Reckless Girls: A Novel

Jake rifles through Robbie’s bag and finds Lux’s passport. Lux is stunned—she hasn’t opened her purse since they arrived on Meroe and had no idea that it was gone. Robbie’s body shows no obvious signs of trauma, but Jake points out that the island’s fish are poisonous. It’s clear from Robbie’s small campfire that he’d recently eaten a fish. Lux wants to alert the authorities, but Jake becomes angry, arguing that they shouldn’t bring more trouble to themselves.

Jake and Lux tell the group about Robbie. No one is particularly upset. They agree to inform the Coast Guard when they can, and Eliza suggests having a party to diffuse the tension in the group. Amma finds this an inappropriate response to someone dying and says as much, but everyone shrugs her off. Jake and Eliza bring out some of their hash, and everyone smokes it. Lux has too much and feels woozy. She and Amma have a conversation in which Amma admits that Nico reminds her of her boyfriend, and Lux is too stoned to be angry at her. They both giggle. Later, she sees Amma and Nico kissing and does not care. She falls asleep.

At a bar in Canberra, Amma watched as Brittany and Chloe flirted with men and then pickpocketed them. Amma grew tired of this routine, but Brittany didn’t. Amma felt intense guilt about Brittany. Her boyfriend, Sterling, was driving the car that killed Brittany’s family. Amma, knowing that Sterling was already incredibly drunk, had sent him out for more beer anyway. She believed that the resulting crash was her fault and felt responsible for Brittany. Back in the bar, Chloe stole someone’s Rolex, but he caught her. She offered to buy him a beer because, as she put it, his watch “fell” into her bag while it was sitting on the floor. He surprised Amma by accepting. Chloe returned to their room much later that night, and Amma confronted her about her reckless behavior. Chloe asserted that wealthy people live in a different world, that they don’t care about “regular” people, and that the guy could surely have afforded to buy a new watch. Amma realized that Chloe stole not out of necessity but because she hated affluent people and all they represented. Later that morning, Amma discovered that the guy whose watch Chloe stole died of an overdose after they left the bar and wondered if Chloe could have given him a fatal dose of something.

Lux wakes up on the beach feeling horrible. She does not remember marijuana ever giving her this kind of hangover. She stands up, hoping to find a bottle of water quickly. The Azure Sky is in its usual spot in the harbor. The Susannah, however, is gone. Brittany wakes up, looking as bad as Lux feels. She also notices the missing boat. Lux swims out to the Azure Sky and is surprised to find Amma on board. Jake suggests that Nico likely took the boat out for a sail to get some alone time and urges her to calm down. If he’s not back by nightfall, he says, then they can begin to worry. Nico does not return by nightfall. Lux is now sure that the happy-go-lucky guy she met in San Diego was not who Nico is at all.

Lux is now in a state of panic. No one else seems bothered, and she begins screaming at them. Eliza tries to calm Lux in a patronizing tone, asking if Nico left because he found out about her and Jake. Lux is stunned, but Eliza brushes her off. She explains that it was obvious what had happened between them but that she doesn’t care. These things, she tells Lux, “just happen.” Amma returns from the other side of the island and accuses Eliza of having done something to Nico. This accusation makes no sense to Lux, but she has little time to contemplate it before Brittany begins screaming. She reveals that Amma’s boyfriend is not dead: He’s in prison for killing her parents. Their story of having met in college is a lie. What happens next is hazy to Lux. Fists begin flying, and Amma accidentally elbows her in the nose, knocking her off the boat. She grabs Amma, who falls with her. The two are plunged underwater. Lux thinks of sharks. She feels as though Amma is trying to keep her below water, but she is so confused that she cannot tell. She crawls her way to shore, where she passes out. The next morning, she wakes up bloody and alone. Next to her on the sand, she sees Amma’s dead body.

Chloe showed Brittany an old Facebook photo of Amma. In it, Amma had her arms around the boy who killed Brittany’s parents while driving drunk. At that time, Amma went by Amelia Marie. Brittany was horrified; this girl was nothing like the Amma she had gotten to know. For one thing, this girl came from a level of privilege unfathomable to Brittany, who fumed silently throughout the day. The next morning, Chloe was gone. Amma told Brittany that she was ready to go home too. Initially, Brittany agreed, but she found a cell phone hidden among her things with a text from Chloe: a smiley face emoji and a message asking to meet her “in the Pacific.” Brittany asked Amma if she would like to take one small detour before going home.

Lux tries to make her way through the island’s dense jungle toward the Susannah anchored on the other side of Meroe. Halfway across the island, she finds Nico’s lifeless, bloodied body. Next to it, she sees Jake’s machete, also bloodied and covered with flies.

Lux takes the machete and moves as quickly as possible toward the Susannah. When she reaches the beach, she sees Eliza and Brittany with Jake’s gun. Neither woman seems surprised to see her. She accuses them of having killed Nico. They calmly point out that she killed Amma, perhaps only in self-defense, but they don’t think that the details matter much. They offer to explain. The two met while traveling when Eliza was using the name Chloe. They hatched a plan to punish Jake for his family’s role in Eliza’s mother’s arrest and imprisonment and to punish Amma for manipulating Brittany and not revealing her role in Brittany’s family’s accident. They’d agreed that Eliza would sail to Meroe with Jake and that Brittany would find someone to bring her and Amma to Meroe. There would be a couple of “accidents,” and justice would be served. 

Eliza points out that wealthy people are dealt an easy hand, but women “like them” need to create their own opportunities. Brittany adds that when she met Lux, she knew that it was fate. Lux also comes from humble origins and lost her entire family. Brittany tells Lux that she, Lux, and Eliza can create their own family together. Lux realizes that when, hazy from hash, she’d thought she’d seen Nico kissing Amma, he’d actually been kissing Brittany—just before Brittany killed him. Brittany confirms the truth, adding that they laced the hash to make things easier. 

Eliza manipulated Jake into moving the Susannah and floating the idea that Nico left of his own accord. Brittany re-iterates that Lux should join them. Life, she argues, has taken a lot from Lux, but Lux is a survivor, capable of strength and resilience. She says that Lux deserves to take back what life has stolen. Just then, Jake appears. Eliza raises her gun and shoots. Lux is stunned when Brittany, rather than Jake, falls.

Eliza screams out, “Oh fuck!” and Lux realizes that she meant to kill Jake. Hitting Brittany had been an accident. She quickly shoots Jake but only wounds him. She hands the gun to Lux and tells her that the two of them can still share the future Brittany envisioned; all she has to do is kill Jake. Lux contemplates the idea but then realizes how manipulative and duplicitous Eliza has been. She raises the gun and shoots Eliza. Jake appears relieved and thanks Lux. She contemplates sailing around the world with Jake instead but recalls how cold-blooded he really is. She shoots him as well, thinking to herself that she is a survivor. 

An interview with a passenger aboard a boat that recently visited Meroe Island indicates that she and her friends found five dead bodies. From the investigation, they know that there had been a sixth person on the island. She was never found.

Caroline sits in a Thai bar crying over her boyfriend, Tanner, who’s cheating on her with a woman they met on their vacation. She feels lost and abandoned. A pretty, red-headed woman sitting next to her asks what’s wrong. Caroline says that she’s upset about a guy, and the woman responds with a joke that actually gets Caroline to laugh. She tells the woman what happened and wonders if she should leave Tanner or forgive him if he wants to get back together. The woman—who introduces herself by an unusual name that Caroline hasn’t heard before—tells her that there’s a third option. She can take control of her narrative, change her life, and live “in the after” (309). Caroline isn’t sure what she means, but she likes the sound of it. She follows the woman’s instructions, slips into their hostel, and steals Tanner’s wallet. Then, she and the woman leave Thailand together.