After three wine coolers, I was well and truly loose and buzzed. Dane was on his third or fourth, I think. Everyone was on the way to being wasted. Ashton and Stacey were now lying on the floor. Someone had found blankets in a closet somewhere and were lying together on the floor of the rec room in each other’s arms.
Dane was chatting with Dylan about something, his hands miming the act of catching a football. I rolled my eyes.
Boys. Typical.
I saw Kelsey dancing in one corner with Bobby. Their lips were locked, and there was tongue action happening. Gross. I looked away and searched the room for the other girl, Ashlea.
But she was nowhere to be seen.
I took another wine cooler out of the portable drink cooler Ashton had brought and walked out of the room.
When I made it to the closed door of the room that Dane had put my abuser in, I hesitated before moving to look through the small window.
But the woman who had been my nightmare was no longer inside the room.
It was empty.
I opened the door to double-check, but there was no one in there. I set down my mostly full wine cooler and hurried down the corridor to check the other rooms.
When I passed the woman in the sundress and hat, I noticed something different about the way she was sitting, and her skin, in particular.
But I put it down to me being too drunk and my eyes and mind playing tricks on me.
I walked past her, but my shoe struck something on the ground near the woman’s feet. I accidentally kicked it, and the glass bottle skittered further down the hall. I stumbled and practically fell on top of the older woman in the sundress.
We fell to the ground together, me pulling her limp body on top of me.
I rolled over to push her off, but that was when I caught sight of the woman’s face.
It wasn’t an old lady, after all.
It was Ashlea.
And she was dead.