Page 64 of Here for a Good Time
I obey, willing my leaden feet to climb back up. I’m staring at Zwe as I move, and my eyes stray to the map that’s still lying open a few feet away.
The blob.
It’s the island.
But wh—
“Now turn around and close your eyes,” Leila says, halting me mid-thought. “And believe me when I say that Iamsorry I couldn’t do this in a less painful way” is the last thing I hear before there’s a dull thud against the back of my head and my brain shuts off.
THIRTEEN
It feels as though I blinked and woke up in a new place. As I slowly reenter the world of the conscious, my only recurring thought is that the strange throbbing in my head is starting to amplify by the second.
When I remember what happened, I try to gather my bearings despite the hazy state I’m still in. I blink several times as my vision comes into focus. Zwe’s several feet away, tied to a chair facing me.
“Leila,” I say, not recognizing my hoarse voice, unsure if I’m whispering or yelling. “Tattoo.”
His mouth moves in a “What?” but it sounds mumbled, like he’s talking underwater.
“Wait,” I mumble, and take a deep breath. I close my eyes, and immediately realize it’s a bad idea because I want to drift back off. I reopen my eyes and blink rapidly, willing myself to stay awake.
We’re in one of the resort’s rooms, one that’s smaller than our suite, and, I presume, much closer to the reception area where everyone’s still gathered. Even though the lights are off, there’senough moonlight and artificial light from outside streaming in that I can see the whole room and our general states of being.
“We’re so stupid,” I say. “Of course it was a trap the whole time.”
“You know what they say about twenty-twenty hindsight,” Zwe says. “I can’t believe we didn’t see it. She was… convincing.”
“Leila has the tattoo.”
He cocks his head. “What tattoo?”
“Thetattoo. Their tattoo,” I say tiredly.
Confusion etches ridges onto his forehead. “You’re concussed, aren’t you?” he asks, although it’s more of a statement.
“No,” I say, then consider. “Maybe. Probably. But I’m making sense. The tattoo. They all have the same tattoo. I noticed it on two of them before. But Leila’s was hidden on her ankle. I only saw it because she was barefoot and I was eye level with it when I—” I stop, unable to finish the sentence.
The unspoken words make Zwe shift in his chair.
“I’m sorry,” I sigh.
At the same time, he says quietly, “I didn’t mean what I said.”
I don’t know if this new, sharp pang in my right temple is a reverberating remnant of getting hit in the head, or because my body physically cannot take reliving that conversation. “Thanks,” I say, and he nods.
“We’ll be okay,” he says. He smiles at me, and even though I don’t fully believe him, the sight of those dimples eases my queasiness a little, like someone’s spread a very thin layer of Tiger Balm over the knot in my neck—not enough to undo it completely, but enough that exhaling becomes easier.
“What do we—”
“What was the tattoo?” he asks.
“It was the island,” I say, the island’s silhouette on his map coming back to me.
“The… island?” he asks. The way his face is scrunched, I can tell he’s wondering again just how concussed I am.
“I’m not concussed. Or it’s not the concussion talking,” I say briskly. When his mouth quirks in amusement, I can’t help but smile back, even if the act of doing so sets off a short stab in my cheeks. “You had the map laid out on the floor. That was it. That was the tattoo. It’s the island.”
“Why does Leila have a tattoo of the island?”
