The Trial Page 14

  ‘Sure, but Shannon deserved to have a good night. So what if she decided to have a few drinks? And doesn’t she have every right to have a bit of fun once in a while like the rest of us? It’s not easy being head cheerleader, you know.’

  May runs a hand over her face, wiping saltwater out of her eyes. ‘Anyway, why is it always all about the girls at parties? Brian was all over those Duke cheerleaders all night, but I don’t see anybody giving him a hard time about it. Not that I necessarily respect their judgement,’ she mutters, ‘considering what he was up to earlier.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, you know, those stupid running jokes he had going with those guys from Duke.’

  Hayley frowns and takes herself back to the party again, the crush of people and the hot, uncomfortably humid living room. She was perched on the edge of an armchair, trying to look like she was part of the conversation of a bunch of Duke girls standing near her. A great splash of laughter erupted around the sofa where Jason and Brian were sitting swigging beers and rippled out around the room. She remembers the half smile on her lips, like she could catch the wave and ride it, using the shared appreciation of a joke to unite her with the other partygoers. But she never heard the actual joke, or the ones that followed as the laughter swelled and crashed. It was lost in the din.

  ‘Let’s just say he wasn’t exactly being complimentary to women,’ May says, tight-lipped. ‘Quite how he managed to attract several of them at once is a total mystery to me.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘I’m not repeating it, Hayley, it was disgusting.’ And before Hayley can ask her anything else, she splashes off into the deeper water, launching into a rhythmic crawl.

  After a few more minutes, Hayley decides to give up and wades in from the shallows. Any fish that might have been tempted have probably been scared off by May’s splashing anyway. Further up the beach, she can see Jason lying in the shade, still glowering. She stops next to his sleeping shelter and crouches down, running her hand over the warm, smooth sand.

  Hayley gasps and cries out as a sharp, clean pain flashes through her finger. She sucks it, tasting metallic blood, and examines the fresh cut, bright and wet alongside the scabs of the scratches she got in the crash. Cautiously, she sifts through the sand with the end of her fishing stick, and uncovers a long, razor-sharp sliver of glass. Hayley picks it up between her fingertips and examines it, eyeing the distance to the rest of the plane debris. There’s no other glass nearby, nothing to suggest it was thrown from the wreck during the crash.

  She digs out a plaster from the first-aid box, and finding the ‘fridge’ empty, fills the skirt of her pale blue sundress with empty water bottles and sets off through the trees to fill them from the fresh water supply. It rained torrentially a couple of nights ago, leaving the island smelling of earth and secrecy the next morning, and there should be enough water left for another round of bottles, at least.

  When she steps into the shaded clearing, someone’s already there. Shannon, standing over the tarpaulin, staring at her own reflection, quietly sobbing.

  She’s suspended there in her own private world, and Hayley feels like she’s intruding. As if the island has somehow accepted Shannon and is holding her in its embrace. Hayley has crashed unwittingly into this tender scene, where she isn’t wanted or needed. She’s about to turn and leave when Shannon looks up and sees her, quickly wiping her eyes.

  ‘Sorry,’ Hayley whispers.

  ‘Don’t be. Sometimes you forget for a few hours, you know? And then…’

  ‘Yeah. I know.’

  And they stand side by side and push the empty bottles into the still water.

  * * *

  Later, after she’s forced down yet another meal of dry, bony white fish, Hayley is pushing through the bushes to find a quiet spot to relieve herself, when she overhears hushed voices, whispering in the trees ahead. She pauses behind a tree, every nerve ending tingling, every muscle clenched on high alert.

  ‘—didn’t want everyone to know—’ a voice hisses furiously. And Hayley’s stomach drops as she realises it is Elliot, standing next to a tree a few metres away with his back to her, fists clenched with frustration.

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ comes the other voice, and Hayley leans out very slowly from behind the tree and sees Jessa, hurt and anger playing across her face, standing opposite Elliot.

  ‘I can see how it might tarnish your perfect image,’ he spits, bitterly, and Jessa snaps at him.

  ‘Oh, shut up, it’s got nothing to do with that and you know it.’

  ‘Then why haven’t you told your friends? Because you know exactly what they’d say if they found out.’

  Hayley leans further, trying to see Elliot’s face, and curses herself as a twig snaps under her foot with a loud crack. Jessa jumps and turns towards her, as Hayley crashes through the bushes towards them, as if she’s just come from the beach.

  ‘Oh, hi, guys,’ she beams, as the sweat pools in the small of her back. ‘Nature calls!’ and she strides cheerily on, pretending that nothing is wrong, that she didn’t hear anything, that the two people she thought were the least suspicious on the whole island haven’t just jumped right to the top of her suspect list.

  DAY 10

  There’s almost no conversation as they pick at their fruit and fish the next morning. Hayley, sick with unease, just swigs at a bottle of water. She tastes it carefully first, an automatic check she’s taken to performing on everything she consumes, just to be safe.

  A lethargy has settled over the group. The survival skills that seemed dramatic and exciting in the first week have become monotonous. Their immediate fears of acute thirst and hunger have been allayed by the supplies they’ve built up, at least for the time being. In the first few days, there was always someone scanning the sky, checking for any sign of rescuers, stiffening in excitement when they thought they heard a faint noise that might have been a distant engine. But every day that passes without any sign of relief blunts their hopes. Nobody is looking skyward today.

  Jessa and May are sharing a coconut, taking it in turns to scrape unenthusiastically at the white flesh. May is humming under her breath as usual, something upbeat and poppy, and Jessa’s nodding along to the beat, but Hayley sees how her eyes dart sideways towards Elliot every now and then. Could Jessa and Elliot be working together? What did Jessa do that Elliot knows she is keeping secret? Could it really have been Jessa who spiked May’s drink? But why?

  Hayley is still mulling it over when the girls set off on yet another a fruit-picking expedition, leaving the boys rattling around the camp like aimless marbles. She considers just coming straight out and confronting Jessa, telling her what she overheard and asking what it was about. But something holds her back. Even though the crash has obliterated some of their social hierarchy, there are still deep-seated boundaries, unwritten rules she doesn’t feel able to break. Jessa, May and Shannon are still those girls, still somehow distant and unreachable from Hayley’s vantage point even though she’s a member of their squad. Things are shifting, slowly, but she still can’t bring herself to accuse Jessa of something outright. Not yet, anyway. And she doesn’t want to scare people off, alert them to the fact that she’s listening and watching, probing into the cracks, trying to put it all together. Her confidence is returning as she tries to solve this mystery, but for now, she’s still more comfortable gathering pieces of the picture and weaving them together from her place in the shadows.

  The weather is mercifully cooler today, with thick, low bands of grey cloud blocking out the worst of the sun’s direct heat. But the air feels muggy and full, pressing in around them and making it harder to breathe. Everything feels quiet and mysterious. The light among the trees is dappled and dark green, the thick air muffling noise, as if they are swimming in a deep lake. Even the bird song is silenced today, and Hayley wonders if they know another storm is coming, if they’re holed up in their nests and crannies, waiting for it to pass in saf
ety. Wondering what’s coming next.

  Suddenly May shrieks, her piercing voice ripping through the cotton-wool air, and Hayley’s head snaps in her direction, her chest pounding. But it’s just a bug, scuttling over May’s hand as she steadies herself against a tree trunk.

  ‘Ugh, ugh, ugh, get it off me.’ She shudders, shaking her hand frantically and spinning around.

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to be an animal-loving vegan, May?’ Shannon can’t resist asking, with a sly smile.

  ‘Vegan. Does. Not. Equal. Bug. Lover.’ May gasps disjointedly, jerking around as if she can feel its scratchy legs clinging to her skin.

  They walk on, the forest grasping at Hayley’s sore ankle every few steps like an insistent child that will not be denied, clinging and encumbering her every step. In the quiet, close stillness, she notices the beauty in the trees around her for the first time. One trunk is enrobed in a fine mesh of thin red vines, the colour so deep and lustrous it looks like a network of pulsating capillaries. A bush she has always avoided because of the long, vicious spikes that protrude amongst its waxy green leaves is sprinkled, on closer inspection, with the tiniest powderpuff pink flowers.

  ‘I have the weirdest feeling we’re being followed,’ May says under her breath, breaking the silence. ‘Like someone is watching us.’

  ‘Someone is watching us,’ Shannon says, almost dreamily.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Jessa looks alarmed, spinning round to peer through the trees that press close on every side.

  ‘The island is watching us. I’ve felt it since the first night we arrived. We’re not supposed to be here.’

  ‘I’ve felt that too,’ Hayley says, aware of the vibrancy of the trees, alive and listening, the vines and plants crushed beneath their feet.

  ‘It’s judging us,’ Shannon says, looking up into the canopy.

  May laughs uncertainly. ‘I don’t know about that. But I do feel very free here.’ She sighs, picking her way carefully between two bushes, one crawling in shiny, black lacquered ants.

  ‘Free? We’re trapped!’ Jessa speaks lightly, but Hayley recognises the note of fear, never far from the surface.

  ‘I know. I know it’s a strange thing to say. I’m worried about getting off the island, obviously. But in those moments when you let yourself focus on the present, it just feels so different from home.’ May looks like she’s trying to find the words to explain. ‘There’s such freedom in being able to explore a forest like this… or walk down the beach alone in the middle of the night…

  ‘I know what you mean.’ Jessa nods. ‘I thought about it that first night, when the boys were so preoccupied about wild animals and protection. And I was thinking, this would be the safest I would ever feel camping out, knowing for sure that my body wasn’t going to be found in some ditch the next morning.’

  ‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’ Shannon sounds pensive. ‘The things that scare us are so very different from the things that scare them.’

  ‘Well, until now, anyway.’ May’s voice is low and serious. ‘Now I’m not sure how safe any of us are any more.’

  ‘Do you guys really think there’s someone going around deliberately hurting people?’

  ‘I think the boys have vivid imaginations.’ Shannon is curt and to-the-point. ‘Like May says, feeling exposed and threatened is a new experience for them. It’s not for us.’

  ‘I don’t know what to think,’ Hayley admits. ‘That whole thing with the glass… it’d be such a weird thing for someone to do… but on the other hand it would also be really odd for Jason to make it up. Do we really think he could have had a nightmare that vivid?’

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ Shannon says, as the others automatically turn to her. ‘My sleeping shelter isn’t even next to Jason’s. I have no idea what he is or isn’t dreaming about.’

  ‘What’s going on with you guys, Shan?’ Jessa asks, gently, curiously.

  Shannon sighs. ‘I don’t know,’ she says in a small voice. ‘Everything just feels different, somehow.’

  ‘Did something happen?’ May asks, with characteristic bluntness.

  Shannon shakes her head. ‘It’s hard to explain.’

  ‘But you’re Jason and Shannon.’ Jessa smiles. ‘You’re the real deal! My world wouldn’t make sense without you guys together.’ She’s speaking lightly, but Hayley senses a real, childlike fear underneath.

  ‘Did something happen at the party?’ Jessa asks, and May stops in her tracks, staring at Shannon as if she already knows the answer.

  ‘He got mad at you for dancing with that Duke guy,’ Jessa says, sympathetically, ‘is that it?’

  ‘No,’ Shannon murmurs, vaguely, shaking her head. ‘No, no, that was nothing. Jason had a headache, he’d already gone home before the dancing started.’

  ‘Where did you guys go?’ May asks, looking uneasily between Shannon and Jessa. ‘When the party moved out into the back yard, I didn’t see either of you. I ended up getting a cab to the hotel because I thought I must have missed you but when I knocked on your room doors, you weren’t there. And your phone was off as always,’ she shoots, reproachfully, in Jessa’s direction.

  ‘I was there,’ Jessa replies, quickly glancing away. ‘I went back to the hotel early: the whole party scene gets a lot less fun really fast when you’re the only sober one left. I must have already been asleep when you knocked.’ Hayley notices that Jessa doesn’t meet May’s eyes.

  ‘I was with one of the Duke girls,’ Shannon says. ‘I went up to use the bathroom and found her in there sobbing. I stayed with her for about an hour, we went into one of the bedrooms to talk.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘She’d had a… bad experience,’ Shannon says, lowering her voice as if she thinks they might be overheard.

  ‘What do you mean?’ May asks.

  ‘Well…’ Shannon pauses as if she’s not sure whether to continue. ‘She’d been… I think…’ She stops and then says, uncertainly, ‘I think maybe she’d been raped?’

  ‘You think?’

  Shannon shrugs. ‘She said she’d been making out in a bedroom with some guy and it was all moving really fast and she thought it was what she wanted but then at some point she panicked and changed her mind.’

  ‘So she had sex with him and then regretted it?’ Jessa asks.

  ‘No, she changed her mind before the sex started, but he just carried on and did it anyway.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ Jessa gasps. ‘Did she go to the police?’

  Shannon shakes her head. ‘She said she had a boyfriend and she didn’t want him to find out what had happened.’

  ‘She had a boyfriend and she was making out in a bedroom with some other guy?’ Jessa holds up a hand. ‘Was it because she was worried about what the boyfriend would say that she called it rape?’

  Hayley feels as if Jessa has reached out and squeezed her stomach with an ice-cold hand, but she continues, with sincerity: ‘You know, they call it buyer’s remorse, right? When a girl has sex but then regrets it, so she says she was raped.’

  ‘Jessa!’ May shoots her a shocked look.

  ‘I don’t think that’s an actual thing, Jessa,’ Shannon says. ‘And she seemed pretty upset.’

  ‘Well, did she actually tell him no?’

  ‘I don’t think so. She said she just kind of froze. She said he was heavy, that his body was pinning her down. But he must have been able to tell she wasn’t into it, right?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Jessa says, slowly. ‘But isn’t there a difference between rape and having sex with someone who’s not that into it?’

  ‘Not really,’ May says, firmly. ‘It depends what you mean by “not that into it”, I guess. If he doesn’t know whether she consented or not I’d say that’s rape. You need an enthusiastic yes or you stop.’

  ‘What, like you have to get the other person to stop and sign a contract before you begin? Sounds sexy.’

  ‘What would you know about what’s sexy, Jessa?’ Shannon asks shar
ply. Jessa stops in her tracks, as startled as if Shannon had actually slapped her across the face.

  ‘Nothing, I guess,’ she says, slowly, cheeks flaming.

  ‘Actually,’ Hayley interrupts and it’s as if the other girls had totally forgotten she was even with them, ‘it depends where you are when it happens.’

  ‘What? What are you even talking about?!’

  ‘The law on rape. It varies by state – I looked into it when I was writing an article about that house-party arrest of that guy, Chad Maxwell.’ She glances quickly at Shannon, but there’s no flicker of recognition on her face when Hayley mentions the case. ‘We were in Texas the night before the plane crash, right? Texas is one of the ones I remember, because it really shocked me. In Texas, it’s only rape if the rapist uses force or violence or threatens it. Or if the person is unconscious or unable to fight back. In other words…’

  ‘She’d have had to try to push him off her,’ Jessa finishes.

  ‘Yeah,’ Hayley admits. ‘It’s completely messed up.’

  ‘But in the guy’s defence, how did he know she thought he was raping her? She was kissing him,’ Jessa protests again.

  ‘You’d never say that about anything else,’ Shannon says. ‘You’d never say, well how was he supposed to know she didn’t want him to take her phone, it was right there in her pocket, he might have thought she wanted to give it to him – that’s why he robbed her. Why are we so keen to give a guy the benefit of the doubt when it’s rape?’

  ‘And why can’t he take the time to damn well check?’ May adds, hotly. ‘If you’re not sure, it should be on you to make sure. The onus should be on him to know for certain she wants it, not on her to find a way to fucking protest.’

  ‘Amen,’ Hayley says, and Jessa rolls her eyes but doesn’t say any more.

  They walk on, the silence awkward at first. But at some point, May announces that this road trip needs a soundtrack and starts belting it out with gusto, flipping between Kesha, vintage Dolly Parton and Beyoncé with wild abandon, Shannon and Jessa occasionally joining in on backing vocals. Their singing is harsh against the silent undergrowth, and Hayley feels like they are breaking something sacred, like they should apologise and muffle their voices. But she doesn’t know how to ask them to without sounding mad, so she says nothing and follows quietly in their wake.