Chapter 7: A Line in the Sand so Taught that it Snaps
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Clay’s senior vacation shouldn’t have turned into the worst experience of Cindy’s life. She rubbed her temples. Clay and Cindy, Cindy and Clay. Keeping two identities separate in her head was becoming a chore. Part of her felt no different from who she was before stepping on that boat, but she couldn’t pretend that she didn’t act different from Clay. Everyone certainly treated her differently.

All Cindy wanted was to look for clues, but the cave had been a dead end, and the forest creeped her out. Only Terri could help because only Terri knew the truth. Anyone else would be upset that she’d lied to them about her identity. No explanation for how they were supposed to prevent that from happening, either. Cindy suspected that Terri didn’t have a plan.

Terri had been standoffish all day. As Cindy paced behind the tent line, she could see Terri glancing over from the cooking station but turning away when spotted. Cindy needed to know what they should do next!

She stopped and took a deep breath. If Terri couldn’t help, she had no choice but to confide in Alex. He would promise to keep the secret for her; it had been long enough that the transformation was clearly not a danger to Cindy’s health. Right? Cindy estimated that her odds of convincing him not to freak out were about fifty-fifty, maybe sixty-forty in her favor if she was being generous.

Alex was standing by the firepit and tossing a stick for the dog to fetch. She approached from behind, the sound of her heartbeat drumming out any coherent thoughts that tried to form, and cleared her throat.

He turned. “Hi. Everything alright?”

“Yes. Maybe. Yeah, probably. Um… My name’s Cindy.”

“I remember. Terri talks a lot about you.” There was a pause. “It’s a nice day.”

“Yeah… Um… The other day, you said something about feeling sorry for Clay. What did you mean by that?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I don’t enjoy talking about people behind their backs.”

Cindy nodded, though it pained her to remember how often Alex would sit and listen to Clay unload gossip into him like a machine gun.

She pressed on, “Well, I mean… How do you know he has a good heart? If that’s true, why can’t other people see it? How is he supposed to make people like him?”

“You can’t make someone like you. You just have to find good people and treat them well.”

“But how are you supposed to convince people to give you a chance if they already don’t like you? You can’t just show up pretending to be another person, right? That seems like it would be a recipe for disaster.”

Her voice was shaking.

“I’m not… entirely sure what you mean,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t hide behind an alt account or anything like that, no. Some people can’t let go of a grudge, and that’s their right, but if you’re a changed person, most people will pick up on that and start treating you differently.” He reached into his shirt and pulled out a little silver cross necklace. “Forgiveness is a huge deal where I come from, at least.”

Cindy blinked in surprise. “Wait, where did you get that?”

“I ordered it from an online retailer that donates to fighting homophobic legislation. Actually, I nearly left it at home, since Clay would never let me hear the end of it if he knew. ‘Christians persecute gay people. How can you believe in something as stupid as an old man in the sky who thinks pastors should have private jets and child brides?’ He means well, but sometimes you don’t want to hear it, you know?”

It took all of Cindy’s strength to hold her tongue. Of course she wouldn’t have harassed Alex for being religious. How insulting! Sure, it was weird, and she didn’t get it, and she had most of a rant already composed in the back of her head, but…

She forced herself to sigh before folding her arms and looking away. “It sounds to me like… Clay might have been kind of a bad friend. From a certain perspective.”

Alex chuckled and put the cross away. “He’s a good person. Clay just needs to be more willing to take criticism, which is kind of a hard lesson to impart on someone. Oh, I almost forgot.” He pulled something from his pocket that Cindy at first mistook to be another necklace. “This is what you cut yourself on earlier. I spotted it and dug it out of the sand.”

She took the dog tag from him and held it up to the light. The engraving was too faded for her to read, but it certainly looked military. Fortunately for her, it wasn’t rusty, so she probably didn’t need another tetanus booster any time soon.

“Weird… Maybe it’s from another camping group?”

“That would be my guess.”

There was a buzz from his pocket, and Alex pulled out his phone to look at the notification. He frowned and shook his head.

“Calendar alert?”

“No, I keep getting nonsense texts. I don’t know why.”

“I thought we were too far out for cell service?”

“We are.”

Alex showed her the phone, and Cindy’s breathing stopped. Blood pounded in her ears. Her vision started to go dark around the edges.

These were texts from Clay’s phone.

“You okay?”

Cindy nodded, certain that she would throw up lunch if she spoke.

“I think there’s some kind of interference, but I don’t know what.”

He put the phone away, but the image was seared into Cindy’s mind. Mostly nonsense strings of letters, numbers, and symbols with the occasional full word thrown in. She’d seen cold, wrath, fear, and hungry before he’d taken the phone away.

“Are you sure you’re okay? You’re super pale.”

“Yeah, I just… need…”

She walked away without finishing her excuse.

 

Brambles cut Cindy’s legs while she stomped through the woods.

“Slow down,” Terri said behind her. “We’re probably worrying about nothing.”

“I’m not worried. I just want to make sure my phone is alright.”

“You probably just left it on by accident, and then it got water-damaged or something.”

“That would literally be the opposite of alright.”

She was silent until they reached the outcropping despite Terri’s attempts to soothe her. Cindy thrust her hands into the bush and started yanking at the suitcase. Leaves went flying as it got jammed in the branches. With a loud grunt, the bag broke free and knocked Cindy to the ground.

Terri tried to help her up, but Cindy shrugged her off and threw open the suitcase, digging around until she found her phone. It was off and took a moment to start up. The battery was nearly full.

“Check the texts,” Terri said from over her shoulder.

“I know. I know.”

She opened up her messages to Alex. The scrambled strings of texts were there and timestamped. A chill ran up Cindy’s arm, and she dropped the phone before clutching her hand to her chest and scrambling away.

“Fuck! Fuck. How…?”

She looked up at Terri, whose face had gone white.

“Try to send me a text.”

Cindy shook her head. Terri scooped the phone up and started a new message, inputting her number–the first time a girl had put her number in Cindy’s phone. She typed for a bit, then shook her head and held the phone out for Cindy to see that the test message failed. No signal.

“Terri, what’s happening?”

“I don’t know.” Her face hardened. “I think… I think this is bigger than just one wall in a cave. We’re not going to find what’s going on unless we really start digging for clues.”

She turned to look deeper into the forest, Cindy following her gaze.

“I don’t want to go in there,” Cindy admitted.

“I don’t either, but we only have three more days before we leave. I can’t go home until we’ve fixed this. And if we can’t… we at least need the truth before we leave. You can’t be my friend from out of town forever.”

Cindy nodded grimly. “I want my life back; I just don’t want to die trying. We have no idea what’s out there.”

 

Cindy was quiet as she focused on the popping of the fire. It was the only source of light now that the sun had finally set. Long flickering shadows danced against the tents around them. People were talking, but it was all so far away. Terri sat just in Cindy’s peripheral vision, her legs pulled up onto the chair while she chewed on her nails.

Diana sat beside Cindy and continued to pluck at her guitar, humming softly to herself so faintly it could barely be heard over the snapping of the fire. Now and then, everyone would burst out laughing. Cindy never caught the joke in time to join in.

The sound of the guitar stopped, and Diana asked Cindy, “Do you want to try?”

“Huh?” Cindy shook her head. “Sorry, I was distracted.”

“Do you want to try the guitar for a while? I can show you how to do the chords if you need help.”

“I… I… Um…” Cindy could feel heat rushing to her cheeks. “I don’t know.”

“Hmm.” Diana leaned over. “You wouldn’t happen to be flustered just by talking to me, now?”

Diana’s eyes were sparkling, and they lit up with flames when Cindy stammered and sank further into her chair. The longer Cindy sputtered, the closer Diana seemed to get. She seemed to glow from either the firelight or the red in Cindy’s cheeks. It was hard to tell.

“Maybe a kiss would help you figure out how you’re feeling.”

“Diana, stop,” Terri said.

“What am I doing wrong?”

“Just… stop it, please.”

Cindy scowled. Why did Terri have to throw a fit every time Diana paid Cindy the least amount of attention? Did she have a crush on Diana too?

“Back off, Terri,” she found herself snapping.

“No, I’m serious. This is a mistake.”

Winter snickered. “Wow, so you do have a spine after all.”

“Stay out of this!”

Diana scowled and said, “You’re being kind of a shitty friend, Terri. How about you let her decide what she wants by herself?”

Cindy didn’t know what she wanted.

“Hey now,” Chris said, standing and holding his hands up. “Maybe we should take, like, thirty seconds to breathe and approach this calmly.”

“No, no,” Winter said, leaning back in her chair. “I want to see where this goes.”

Cindy felt a hand on her chin. It was Diana, who turned Cindy to face her.

“At the very least,” she said, eyelashes fluttering, “you should try it out and see how you feel.”

“Diana! Cindy, don’t do it!”

Cindy leaned forward until her lips were against Diana’s. It was like fireworks going off in a hall of mirrors. It was like taking a shot of hot sauce on a frigid winter day. It was like jumping out of a plane and diving into a storm cloud.

It was a lot for Cindy to handle.

Pulling away, Diana said, “Congratulations on your first lesbian kiss. How did it feel?”

But Cindy was silent. A storm raged through her brain. Her first kiss with Diana was as a girl kissing another girl instead of as herself. Himself. Diana hadn’t really kissed Clay, she’d kissed Cindy. It was different. At the very least, it wasn’t the same.

The awkward silence was broken by a scream. Winter jumped from her chair and pointed at the cliffs where a dark figure darted out of sight. Everyone stood and started talking at once except for Cindy, who remained fixed in her chair.

Color faded from the world as noises blended together into a dull, distant hum beneath the ringing in her ears. Everyone’s movements were so frantic that they blurred into an entity of waving arms and gaping mouths. Then everything snapped back to reality when Terri stood up on the cooler and shouted everyone down.

“Thank you,” she huffed. “Winter, what happened?”

Winter was shaking, the only time Cindy had ever seen her at all off-kilter. Roberto had his hands on her shoulders to steady her. Taking a few deep breaths, Winter started gesturing up at the cliffs and rambling.

“My mind was drifting, and I saw myself staring at something that I… I wasn’t entirely sure what it was. It might have been a tree or a rock, but it was really oddly shaped. The firelight seemed to be reflecting off of… I guess its eyes? It took a couple of minutes for me to realize it was a person.”

Her face was pale.

The atmosphere was brittle. It felt like everybody had a novel’s worth of thoughts they wanted to get out all at once, but nobody spoke. Cindy held her breath. The fire had died down a little as if afraid to break the silence.

“There’s someone else on this island,” Roberto finally said. “I don’t know how they’re surviving without help, but us getting interference on the radio doesn’t make sense unless someone is operating a radio antenna out here.”

“It… might explain something else,” Alex admitted, pulling out his phone and explaining the strange text messages he’d been getting. There was shuffling as others checked their phones but found nothing.

“We need to call the coast guard,” Diana said, sitting down. Her legs were shaking. “It’s not safe here. Someone has to rescue us.”

“No!” Terri blurted out so quickly that everyone turned to look at her. “I mean…”

“What if the military is in on it?” Cindy asked, looking straight at Alex. He nodded and fished the dog tag out of his pocket, describing how he’d found it earlier.

Chris knelt down to wrap his arms around Nightwing and said, “I don’t think there’s a military base here, not if people can freely come and go like we are.”

“It’s not exactly a big tourist destination,” Winter admitted. “I only heard about it from Stacey’s cousin. And she really hyped up how secluded it was.”

“Let’s not do anything rash,” Terri said. “It’s late, and we don’t have any proof of anything. Maybe Winter just saw an animal. Let’s wait until morning to… let’s just wait.”

Roberto mumbled, “Hang on…”

He walked over to a footlocker, ignoring Terri’s protests, and threw it open to rummage inside. Winter insisted that she had seen a real person. Diana still wanted to leave immediately. Chris did his best to console her while Alex tried to keep things from escalating between Terri and Winter.

Cindy held perfectly still, hoping that nobody would see her.

Everybody went quiet when Roberto emerged with the satellite phone. He turned it on and hit the button for the emergency line, setting it to speaker so everyone could listen. The phone rang while they all stared. The fourth ring was slower and deeper, the next was warbled, and then it was just a few jumbled noises.

“We’re sorry. The number you are trying to reach has been disconnected.”

Roberto took a deep, trembling breath.

“I don’t think it’s radio interference.”

Finally, the water in the pot is heating up. Can Cindy get out before it starts to boil, or is she already past the point of no return?

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