Spring Break (ONC 2023)

6: Spin the Bottle

Sometimes, the difference between life and death isn't obvious; other times, a glance is all it takes to distinguish something living from something dead. In this case, the latter held true, and I didn't need to be a doctor to tell Tyler was well past saving.

His clouded eyes stared sightlessly at the morning sky, his skin was the bloodless gray of fish flesh, and his lips were a dark, anoxic blue. 

"Holy shit!"

Michael stumbled back a pace and tripped, landing on the rain-slicked flagstones with a wet thwack. Rose let out a high-pitched shriek and turned away, covering her face with her hands. My own reaction was, characteristically, more introverted.

I merely stared, my mind going blank and silent as a snow-shrouded wasteland as every tiny detail stood out with ultra-HD clarity: the wet strands of Tyler's sandy hair plastered to his forehead by the recent rain, the gritty texture of the mortar between the paving stones, the steam rising from the warm water, and the distorted image of Tyler's nude body beneath.

"Holy fucking shit!" Michael exclaimed again, scrambling to his feet, his eyes round with horror. "Is he...? Is he...?"

"Yeah. He's dead."

The calm, emotionless voice was mine.

"Oh, my God," Rose moaned softly into her hands. "What do we do?"

It took me a moment to realize she was talking to me—I guess the calmest person in a crisis becomes the leader by default. Unfortunately, my 'calm' wasn't a sign of resilience and strength. It was merely a side-effect of my tendency to shut down when stressed.

"We need to tell the others," I hear myself say. "And we need to call the police."

"The police?" Michael's voice pitched high with alarm. "Why the police?"

Remembering to blink and breathe, I turned away from the body.

"I mean 911. We need to call 911. But of course the police will need to figure out how he died."

Michael's voice shifts a step higher and cracks. "What do you mean 'how he died?' It's obvious he OD'd on something."

"Is it?" I turn and start walking back towards the patio doors as I speak. "I don't know that much about drugs."

"Neither do I!" Michael exclaimed. "But isn't that—"

"Tyler never touched drugs," Rose said, a slight shake in her voice as she hugged herself and jogged to keep up at my side. "Unless he lied. It's one of the first things he told me when we met. Said his mum's an addict, or something. He won't even take Tylenol."

"Did he not know alcohol is a drug?" I heard the detached dryness in my tone and winced. "Sorry. I don't process emotions well when too much happens at once. Ignore me."

Michael just gave me a wild-eyed stare; but despite her own distress, a bit of empathy showed through Rose's expression.

"I understand. And if he did die of an overdose, it's possible he... Well, who knows."

I nodded. Tyler had made a uniformly negative impression on me, but no one is as cartoonishly simple as our first impressions make them out to be.

Meanwhile, the commotion had attracted the others, and Mercedes, Nick, Logan and Cece converged from various directions and met us near the patio doors.

"What's going on?" Cece asked. "We heard someone scream."

"That was me," Rose said, and took a deep breath. "We found Tyler. He's dead."