That's Not a Fruit Salad, THIS is a Fruit Salad

Blood on the toilet. Blood on the sink. Blood on shaky fingers. Needles. Thread. Pills spilled on the floor. The sour musk of body odor. All of this, plus two sets of worried eyes, reach out at Zandra from the open doorway of the bathroom.

There's only one way to deal with this.

Zandra shuts the bathroom door and starts to walk away.

"Zandra?" comes a voice from inside the bathroom.

Damn. Almost got away.

The door opens again. Zandra reacted too fast to notice the occupants before, but she does now.

"Chad," Zandra says like it's a diagnosis. "And Bexley."

Bexley bleeds onto the toilet from her arm. Chad hunches over her with a needle and thread, guided by squints behind thick eyeglasses. They're both wet with water.

"See? I told you she'd find us. It's the Law of Attraction," Bexley says to Chad.

Chad smiles at Zandra. "Just a minute. Finishing up here."

So Bexley's gunshot wound back at Carey Manor wasn't fatal. That's good, I guess.

"And what is it you're finishing up?" Zandra says, although she can guess by the location of the wound.

"I'm re-doing the stitches. They came open again," Chad says. He still sports his leather jacket, unzipped and without a shirt underneath.

"Your doctor owes you a refund," Zandra says.

"No, no doctors. I did it all myself," Chad says with a proud grin. He paused mid-stitch to talk to Zandra, leaving Bexley's open wound weeping. "I watched a video about it online. It was in Spanish, but I turned the English subtitles on. The nurse did this viral dance at the end of it, too. It was educational and fun."

Zandra coughs into her sleeve. She leans into the bathroom and spits into the sink.

"Should I tell her?" Bexley says to Chad in a half-whisper and distressed jeans.

"She probably already knows," Chad says.

"You're going to tell me anyway," Zandra says.

I don't have a clue what they're talking about.

"We registered for this event when we heard you were going to be here," Bexley says. "I didn't want to wait, though. We snuck in early."

"Yeah, we climbed up the side of the boat," Chad says.

"And that's how the stitches came open," Bexley says.

"We only fell in the water twice."

They could've walked up the ramp like anyone else. With all the crew going back and forth, it'd be easy to slip by. Maybe they were trying to traumatize themselves into psychic powers again.

Not that that can't work.

The pills on the floor are too numerous to be illegal drugs. By the size and the shape, Zandra figures they're over-the-counter pain relief.

"You came early for a chance to meet me?" Zandra says.

"Yeah, and now you came to us, like it was meant to be," Bexley says.

Zandra steps on a nearby pill. It pops into bits and powder beneath her foot. "Skip the pills. Soak in the pain. Hope that that's enough."

Bexley raises her injured arm and wags a finger at Zandra. She says, "See, Chad? See? I told you. It's all for a reason. If we didn't come here early, the stitches would still be good."

Chad drops the needle and thread to the floor. He places his fingers onto his temples. "Holy shit. I think it's working."

"Hello? I'm the one bleeding, Chad," Bexley says. "It would only work on me."

"Oh, yeah, good point," Chad says. "Wait. Do you think it could be—what's that word—contagious?"

That's enough. Back to my original plan.

Zandra shuts the door again. She hobbles to the stairs that lead down to the cabins. Cabin 27 unlocks with the twist of a key that Jade gave her. Before she can step inside, a voice calls Zandra's name from behind her. Sort of.

Bexley better not have followed me down here.

"It's Sandra, right?" Cherry Peach says.

"Zandra. With a z," Zandra says. "We met when you were talking with pDano®, with a p."

"Right. Yeah," Cherry Peach says. She forces a smile. "Hey, could I, maybe, talk to you about something?"

She wants her palm read or tips for charging her tarot deck. I'm too tired for this. It's nap time.

Zandra yawns and stretches. She uses the moment to assess Cherry Peach closer. True to her name, Cherry Peach is dressed like a fruit salad.

Actually, not like a fruit salad at all. Fruit salad in Wisconsin is a unique concoction. At minimum it requires grapes, Mandarin oranges, squares of Snickers, whipped cream, and—if you're lucky—fruit that didn't start its day in a can.

So, not a fruit salad. Let's try this again.

Zandra decides Cherry Peach's appearance couldn't possibly reference fruit salad, not by Wisconsin definitions. She continues with her quick observations through her long yawn.

Cherry Peach wears cherry prints on her sundress like a Las Vegas slot machine. Red- and peach-dyed hair. Alternating red- and peach-colored fingernails. One lip red, one lip peach.

Underneath all that is someone in her 20s with presence. She holds herself with confidence. It's a prerequisite for all that camera work.

Except for right now. Because right now the bends in her brows tell me she's nervous.

"I can come back later if you're tired, but I was really hoping we could talk now," Cherry Peach says.

Zandra wraps up her yawn and says, "OK. What is it?"

Cherry Peach hesitates. The pause lasts longer than the unspoken rule of three seconds. Now there's a problem.

"Are you planning to tell me now?" Zandra says.

"I was thinking we could talk in your room?" Cherry Peach says.

"Oh. OK, sure."

It's nap time, I'm not firing on all cylinders.

The air conditioning, on the other hand, is firing just fine. That much is obvious when they step inside the room. It provides cool relief from the warming day. Zandra raises a palm to a vent above the Murphy bed.

Perfect sleeping weather in here.

The air conditioning switches off, and the cool breeze stops. Zandra rubs her chilled hand on the back of her neck. It sends a tingle down her back.

Is this like ASMR?

Cherry Peach makes sure the door is latched all the way. Turning to Zandra, she says, "It's that football guy."

Zandra rubs her palms together. The chill in her hand disappears from the friction.

Suddenly, I'm not feeling sleepy anymore.

"Aaron Farve," Zandra says.

"Yeah, I saw you and him didn't look real comfortable with each other in the lounge," Cherry Peach says. "So maybe I can come to you with this."

Zandra offers Cherry Peach a seat at a small desk. "Go on, child."

"Well, it's hard to say it exactly, but I got bad vibes from him," Cherry Peach says. She purses her lips.

Cherry's holding back. Needs to know it's OK to tell me more.

"I think he's a creep, too," Zandra says.

Cherry Peach breathes out relief. "OK, thank you. I wasn't sure if you were friends with him or what."

"We know each other, in a way. We're not friends, though," Zandra says.

She's got smarts. A good person to know.

"You know, with what I do, sometimes guys online try to find out who I am. It's like a game. They try to figure out my real name, where I live, all that stuff," Cherry Peach says.

"So why do it?" Zandra says.

I'm not here to give her a lecture. I'm sure she's been asked this a million times, and is sick of the judgement.

"Because it's good money and it's fun. I get to be my own boss, set my own rules. But, mostly, because fuck them. And also because of this," Cherry Peach says. She reaches into her purse and pulls out a pistol. She sets it on the desk with the barrel pointing toward the wall.

Zandra nearly jumps at the sight.

"Don't worry. I've got a carry license for it," Cherry Peach says. "I've never had to use it. That's because I can figure out who is going to be trouble and avoid them."

Zandra nods.

"Since you're a psychic and everything, maybe you could watch my back? We could watch each other's? I talked to Aaron for two seconds, but I got that feeling. Sus," Cherry Peach says.

No bad vibes from pDano®, though?

"I did, too," Zandra says.

"Maybe there's a little psychic in all of us," Cherry Peach says.

"Maybe," Zandra says. She points at the pistol. "Do you mind?"

Cherry Peach hands the pistol to Zandra. Zandra keeps the barrel aimed at the ceiling while she looks it over. It's not that Zandra is a gun nut, but there's value in getting a feel for it.

Chekhov's Gun and all that.

"You ever shot a gun before?" Cherry Peach says.

I can think of a time.

"Not really," Zandra says.

"This one is for hiding in a purse or a pocket. Beretta Bobcat. It's a .22 caliber. I don't know much about guns, but I know about this one," Cherry Peach says.

Zandra sets the Beretta back down on the desk, staying mindful of the direction of the firearm's business end. Cherry Peach slips it back into her purse.

"Does he know you have this?" Zandra says.

"You can't just go around showing off your piece to everyone," Cherry Peach says.

To be fair, that is what you do for a living.

"Laws, huh?" Zandra says.

"Yeah. Unless you're going to use it, you keep it to yourself. Otherwise, it's an illegal threat," Cherry Peach says. She rearranges the contents of the purse. "Anyway, I thought I'd mention it. If I ask you to come with me somewhere, it's because I don't want to go there alone if he's nearby."

Zandra waves at the room. "And he's always going to be nearby on this boat."

"Exactly," Cherry Peach says.

They talk a bit more about their presentations and demos. Cherry Peach thanks Zandra and leaves to go to her room to rest. She'll need it. There's a group dinner planned for later that night, after all the attendees arrive and the Curd Queen sets sail.

That leaves Zandra alone in her room, although it doesn't sound like it. Zandra stays in place, but her ears pick up the sounds of someone shuffling about. The small room makes it hard to pinpoint the source, but eventually she realizes the sound comes from the vent above the Murphy bed.

The shuffling turns into a voice.

Aaron.

Jade said he'd be my closest neighbor.

Zandra supposes he makes a phone call, since she can only hear one side of Aaron's conversation.

"Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. It's all set. No, no worries. We'll connect then. Bye," Aaron's voice says from the vent.

If Zandra were doing a reading on herself, she'd have nowhere to hide. Her pulse picks up. Perspiration forms across her face. But Aaron's phone call isn't what makes Zandra nervous.

It's how clearly I can hear him. Because if I can hear him, he heard Cherry and me. Who knows how that dick will react to knowing about Cherry's concerns—and her gun. His massive ego already got torn down a few notches. Throw me into the equation, and it gets even more complicated.

Going to need to nip this in the bud before it becomes a "thing."

Zandra soon gets her chance to do just that in a way she never saw coming.