I wanted to know the truth, but now that it’s coming closer and closer, I feel more like running away.

“There’s someone in the hotel who wants to punish us for last year.”

I look at him. “What do you mean?”

“That room service just now. Someone’s threatening us, sending us messages.” Fender sighs. “We weren’t going to tell you.”

I was right. All three of them have been keeping it from me. I obviously knew they’d been friends for ages before I came along, but I had no idea there was something so huge going on.

“Tell me everything,” I say.

Fender looks at me. “Are you sure?”

No.

“Yes,” I say. “Certain.”

Fender gives a deep sigh as he takes a gold envelope out of his pocket.

“This was just delivered by someone who calls himself Room Service. We don’t know his real name, only that he’s here in the hotel. He’s been sending us messages, like her suicide note and the death notice from the newspaper. This message was under the cloche just now.”

“The what?”

“Cloche. Like that one over there.” Fender points at the silver dome in the corner of the room.

It was there when we came back from the pool.

We found Fender surrounded by chaos.

Had this already started then?

I point at the gold envelope in Fender’s hand. “What’s in there?”

“I haven’t opened it yet.” Fender looks at me. “But there’s something else you need to know.”

“What’s that?”

“Before, it just had the names of Lucas, Kate, and me on it, but…” Fender turns the envelope to show me. “Now yours is there too.”

I stare at the six letters in front of me.

“How…” I stammer. “How does he know my name?”

“He knows everything.” Fender puts the envelope back into his pocket.

“I’m going to the bar.” I walk to the door. I want to hear the whole story from Kate. I need to know what happened last year.

“They’re not in the bar.” Fender blushes a little. “They’re next door.”

“In our room?”

So that’s why I wasn’t allowed in there. Were they having a meeting to discuss how to keep me out of everything?

I feel tears prickling my eyes. Am I worth nothing at all to them?

I thought Kate and I were friends! I felt like Lucas and I were getting closer lately, but clearly not close enough for him to tell me the truth.

“Come on.” Fender holds the door open for me. “Now that you know, I’ll show you.”

We go out into the hallway. Fender knocks on our door twice.

“Fender?” comes a voice.

“Yeah.”

The door swings open, and Lucas is standing there. He pauses when he sees me, but then he lays into Fender.

“What are you doing? We were going to keep her out of this!”