Remake Read online

  Remake

  A.J. Sand

  Dedicated to everyone who fell in love with Documentary. Thank you!

  — A.J.

  McKenna Rockwell – Prologue

  “E?” Kai said when she picked up the phone. Erica sensed the panic in his voice, and it heightened her own anxiety. Maybe she had gone a little crazy with the emails, texts and calls to him and Dylan, but she was digging a trench in the carpet of her new L.A. apartment from pacing across it, literally unable to sit on the news she’d just gotten.

  “Hey, Kai—”

  “You all right? I’m freaking. Dyl’s freaking, which is making me freak out more. What’s wrong? That asshole bothering you?” He meant Jeremy Bunyan.

  “No.” She finally sat on the couch, and her accelerated heart rate made the whole thing feel like it was shaking. Shit. She needed a drink, but the apartment was currently devoid of alcohol, and she needed to take care of that before Dylan moved in for the summer. “I know you and Dyl are spending time together before her finals, but I didn’t really know who else to call…”

  “E… You can call me whenever. You know that. Dyl says her too.”

  “Okay.” She did know that.

  “So, what’s up?”

  “Oh, Kai…it’s not a what. A who.”

  Patong Beach, Phuket, Thailand – Fifteen Months Ago

  The woman stumbling along the dark, quiet beach was angry. She reeked of Thai beer spilled down the front of her floral print dress by the bitch flirting with her boyfriend. It was her favorite, so the brunette had gotten a well-earned, sharp slap across the face, and McKenna had nearly been arrested. She settled for just leaving the beer bar instead. She wouldn’t have been so brutal ordinarily, but jealousy and alcohol were an unpredictable mix in a girl like her, she had discovered. What a way to start off what was supposed to be an amazing trip city-hopping through Southeast Asia.

  When her cell buzzed, she stopped in her tracks. “Rich” flashed on the screen. She growled and sent it straight to voicemail. Screw him. Well, no, she wouldn’t be doing that for a very long time. Her black hair whipped across her face, and she fingered the necklace dangling just below her collarbone, tempted to rip it off, as she trudged through the sand for the edge of the Andaman Sea. Her cell buzzed again; it was still Rich. A stream of vile words waited on her lips, but an echo of soft voices broke through the air before she could answer. Were they friend or foe? McKenna got a chill, even though the night was balmy. It was too dark to be out there, she suddenly realized, so away from the bustle of Patong Beach nightlife, so shaded by the tropical trees and beach foliage. She was unsure that even at her most furious right now, she could take down a determined person with ill intent.

  Legs trembling, she started to tread back toward the road adjacent the beach. But she heard the voices again, and one sounded more agitated this time. The other was…smaller, child-like…crying, maybe? Was someone in trouble? She couldn’t tell where on the beach the noises had come from, and with only the moonlight to guide her, finding anybody out here was simply a vain task.

  “H-h-hello?” she called out, looking around. If someone were hurt, how would she even know where to tell anybody she was exactly? Opening a map app on her phone, she pinpointed her location and snapped a picture on the screen. “Are you okay? Hello?”

  There was no response. Some lovers in the throes of passion, probably. This part of the beach was perfect for a risky tryst. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling—the intuition of fear—that something wasn’t right, which meant this really wasn’t safe for her, either. Her legs were becoming more and more like Jell-O as the moments passed.

  McKenna squinted in the darkness. “I don’t want to interrupt. I just want to make sure you’re okay. Just give me some sign that everything’s okay and I’ll leave!” she yelled out in a try at nonchalance, but fear had snaked into her voice.

  Silence.

  Why didn’t they just say something back? She couldn’t even see them, so they had no reason to be embarrassed. And she’d had sex in far less traditional places than this; they’d get no judgment from her. “I might as well be blind out here. Just making sure no one’s hurt.” She added laughter because it tended to make people feel more comfortable. Shit, if they laughed back, she’d feel more comfortable, too.

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina – Four Months Ago

  McKenna knocked softly on her roommate’s door, grateful that he was finally home. Without one of his Ambien pills, tonight would be another where she’d greet the sun eyes wide. Ambien never really gave her a full night’s rest these days—her worries always managed to be more powerful—but it let her sleep for a few hours. She asked Danny sparingly, not wanting him to get wind that she had developed something she hesitated to call an addiction, just yet. She had also been downing Tylenol PM, melatonin supplements or several glasses of Sauvignon Blanc for months.

  “Kenny? I’m about to hop in the shower… What’s up?” Danny shouted from behind the closed door. Her small, shaking hand turned the knob then pushed the door open just so, and she peeked through the slice of space at his topless frame.

  “You’re not in it yet, though. I can’t sleep. Can you spot me an Ambien?” She stepped back as he approached, startled by the way his brown eyes widened in concern and then narrowed in anger once the door was wide open. For a beat, the whites of his eyes stretched again behind his glasses as he took her in. McKenna knew she looked like shit. Her black hair was in matted tangles, her brown eyes, bloodshot. In just her shorts and tank top, her weight loss over the last few months was probably far more noticeable now.

  “I’ll give you one this time, but I’m not going to pretend I haven’t noticed you’ve been taking them without my permission. Not cool. I’m not going to keep living with someone who’s stealing from me,” Danny said in a resolute and cold tone as he locked his arms across his chest. His brown hair flopped over his eyes. “Do I have to put a padlock on my door from now on until our lease is up?”

  McKenna started to apologize, but the first wave of sobs came before she could speak and she crumbled down to her knees. It had become too much. She didn’t know why tonight, but she couldn’t carry the weight of what she knew anymore, what she had done.

  Danny led her into the room, nearly having to carry her in his arms to his bed. “Kenny, what the hell is going on with you?”

  “I’m a horrible person!” she confessed as she curled into a fetal position, and Danny cradled her head in his lap.

  “What? Because of the Ambien? It’s the dependence making you act this way. You just need help, is all.”

  “No…” she whimpered, sputtering and coughing. “No… Danny, I messed up.” She bawled louder, and Danny pulled her into his lap completely and held her against his chest.

  “Jesus, you’ve gotten so small. What the hell is going on with you?”

  McKenna sucked in a breath to regain her composure, but her throat kept clenching and the tears kept coming. Maybe they would never stop. Did she deserve anything better, anyhow? “I have to tell you something about our trip to Thailand.”

  “Okay, McKenna, this is stupid. Go back to the hotel or at least go back to the main road where people can see you,” she lectured herself out loud. Her mouth was so dry that it hurt to swallow. She was terrified, but she couldn’t seem to get her legs to cooperate in a self-preserving way to lead her away from the beach. She continued walking parallel to the water, though on a slight diagonal so that she would eventually head to the road. It was impossible to really make out all the shadows, but she had a compulsive need to confirm whether someone else was on the beach with her. It was better than having to deal with Rich anyway.

  A roar suddenly sounded behind her, not passionate at all, but animalistic in its agony, rocking
the beach’s silence. McKenna flinched. The muscles in her legs tightened, but she turned around, searching and searching for the origin. Was he coming after her? Then, down a ways, the moonlight finally struck a figure heading toward the road.

  “Hey! Are you okay?” she yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth. The person stopped, but as McKenna moved toward him, he picked up speed. “Hey! I can see you! I’m talking to you!” McKenna gave chase, calling after him, hoping to catch up before he disappeared into the nighttime festivities. What the hell had he been doing? Was he alone? No, he couldn’t have been. She laughed a little. Who did she think she was? Nancy Drew? Veronica Mars? But her curiosity had become uncontrollable, and the lingering alcohol in her system made her feel a little daring now. Then, a thought sparked. If she couldn’t catch him on foot, she could catch him on camera. At the least, she’d have a weird story to tell her friends.

  McKenna tried to snap a picture of his back; it turned out blurry and really dark, with barely an outline of his image on the screen. He made it to the road before she caught up to him, but once he was on the lit street, she could see that he was clutching the side of his blond head. She also took in his attire beneath the lights. A red polo shirt and khaki shorts. McKenna typed a note in her iPhone about everything she had just seen. By the time she hit the packed street, he was gone, just another face in the raucous crowd. A face she hadn’t even seen anyway. Whatever. She had probably taken her nosiness way too far. She was assuming something more serious had happened when maybe the guy had just realized the chick he was hooking up with wasn’t a chick at all, and was simply embarrassed or didn’t want to pay, and then they had gotten into a little scrape. Patong Beach was pretty well known for its “ladyboys.”

  Should she go back to the beach? Fuck. She wouldn’t have even known where to look now. And maybe the other person had hightailed it too.

  “What, Rich?” McKenna said flatly when her phone buzzed again, just as she had redirected her path for the sand. Instead, she walked a bit until she reached a stretch of hotels. “I don’t want you to come back to the room.”

  “Why not? I can come where I like.”

  “Yeah…that’s precisely the problem,” she muttered. “Well, I have the only keycard right now, remember? Crash with Danny.”

  “I’m sorry, baby,” Rich said in a halfhearted plea. “It was the liquor. I don’t know what they put in the drinks here. You know I’m not like that. It’s not like I thought she was prettier than you. She was hitting on me, you know…”

  Drifting away mentally from the conversation, McKenna wondered if she should just step inside a hotel and tell them what she had seen and heard. What if someone was dying out there? Damn, but that could mean staying in Thailand longer. What if she had to become part of some full-blown investigation? A feeling crept in, one worse than what she had felt earlier on the beach. She had planned this vacation for months, spent nearly everything she had saved. Her need to see the world while she was still young dated back to her childhood. McKenna was almost surprised by how easily guilt could be shoved aside for the wonders of globetrotting as she moved away from the building, looking in the direction she needed to go to head back to her hotel. There was still Indonesia to see. And Malaysia. Yes, Malaysia! Her desire to visit Redang Island had sparked the idea for this trip in the first place, and she would go there before she had to be back in North Carolina.

  “You’re the only girl for me, McKenna Rockwell. My Kenny…The love of my life! Hey! Hey! Are you even listening to me?” Rich shouted.

  “Yeah, Rich…” She looked back at the beach, even as she tried to convince herself to let it go. “Hey, um, what if I…?”

  “What if what, baby?”

  Rich would just talk her out of it. None of her friends would stay with her if the Phuket police needed her to remain there for something. McKenna sighed. “Nothing. Let’s talk tomorrow. You’re still stuck with Danny tonight, though.” With the call done, McKenna felt a tugging in her chest, a sense that she had to prove herself wrong. Just to be sure. She had to be sure.

  “But…um…” McKenna paused as she pushed away from Danny and sat upright. He was the first person she met when she got to UNC. Would their friendship survive when he found out what kind of person she was? When he knew the whole story? He’d never understand. Sometimes, she didn’t, herself. “Um, I changed my mind again, went back to the hotel, and just went on with life, like nothing had happened…”

  The entire trip was marred by mishaps from that moment on: armed robbery in the Philippines, losing her passport in Cambodia, and Rich cheating on her with a woman at the hostel in Malaysia. Then there were the sleepless nights and the relentless memories when she got back home. It was as though her deliberate decision to ignore her instincts had left her stricken with an immovable curse, a punishment for being the type of person she had always thought she wasn’t.

  “My bad feeling wouldn’t go away. A few months after we got back to the States, I Googled Phuket news from around that date, and it turns out an American tourist reported a rape the next day. It happened literally near where I was,” McKenna explained tearfully. “That poor girl…”

  “Holy shit… That was the night you and Rich got into that huge fight, right? But maybe it’s not too late to come forward,” Danny assured her. “You can do something now. I don’t even know how we go about reporting this, but we should at least try.” He left her side and returned with his laptop.

  “Wait. Wait! I don’t think I can, Danny.” McKenna shook her head and placed her hands on the laptop before he could open it. “I can’t. I really, really can’t.”

  “Why the hell not? Even if you didn’t see a lot, you clearly still saw something. You have information. You need to come forward. There’s some lowlife out there hurting women, Ken! Do the right thing!” He jerked the laptop away, looking at her with disgust. If only you knew, she thought.

  She sighed but admitted in silence that Danny was right. Maybe after all this time she could redeem herself, forgive herself, before whoever she had let down that night had a chance not to. But would it be enough? What was the redress when the damage done was so great? Did such a thing even exist? “I can’t because…I’m…I’m not telling you everything that happened… I did something really, really stupid. Something else really stupid. There’s more I have to tell you. Way more. And I don’t think you’re going to like me much after you hear it.”

  Ruined - Chapter 1

  “So, yeah, there was someone else on the beach that night, apparently.” Erica Evigan combatted her trembles with several sips of a cold Corona as all of her friends stared at her. Abel’s bedroom had gone funeral quiet; she was having an easy time hearing the chatter of the people walking outside along the Venice Beach Boardwalk. Surprising your friends with the news that a witness had come forward claiming to have information about your sexual assault more than a year after your other friend attacked you sure could darken the mood. But there hadn’t really been a great way or time to tell them, she figured. And this was one of the few places that they would all be together for a while before her sister’s wedding. She had frantically filled Dylan and Kai in a couple weeks before, but she was finally getting around to telling everyone else. Erica had only told the rest of them about the attack recently, too, and mentioning it again had seemed to trouble them as much as it had the first time.

  Everyone had convened in L.A. for a few days for the Elliott twins’ housewarming party the night before; even though they were only renting the townhouse for a short time, Abel and Wes never wasted an opportunity to induce drunken debauchery. Most of the group had only woken up a few hours ago to attend tonight’s smaller—in Elliott terms—gathering of the core group: Kai, Jamie, Odette, Leko, Ribsy, Dylan, and herself, with a few other friends and acquaintances scheduled to arrive soon, including some of Kai’s tour members—Heath, his bassist, Ashley, his tour manager, and Xavier, his drummer.

  As she took another sip of beer, Eri
ca surveyed their blank expressions and their still bodies, wondering if she had made a mistake with this announcement. Tonight was supposed to be the opposite of the sadness filling the room, but she realized she should’ve expected it. She, too, had been struggling to process the information about the witness for weeks now, feeling equal parts anxious for a resolution to this whole situation but scared out of her damn mind about what needed to be done to reach one.

  “What does this mean exactly for the investigation?” Odette was the first one to speak, twisting her thick blonde braid with one hand. Her other, Erica noticed, was clutching Ribsy’s tightly. Each pair of eyes, momentarily focused on Odette, suddenly fell back to Erica. Even though she was standing between Wes and Abel in an irregular circle with everyone else, she felt like she was twirling naked on her head in the middle of the room. Shit. Why had she been foolish enough to think that she’d share this information and everyone would just head downstairs and have dinner? But as much as she wanted the evening to simply continue, it only would’ve happened that way if her friends weren’t so supportive.

  “I’m not sure,” Erica said with a sigh, rocking back on her heels. “The detective on my case only said the person claimed to have information but was very hesitant to share any of it.” The room slipped into the frightening silence again when she stopped talking, and she had to tap her nail against the neck of the Corona bottle just to prevent any panic on her part.

  “So we’re in the same place,” Kai said through clenched teeth. “Which is nowhere.” Erica turned her gaze to him, and he had an intense stare aimed at the wall above her head. He finally looked at her, fighting against what seemed like rage, from feeling useless. If Dylan weren’t sitting on his lap in the chair at Abel’s desk, she was sure he’d be apologizing to him right now for breaking something. No matter what she said or wished, Kai continued to blame himself for not walking her back to the hotel that night, and because Jeremy had told him he was the reason for the assault.