“It’s not a serial killer if there’s only one death.” Shelley’s hands squeezed together. “Right? It’s just one?”
“Sure, but how many ‘one and done’ killers leave notes like that?” Warix scoffed.
“You’re saying there’ll be more?” Sofia’s dark eyes shone.
Warix looked like he was going to say something cutting, then glanced at Sofia’s face. He just shrugged.
Plum had to physically stop herself from monitoring her own body, waiting for signs that she, too, had been poisoned. Surely, wherever the poison had been, if anyone else had eaten it, they’d be dead by now.
Plum glanced at Marlowe and Sofia. They both looked fine. Shocked, yes, but otherwise healthy.
“What do we do?” Cici waved her hands, her sparkly pink nails catching the light. “What are we supposed to do now?”
Plum could empathize; she felt similarly confounded. Jalen was holding up his phone slightly—was he recording them? The rest of the group was still standing in a loose knot, looking down at Brittlyn’s cloth-napkin-covered face.
Calling it surreal would be an understatement.
“For starters, don’t eat anything that isn’t canned,” Warix said. “Since we don’t know how she got poisoned.”
“Yeah, smart.” Sean pointed at Warix in agreement. “And what do we do with the body?” Sean asked, his accent making the last word sound like bo-ee.
Plum glanced back at the prone form, the faint outline of a nose under the white cloth napkin. To think that just a short time ago, Brittlyn was being mean to them all, and now she was dead.
“I want to leave this room.” Shelley’s earrings twinkled as she gave a whole-body shiver. “I can still feel her . . . her . . . aura . . .”
“Will you stop that nonsense?” Sean snapped.
“It’s real and it’s true, and you should open that thick skull of yours to—” Shelley began.
“Dudes!” Dude yelled, his voice as sharp as a gunshot.
They all silenced and turned to him.
Dude shook his head. “Not helpful, dudes,” he scolded Shelley and Sean. He spoke with newfound authority now, Plum thought. What with actually risking death to try to help Brittlyn.
Shelley sniffed and took a few steps away from Sean.
Sean shook his head, a sneer tugging the corner of his mouth.
“We can’t just leave her there!” Cici’s architecturally perfect eyebrows lifted in disbelief.
“We shouldn’t move her,” Sofia said at the exact same time.
They turned and blinked at each other.
“On the police shows, you have to leave the crime scene undisturbed,” Sofia explained.
“That’s when the police are on their way,” Warix said. “There’s no telling how long we’ll wait for rescue.”
The word rescue hung in the air.
“God, if only someone had a signal!” Jalen said.
Sofia pulled her phone out of her romper pocket. “There’s no signal up here, but I sent a text to my sister when we first arrived. Out on the dock.”
Dude pointed at Sofia. “I posted my Killing it! video of Brittlyn from the dock.”
Plum felt a spark of hope. “Yeah!” she said, remembering. “And I did a cross post from the dock when we arrived.”
Marlowe cocked a quizzical eyebrow.
Plum gave a little cough and looked down at her feet. “It was the puke bucket,” she murmured, not certain how her friend would react.
Marlowe snorted.
Sean took a wide stance, like he was about to storm a beach or run with the football. “We should all go down to the dock with our phones. If we can get a signal, we can call for help from Saint Vitus!”
“Yes!” Jude pumped a fist by his hip. “We’ll be saved!”
“It’s better than sitting here,” Marlowe suggested, turning to her friends.
“Good, let’s do that.” Cici held up a pink-sparkle-tipped index finger. “To be safe, we should stick together, but not too close on that mountain path!”
“It’s not one of us, no way!” Jude said reassuringly. “She said it.” He nodded at Marlowe. “The poem’s lying.”
“I said it could be lying,” Marlowe said.
Plum looked around the group. If anyone made even a slightly wrong move toward Sofia or Marlowe, Plum would drop them so fast they wouldn’t know what hit them.
“If we can just go to the dock and call for help, we can stick together for safety . . . and at a safe distance, until the boat gets here,” Marlowe said.
“Good.” Sean nodded.
“It’s a plan,” Dude agreed.
“Listeners, I have a deep sense of foreboding,” Jalen dictated into his phone.
“Stow it!” Sean barked at the podcaster.