what friends are for

chapter twenty nine: that night

Hollis didn't make it much further down the beach until sobriety sneaked back over her and guilt settled in as company. The purple ring of bruises around her neck tugged at her like a leash, pulling her back to the site of the encounter that just took place. How hard had she hit Melanie? Would she need medical attention?

Despite her reputation for being cold-hearted, Hollis couldn't walk away. Hollis couldn't bring herself to shuffle back into the party, knowing she'd left Melanie unconscious with the waves creeping ever closer.

On her way back down the beach, she fixed her dress as it slowly kept creeping up, as the moonlight made the scars seem almost silver. Her stumbling movements turned into steps again as her thoughts became comprehensible, even if she was the only one to hear them. The bass of the music from the house was still loud enough for her to hear, despite it creeping into the early hours of the morning.

She didn't expect someone else to be walking in the same direction or shouting her name.

Eden Lloyd was almost tripping over her own feet and kicking up sand as she raced to catch up with Hollis, eager to gain her opinion about what had just happened outside the house. Her pupils were dilated, her thoughts running away from her and her smile wider than Hollis had ever seen it. It was painfully clear that she wasn't just drunk but high too.

Great, Hollis thought, not only had she attacked a girl but also had to worry about illegal drugs being at her party. The Whitley family must be so honoured to have Hollis wearing their name.

"Holly, Holly, Holly!" Eden chanted childishly, lacing her arms around Hollis's neck as she giggled and pulled the girl down for a hug.

She smelt of beer, of salt air, of whatever she'd been smoking before tracking her down.

"Oh my god, Holly this is your best party yet!" Eden chirped and Hollis tried to remove her cold arms, but she nearly fell as soon as she tried, so she accepted that she'd have to hold Eden up for the rest of their chat. "I feel great. We really showed her, didn't we?"

Eden giggled and wiped her lips, smudging her lipstick across her chin and cheeks.

"Who?" Hollis asked as she kept walking in the direction of where she had left Melanie.

"Stalker. It's about time she recognised who's on top and who isn't. Showing up here... who does she think she is!"

"Don't be stupid Edie. We're no better than her," Hollis said.

Eden rolled her eyes. "Why the change of heart Hollis? We are better than her. Just ask anyone in your house. Just ask anyone ever! We are queens!"

Hollis was going to be sick.

"We aren't better than her. What, we're rich and people like us so automatically we're better? Grow up, Eden."

"So, you can say all of this, but you never act on any of it. You'd disagree with all of this if anyone else said it so how come you can say it to me but no one else?" Eden said and despite clearly not being in the right frame of mind, her words made sense.

Hollis used to unload everything on Sabrina but since recently she had her issues, Eden had become her newest confidant.

"Would you rather I talk to someone else about how I feel?" Hollis said and it almost sounded like a threat.

"Obviously not. I like how close we are. It makes me feel like you love me the way I love you."

Hollis knew about Eden's attachment issues, caused by her dad running out years earlier and how her mother didn't fully care for her. Eden had always been paranoid, constantly questioning people's love and never fully able to accept it. So, it wasn't unusual for her to make these sorts of comments when she wasn't sober.

"I do love you, Eden."

"But not the same way you love Sabrina," Eden retorted and Hollis stopped walking. "And you can't deny it because you told me that's how you feel."

"That's how I felt. Not anymore," Hollis snapped in response, the cold flesh of Eden's arms burning against her skin.

"Yet you'll still drop everything to help her. Seems like you still feel like that to me." Eden sang, sounding way too pleased with herself.

After pushing Eden off her, Hollis walked quicker up the beach since she was no longer able to see Melanie. Footsteps, her previous footsteps, were still engrained in the damp sand that she began to race up. She was sure she wasn't this far up before. But if Melanie had moved, that was a good thing. That meant she OK, she was able to move and she went to get herself help.

But there was a small bundle of a person just ahead of them that Eden had begun to point and laugh at, and Hollis knew this didn't mean anything good.

Running as quick as she could, she didn't care careful enough to avoid the shards of glass embedded in the whiskey-soaked sand. They pierced the skin of her feet harshly but the pain felt distant.

Melanie looked like she had barely moved since their fight. Her hair was half-covering her face and the other half was sticky with whiskey and had dry blood splattered across her cheeks and forehead. Her limbs scattered limply around her as if they were an afterthought. The bruises around her body had begun to change too, from red to a deep purple, almost brown even, nearly matching the deep hue of her dress, that was almost destroyed now.

There was no longer a rise and fall of her chest like there had been when Hollis staggered away. Melanie's eyes weren't shifting beneath her lids. The only movement on her body was the October wind rustling the knots in her hair. Hollis knew if she reached out and grasped her wrist, she wouldn't be able to feel a pulse.

She barely felt herself collapse into the sand, and was unaware of how her hands snuck into her hair as began to pull as hard as she could. The tears burned as they fell down her face. With her knees pressed to her chest, she heaved and heaved for breath, but even the tightness in her chest felt like a distant pain, a pain that didn't quite belong to her. Numbness settled in. The only thing she could move was her eyes.

"Hollis, what have you done?" Eden snapped as she arrived, crouching down carefully to feel her pulse. Her dark eyes bugged out of her head as she ran a hand through her hair. "What have you done!"

The waves were crashing against the beach and they sounded like they were creeping ever closer.

"We can't leave her here like this. We can't have you getting arrested."

Hollis could hear the softness of the waves and how harshly it contrasted the panic in Eden's voice.

"Are you going to help! You did this! You did this!"

Hollis knew she was awake. She knew she should be aware of what was going on but she couldn't. The last thing she would remember of that night was Eden in front of her, crying, grasping her shoulders, trying to shake the consciousness back into her while Melanie Stocker lay dead at their feet.