We stand there on the hot beach, smelling the smell and sweating. My mind is strangely still. There is no life nearby aside from us and together we sound empty like a cowboy’s harmonica against a night campfire. “It’s her, isn’t it?” I ask Corina because I can’t stand the waiting in silence.
“I expect so.” She’s nervous, and if it weren’t so hot, I’d put my arm around her.
It feels like it takes forever for Cassandra to reach the small hill that leads down to the beach. Close up, she looks different than she did when I witnessed her—her hair is longer and it’s curly, like an eighties rocker chick. She’s wearing the same loose white tank top, black lace bra, and black jegging-style pants that she had in the picture. The same black Converse.
She stumbles a little bit coming down the hill. Neither of us makes any move to help her.
“Hey,” she says, standing up. She looks Corina up and down and then turns to me and smiles. “You’re just as cute as I knew you’d be.”
I flash on an image of her from my witnessing, lifting the covers as she turned. My stomach tightens and I try to change my thoughts, but I can’t. “Hey,” I reply, wishing I was better at coming up with things to say.
She digs into her shirt and pulls out a little old-school camera. “Corina, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad to meet you. Here,” she says as she tosses the camera to Corina. Cassandra closes the distance between me and her. “Take our picture.”
I feel her next to me. She’s sweaty and she smells a little bad, even compared to the ground around us. Now that she’s closer I can see that her shirt is dirty and so is her skin. It’s been days since she’s been in a shower. I look up at Corina and try to make a moment happen, but she’s looking at the camera, not at me. My eye travels down to the thigh that’s next to my leg. Cassandra’s shirt doesn’t come all the way to the waist and there’s no sign of the big nasty scar I saw before.
“Okay.” Corina lowers the camera. Cassandra moves over to her and I make a face, like girl’s crazy and stinky. Corina smiles quickly and then turns to Cassandra, who’s grabbing the camera from her. “Jesus—didn’t anybody teach you not to grab?”
Cassandra doesn’t react. She just takes the camera and holds out her hand. “The picture?”
Corina looks at her for a moment like she’s thinking about beating her down, but then she sighs and slaps the wrinkled picture into Cassandra’s hand.
Cassandra unfolds it and then turns to her camera. “Shit’s weird,” she says as she examines them both. “I can never get used to things like this. Did us getting the picture cause the picture to be taken or was the picture taken and then that caused everything else?” She pulls another sheet of paper out of her pocket and unfolds it. “Exactly the same.” She looks over at me. “You got any answers, man?”
I don’t even know what she’s talking about. All I know is that she’s holding a second picture that, from this distance, looks suspiciously like the one that I have. “That’s the same picture?”
She rolls her eyes at me. “Yes, dipshit, it’s the same picture. I got mine in a family photo album I found in my grandma’s house—where’d you get yours?”
“Uh . . .” I stammer, which is embarrassing. “In a time capsule buried in my school’s gym.” I get myself together. “You didn’t send it?”
She breathes out. Exasperated. “No,” she says slowly. “I didn’t send it.”
“If you didn’t send it, how’d you know to be here?” Corina asks, not bothering to keep the beef out of her voice.
“Because Sybil said to be.”
“I’m supposed to find Sybil.”
Cassandra looks at me. Her eyes steady. “You will.” She shakes her head, shoves the pictures into her back pocket, and holds the camera up in the air like she’s searching for reception, waits a minute, nods her head. “Stored in the cloud for whenever.”
She brings the camera down and tucks it slowly into her bra, lifting up the fabric more than she needs to. She watches me while she does it and then winks. “C’mon,” she says, turning around, “we got a lot of walking to do.”
I turn to look at Corina. She won’t look back at me. She waits a beat and then heads off after Cassandra, leaving me to take up the rear.
We follow her back up to the main road and turn south. I can’t see anything on the horizon—there’s no town or even any buildings for as far as I can see.
I jog to catch up with Corina. “She’s insane,” I whisper.
Corina nods slightly.
“I don’t know what’s up with her.”
She nods again.
“We don’t have to go with her,” I say. “I haven’t seen this before. I’m not a Zombie here.”
While I wait for Corina to say something, I pull off my hoodie and my shirt. I tie my hoodie around my waist and I turn my shirt into a turban that I put around my head.
I don’t feel any less hot than I did when I was wearing them.
Corina slows a little, but then she picks up her speed again. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, we do.” And then: “We got nowhere else to go.”