WATER(4)
608 Words
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The café hummed with morning chatter, cups clinking and spoons scraping against saucers. Tucked in a corner booth, the girls leaned in close, their voices low, their eyes darting every so often toward the crowd.
“…so we all saw it,” Elina muttered, arms folded tight across her chest. “That can’t be coincidence.”
“It’s not,” Miranda said quickly. “There’s no way five people could hallucinate the exact same thing. That’s impossible.”
Beyoncé fiddled with her straw, lowering her voice even further. “Then what does it mean?”
No one answered right away. The weight of the question seemed to press the air around them.
Finally, Monica broke the silence. “Something happened to us on that island. And whatever it was, it followed us back.”
Miranda’s fingers tightened around her phone. “I… called Clara this morning.”
Annalise’s head snapped up. “You what?”
“She wasn’t picking up. Her mom answered. Said Clara wasn’t feeling well.” Miranda’s voice faltered. “She sounded worried.”
“Of course she did,” Annalise muttered, dragging her hand through her hair. “Clara’s… fragile. She doesn’t handle things like this well. If something happened to her, I don’t want to make it worse.”
Miranda’s jaw tightened. “But what if she already knows? What if she saw it too?”
Monica sighed. “Then we figure it out when she’s ready to talk. We can’t just show up at her house asking if she grew a tail.”
The table went quiet again. Each of them was thinking the same thing, but no one dared to say it aloud.
Before they could dwell on it, Beyoncé sniffed the air, her eyes widening. “Is anyone else… starving?”
Elina tilted her head. “Now that you mention it…”
Monica rubbed her stomach. “Yeah… me too.”
The waitress approached, pen ready. Her polite smile faltered as she caught the glassy look in their eyes. “What can I get you girls?”
“Do you have shrimp?” Annalise asked abruptly, surprising even herself.
The others turned to her, startled.
“Uh… yes,” the waitress said slowly. “Shrimp cocktail, grilled shrimp, seafood pasta…”
“Shrimp cocktail,” Annalise cut in.
Strangely, the others nodded in quick agreement.
“Alright… five shrimp cocktails,” the waitress said, jotting it down with a puzzled glance before walking away.
When the plates arrived, the girls dug in immediately. Forks scraped, shells cracked, cocktail sauce smeared across their fingers. Their movements were fast, almost in sync, as if they hadn’t eaten in days. For several minutes, the only sounds at the table were chewing and sharp clinks of cutlery.
It was Elina who noticed first. She froze with a fork halfway to her mouth, eyes flicking to the couple at the next table who were openly staring. The man had stopped eating, his brows knitted, while the woman whispered something behind her hand.
“Guys…” Elina muttered.
The others looked up, following her gaze. Heat rushed to their faces as they became suddenly aware of how they must have looked, leaning over their plates, devouring the food too quickly, too hungrily.
Beyoncé set her fork down slowly.
Monica shook her head, wiping her fingers with a napkin, her chest tight.
A heavy silence fell over the table.
Miranda swallowed hard.
Annalise pressed her palm to her scalp, her breath shaky. Her roots felt strange beneath her touch, coarser, thicker.
They were unsettled and afraid, the weight of the unspoken truth settling between them.
- Writer
