The bathroom looms before me, and I hurry inside like it’s my only safe place, some sort of dirty salvation in the woods where I can have some peace and quiet. But I know better, because no matter how far I run, I can never outrun myself. I have the loudest voice I know, even when I’m completely silent.
The ocean’s salt is still sticking to me, and there’s sand in between my toes when I walk into one of the stalls. I stand there for a minute, trying to breathe through my nose and form a plan on how we’ll get out to the rocks so that I can jump like Wendy had. So I can feel the exhilaration of the drop into the water. She talked about the freedom of the fall, and even though I’m terrified of heights, I would do this in her honor. Just to feel a flicker of what she might have experienced.
There’s a creak and then the sound of the main door being slammed shut. A shuffling of feet through the water on the floor alerts me to someone else in the bathroom, and just when I start to hold my breath and my heartbeat gets louder in my ears, I hear the click clack of flip flops on the floor, and I know it’s not one of the guys coming to find me. It’s another camper.
Of course it is.
I exhale and turn around, lifting my foot to flush the toilet so I don’t seem like some kind of weirdo, and let the commode noise die down before I reach for the door handle. There’s a huge colorful butterfly sculpture attached to the yellowed tile up by the screened windows, and I pause for a moment, wondering who would put that much effort into decorating a restroom before the sound of the other person washing their hands brings me back to reality.
Gaining my composure, I step out and head toward the sinks when I notice that the other occupant of the bathroom is the girl from the boat. She’s got a towel wrapped around her chest, her hair thrown into a ponytail, and her sunglasses perched on top of her head again. She smiles at me from the mirror’s reflection.
“Hi.”
“Hey,” I say and turn the water on to wash nothing from my hands. When I’m done, I reach for a paper towel, but she hands me one instead.
“September.”
“What?” I ask, leaning back to look her over. Her cheeks are sunburnt, and her bright green eyes are a little red so I’m wondering if she’s high or if it’s the lake water.
“I’m September. What’s your name?” She extends a slender hand my way, and I blush as I realize that she’s just being nice and that this is probably how my mom did shit back in the day. Just talked to people. It takes a few drinks for me to get this friendly. This girl is offering up her hand like she’s ready to be best friends.
“Audrey. I saw you come by on your boat.”
She grins. “It’s a rental. I’ve only got it for another day. Are you in the lot next to the little red tent?”
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“We’re neighbors for a couple more nights.” She turns to her reflection in the mirror again and presses the pink spots beneath her eyes. “These are gonna hurt like a bitch once the sun goes down. I probably won’t get any sleep at all.”
“One of the guys I’m with snores like an eighty-year-old man who forgot to plug in his CPAP machine, so you probably won’t get any sleep anyway. My apologies in advance.”
Her laugh is loud and genuine, and her smile reflects in her eyes. But the sound also bounces all along the walls, across the tile, and with it comes the sound of fluttering.
“What the hell?” Her eyebrows draw together as she looks around. “Did you hear that?”
“Maybe it’s a bird in the rafters?” I strain to look up into the darkened ceiling.
“No. That wasn’t a bird.” She steps forward and pushes open one of the stalls and we both peek in to see if there’s anything there.
“That’s weird,” I say as the door slams shut, rattling the other stalls.
She turns to me with wide eyes. “What’s weird?”
“There wasn’t a butterfly statue in that one.”
“What. The. Fuck …”
The reverberation of the doors reaches the last stall where I was standing and we hear the sound again, this time more urgent than before, and faster than a scream can leave my mouth, that thing that was in the stall with me rises and takes flight right above our heads.
“That’s a fucking moth, Audrey!” September is screaming and it’s making the thing go crazy. It’s three feet tall, I swear, and it has no sense of personal space, because it’s flying at us intermittently as we are screaming and covering our heads.
“I thought it was art!” I’m ducking and weaving, trying to make it to the door and she’s right behind me, slipping through old water, and Mothra is getting more agitated by the second. I reach the door, throw it open, and we both run screaming out into the open air, crouched low as the beast with wings follows us out and pivots up and over the bathhouse.