Day One
Leah
"Earlier this morning we made contact with your parents. We'll travel them here as quickly as possible, and the quarantine order will be lifted soon, not just for you but for all the victims, at which point you'll be free to see each other. Just to be clear, our primary goal is to conduct an investigation. There's a lot of haze surrounding your circumstances that we just want to clarify. And I cannot stress this enough, but this is just a conversation. That's all."
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To most, Hunter Boyd was the typical head cheerleader type. Long blonde hair, popular, rich family... you name it and she likely had it. She was a grade A student, but you'd never hear that out loud. Her twin brother - older by Hunter than 4 and a half minutes, not that he'd let the girl forget it - was the captain of the football team and had played with the school to win them three state championships. The Boyd twins were certainly well known in their rural Texan town.
To the few that knew her a little better, Hunter Boyd was irrational. She was constantly on edge since her break-up with her Quarterback boyfriend, Riley Black. They'd been the perfect couple until Hudson Boyd, her headstrong twin, had almost beaten Riley into a coma the night after their homecoming dance. The few that knew her better knew that that was the finally nail in the coffin of their relationship, even though they'd seemingly had the perfect high school romance.
To the one that knew her best, Hunter Boyd was a broken girl going through trauma. Hudson Boyd had started to notice the change in his sister a few weeks after she had began dating Riley Black and it didn't take him long to figure out what was happening to the blonde bombshell. She was loosing not just herself, but everything that had made Hunter her own person.
Her grades were flunking, the coach was threatening to give away her title as Head Cheerleader and her brother wasn't even sure how to approach her without seeing the ways that Hunter would automatically try to distance herself from him almost as if it was a natural instinct. That wasn't to say that Hunter didn't notice the change in her brother either. He was getting more irrational than her, going out to parties all the time and ending up in more fights than she could count on her hands.
When her parents found out why Hunter had became so irrational, that's when everything changed for the twins. Some business woman had approached their parents during their latest business conference - which the twins had a theory their parents usually made up just to get away from their children for whom they displayed little love for - telling them all about a female-only wellness retreat that she was personally attempted to scout Hunter for. It hadn't taken much convincing for Jared and Jackie to sign Hunter up for the retreat, just glad to have one less failing child to deal with.
In the space of one week, Hunter and Hudson had packed everything the younger twin would need for this "Dawn of Eve" vacation and had travelled together to the designated airport to bid their final farewell. Hunter's parents had failed to mention that there were two other girls from their high school also attending the trip but she paid little attention to them as she hugged her brother tight.
If Hunter had known what would have came next, she would never have let go of Hudson Boyd.
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"Jeanette. That was her name, I found out later. She was the only one who had came alone. The rest of us came with others. There was Toni and Martha, best friends from Minnesota. The Texans, Dot, Shelby and Hunter. There was Rachel from New York and her sister, Nora. And Fatin, of all people, from my school."
Hunter felt her earbuds get tugged out by the bubbly girl who had sat in the seat next to hers on the private jet that the ten girls had boarded that was set to take them to Hawaii. Furrowing her eyebrows as the relaxing sounds of Taylor Swift instantly were snatched away from her, Hunter turned to look at where the Asian girl was pointing towards a screen at the front of the plane.
"You're missing the welcome video!" She exclaimed, turning herself around in her seat to stare at the woman talking on the screen. Hunter blinked for a moment, not liking how the girl had invaded her personal space before contemplating putting her earbuds back in and ignoring the video altogether. It wasn't like she wanted to be going, she just wanted to be back with Hunter in the comfort of their shared loft space that their parents had built to keep their contact with their offspring as little as possible.
Sighing as she paused her music on her phone, Hunter wrapped the earbuds and their cable around it as she tuned into the video that was playing. She hadn't taken the time to speak to any of the other girls but she knew that some of them were more excited than others about the trip.
"Right now, hundreds of girls just like yourselves aboard charters just like this one are en route to our retreat in Kona, Hawaii, for a long weekend of female-centric learning and growth. The Dawn of Eve literally waits for no man," the woman on the screen told them all as Hunter let her mind wander again.
It was ironic that her parents were sending her on a long weekend of female-centric learning and growth when they knew she had literally no female friends left. Riley and her's relationship had been so turbulent that by the end of it, many of her friends had been long gone from her life. She had stopped speaking to them after a few weeks of being with Riley and while they were all still friendly with each other, the only friend Hunter truly had that she could count on was Hudson. She didn't need anyone else.
"So in the interest of bringing us all together, I'd like to propose a lil icebreaker," Shelby announced, throwing herself out of her seat and standing at the front of the plane as soon as the welcome video ended. The rest of the girls had already gone back to pretty much doing their own thing and Hunter would have felt bad for Shelby being ignored if she wasn't planning on doing the exact same thing.
She briefly knew of Shelby Goodkind. However, she was fully aware of her cheating boyfriend Andrew since he had made it almost a sporting event for himself of trying to stick his tongue down Hunter's throat at every house party she had ever attended. Riley used to find it funny that Andrew was clearly not getting what he wanted from Shelby, but Hunter found no enjoyment in the situation happening every time the boy had a drink in himself and saw the other blonde. In another life she'd have told Shelby this, but that wasn't something that girls did in society at their school. Pretty much the entire school knew that Andrew frequently cheated on the blonde, and for that reason alone, Hunter would always pity her.
"Oh like never have I ever?" Jeanette, the girl who had tugged the earphones out of her ears, exclaimed as she jumped to her feet at Shelby's suggestion.
"That games a little much," Shelby attempted to shoot the idea down, and Hunter couldn't help but roll her eyes slightly at the brief look of shock that crossed the blonde's face. That was the exception to her one rule of pity for Shelby: how her parents religion restricted her views and experiences. She knew that the blonde had never been to a party and she pitied her for missing out on that high school experience.
"How about we just pair off, powwow with your partner for a sec and then afterwards you can introduce her to the rest of us?" Shelby suggested as she walked the length of the plane, shooting a big grin to the Boyd twin that seemed to be somewhat paying attention to what she was saying unlike most of the other girls on the plane. "Guess I'll have to play matchmaker."
Shelby reached out and grabbed on to the hand of the girl sitting diagonally behind Hunter, dragging her from her seat and out of it. Hunter was sure that was Toni but it was hard for her to keep up with all of their names when she'd barely been paying attention in the first place. As she passed Hunter, she reached out and latched her spare hand on to the girl's wrist without any warning.
Hunted ripped her wrist out of the girl's grip instinctively, throwing herself out of her chair and taking a few steps away from Shelby with a scowl suddenly on her face as she cradled her wrist slightly into herself. Everyone paused slightly as they watched the slight situation, unsure whether a fight was about to break out or what. Even Leah looked up from the book she was engrossed in with a furrowed brow at the sudden movement from the other blonde who had been pretty stationary the entire ride.
"Don't touch me," Hunter snapped before realising what she had done. She cleared her throat before walking in the direction of the front of the plane, hearing Shelby continue to drag Toni with her as if the other Texan blonde hadn't just snapped at her. Hunter sat down in the spare seat at the front of the plane as Shelby sat Toni down in the one directly across from her before turning and trotting off towards Leah who had gone back to reading her book at the back of the plane.
"What, not a fan of human contact?" Toni half-joked, half-prodded as she looked at how Hunter was still subconsciously holding her wrist where Shelby had grabbed her. The blonde dropped her wrist as she shrugged slightly, looking back at the other girl in their group - Rachel - who was also looking at her curiously.
"Something like that," Hunter mumbled. She looked at the man who was passing the other two cake before scrunching her eyebrows. "Is that vegan?"
As she refused the offer of cake once discovering it was not vegan, Rachel changed the subject as she looked at the shirt that Toni was wearing.
"So you play basketball?" Rachel asked, keen to see if she was the only athlete on the plane.
"I used to," Toni admitted as she ate her slice of cake with a grin on her face as she looked at the other two girls sitting beside her. "I got cut from the team for unsportsmanlike conduct. This bitch from another team kept fouling me, so I pissed in my hand and I threw it at her."
"Were you good?" Rachel asked while Hunter paled slightly at the thought of someone pissing in their hand and throwing it at her. She'd be pretty disgusted at that.
"Hell yeah," Toni said with a proud grin, a slight stain of chocolate around her mouth from where she had engulfed the cake. "I was a beast on the court."
Rachel shook her head as she began to cut away at the cake in front of her slightly. "People who waste their talent get on my nerves."
Toni blinked slightly, not expecting the girl to have been so bitter before she shared a confused look with Hunter. The blonde simply shrugged, offering the ex-basketball player the slice of cake that she had refused to eat. Just as Toni went to take the plate from her hands, the man who had served them the cake reappeared almost from nowhere as he smiled warmly at Hunter.
"Miss, I've just been informed the cake is vegan friendly."
Shrugging as she watched Toni scowl at the news, Hunter retracted the plate back to her chair and began to eat the slice of cake content with knowing it was vegan. She wasn't vegan - Hudson was - but she had promised the boy that she would use this retreat to pick up the lifestyle that he had adapted in the previous year.
Toni and Hunter shared another amused look as Rachel started weighing out the cake on a digital scale on her phone, both of them rolling their eyes at the athlete's obsession already. It was clear to them both that Rachel wasn't here to make friends and while they weren't either, they were at least willing to get to know each other a little.
"So, are you like friends with Shelby or Dot?" Toni asked Hunter as Rachel gave them both the silent treatment. The blonde shook her head at the other girl as she cast a quick glance down the plane at where Dot was sitting with Fatin and Shelby with Martha.
"Nah, I don't think I've ever really spoken to either of them before. I think my twin maybe had spoke to Dot once or twice but not myself," Hunter told her as she ran her finger lightly along the small leather band clasped around her wrist that had the initials H.B engraved into the material.
"Why didn't she come? Your twin?" Rachel suddenly asked, causing the other two to look at her in surprise. They had guessed that her and Nora were twins but this confirmed their thoughts.
"Because she is a he," Hunter said before clarifying what she meant. "Hudson is a guy so he wasn't allowed to come, which means this is probably going to be the longest we've ever been apart from each other. We're pretty close."
And that's when the turbulence started.
____
"HEY! HUNTER, GET UP!"
Hunter shot up as she felt a hand on her shoulder, the girl hyperventilating as she scrambled back through the sand that was scratching her back and itching against her clothes. She flailed her arms slightly as she scrambled to get away from whoever had been touching her shoulder with wide eyes.
"Hey, hey, it's okay, it's OKAY!" Toni yelled slightly, holding her arms up in defence as she allowed Hunter to calm down. She had caught on to the girl not liking physical contact when they were in the plane and Shelby had tried to grab her but she hadn't realised that it was this serious. "Look, our plane has crashed and we need to find the others, can you walk?"
Hunter breathed in and out deeply as she tried to process what was going on, nodding as she went to jump up to her feet. The girl let out a yelp as she put weight on to her knee, pulling her hand back to see it coated red with blood from where she had scratched it up badly. She limped as she rose to her feet, trying to figure out how she was going to hobble around.
"Look, I get you don't like contact but can I at least help you? We'll never find the others if you can't walk," Toni snapped slightly, clearly stressed about the fact she hadn't found anyone else yet. Hunter tried not to flinch as she allowed the girl to pull her arm around her shoulders, helping her towards the shore where they could see others.
Toni left her with Leah, Dot and the unconscious Jeanette as she sprinted over at the sight of Martha, while Hunter gritted her teeth and started to help Dot drag Jeanette out of the freezing water. All of the girls were shattering from the cold, but it was Jeanette who was clearly in the worst state.
"SHE'S NOT BREATHING!" Dot yelled out to the rest of the them, causing everyone to sprint to where they all were crowded around Jeanette. Hunter's hand was resting over her knee as she tried to put pressure on the bleeding scratches but she was watching the scene unfold in front of her with wide eyes.
"Those compressions are way too fast!" Rachel argued as Dot pounded on Jeanette's chest rapidly. Hunter nodded in agreement with the girl, knowing from all of the medical shows her brother made her watch that it certainly wasn't the right tempo. "You're pumping like, double time."
"There's no such thing as too fast, only too slow," Dot argued before Nora backed her sister up.
"Actually, compressions can be too fast if they're not deep enough," Nora informed them all, stepping back slightly as Rachel yelled at Dot to slow down again. Before anyone else could say anything, Shelby, Toni and Martha arrived at their crowd too with Shelby sliding to her knees beside Dot.
"Easy up, Dottie! You're going way too fast," Shelby said as Hunter squinted a little. She'd never heard anyone refer to Dot as Dottie before but she guessed that Shelby must have gotten the nickname from somewhere.
"Okay, hell, if you're all such experts, somebody else tap in!" Dot exclaimed as she stopped the motions on the unconscious Jeanette, causing them all to freeze in the spot as she stopped. "Who knows CPR?"
Everyone looked around in shock as everyone else raised their hands at the question, even Leah from where she was still laying on the sand and Fatin from where she sat curled in on herself a few metres away. Hunter watched in silence as the others started to direct Dot through the motions of CPR while she shut her eyes for a second as she tried to process what was going on.
Things had seemed so simple that morning.
"This retreat will be good for you, sis," Hudson told her as they both sat in his car on the way to the airport. "It'll be a chance for you to heal from what... he... did to you."
"I know Huds," she had told him, a small tear rolling down her face as she looked at her brother. "I just don't want to leave you."
"It's only a long weekend Hunt," he had said, his voice firm and confident as he kept his eyes on the road. "You'll be back with me before you know it."
How wrong he had been.