It was a full moon, or at least very close to it. Hailey had followed Aidan and May and a few other people surreptitiously out onto the beach. The brightest white spot belonged to Venus and it was clinging to the side of the moon like a fruit fly around a bowl of over ripen bananas. The stars were more numerous than they were at home and they were all visible; not a cloud in the sky to cover them up. The ocean looked as black as oil and it had gotten colder. Hailey would have noticed these details if she hadn't had a cocktail of cocktails and was now only following the sound of May's voice and the looming orange brightness of a bonfire someone at the party had set up an hour ago, smiling the entire time. She was very nearly out of her head, but she managed to walk in a convincingly straight line, and almost tripped on a raise in the uneven sandy surface once. Once May sat down in front of her, she let her legs collapse under her and giggled just a little when her bare legs hit the cold sand. She looked into the fire and was satisfied that she no longer possessed enough consciousness to question.
It soon became apparent, however, that everyone else wasn't as happy as she was. No one said a word. Music was still blasting from the bar, underneath the banners tied around each wooden post set up in each corner of the bar, sanctioning the space from the rest of the island. Hailey could still detect people talking and yelling. But around the fire nobody said anything for the longest time, until Hailey began to grow nervous. She didn't want to die in some strange ritual. In comparison, a plane crashing would be preferable. Across from her three faces were illuminated in orange. One of those faces was Aidan, and even he wasn't smiling. Chilled, adrenaline innervated her enough where she thought it would be reasonable to get up and run back to the bar and catch a cab or run back to her hotel. She straightened up and began to push her weight onto her legs to get up when a man she'd not seen until now said, "It's ready." Hailey turned to look at him. He had just snuck up on them. He was holding a piece of paper the size of an index card and a brass key wrangled in a desolate key ring loosely in his black hands. He sat down next to an unfortunate red head who was maintaining impeccable posture and had her hands clasped respectfully in her lap. The man passed the contents on his palm to May. She read what was on the piece of paper. Hailey tried to read it, but the writing was too small and she couldn't focus on it before May had put it in her pant's pocket.
"Everyone," she announced to the group of about twelve people, "This is Hailey. She's a vacationer, only in for one week." Hailey stopped breathing. Then May turned to her, "Hailey, we need your help." Images of ritualistic wooden swords carving into her innards as her blood was extracted into vials for later consumption appeared before her eyes.
"There's a man on this island who needs to be taken care of. And we need your help to kill him."
"So you're not going to kill me?" A deep laughter from someone around the fire was heard, followed by a serious of less intense giggles.
"We're scaring this poor girl to death," it was a native accent, and it belonged to the man who had just laughed. "I say one of us can do it. Let's not get an innocent involved."
"We've already discussed this Gray, and she'll be fine. If one of us did it, we'd probably die."
"Do what? I don't want to die." Self-fulfilling prophecy, she thought to herself.
"You're not going to die. But we need you because you're not a citizen."
"Aren't you not a citizen? You've only been here five years!"
"I'm a resident."
"I knew something was up. Nobody that's friendly. I knew you were going to use me."
"It's a fool proof plan, you're not going to die." Hailey felt as if there was an however inherently built into that statement. She looked across at Aidan but his face seemed too neutral to read.
"What would I even need to do?" She had turned back at May's face and she felt a strong urge to slap her. But for some reason she was deeply curious. May told her what they had been plotting for the last year while random voices shot out from among them every once in a while to clarify specific details.
Later that night when Hailey was lying in bed, television on because she was too scared to go to sleep without something to distract her besides the night's necessary intoxication, she wondered if she could be a hero. She hadn't been for Jess.
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