Cindy sat in the tent, hugging her knees. The flap was open and whipped around in the salty gust that came off the ocean. The others milled about aimlessly, though she could only see a few from where she sat. A blanket of gray cumulus clouds hung still in the sky.
She sniffled and sobbed lightly, but it didn’t really matter if she kept quiet when nobody would look her way regardless. Since escaping the military building, nobody had said anything to her. Cindy knew they were mad; that didn’t make her less angry at them for ignoring her.
Cindy climbed to her shaky feet and stepped out into the cold sand. She scanned around for Alex. He was her closest friend. If no one else, he owed it to her to be kind when she needed it the most.
Alex was further down the shoreline opposite the direction of the cave, standing on some large rocks and staring out into the ocean. She walked over, arms wrapped around herself, while shivering slightly in the cool summer air. He didn’t seem to notice her approach.
Cindy stopped at the foot of the rocks and asked, “Hey?”
He flinched at her voice, then turned to look at her. There was a vast distance between them. Alex turned his attention back to the water and mumbled in reply.
She asked, “Can we talk?”
“I’m not really in the mood.”
“Why–?”
“Because you lied to me, Clay!”
“Alex, please.” Cindy’s strength gave out. Her whole body started to tremble. Breathing became a struggle. “I can’t… I need someone to–”
He spun around and snapped, “I was so worried for you! You let me get all worked up knowing that I was afraid the worst had happened. All of this could have been avoided by just telling the truth! But you don’t trust me, I guess.”
Cindy covered her mouth and sobbed. Alex stood there, staring at her for a moment longer before turning and hopping off the rocks. He gave her a wide berth as he walked away.
It took a few minutes for Cindy to get her body back under control. She took a deep breath, wiped her face dry with her dirty hands, and straightened her back. It had taken a while, but she felt as though she’d cried herself dry.
She turned to scan the scene of the campsite. It had felt cozy before, but now they looked so small and exposed to the surrounding forest and cliffs. A hard gust of wind blew off the ocean, stirring the trees into fervent whispers.
Cindy saw Chris watching her awkwardly from where he sat by the fire pit. Shame flooded over her. Chris had only been crushing on her because he hadn’t known who she was, and she had—unintentionally—returned his feelings while well-aware of her deception. If their situation had been reversed, Cindy would be too disgusted to ever speak to him again.
But Cindy had always been an asshole, especially compared to Chris.
She wished that he would approach her, but as the minutes dragged on, it became increasingly clear that she would have to make the first move. Steeling her nerves, she trudged over to the fire pit. A few half-burned logs remained stacked on the ashes; despite the chill, nobody was in a hurry to feel warm again.
“Hi there,” Chris said blankly.
Cindy sat down on the edge of a folding chair and placed her hands on her closed knees. Her shoulders were tense. It was a struggle to look up from her lap.
“Hi… I feel like I owe you an apology.”
“You feel that way?”
“Okay, I definitely owe you an apology. I didn’t think… I wouldn’t have… I wasn’t trying to lead you on or anything.”
Chris’ expression was hard. “Yeah, not ideal circumstances. Can’t change it now, though.”
Cindy nodded. Pins and needles ran across her skin. “It’s hard. People trusted me when they thought I was someone else. I feel bad for lying, but I didn’t feel safe telling the truth. And then it just became easier to open up when I didn’t feel like people were judging me based on…”
“Based on stuff you actually did?”
“I liked having a chance to start over.”
She saw his expression soften just a bit, and he said, “Like I said, we can’t change what you’ve done. The only thing you can do now is make good on what you’ve learned. People will still want to be friends with you if you actually learn and become a better person. At least they will if it’s genuine, not just you pretending to change in order to get back into their good graces.”
“How do I convince other people it’s genuine, though? The more I insist, the faker I’m going to sound. And how do I know I’m not lying to myself?”
“I… I don’t know. Maybe you can’t convince everyone, and maybe you shouldn’t make that your goal. You just have to want to be better.”
She nodded slowly but waited for him to say more. He did not. The silence stretched on for another minute where Chris did not look at her. Finally, Cindy stood up to leave.
There was truth to Chris’ words, but it didn’t help her at that moment. Cindy needed to know that she wasn’t alone. If Alex and Chris couldn’t give that to her, then she might be screwed. The thought of talking to Terri or Diana after everything that happened made Cindy’s face burn.
Winter and Roberto were sitting at one of the tables and muttering aggressively about something. Roberto had the few torn and faded pages he’d managed to salvage from the military building scattered out around him. Cindy tried to ignore them—they wouldn’t want to talk to her—but the intensity of their conversation kept pulling in her attention.
She took a tentative step toward them, then stopped, worried that they’d snap at her for even approaching. Cindy shook her head and walked over, holding her head as high as she could. They saw her approaching, and the conversation fizzled to nothing, but neither of them looked ready to kill her.
Cindy gulped and said, “Um, hi.”
“Hello,” Winter replied with no inflection.
Roberto scowled at Cindy, but his voice was even. “Are you alright after what happened back there?”
“I don’t know anymore,” she mumbled. “I’m sorry I lied about who I was, really. I was just afraid.”
Roberto snorted. “Can’t say I’m not pissed. At least you’re apologizing, but we could have started fixing things a lot earlier if you’d just been honest and asked for help. If nothing else, you didn’t have to mislead us into thinking you’d been kidnapped.” He turned his attention back to one of the documents, squinting at the illegible notes in the margins. “I didn’t like worrying that you might be dead.”
“How was I supposed to know you’d help?!” Cindy snapped. “The first thing everybody did when they arrived was badmouth me!”
Roberto gave Cindy such a stern look that her resolve evaporated.
Winter replied, “You still thought of us as your friends. If you’d taken a chance and believed we were good people, things wouldn’t have turned out nearly this badly. There’s no way you thought you could hide this forever. We were always going to be angry at you for this.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out myself. Feels obvious in hindsight; you don’t even look that different.”
Roberto shook his head. “It was impossible to figure out without knowing something supernatural was going on. You were trying to keep theories in the realm of possibility.”
“We knew something weird was happening.”
“But we trusted Terri not to lie to us.”
Winter grunted.
Cindy’s shoulders drooped. “That’s all my fault, too. You’re right. I should have been honest from the get-go. But I can’t undo any of that, and I don’t know what to do moving forward.”
Roberto absentmindedly shuffled the pages. “I… I genuinely don’t know if we even have time to find an explanation for this, let alone a way to change you back. Even if the boat captain is willing to bring us extra food and wait a few more days, we all have homes to get back to.”
Cindy nodded, fully deflating.
Winter stood up. “Well, like I was saying earlier, we’re going to try.” To Cindy, she added, “We’re certainly not friends after this, but I’m not going to let you lose your identity without a fight.”
Tears welled up in Cindy’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry about all of this.’
“...I believe you,” Winter said before walking away.
Roberto said nothing, but he nodded before turning his attention back to the papers.
Cindy returned to her tent, sitting down and hugging her knees to her chest. The tent flap continued to flutter around but less aggressively than before. She sighed. This had all been so draining on her, and she didn’t feel much better for having done it.
Footsteps approached the tent, but Cindy didn’t react. They stopped outside, and then Alex leaned over to peak his head into the tent. “Uh, hey. Can we talk?”
Cindy shrugged, and Alex climbed inside to sit down beside her.
He chewed on his words for a bit before saying, “I’m sorry about what I said earlier. You have enough to deal with, and I’m just having trouble processing it all.”
Cindy nodded.
“Can you forgive me?”
“Yeah, I forgive you if you can forgive me. Still no idea how any of us are supposed to deal with all this. How are you supposed to cope with the fact that your entire religion turned out to be wrong?”
Alex raised his eyebrows. “I don’t think it’s wrong. I certainly didn’t expect any of this to exist, but it was all here before we discovered it, and it being real doesn’t make God any less real. Whether this turns out to be demons or something else, nothing about my worldview has changed. And I still believe that things will turn out alright in the end, whatever ‘alright’ looks like, because we have God looking out for us.”
Cindy digested what he said before admitting, “That’s weirdly comforting to hear. Not that any of this makes me more of a believer than I was before, but I feel better knowing that you’re confident we’ll be okay. Thank you. I really appreciate it.”
Alex nodded, but she could see from the tension in his expression that he was holding back doubt.
They sat together for a while longer, not really talking but grateful for the shelter as it started to drizzle.
Cindy definitely needs therapy
Cindy's got a lot of unlearning to do. It's gonna be rough when she makes it back to dry land.