Epiphany *The wilds*

Day Seven

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"Why do you think Leah acts the way she does?" Agent young questions me, ready to write down any answer I give.
I roll my eyes before answering,
"Besides the obvious fact that we were on a stranded fucking island.... Trauma. We're all hiding something dark, and some know how to hide it really fucking well."
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Waking up from a dream about home, only to be still stuck on this island, is probably the worst way to start the day.
Then hearing that Fatin is still gone, and now Toni's missing definitely didn't help.
"How, um..." Shelby starts, playing with her hands.
"How concerned are we that neither of them are back yet? 'Cause, personally, I'm at, like, a solid seven." She finishes, looking directly at Martha.
"If you're wondering if I'm worried about Toni, just don't, okay? She's not my business anymore." Marty says, annoyed.
"Okay. Well, there's also fatin."
"She stole two cans of our water supply. So... pretty sure she doesn't deserve a place in our thoughts and prayers." Leah chimes in, causing me to smack her arm.
"We don't technically know it was her." I defend the girl, causing her to roll her eyes at me.
"Dude, it was definitely her." She laughs, making everyone besides Shelby and I agree.
"I mean, this basically sums up how much she cares about our welfare." She continues, holding up a bracelet that says 'zero fucks'.
Nora suddenly gets up and grabs the bracelet,
"Uh.. I would like to let everyone know that what I'm about to do is a loving homage.." she trails off, and holds the bracelet up.
"Honestly, I resent being called basic, because would a basic bitch make out with Elon musk at a yacht party and inspire the designs for the new Tesla? Don't @ me." Nora mocks fatin, before throwing the bracelet down, causing most of us to laugh.
Martha suddenly gets up and grabs a sweater to wrap around her head,
"Me? Me break a sweat? In gucci? I don't think so." She mocks and throws the sweater down into the sand.
"I feel bad for laughing, but..." Shelby trails off, and grabs a pair of fatins sunglasses,
"I'm a Virgo ass bitch with a Pisces effing moon, so y'all can suck it."
"I need to try this." Leah laughs, before grabbing a headband and putting it on her head.
"I have insane HPV." She laughs again, making us all go silent.
"What? Too far?" She tried to joke again, obviously failing.
I slide my body over to dot, whose been searching through fatins bag.
"Everything all right?" I ask her, putting my hand on her shoulder.
She sighs and throws down a shirt,
"I lost the lighter. "
Rachel gasps, fury building in her eyes
"You lost the fucking lighter? How are we supposed to keep the fire-" she starts, but dot cuts her off,
"Yeah, keep the signal fire going. Boil water, if we find any. I know how bad this is for us, and I'm sorry, but if you're tempted to make me feel like shit, don't bother. I'm doing a pretty good job of it on my own."
Rachel's eyes soften, knowing it was clearly an accident,
"Look, we just got to keep a close eye on it, then, all right? Keep it burning, keep feeding it..." she trails off, looking over at Leah and grabs the book from her lap.
"Hey, you know, this shit would make some great fucking tinder for us." She teases, holding the book back.
Leah turns red, pushes Rachel and gets on top of her, "Give it back, Give it back!" She screams,
"Leah, get the fuck off of her, let her go!" I try and push her off, causing her to look over and push me hard to the floor.
Rachel laughs in her face, "and you called me the psycho."
"Give it the fuck back!" She screams again, trying to grab the book from her long arms.
Dot walks over and helps me up,
"Are you okay?" She asks, concerned.
But before I could reply,
"HEY! HEY!" Toni screams from across the island, causing the two girls to stop fighting.
She runs over to us and drops a piece of fabric with blood,
"This is fatins, right?"
We all gasp, and I immediately turn to hug dot, who hugs me back tighter.
————
Shelby decided that we need to go and look for fatin, so here we are. Balls deep in the middle of nowhere.
"Like, why would her shirt be all ragged and bloody?" Toni asks, clearly confused.
"Well, maybe because Leah went apeshit on her, too, yesterday" Rachel replies, causing Leah to scoff.
"Okay, there was definitely not that much blood and I didn't tear her fucking pants."
"Yeah , that's what got me worried."
"You think something attacked her?" I whisper, causing dot to grab my hand.
"Don't, Lydia. Don't let her work you up. This is probably just a distraction to make us forget all the shit you pulled yesterday." Martha sneers to Toni.
"Yeah, nah. This isn't about me." She pauses, leading us to a certain spot.
"This is where I found it."
"All right, look, if she'd been mauled by an animal, there wouldn't just be a single scrap, okay? There'd be, like a fucking crime scene."  Dot chimes in, looking at the bloodless scene.
"Still... I don't see her voluntarily ripping her Givenchy." I say to her, getting multiple nods in agreement.
"So what do we do?" Shelby asks, looking around at the silent group.
After a few moments of quiet, Leah suddenly speaks,
"We have to go find her. I mean, she probably just wondered off to troll us or to masturbate with her stupid electric toothbrush... but we all know she can't survive the wilderness by herself, she can't even survive a holiday inn."
"I'm gonna stay back, keep eyes on the fire." Dot nods towards Rachel, causing Shelby to laugh.
"No way. You're coming with us, Dottie. You're better at tracking than anybody. And plus, like, you know your way around a snake." She smirks, causing dot to sigh.
"I can watch the fire." Nora says quietly, making Rachel roll her eyes.
"No, it's not just watching. It's feeding the right amount of kindle at the right time." Dot insisted.
"Bark and small twigs work best... the thinner the better. Avoid wet tinder, and the oxygen is key." Nora smiles at her then turns around to walk  back to the fire.
"You ready to do this?" I ask dot, causing her to sigh once again.
"Doesn't look like I have much of a choice." She huffs, walking to the front of the group.
"Lydia!" Leah yells from behind me, "wait up!"
I slow my walking and turn my head to look at her,
"What, you gonna try and push me again?" I question her, crossing my arms.
She rolls her eyes, "no, fuck. I'm sorry. It's just.. it's Jeffery's book and I just, I can't."
Now it was my turn to roll my eyes,
"if you haven't noticed, we're on a stranded fucking island, Leah! You wanna bitch at fatin for not doing anything, but what are you doing, besides bitch and Moan and apparently try and fight everyone?" I spit at her, causing her to widen her eyes and back up.
"I'm seriously so sick of this victim act, Leah. He's not gonna fucking save you."
————-
After walking for what seemed hours, Shelby decides to suggest a game of would you rather, causing everyone to groan.
"No!" Dot yells dramatically.
"I don't wanna play that!" Leah whimpers out, causing Shelby to roll her eyes.
"Come on, we could all stand to get out of our heads, take the edge off."
"I've got one!" Toni claps her hands together,
"for the record, I didn't come up with this. I heard it from a girl from my team... would you rather eat nothing but plain yogurt for the rest of your life, like, not vanilla yogurt, like, im talking plain...." She trails off, biting her bottom lip before speaking again,
"Or suck off your dad?"
All of us laugh loudly, answering different variations of 'fucking yogurt!"
"Guys, please focus. Fatins been gone for way too long for us to be dicking around." Leah blurted out, causing the laughs to stop.
"We're just trying to stay sane here." Dot says, while shaking her head.
"Yeah, I know that, but staying vigilant is more important at this point. You know, this is like, every single horror movie, ever. A bunch of kids walking through the woods, and then as soon as somebody laughs or they get comfortable, something just starts picking them off one by one ." She snaps back, dramatically.
Rachel sighs, "there she goes, amping up the drama when we really don't need it.
"Rachel, I'm not. I'm just saying that we don't know what's out there."
"Last night, when I was roaming around, I did hear some kind of fucked up animal shit... howling and screeching..." Toni trails off,
"Did it sounds like it came from something, like this size or this size?" Dot makes a small movement and big movement with her hands, causing Toni to nod at the bigger movement.
"Fuck."
Then, a twig snapped. We all stop and turn our heads to the direction where it came from.
"Fatin?" I whisper out from behind dot, who walks closer to the noise.
Suddenly, a ferret pops out and Chirps loudly, causing us all to scream, then laugh.
"You need to calm down, and you all need to calm down." Rachel says loudly, pointing at leah then the rest of the us.
"I'm out." She finishes, walking away.
Leah shakes her head, "yeah, of course you're out! You have no problem dragging people into your stunts, but as soon as it doesn't fit into your agenda, you bail."
Rachel laughs sarcastically and gets in Leah's face,
"Dude, I wasn't going back. I was just gonna fan out and increase the search area."
"Oh. I didn't know that." Leah says back, while looking at the ground.
"I'm out too." I agree with Rachel, walking away from Leah.
"I'll go with." Dot raises her hand, trying to fight off the stares from the girls, "you know, no lone soldiers and all that."
Dot and I start to walk away, while Rachel stays behind and mouths 'you're crazy' to Leah, causing Leah to once again, turn red.
"I'm not fucking crazy!" She screams loudly, clenching her fists together.
Rachel smirks and looks her up and down, before turning around and running to catch up with us.
—————-
"You know what I like about you?" Rachel says suddenly, looking at me.
"What?" I say, smiling at her sudden calmness.
"You never feel the need for lame-ass chatter.  You're literally nothing like your sister." She begins, "but since we're here, you ever notice how Leah seriously bugs?"
Smiling at her sadly, I nod, but before I could speak, she cuts me off,
"Like, seriously, she's always 'my precious' over her mans book. Like, for real, lighten the hell up."
"Kindred fucking spirits." Dot laughs from beside me, causing Rachel to turn around and glare at her.
"I just mean you're both trying to give each other the same damn advice." She finishes, not wanting Rachel to get mad.
"No. Her crazy's a bit extra." She hissed, turning back around to keep walking.
While walking, Rachel suddenly sinks into the mud.
"Oh shit. What is this?" She yells out, flailing her arms. I throw my bag in a bush and run to the sinking girl.
"You okay?" Dot asks her calmly, before setting her bag down and try to pull her up.
"What the— what the fuck? It's taking me down!" She screams out, trying to grab anything to stop her sinking.
"Rachel, calm down." I yell at her, trying to grab her arm to pull her.
"you guys, it's sucking me in! What is happening? What the fuck is happening?" She screams again, reaching for something to pull her out, instead of letting us.
"Help me!"
"Let us fucking help you!" Dot yells at her, grabbing her wrist.
Looking up, I see all the girls about to walk straight into the mud,
"Wait! Stop! Go around." I say, rushing the girls over to help.
Rachel screams and flails even more, her arms getting stuck in the mud.
Martha grabs her face, shushing her,
"Shh. Listen to me. You have to stop, okay? Shh. Stop fighting. You'll see. Everything gets easier. Just let go. And let us help you, okay?"
Rachel whimpers out, stopping all of her movements, letting all of us grab her.
"Breathe. Relax. Breathe. Exhale. Breathe. Let us help you, okay?" She whispers to a crying Rachel.
"On three." Dot gasped out, trying to get the tightest grip possible.
"One, two, three." We all shout out, pulling Rachel out of the mud as hard as we could.
Once we finally got her out, we all fell to the ground, gasping loudly.
————-
"So, um. God knows I'm not a quitter, but at some point, this search party...." Shelby trails off, looking absolutely exhausted.
"Yeah, she's right. We should call it. You know, start out fresh again tomorrow." Dot agrees with her, earning nods from most of the group.
"We have to keep looking." A broken looking Leah starts,
"We can't stop looking."
"The sun will be going down soon, Leah. You really want us out here, stumbling around in the dark?" Dot questions her, shaking her head
"We have to find her."
All of us sigh, and I turn to dot, who looks the most stressed out, besides Leah.
"She feels like this is her fault, you know? If something happened to fatin, she'd blame herself." I whisper to her, causing her to nod and run her hands through her hair.
"FATIN!" Leah screams out, multiple times.
"Fatin!"
"Fatin!!"
We all start to follow leah, and scream as loudly as we could.
"Hey- oh!" Fatin yells out, coming from a different direction.
"Fatin!" Leah yells out, before falling on her ass into the ditch.
"What's up?" She smiles widely, looking at the beat up group.
"Fatin, oh my god." I say, before slowly walking down into the ditch to hug her.
"What the hell happened to you?" She asks me, dodging my hug while looking us all up and down, with a sour face.
"Is that nail polish?" Shelby asks her, pointing to the bright red polish in her hand.
"Is this what you've been doing? Painting your fucking gel tips?" Rachel fumes from beside me.
"We've been out of our skulls looking for you." Dot joined in, shaking her head with a glare.
"And all this time you've been treating yourself to a goddamn mani pedi?" Shelby finishes, glaring at fatin, who just smiles and rolls her eyes,
"Okay, are you done? Because I have something to show you."
She turns her back to us, and puts some of the nail polish on a tree, before leading us to something that would change everything.
"What?" We all gasp excitedly, looking at the gorgeous waterfall in front of us.
"Yeah!" Dot yells out, throwing her hands up in the air.
"Come on guys, let's go!" Fatin yells out, running towards the water.
Once we all washed up in the water, we decide to just hang out, and enjoy the amazing find.
"Is that what you went looking for? The water, I mean." Leah asks fatin, running her hands through the water.
"I don't know. Yeah. No. I was just trying to find something useful." She says sheepishly, making Leah smile at her.
"Good hussle... marking the path like you did." Dot comments, proud of her new friend.
"Yeah, well, what good would the water have done us if we couldn't find it again? And you're the fucking broken record about how easy it is to get lost." She smirks at her, causing dot to laugh out loud.
"Yeah, and you know what? I have never been prouder!" She smiles before jumping back into the water and swimming over to me.
"Can you believe fatin?" She beams, throwing herself back into the water.
"Honestly, yeah. I don't know why everyone doubts fatin, have you ever looked at her hands? They're calloused as fuck. I'm not sure what she does at home, but it's hard work." I tell her, looking over at fatin, who is sitting on a high rock, not wanting to get wet.
She catches my eye and gives me a wink, before turning her attention back to Leah.
Fatin and I never really crossed paths before all of this. But, there was one time in the school bathroom that really changed my perspective on her. She wasn't a stuck up, mean rich girl. She had feelings just like every other teenage girl.
*flashback*
It's about 30 minutes before school, I woke up early so Leah or my parents wouldn't notice the black and blue bruise I had on the side of my cheek.
I walk with my head down into the bathroom, sighing in relief when I notice nobody is in there.
I begin to take my concealer and beauty blender out my bag, putting a fair amount on before lightly dabbing the product on my bruise.
I wince slightly at the pain, not expecting it to hurt this much. It normally doesn't.
I stop my actions when I hear the door creek loudly to reveal a pissed off fatin, rushing to the sink.
She mutters something along the lines of, 'I fucking hate boys.', making me laugh slightly.
She cocks her head over when she hears the sound, raising her eyebrows in surprise, but doesn't say anything. 
I go back to dabbing my face with the beauty blender, now putting it in other spots so i don't look suspicious.
But, to fatin, everyone looks suspicious.
I try to ignore the glances at my cheek in the mirror, grabbing some foundation for full coverage.
"You're doing it wrong." Fatin pipes up, glancing at the foundation on my bruised cheek.
"What?"
"Yeah.. here." She pauses, taking out a travel size color corrector and handing it to me.
"Use the red one, it should work perfectly." She smiles sadly, not bothering to ask where to bruise even came from.
I look down at the product, and then back to fatin who is grabbing her stuff to walk out the door.
"Hey, fatin?" I whisper out, biting the inside of my cheek when she stops.
"Hmm?"
"Thank you."
*flashback over*
——————
Once we made our way back to camp, we all settled near the fire to boil the water we got at the waterfall.
"Alright. Careful, it might still be hot." Dot says while handing Toni a can of hot water.
"Oh, bring on the third degree burns. I'm thirsty as hell." She drags on, taking a big gulp of her hot water.
"You know what would be really great with this water? Some fucking food." Rachel says, staring Coldy at the fire.
"The hunger is real, bro. After that talk today... I'm not so concerned about going hungry. Im more concerned about something hungry finding us.." dot trails off, avoiding eye contact with the rest of the group.
"How long does it take for the water to boil?" Martha questions, ignoring dots morbid statement.
"At least a minute. Kill off all the microbes and shit." She replies, handing her a can of water.
"Well, how can we tell it's been a minute? I mean.... I guess I could count." Marty announces, before continuing,
"One one thousand, two one thousand....what should I be saying? One one thousand or one Mississippi?" She rambles on, looking at Nora.
"I mean, I don't know which ones more accurate, so..." Nora stuttered out, playing with her sleeve.
"Hey, Martha. Here, this will help." Fatin throws her, her Rolex.
"Oh, my god. This is beautiful." Martha stares at it, afraid to mess it up somehow.
"Seventy- eight thousand dollars. It better be."
Martha gasps, while some of us scoff.
"Uh. Okay, I don't think I should be touching this" she says, trying to hand the watch back to fatin, who shakes her head no.
"Uh uh, it's all good. My shit is your shit. Or it's all part of Dorothy's inventory, right?"
"Hell yeah, it is!" Dot says, holding up her can of water, smiling.
"Good job, Dot. We couldn't do this shit without you." I whisper to her, putting my hand on her knee.
She blushes and smiles up at me,
"Nora probably could of figured it out." She half joked, not accepting my compliment.
"Fires low." Leah says from behind us, showing her book to Rachel.
"You sure?" She questions, looking at her suspiciously.
Leah only nods, and let's put a loud sigh before throwing it straight into the fire, flames shooting up, scorching her beloved book...
———
Hours later, when it finally hit dark, dot decides to lead us somewhere, not telling us why.
"Predators ain't no joke, man." She barely gets out, getting cut off by loud howling.
"That was disturbingly on cue." I reply, shoving my hands into the pocket of my sweatshirt.
"Yeah, and getting a hell of a lot closer every night."
"Then why exactly are we traipsing around in the dark making ourselves easy prey?" Shelby groaned, flailing her arms dramatically.
"This." She suddenly stops,
"It's Jennettes grave. Or what's left of it, anyway... keeping her here was fine when we thought rescue was coming right away,-"
Rachel cuts her off, "but it's been a week."
Dot nods her head, "a shallow grave right near  camp. It's going to attract company that we don't want. It needs to be deeper, and a hell of a lot further away"
"Wait, so dig her back up?" Marty questions, looking sick to her stomach.
"Doesn't that feel a little... sacrilegious?" Shelby chimes in, staring at the grave in horror.
"I don't know that we've got any other choice." Dot explained.
"Fuck it. I'll start." Rachel gets down and starts to dig up the sand, causing dot to as well.
Following dots lead, I take my hands out my pockets, and start to dig.
I don't think I'll ever be able to listen to pink again.
After digging and digging, we find nothing.
Her body is gone.
"Where the fuck is her body?" Leah asks, clearly in shock.
"Maybe we didn't dig deep enough." Martha tried to reason.
"No, we didn't bury her any deeper than this. There's no way" Toni shakes her head, running her hands through her hair.
"Then maybe this isn't the right spot."she tries to reason again, causing dot to sigh.
"No, it is. I counted. 120 feet away from camp."
"So, what are we saying? That she just, like, re-animated or something and walked off like a zombie?" I question, confused as hell.
"Resurrection." Nora comments.
"No, this is weird as hell. Her body wouldn't just disappear." Rachel booms, shaking her head.
"Maybe she got taken out by the tide." Shelby insists, looking out into the ocean.
"The marker was gone. The grounds wet. The elevation of the sand has shifted." Dot starts, but I cut her off.
"The tide could take a body out?"
"Tides can pull anything out. Cars, entire houses. The ocean is incredibly powerful." Nora whispers out, causing everyone to look down.
"So, jennettes just out there on the waves, floating alone." Martha states, her voice breaking with every word.
Shelby turns to her and hugs her,
"Hey, it's kind of beautiful, though. Mother Nature holding her arms around jennette carrying her away.."
"Adios, j." Dot says, putting her hand on top of mine, before standing up and walking back to camp.
I stay back with fatin and Leah, not ready to leave.
"Do you guys buy this whole tide thing?" Leah questions out of the blue, causing me to furrow my brows.
"I don't know." We both answer, standing up.
"I'm gonna go back, Leah... you should too." I smile at her, before walking back with fatin.
——————
"Digging for jenenttes body and finding absolutely nothing, was definitely weird... and not to mention, it made Leah's theories get worse. I hope where jennette is, she's at peace."
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Notes /// hi:) so, I feel like this needs some drama, so be prepared 🤪 and how are we liking the long chapters? I personally don't like reading fanfics with short chapters, Like gimmie the details yk?