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“You’re watering it down,” I say, surveying the mess of empty cans and water bottles strewn across the counter.

“Yeah,” she says, wiping tears off her face. “He’ll die of alcohol poisoning if I don’t. And they’re just . . . they’re just . . . they’re letting it happen.” She starts crying again, full sobs wracking her body as she hangs over the porcelain sink, tears falling against mold that has crept up the sides.

“Not even just letting it happen,” she goes on. “They’re encouraging it. Did you see this?”

She pulls out her phone, showing me the comments under the livestream.

Ask him if he’s ever killed someone

Tell him to whip it out

Is he a virgin?

Fake news

Ask him if he’s ever killed someone

That last one from the same poster, insistent.

“Hugh sent me this screen cap from his phone.” She flips through some pics, smiling photos of her and Felicity; a group shot near a bonfire; Gretchen’s dog, posing in a Halloween costume as a skeleton.

“Look,” she says, pulling up a shot of a messages app with over two thousand unread notifications. “Somebody posted Hugh’s account info, and he’s getting questions from all over the world. It’s . . . it’s . . .”

She’s shaking, and I take her phone from her. Not all the comments are enthusiastic.

Somebody stop this

If you’re there please, someone help him. This is wrong.

Does anyone recognize where they are? Somebody needs to get out there.

Everybody chill. This is obviously all staged.

Those kids are not okay! Do you see the ones that are passed out?

They aren’t passed out—look at the puke, look at their skin. They’re sick.

Jesus Christ somebody call the cops

There’s concern but it’s all the same. Somebody—somebody else—should do something. Comments are coming fast and hard. I can’t keep up, and Brynn’s phone shakes in my hand when a screenshot pops up, the upper-right-hand corner circled in red with an arrow pointing to four dark paws, leaving the shot.

What the fuck is THAT? Did anybody else see that????

Yawn . . . Staged

I hand Brynn her phone back. “I’ve got to go.”

“Go where?” she snaps. “No, you’ve got to help me.”

“Help you?” I ask, truly flummoxed. She’s currently double-fisting watered-down beers to take to Ribbit. I don’t see how I’m needed. But Brynn’s back in control of herself and giving me orders like I’m a freshman on the volleyball team.

“Everybody’s puking their guts out,” she says. “We need to get water into them, keep them hydrated. If you see anybody lying down, turn them onto their side so they don’t asphyxiate on their own puke. I’ll be back,” she says, pointing one red cup at me, her eyes narrowed, “and if I find out you went downstairs to sell drugs instead of helping me, I swear to God, I’ll call the cops myself and we’ll all be fucked.”

I’ll be way more fucked than anybody else, but Brynn doesn’t need to know that. “Okay,” I tell her, hands in the air in surrender. “Okay, I’ll start . . . watering people.”

I wait for her to disappear into the front hall, the kitchen door swinging into place behind her, then take the servants’ stairs up the back—the same path the cat must have taken to avoid being seen. I stop, unzip my backpack, and pull out a flashlight. Ribbit didn’t run bulbs up the back staircase, and I can’t see anything once I’m more than a few steps high. The walls are close and tight here; the servants not rating the open, expansive staircase from the front room.

Sure enough, muddy prints precede me. I wave my light, following as they lead me to a kid wearing a ragged Red Hot Chili Peppers shirt. He’s on his back, one shoe loose and dangling. I prop him up, feeling the heat of his skin, and lean him against the wall.