“You don’t think they went looking for Martin too, do you?”
“No.” Dougie’s voice was certain. But where else could they be? The car was still there, so they hadn’t gone far.
“Do you think they just went for a walk?”
“Maybe.” His doubt was easy to hear.
I drummed my fingernails against the plastic armrest of my chair. The sharp, staccato noises jarred my nerves, but it was better than sitting still, doing nothing. I was finding it a challenge just to stay in the chair.
It was incredibly frustrating. I wanted to drive somewhere, raise the alarm for Martin. I wanted to get Dougie to a hospital and have his ankle x-rayed in case there was a fracture under all that swelling. He’d propped his foot up on one of the other chairs and put the last dregs of ice from the cooler into a towel now wrapped around the joint, but he had taken my advice and left his shoe on. He wasn’t complaining, but I could see that it was hurting him.
Most of all, I wanted to find Emma and wring her neck! How could she be so inconsiderate? I expected nothing better of Darren, but not Emma. They hadn’t even waited around to find out if we’d managed to get in touch with Martin!
“I’m getting a sweater,” I announced, lurching to my feet. I wasn’t cold; I just wanted an excuse to move about, to do something. Inside the tent, I dug around in my bag, hunting for my zip-up top. A crumpled sheet of paper floated to the ground as I did so. It had been caught under the flap, the reason I hadn’t noticed it before. Curious, I grabbed it. Opening it up, I recognized Emma’s sloppy writing.
Going to find more wood for fire. Think there’s a cove just around the headland. Back in an hour. Em
I pursed my lips as I glared down at it. The note did not make up for the fact that they’d disappeared. Nor did it excuse their lack of concern about Martin. And I still hadn’t forgiven Emma for siding with Darren. At least we knew where they were, though.
“Found a note,” I called out, emerging from the tent, sweater in one hand, scrap of paper in the other. “They’ve gone for more firewood at the cove.”
Dougie’s eyes narrowed, and I knew that he was still annoyed as well.
“It says they’ll be back in an hour,” I said, handing him the note. “Don’t know how long ago that was. They shouldn’t be long, though—” I broke off in the face of Dougie’s dissatisfied grimace.
“This is ridiculous! We can’t just wait around—we need to do something about Martin.” He looked at me. “Can you check your phone again?”
There wasn’t much point. Even if it turned on, there was no signal down here. I did as he asked, however, digging out my phone and banging down on the power button. Nothing.
“Still dead.”
He made a frustrated growl under his breath.
I stared at him thoughtfully. Did we have to wait for Darren? “Can you drive?” I asked. It was a different question than before. I wasn’t sure his ankle would hold up enough to push the pedals.
He made a face. “I don’t know. Maybe.” He pulled his leg off the chair and pressed his foot onto the sand. Grimaced in pain. “Maybe not,” he admitted. “Can you?”
No. I’d never had a lesson. Never even reversed my parents’ car out of the driveway. The Volvo was like a boat, and the thought of trying to navigate the steep, narrow, potholed road up to civilization was terrifying. Even more frightening was the thought of Darren’s reaction if he found out I’d driven his car. I wasn’t entirely convinced that he’d be above punching me in the face! But Dougie was looking at me hopefully. I shifted from foot to foot on the sand, uncomfortable. “I don’t know…”
“I’ll help you,” he offered. He grabbed my hand, his fist warm around my icy fingers. “Come on, Heather. We still don’t know where Martin is.”
I couldn’t say no. “I’ll try,” I mumbled.
Dougie directed me to where Darren kept his keys—thankfully he hadn’t taken them with him in a fit of pique—and I helped him limp back to the car. Dougie lowered himself gingerly into the passenger seat while I yanked open the door to the driver’s side. I couldn’t even reach the pedals and had to yank the seat forward with an earsplitting screech.
“Right,” I said. “What do I do?”
“Putting the keys in the ignition is a good start,” Dougie offered, grinning at me. I didn’t grin back; I was too nervous. My hands shook a little as I shoved the key into the slot.
I twisted the key. Nothing happened. It wouldn’t turn, not even a little bit. I twisted harder, but I was worried about snapping it.
“What’s wrong?” Dougie asked.
“It won’t turn,” I complained.
“Twist hard.”
“I am!”
Dougie sighed and reached over me. I sat back, a petulant expression on my face, and watched him try. My scowl became smug when he had no more success.
“Hang on, the wheel lock’s on.” He jiggled the steering wheel, then went back to twisting the key. This time it rotated, but the engine didn’t spark. It didn’t even cough. It was a replay of the scene by the highway: nothing but a series of dissatisfying clicks.
“Heap of junk!” Dougie exploded. He banged down on the middle of the steering wheel. “The battery’s gone again.”
I said nothing; I’d figured that out for myself.
Dougie sat hunched across from me, still gripping the wheel as if he could make the car start with the power of his mind.
“Now what?” I asked after a full minute of silence. He sighed, aggravated.
“Now we wait for Darren and Emma,” he said after a moment. “We’ll have to hike back up to the road, and you won’t be able to help me all the way up there. Unless you want to go by yourself?” He looked at me, and I quickly shook my head. Once more, we slowly made our way back to the still-deserted beach. Just for something to do, we made lunch. Neither of us had eaten breakfast, and it was hard to decide if I felt sick because I was worried about Martin or just because I was hungry. I made myself eat, forcing in one mouthful at a time. They still hadn’t arrived by the time we’d finished eating.
With nothing better to do, we sat and watched the constant movement of the water. We didn’t speak. There was nothing to be gained by berating Darren and Emma, or guessing where Martin was. That just made the anger and fear spike by degrees. After a while, I dug the brooch back out of my pocket and started to stroke it, running my fingers around the curved edge, tracing the carvings with my fingertips. Like before, the metal remained cold, despite having spent the morning snug against my body.
Eventually I became aware of Dougie staring at me, staring at it.
“I want to take this back,” I said softly. “I feel like we shouldn’t have taken it. It’s not ours, and it means something to someone. They put it there for a reason; that’s where it belongs.”
When Dougie didn’t respond, I turned to stare at him. His expression was unreadable.
“Well?” I asked.
“If you want to,” he said tonelessly.
I tried not to make a face, but I didn’t like his reaction. I pursed my lips, feeling the need to explain myself further.
“I just… I just feel like it’s unlucky or something. Look at everything that’s happened since we picked the damn thing up.” Dougie was frowning so I went on hurriedly. “I mean, we had that big fight and Martin stormed off, then he went missing. Then all that trouble with the phones, your ankle…” I pointed at his swollen leg. “Now the car won’t start, and Emma and Darren aren’t here. They should have been back by now.”
Dougie huffed a laugh.
“Darren and Emma’ll be fine,” he said, crossing the last item off my list. “As for the rest of it… Martin was uncomfortable with Darren coming along from the start.” (This didn’t surprise me, though I was a little put out that he hadn’t said anything to me himself.) “And the damn Volvo is an unreliable piece of crap, no matter what Darren says.”
“I know, but I still want to take it back. It feels… It feels weird, having it. I don’t like it.”
“Well, I’m in no shape to go hiking,” Dougie said. “And finding Martin is kind of a priority…” He broke off, looking closely at my face. “But if you want to get rid of it…”
Before I realized what he was going to do, he’d taken the brooch out of my hand. He shifted upright in his chair and, curving his arm back, launched the little circlet into the air. It arced across the cloud-covered sky, then landed with a splash in the choppy waves, several yards into the sea. I gaped at the water, then at him. I hadn’t meant that; I hadn’t meant that at all.
“Gone,” he said, looking at me solemnly.
“Dougie!”
The uncomfortable feeling I’d had about the brooch went into overdrive. There was absolutely no way to get it back now. I knew roughly where it had landed, but the constant motion of the waves would already have shifted it, and the sea was dark and murky and uninviting.
Now I felt worse than a thief. I was a vandal. A desecrator. A… A… I wasn’t even sure what the word was. My stomach churned.
But I didn’t want to fight with Dougie—not with everything else that was going on—so I bit back the angry words that were forming, bitter on my tongue.
“I want to go and look for Emma and Darren,” I said, standing abruptly.
He started shaking his head before I’d even finished. “My ankle—”
“I know.” I cut him off. “You stay here. I’ll go. That way we definitely won’t miss them.” And I could get away for a little while and cool my ire. It was just a brooch, after all; there was no reason for the whispering in my head telling me that discarding the thing so flagrantly was a very, very bad move.
“You want to go on your own?” Dougie said dubiously. “Heather, you don’t even know where the cove is.”
“Well—” That was a point. Needlessly, I dusted my sand-free hands against my jeans while I thought of a counterargument. “It’s another beach, right?” It wasn’t really a question, but Dougie nodded anyway. “Surely I can just follow the coast around?”
“Probably.” He looked at me, unconvinced. “But what if you get lost?”
“I’ll be fine. I just… I just don’t want to sit here any longer.” I didn’t give him another chance to argue. Twisting away, I headed to my tent to change into better walking shoes and drag on another layer of clothes. It had clouded over and was getting chilly on the beach; it’d be even colder up on the headland—the tide was in too far to follow the rocks round the shoreline.
Dougie watched me leave, his expression unhappy. I guessed he was worried about what would happen if I, too, failed to return and he was stuck there on the beach, unable to hike his way out. I wasn’t going far, though. Anyway, his parents knew exactly where we were. They’d come looking for us eventually. That thought cheered me. We were due back in three days, and we easily had enough food to last that long. If we couldn’t get Darren’s car going, and if Dougie wasn’t fit to walk back to civilization, his dad would come and get us.
The only problem was Martin. I couldn’t bear three more days of worrying about what had happened to him. I hoped to hell he was back home, vilifying us to his parents and the rest of our friends. I hoped I’d get the chance to kill him for just taking off. It was a short trudge up the steep hillside to the low cliff that curved around the edge of the land. The path was compacted dirt coated with loose gravel that skittered out from under the treads of my shoes, and in places I had to use the long grass to steady myself.
Up top, the view was glorious. The sea stretched in front of me, undulating to the horizon, and far out I could see a boat. To my back were the heather-covered hills, but I didn’t turn to look at them. I knew the cairn would be there, a beacon in the middle of the landscape. I imagined it silently condemning me.
I started off again, following a thin path that was little more than downtrodden grass. The cove couldn’t be far, according to Dougie. No more than ten minutes he thought, according to his dad’s descriptions. I hoped not, anyway, because the sky was darkening. I knew night wouldn’t fall for at least another couple of hours, but the murky half-light was unnerving. It made the world a little blurry, a little less defined. I didn’t like it. Strange shapes kept leaping out of the corner of my eye, making me start until I recognized them for the whipping branch of a tree or a bird launching itself into the sky.
“Emma, I am going to kill you,” I muttered as I stalked along. It made me feel a little less isolated and alone to hear someone speak, even if it was only me.
I wondered how long our little friendship group was going to survive after this trip was over. Martin was not going to want to be anywhere near Darren after this, which was no real loss, but where Darren went, Emma went. To be honest, I was rapidly losing the desire to be in Emma’s company myself. Darren seemed to bring out a host of new, unattractive qualities: vanity, selfishness, feigned weakness so that boys would fawn over her. I could hear her coquettish giggle in my head, setting my teeth on edge. Feeling vicious, I parodied it, then giggled again as I listened to the simpering peals vibrating back at me. Then I heard another sound. A colder sound.
I heard Emma scream.