We did this before the wedding, but Bella was with us then. It was two or three days before, I can’t remember exactly. Bella and I had come here, and the others drifted along, one by one. Who was it that first mentioned the murders of Nicole and the other girl the previous summer? I can’t remember, but I remember we passed stories along, like campfire ghost tales, stories that painted a serial killer stalking the village, some twisted perverted monster. It was mostly Lena talking, the rest of us quiet. Bella kept looking at me. It was the next day that we had our fight about Greg.

I take another swig of vodka, feeling the burn right down to my feet. The world keeps doubling, blurring. When I look at the others, sometimes they’re as they are now, sometimes they’re the teenagers we were ten years ago and Bella is sitting with us. Ghost Bella takes the bottle Lena passes down and tilts it to drink. Tonight’s conversation overlaps with our horror stories from then. My hands are shaking when the bottle comes back to me; vodka spills down my chin as I take a drink. It wasn’t vodka last time, I remember, it was rum stolen from our kitchen; sweeter, darker, a warmer glow going down.

Jack lights a cigarette, offers the packet to the rest of us. We all take one, like we did that night. I didn’t smoke then, not properly, don’t smoke now, but I take one and light it anyway and the harsh smoke makes me cough, hurts my chest as I try again, inhaling deeply. I was sick last time—not in front of everyone, but when I got back to the house. It was the last time I smoked until now, first and only time drinking rum.

I wonder if Sean’s told them about the camera he found. I think, as we all sit here again, I want to find who we were back then. Maybe we’re all captured on that film of Bella’s and the nostalgic ache I feel as time slips in and out as the vodka level gets lower makes me long to be back there, Bella safe and alive next to me. I’d talk to her if she were really here. I’d make her tell me what was worrying her, I’d make it all better and, in doing so, I could stop what happened, reverse it, wipe it out.