***

  It’s not until sunrise the next morning that actual panic sets in.

  Whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck

  The sun is roughly three of her outstretched thumb widths over the liquid horizon—she’s slept in—surprising on account of it feeling like she’s barely managed 3 hours.

  More surprising is the large wicker picnic basket next to her with blanket and pillow draped over top.

  She notices the shoeprints next, leading to and away from her, all the way out to the short pier at the edge of the beach.

  She is up in a flash, screaming. “Hey! Hey! What the fuck” —there’s no one there— “is… going… on…”

  Would she have heard a boat arrive? Surely she would’ve heard somebody approaching, right? Evidently not, she thinks.

  She crouches down, examining the marks. She can just make out a faint cursive nituoduol in the center of some.

  So some rich prick made a midnight delivery, huh?

  She looks back at the print before scoffing and slapping at the sand. She’s not a forensics expert. What does it matter if her mystery delivery man was wearing Louboutin or Gucci or Balenciaga or a pair of fucking Sketchers from the Foot Locker discount bin? That didn’t tell her when the prints were made. Even if it did, it still wouldn’t tell her why she’s chained to a fucking tree.

  She crouches there and stares out at the horizon, it’s pretty at least. She watches the gentle roiling surf carving runnels into the sand, only to wash them away and carve anew.

  She trudges back to the tree and inspects the contents of the basket. Within are toiletries, an assortment of crackers, various berries and fruits, lunch meats, cheeses, jams and spreads, snack bars, and several bottles of water plastered with pretentious labels that read alkaline H?O: low acidity hydration!

  She’s hungrier than she thought and soon she’s finished the snack bars and sliced meats. She’s never been too keen on dairy, so the cheese will sit for now.

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  She’s halfway through a bottle of the champagne-priced water when she realizes that she hasn’t pissed since the party—barring any incontinence from her less sober hours, which she hasn’t smelled any indication of regardless—and she so very badly needs to do so right now.

  She quickly pans her surroundings.

  Fuck it, if they film me I’ll fucking sue the shit out of them. Wouldn’t even be the worst video of me out there either.

  “Hope you pervs like this!”

  Once finished, she greedily downs the rest of the water and reaches for the next. She’s thirstier than she thought too. Twisting off the cap she savors the cool liquid as it passes her lips, although she would prefer a decidedly more alcoholic refreshment right about now.

  She sits back against the tree and relaxes her gaze. Above her, a long slender branch extends into the sky, before curving back with the last few feet of its length. She notices most others do the same, their ends all looped back like little curly pigtails. Kind of cute, she thinks. Weird, but cute.

  She spends the rest of the day staring up at the cloudless sky. A small nagging has begun in the back of her head, she puts it out of her mind even as she becomes aware of what it is saying. What if no one comes to unbind her? What if she is stuck here? Could she fit her wrist through the cuff if her hand was broken? Could she break her own hand if she had to?

  Don’t be ridiculous, it won’t come to that, she reassures herself. This is just a sadistic prank and the ensuing lawsuit I’ll bring will be every lawyer’s wet dream.

  ***

  The sun is setting again. She watches the sky change from orange to pink to purple to grey.

  Something feels wrong—besides the obvious, of course—but she doesn’t know what. The voice in her head isn’t nagging her anymore, it’s not even talking to her, it’s broken into her amygdala and started pulling all of the levers for fight and flight and freeze and fucking panic!

  She’s hyperventilating, broken into a cold sweat. It’s been years since she’s had a panic attack. She figures now is an appropriate enough time for it.

  Her first waking moments here weren’t real to her then. Even by that first day’s nightfall she could still imagine that she was dreaming, or hallucinating, maybe any second she’d wake up back at the party with all the fancy people in all their fancy clothes.

  But now, at the close of her second day in this place, there is no more pretending. This is not a dream or a bad trip.

  She leans against the tree and shivers. It’s not cold out.

  When she opens her eyes again, it’s dark out. She’d swear she can see every star in the Milky Way, this calms her some.

  She remembers her mother and how as a little girl they would travel as far away from the city as they could to look at the stars. The light pollution, she remembers, you want as little light pollution as possible. Mom had never been able to afford a trip to the mountains before the emphysema had taken her, nor to any of the other places where she had claimed one could see the stars as clearly as if they were the glow-in-the-dark stick-ons adorning the bedroom ceiling, but on a lucky night when the smog was low they could lie back on the hood of the Ford Taurus, mother enraptured by those pinpricks of light, incalculably distant; Sasha by the exuberance washing over the old woman’s face, by the sparkle lit in her eyes that made her look nearly unrecognizable: young and happy like she did in all the old pictures on their refrigerator.

  If only you were here now to point out the constellations, mom. It all looks the fucking same to me.

  ***