But there’s a stiffness in Shannon’s back. Her arms hang at her sides, and she doesn’t return the embrace.

Time jumps forward again.

Hayley is sitting at the base of a palm where the beach meets the tree line, rough bark reassuringly solid behind her back. A few yards to her right, in the shade of another tree, Jessa is lying, mercifully asleep, her head in May’s lap. May is stroking the baby hairs on Jessa’s forehead with the tips of her fingers. Jessa usually gels them flat, but they’ve started to curl wispily at the roots in the humid air. It makes her look younger, more vulnerable somehow. Jason puts his hands under Brian’s armpits, heaving him over to lie next to Jessa. Thick bushes and palm trees with shiny, rubbery leaves that Hayley doesn’t recognize spread behind them in a dense tangle. The beach stretches out uninterrupted to the left and right like a smooth slick of butter. The smoldering wreck of the plane is hunched, gargoyle-esque, twenty feet away, its wing forced deep into the sand. Elliot encouraged them to get away from it in case there was a fuel explosion, but the flames have died down. It isn’t the whole plane but a torn-off hunk, one wing and the tube of its body, the tail ripped and twisted to one side. There is no sign of the nose or the front third. The beach is strewn with parts as if the carcass of the plane has been ravaged by scavengers, trailing its innards across the sand. Ripped seat cushions dribbling foam stuffing, metal panels and glass shards littering the beach. A piece of tasteful beige carpet flaps listlessly in the breeze.

In the distance, beyond the wreckage, is a shimmering swipe of pale golden turquoise that must be sea, hough the tide is so far out that Hayley can’t make out where the sand ends and the water begins. The chances of them landing on an island rather than plunging into the sea were infinitesimally small, Hayley realizes. Lucky. An odd way to look at it—but they are.

“I shouldn’t be here,” Hayley says to no one in particular, a stream of giggles burbling suddenly and unstoppably out of her. It seems hopelessly, ridiculously funny. Things like this do not happen to Hayley Larkin; everything in her life is perfect, controlled and calculated down to the very last detail. Or at least that’s what it looks like from the outside. She wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for the unwelcome revelation from her guidance counselor that even being on track for valedictorian and maintaining a flawless GPA wasn’t enough to guarantee admission to an Ivy League college without diverse extracurriculars to boost her application.

Her head feels light somehow, as if there’s too much air inside her skull, and she can’t keep hold of her thoughts. Suddenly she’s back in that drab, airless office, its gray walls closing in on her even as the sun beats down around her.

She expects the appointment be a formality, a check-in on her excellent progress, a pat on the back. She is on track for Princeton or Harvard; she has ticked every box. A major in English with a stint on the college paper, then internships at the New York Times or the Washington Post in her junior year and a position as a cub reporter at a local outlet when she graduates. She has it all planned out. So it’s a shock when Mr. Curtis looks at her file and frowns. “Right now, on paper, you look like a very…solitary candidate. What you need is something that shouts team player!”

She hopefully suggests debate club and reminds Mr. Curtis she is already editor of the Oak Ridge Tribune, but he frowns and kindly proposes something “a little further from your comfort zone…less academic.”

“It needn’t be long term,” he adds, catching her expression of dismay as she mentally tries to work out how she will cram anything else into her already-packed schedule. “It might even be fun. What’s the worst that could happen?”

And suddenly, she is on a windy field one Monday at lunch, tugging her cycling shorts out of her crotch and trying to remember to smile while she high kicks her way awkwardly through her audition routine.

Which (thanks to two dropouts and a nasty bout of strep throat) lets her scrape into the bottom of the cheerleading squad. Which, in turn, leads her here. To this beach.

And suddenly she is back on it, this beach covered in vomit and blood and twisted metal.

Hayley Larkin does not belong on this beach.

The strange thing is that she cannot seem to move. Distantly, she is aware of activity around her. Shannon is moving purposefully from Brian to Jessa, lifting their wrists to check pulses, bending down low to feel their breath on her cheek. Jason has wrapped a wet basketball jersey around his face as a makeshift smoke mask and is diving in and out of the plane’s wreckage, pulling out anything that might be useful or edible and piling it high on the beach. With the sun shining on his muscular, lightly tanned arms and swept-back blond hair, he looks like something out of a superhero movie.

I always thought I would be the unlikely superhero, Hayley thinks vaguely, as she feels the sand prickle the backs of her thighs. Sure, she might be the weakest link in the squad, the last one invited to social events, more likely to attend prom as a student reporter than somebody’s date. But she’s always somehow believed that when it came down to it, when “real life” started, she’d show them all. She’d secretly pictured herself one day becoming the front-page story instead of the person who wrote it. Graciously accepting her Pulitzer for blowing a sex trafficking ring or a corruption scandal wide open while the cheerleaders, weirdly still in their teens, stood by, mouths open, pom-poms hanging limply. She’d daydreamed it in the long, tedious hours sitting in hotel rooms on the tour, pretending to be glad to have the time to study while she listened to the other girls shrieking with laughter at TikToks of cats dubbed to look like they were singing pop songs.

Yet still she cannot move. She wants to sit here with the solid tree against her back for as long as it takes until things don’t feel like they are spinning out of control anymore.

She sees May gently ease Jessa’s head onto a folded sweatshirt and walk over to help Jason sort through the growing heap of supplies next to the plane. Her willowy frame bends and straightens, bends and straightens as she goes through the items.

Hayley watches as May stacks a small tower of those foil-covered trays of plane food, watches as they slide down in all directions, crashing into the sand. She sees the exasperation on May’s face as she wipes beads of sweat from the bridge of her nose, running her hand over her perfectly groomed black eyebrows. Numbly, Hayley thinks that the food shouldn’t be left there in the sun. Someone should carry it into the shade. But she can’t move.

“It’ll spoil so quickly in this heat,” her mom tuts unexpectedly in her head.

Mom.

Hayley sees her walking toward the front door, frowning, glancing at her watch. Taking off her glasses, wiping them automatically on her sleeve and tucking them into the collar of her sweater. Swiping her dark blond hair back over her shoulder with one hand as she reaches for the doorknob with the other. Sees the panic flicker on her face as red-and-blue lights cross her forehead. Sees Dad appear behind her at the open front door, place a hand on her shoulder, start barking urgent questions at the police officer as Mom stays silent. Sees the tension in the tendons of his neck, stiffening beneath the short salt-and-pepper hair, jaw clenching, dark brown skin carefully clean shaven.

“A phone,” she croaks, surprised to find how sore her throat is. “Does anyone still have their phone?” Shannon looks up from where she’s kneeling beside Brian, one dark eyebrow raised in the sort of patronizing expression Hayley has become far too accustomed to in cheer practice.

“Don’t you think we’ve already tried? No signal,” she replies curtly, tossing her phone into the sand at Hayley’s feet with a soft thud. Shannon and Jason grin cheesily in the lock screen picture, all wide white smiles, his teeth practically sparkling. They look like an ad for all-American high school sweethearts. Shannon’s right. No bars.

Shannon moves practiced hands to Hayley’s ankle, rotating it expertly as Hayley winces and draws a sharp breath. “It’s swollen, but it’s probably just a sprain. You wouldn’t be able to put any weight on it if it was broken.” And Hayley’s so grateful that someone is taking charge, touching her with firm, confident fingers that show her limbs where to move and when, that she doesn’t find Shannon’s know-it-all tone as annoying as usual. “The soreness in your chest is probably from smoke inhalation,” Shannon adds, almost smugly. “Lucky I got my first aid extension certificate last month.”

“Or bruising from the crash?” Hayley asks, indicating a nasty bruise blooming below Shannon’s collarbone.

“Maybe,” Shannon agrees, handing Hayley an open bottle of water. She takes it and swigs great gulps, then suddenly stops, the bottle still raised to her lips.

“Should we be…” It sounds so silly, so melodramatic. “Should we be saving our water?” she asks uncertainly.

“I don’t think it’s going to come to starvation rations.” Shannon smirks. “It’s the Gulf of Mexico, not the Bermuda Triangle—I’d be surprised if someone hasn’t found us by sunset.” She bustles off again.

“Speaking of sunset…” Hayley glances at the horizon. The sun pulses egg-yolk orange, lower in the sky now, and the incoming tide, while still distant, has crept closer, so that she can see a faint white line where the frothy edges of the waves meet the shore.

Hayley passes the water bottle to Jason and he swigs thirstily, wiping his lip with the back of his hand, his eyes on Shannon, who is hovering over Jessa again.

“So,” he says, sitting down in the sand with his legs out in front of him, knees bent. Hayley notices little grains of sand hanging on to his sun-bleached blond leg hairs. They all turn toward him instinctively. It’s as if, with Coach Erickson gone, he’s the natural source of authority. As if being captain on the court has anything at all to do with this. As if a carefully crafted defensive

play is going to help them now. Hayley feels giggles fizzing inside her again. It is all so completely absurd.

Jason holds up seven fingers. “Shannon, Hayley, May, me—all okay or near enough.” He nods at each of them, folding down his fingers one by one as he checks them off.

“Elliot too, though I don’t know where he’s gone.” He folds down the thumb, leaving a curled fist and two fingers still sticking up on the other hand. “Jessa—hurt but conscious.” They all turn to look at Jessa, curled in a fetal position, her long, glossy twists splayed on the sand, lips slightly parted to reveal the gap between her front teeth. There’s some swelling around her shoulder, but the blood on her upper arm has congealed to a dark paste.

A small fly lands inquisitively at the edge of the dark blood. May brushes it away angrily, glaring at the others as if all this is their fault. Jessa has always been hers, as long as anyone can remember. They’ve been a pair since day one of first grade, fingers interlaced in a wordless playground pact before the bell even rang. Jessa’s gentle, considered thoroughness and May’s spiky, scrappy boldness somehow fit together and made a whole.

“The mouth on that girl,” Hayley’s mom had gasped, half admiring, half disapproving, after she’d stopped by to pick up Hayley after practice one night just in time to hear May unleash a stream of profanities in the direction of a truck that had blocked her in the parking lot. Hayley has never seen May without a comeback. But she looks shrunken and lost without Jessa awake and alert by her side. Her straight black hair hangs around her shoulders like a silk curtain, like she’s already in mourning. Her delicate features look crumpled, long black eyelashes shining with tears.

They all stare at the seventh unchecked finger. Jason doesn’t need to say it. Brian lies motionless in the shade, his meaty calves and forearms limp, his thick neck looking strangely delicate and vulnerable.

Only a short while ago, they’d been teasing him on the plane for having to wear his basketball jersey because he’d run out of clean clothes two days before the end of the tour. He grinned proudly and started explaining how underwear lasts twice as long if you turn it inside out, at which point Hayley very deliberately stopped listening.

Now Brian’s arms and legs glow an angry red, his fair skin already burning under the relentless sun. The pale brown freckles that usually dust his round cheeks have been swallowed by the new rose pallor, which clashes with the ginger of his messy curls.

“He’s breathing,” Jason says, a little too loudly. “Maybe he just needs to sleep it off.” Hayley resists the urge to point out that he hasn’t regained consciousness yet; the situation is significantly more serious than an extended nap. She looks at Brian’s slack face again and feels a wave of nausea rise in the base of her throat. She swallows it down and looks away.

“OH MY GOD, NAKED TWIN LESBIANS!” Jason shouts suddenly, leaning toward Brian and shaking his leg. Brian’s head lolls a little, his eyes remaining closed.

“Yeah, he’s genuinely unconscious.” Jason smirks, apparently oblivious to the fact that he’s the only one who seems to find this amusing.

“We queer women don’t only exist for your amusement, Jason, you might be shocked to hear,” May mutters without looking up. And Jason at least has the grace to look awkward, though he doesn’t apologize.

“Has anybody seen Coach Erickson? Or the pilot?” Hayley asks.

Jason shakes his head. “I walked pretty deep into the trees looking for Brian. He must have been thrown farther from the wreckage because he wasn’t wearing his seat belt. But there was no sign of anyone else or the front of the plane.”

“It probably broke away much earlier,” Shannon says grimly, looking out to sea. Her pale, angular face is serious, dark circles making her eye sockets look hollow and gaunt where usually she exudes an unusual kind of sharp glamour. “That grinding, screeching noise started a good minute or two before we crashed. The rest of the plane could be miles away.”

“Or it could be somewhere else on the island,” May snaps. “They could be injured, or worse—they might need our help.”

“I don’t think so, May,” says a quiet voice, and Elliot steps out of the bushes, his curly, chestnut-brown hair wild, his arms piled with sticks and twigs. There’s a thin diagonal cut across his right cheekbone, and his knee-length khaki shorts are torn.

He bends down, carefully piling the wood on the sand. “There’s a pretty steep incline to the north.” He jerks his head back toward the trees and to the right. “I climbed up far enough to get a sense of the whole island, and I didn’t see anybody else or anything that looked like it was from the plane. There’s a lot of tree cover across the center of the island, so I guess it’s possible there’s something I didn’t spot if part of the plane went down there…but I’d still expect to see some debris, broken branches…something. I think Shannon’s right. We’re on our own.”

There’s a surprised silence. Hayley isn’t sure she’s ever heard Elliot talk uninterrupted for that long. She sees a sudden flash of him skulking into the first joint practice at the start of the semester, head bowed, not meeting anyone’s eye.

Then the reality of what he has said hits her like a cold blast. On our own. Stranded. Stuck. The enormity of it is so great she almost can’t think about it at all. She looks down at her bloodied hand and notices her torn fingernail is beginning to throb. Somehow it’s easier to focus on that one small thing, the immediate pain, than it is to contemplate what Elliot has told them. There’s a wave of panic hovering, threatening to completely overwhelm her. She picks at the nail and earns herself a sharp stab of pain. The panic recedes a little.

“How do you know that’s north?” May blurts it at Elliot like she wants to pick a fight. Hayley looks at May’s dark, glinting eyes and knows she isn’t the only one at risk of being swept away by that wave of fear.

Elliot holds out his arm, showing them a worn leather watch whose soft, threadbare strap is the same sandy golden brown as his skin. “You can work it out by pointing the hour hand at the sun. A line drawn between the hour hand and twelve points south.” The others stare at him. “My family camps. A lot,” he adds awkwardly.

“Anyway.” Elliot crouches and starts arranging little twigs and scraps of wood in a pyramid. “It’s going to get dark and cold pretty quickly once the sun goes down. And if anyone comes looking for us, a fire is the best way to get their attention.”

Hayley feels like an idiot. They’ve been here for hours—why didn’t any of them think of a fire?

“Nobody has a lighter,” Jason scoffs, shifting his weight forward like he wants to draw the others back toward him. Heads obediently swivel in his direction. On the court, Elliot might’ve ducked his head in embarrassment, danced to Jason’s tune, but here he ignores him, walking over to the pile of supplies by the plane.

“I said there aren’t any lighters or matches, man,” Jason repeats, a tougher note in his voice daring Elliot to contradict him.

Elliot picks up a plastic water bottle, murmurs to himself, and starts walking up and down the beach, sifting through the debris. With a grunt of satisfaction, he pulls his sketchbook out from under a pile of clothes and shoes, flicking past a half-finished picture of them sitting in the back of the plane, and carefully rips out a piece of paper covered in dark pencil lines.

Hayley leans forward to watch, wondering how he can manage to stay so calm. Bending close to the tepee of twigs, Elliot folds the paper in two and holds it in his left hand, then slowly tilts the water bottle back and forth using his right hand. A bright spot of light appears on the paper, a circle that grows and shrinks as he experimentally moves the bottle around. When the light is at its brightest, a tiny concentrated pinprick, he holds it still, and almost immediately the paper begins to smolder and smoke. A dime-size circle scorches out from the center, the edges curling white. Jason raises his eyebrows and puts his arm around Shannon’s waist. “Nice trick, Cub Scout.”

Elliot’s lip twitches with a tiny smile as he gently waves the paper back and forth, feeding it oxygen, patiently encouraging it until an orange flame flickers up. He pokes it between the twigs he’s arranged, pulling a handful of dry, dead grass from his pocket and stuffing it into the gaps.

Elliot puts his cheek to the sand and blows, and a little spiral of bluish smoke rises up again, chased by tiny tongues of flame licking at the twigs.

There’s a low whistle. “Impressive,” croaks a voice. Brian is struggling to raise himself up on one elbow.

Hayley feels the relief thrum warm in her chest.

“Fuck’s sake, Brian. Do you have any idea how long you’ve been out?” Jason’s voice is rough—accusing, even. He wipes his hand swiftly across his face and frowns at Brian like he’s committed five fouls in a game.

Brian grins sheepishly. “Where are we? What happened?” He looks around, taking in his surroundings, and mutters, “Jesus.” He raises his hand to the back of his head with a wince and then gulps greedily from the water bottle Jason shoves toward him.

“The plane crashed,” Shannon says simply. “We’re on an island.”

“Is everyone okay?”

“Everyone except Jessa. She’s been conscious, but her arm is hurt. We don’t know about Coach Erickson and the pilot. We think they went down somewhere else.”

Brian’s gaze wanders from the fire to the trees to the plane, then out over the beach toward the sea. The heat of the sun is waning now, a breeze rushing up the beach and into the canopy above them as if to whisper that the sea is coming, coming. They can smell it—the wet, fresh scent of salt and seaweed that tethers Hayley to reality, forces her to acknowledge that this is actually happening.

Brian is eyeing Jessa. “Is it just her arm? Because I saw something like this on Grey’s Anatomy where they thought the guy was totally fine because he was awake and talking, but then he had a delayed brain hemorrhage and he just died.” Brian snaps his fingers. “Like that.”

“Oh, good.” Shannon rolls her eyes. “I didn’t realize we had a qualified brain doctor with us.”

May’s eyes shoot daggers at Brian as he shuffles into a sitting position, wincing and rotating his head from side to side.

“What? They have medical advisers to make it realistic, you know.”

It’s quiet around the fire as they peel back the metal foil from the food trays and start picking at the contents with plastic forks. Cold macaroni and cheese isn’t exactly appealing, but at least it fills their stomachs. Hayley pulls the plastic wrapper off a small bread roll and is about to take a bite when Elliot walks out of the trees carrying another large armful of sticks, which he dumps in a pile near the fire.

“What are you all doing?” Elliot pants, gaping at them.

They blink at him, this new, different Elliot who isn’t sitting on the sidelines with his patched backpack guarding the seat next to him, listening silently to post-practice pep talks, emerging from the locker room like a ghost after the other boys have tumbled out in a loud group. They are so used to not noticing him that nobody even saw him go, and his return takes them by surprise.

“What do you mean, what are we doing?” Shannon looks at her macaroni and wrinkles her nose “We’re eating dinner, if you can call it that.”

“Guys,” Elliot speaks urgently, angrily. “You can’t just eat everything. We have no idea how long we’re going to be stuck here. We need to ration our food and liquids.”

“Oh, come on, man,” Jason drawls, taking a bite of a candy bar he has helped himself to from the supply pile.

“No, ‘man,’ you come on,” Elliot shoots back. “The plane only had enough food on board for one meal, plus whatever snacks people had on them. That’s it. How long do you think we’re going to last if we eat it all at once?”

There’s an uncomfortable silence.

“It’s only a matter of time till someone finds us,” Jason says dismissively. “My parents are going to have people out looking, believe me.”

“I’m sure they will,” Elliot retorts drily. “But do you have any idea how big the Gulf of Mexico is? How long it could take? We’re talking about more than a million square miles.”

“They know our flight path,” Hayley points out, swallowing a gelatinous mouthful of macaroni and trying to quell the rising fear Elliot’s words are igniting in her stomach. “Houston to Miami. That’ll narrow it down.”

“Sure, if we’d stayed on it. But who knows how far we zigzagged or what went off course with the plane? We have no idea whether the radio transmitter was still working, whether the pilot was able to issue a Mayday call…” Elliot frowns. “Even in the act of falling out of the sky, the plane could have covered miles and miles! And they might have lost track of us long before we went down.”

“Aren’t we on a barrier island?” May asks uncertainly. “I assumed we were somewhere close to land, just not close enough to see it.”

Elliot shakes his head. “I’ve been fishing off some of the barrier islands with my dad. They’re basically just big sandbars. They’re flat, grassy.” He waves his hand at the thick trees behind them and the darkening shadow where the land rises to the right. “Nothing like this.”

“Right.” Jason claps his hands loudly, speaking over Elliot. “I think we need a plan. Let’s assume it could be a few days before we’re rescued. We need to do an inventory of our supplies and ration them out.”

There are six untouched, foil-covered plane dinners left in the pile and a smattering of squashed snacks.

“Each tray has a carton of macaroni, a salad, a bread roll, crackers, and cheese,” Jason announces. “Let’s call that four portions of food.” He pauses, and Hayley physically bites her tongue to stop herself from doing the sum for him. “Twenty-four portions in all. There’s seven of us, so that’s enough for three days if we each eat just one portion per day. Plus two Snickers, a Slim Jim, and three bags of Cheetos. There’s no way it’ll take them more than three days to find us.”

“They better find us faster,” Brian mutters. “This puny salad is not a day’s worth of calories. Although,” he says, brightening, “if Jessa doesn’t wake up tomorrow, I call her macaroni.”

“What?” he asks defensively as the others look at him in horror. “I’m not saying I don’t want her to wake up…I’m just saying there’ll be more food to go around if she doesn’t. It’s a simple fact.”

“What about water?” Hayley interrupts. “It’s more important than food, isn’t it?”

They separate the pile of supplies into four sections. Food, liquids, clothing, and things like cushions and towels that they can use for bedding. There are twelve unopened bottles

of water left. Hayley feels her chest tightening as she does the math. Four bottles a day if they’re rescued in the next three days. Four between seven. Less than a bottle each per day.

“We should keep the water all in one place,” Shannon says as Jason stuffs the rest of the candy bar in his mouth. “Make sure it’s shared out fairly.”

“Good idea, sweetie.” Jason nods. “You be in charge of that, okay?”

Shannon doesn’t reply. She begins stacking the water bottles methodically. “And we should stay out of the sun,” Hayley adds, “then we’ll dehydrate less quickly.”

She feels an automatic rush of relief that she’s thought of something to contribute, then realizes how ridiculous the impulse is. It’s not debate club. Nobody here is being graded. “That’s all settled, then,” Hayley says. “Nobody eats or drinks alone. We’ll put the food and water in the bushes to keep it cool.”

“What about animals?” May’s voice is uncharacteristically small and uncertain. “How do we know it won’t get eaten by wild animals?” she repeats, slumping down next to Jessa and pulling her knees to her chest. “How do we even know it’s safe to sleep out here?” She gestures to the beach, where the tide has crept much closer, little waves running up the sand and stopping about thirty yards away. “Who’s going to keep Jessa safe in the night? What if something smells her blood—” Her voice is rising, and there are tears in her throat though her eyes look fierce. Hayley wants to hug her, to tell her it’ll all be okay. Except that she doesn’t know whether it will be, and she knows that May would hate a hug, shrugging off the pity as if it burned her skin.

And underneath her sympathy, her urge to comfort, there’s a colder, selfish part of her that just wants May to shut up, to stop pointing out problems. She wants Elliot to stop going on about search areas, wants to stop counting bottles of water over and over again in her head. A part of her that doesn’t want to accept what has happened or start thinking about the reality of what it means. And a part of her that really, really doesn’t want to think about wild animals.

“It’s okay, May.” Jessa has woken and is suddenly sitting up next to her best friend, looking shaken but awake, uninjured arm around May’s waist, where anyone else’s would have been scornfully rejected. The very fact that she’s conscious is the shot of relief they all desperately need. “We can sleep in shifts.”

“Here’s what we should do.” Jason stands up, and Brian instinctively lumbers to his feet, leaning toward him, wheezing a little. It almost looks as if they’re going into a tactical huddle on the deserted beach.

Jason grabs Elliot’s arm, and Hayley realizes he’s the only one with an old-school wristwatch. Jessa and Jason both have Apple watches, and the others just rely on their phones. It won’t be long before the batteries die.

“It’s just after seven,” Jason says, “and sunset probably isn’t far off.” Elliot looks as if he’s about to say something but doesn’t. “So, Brian and I will stay awake until ten, then wake Elliot. He can take the next shift until one, then wake us. We’ll keep watch until four then switch again.” The others nod in agreement.

“And what are we, chopped liver?” Hayley asks, taking herself by surprise. The boys blink at her.

“No offense but this is a guy’s job.” Jason laughs. “Are you really going to chase off a wild dog or a boar or wha

tever with no weapon?”

“Are you?” Hayley retorts, her confidence growing. “What are you going to do, flirt it to death?”

“They’re offering to protect us,” Shannon mutters. “There’s no need to start burning our bras. We should just be grateful.” Jason grins, reaching out a hand to touch her hair.

“We need weapons. We can sharpen some sticks from the forest,” Brian suggests enthusiastically as Hayley glowers. He crashes off into the undergrowth, followed by Jason, leaving Elliot with the girls.

“The tide won’t come up much higher,” he says to May, as if the last few minutes’ conversation never happened. “You see the line of debris just there?” He walks down the beach beyond the plane, a few yards from where the waves are rushing up the sand. When they look closely, there’s a line of broken shells, little pieces of driftwood, and scraps of seaweed stretching the length of the beach. “That shows you where the tide was at its highest point,” Elliot explains. “It won’t reach us if we sleep up near the trees.”

May nods with a nonchalance Hayley suspects might be fake.

“As for animals, I don’t think it’s likely there are any large predators on this island.” Elliot looks back into the forest. “I’ve been quite far into the trees and haven’t seen any tracks, and the island isn’t very big. You could cover the whole thing in a few hours. Animals aren’t what we need to be worrying about.”

“What do we need to be worrying about, Elliot?” Hayley asks in a low voice.

“Dehydration,” Elliot replies simply. “We can survive weeks without food but only a few days without water. And I’m really glad everyone’s so optimistic, I hope you’re right, but honestly, we have no guarantee of when we might be found. If it looks like we’re going to run out of water, we need to do something about it before that happens—plan ahead before it’s too late.”

There’s a long silence. Hayley knows he is right. But the others look skeptical. None of them are used to hearing Elliot speak, let alone taking orders from him. She wants to back him up, tell them they have to listen. But that means letting in the fears at the very edges of her mind, the ones tap-tap-tapping to get in and willing her to absolutely lose her shit. Hayley Larkin doesn’t lose her shit. She doesn’t panic or lose control. So she stands there, looking at Elliot, and says nothing.

“Fine.” Elliot spits the word out sharply, but it’s swallowed by the sand’s softness. He turns on his heel and starts rifling through the supplies, tugging at something. It’s the plastic drawstring bag that held the practice balls, except the balls are all long gone. For a moment, Hayley pictures them raining from the sky, dropping into the waves like cannonballs. But then she sees other things dropping, like Coach Erickson’s body, and feeling sick, she turns away. Elliot disappears again into the trees.

Night comes suddenly, just as Elliot said it would. It’s not a slow, lingering beach sunset like the ones in the movies. The night swallows them whole. And it’s cold—colder than they could possibly have imagined. Elliot hasn’t come back when Hayley curls into herself under a coat, huddling near the fire and waiting for sleep to come. Through her eyelashes, she watches Jason marching up and down, clutching a freshly broken branch, his strides long and his knuckles clenched.

But sleep doesn’t arrive. And the island comes alive at night, becomes a roiling, writhing, terrible thing, outraged at their presence. The sand belches tiny flies that tap-dance across Hayley’s flesh with heels like tiny needles. They want to claim her body and gnaw away at it until the beach is smooth and untouched once again. She can’t say when the noise starts exactly, only that suddenly it’s around her and inside her all at once, a rhythmic, vibrating denseness that she can feel in the back of her jaw, in her teeth.

She shifts uncomfortably, trying to find a position where her shoulder blades and hip bones aren’t grinding uncomfortably against the sand. Listening to the steady thud, thud, thud of Jason’s footsteps as they recede and approach. The sea seems to be farther away again, its cycles governed by a timetable she doesn’t recognize, its low, uneven whispering like a conversation just out of earshot, leaving her straining to hear. And the feeling that the island is closing ranks against her—the sand and the sea and the invisible chorus of rasping, scuttling creatures all united in harmony—is all too familiar.

Suddenly, she’s back in the school gym, echoing with shoe squeaks and rank with the smell of rubber and slightly damp tumbling mats. Standing awkwardly in the corner, panic slowly rising as she realizes she’s wearing the wrong thing. Tugging down the edges of the purple nylon pleated skirt, wishing the tank top emblazoned with the Oak Ridge crest came below her belly button. Everyone else is in leggings, oversize T-shirts, or slouchy sweaters. May in a graceful front split position, back arched forwards, arms extended. Shannon pacing out a new routine, her face lined with concentration.

Jessa puts a gentle hand on Hayley’s shoulder and hands her a spare T-shirt. “Sweats are fine for practice. You’ll know for next time.”

“Looking good, new girl.” Jason wolf whistles. “Didn’t know it was dress-up Friday!” Hayley glances instinctively at Shannon, but her back is turned, hunched over some complicated diagrams. Brian and some of the other boys snigger appreciatively, circling Hayley like hyenas.

“Knock it off, pigs,” Jessa shouts, rolling her eyes.

“She might like it, Jessa.” Brian leers, his eyes creeping up Hayley’s thighs. “Not every cheerleader’s as uptight as the Virgin Mary.” He gestures to the crucifix hanging on a fine silver chain around Jessa’s neck, and she stiffens, flipping it under her top.

“The Virgin Mary got knocked up outside marriage, you tool.” Jason takes careful aim and bounces a basketball off the back of Brian’s head before catching it and dribbling up the court to shoot. Brian stumbles, cursing, behind him.

“Uh, it was an immaculate conception,” Hayley mutters, unable to stop herself.

“Impractical come what now?” Brian mimics her, his voice high and reedy.

“Never mind,” Hayley mumbles, grateful for the interruption when Coach Erickson arrives, gesturing the boys over to the benches, and Coach Robinson walks in behind him to start cheer practice.

“Thanks,” Hayley murmurs as Jessa stands next to her in the huddle.

“Let us know if you’re going to need a babysitter every practice,” Shannon whispers. “We’ll need to know in advance if we’ve got to bring an extra squad member with us to hold your hand.”...