Lying in the Deep by Diana Urban
There is a lot of blood. A lot. Everywhere. Ex-best friend is surely dead, but there is no body, possibly she’s been thrown over the balcony and into the sea? Well, she got exactly what she deserved.
Three weeks earlier, at a port in Amsterdam ready to set sail for the Campus on Board program and surrounded by classmates, Jade Miller is daydreaming about murder again. Murderous vengeance. She was dumped by her boyfriend of two years, Silas, for her best friend, well, ex-best friend, Lainey. By text! Hence all the daydreaming of murder.
Embarking is a pain in the butt, but Jade has only just arrived while most of her classmates, being rich kids, arrived the day before. Miguel Diaz’s biggest concern is the lack of any cell signal and very limited data packages while on board. He's going to lose followers! Looking around, Jade spots Lainey leaning on her Louis Vuitton suitcase’s handles and then… Silas. Noooo! How dare she show her face! Why is he here?! How can he afford it?! Thankfully Miguel doesn’t like Lainey either because she may bribe her way into the student YouTuber role that he wants even though her family can more than afford for her to travel the world without a gaggle of social media followers. As Miguel takes Jade’s advice and gets some embarking shots, Lainey catches Jade’s eyes, announcing loudly to Silas, “she came anyway.”
Jade heads to her cabin, 417, thinking how she suggested Silas take a paid internship at Lainey’s dad’s pharmaceutical company. She was meant to be helping her boyfriend get back on his feet, not throw him in Lainey’s path. In the cabin, Jade finds a note from her roommates who are at the gift shop, so she unpacks her things. When they arrive, it is with a burst of (fraternal) twin energy, Navya and Divya are ecstatic to meet her. They’ve also brought her one of the CoB T-shirts before they go on sale tomorrow… that’s $28, thanks. $28 that she really doesn't have… Gah!
It’s not long until the ship sets sail with the usual blaring of horns and cheers from those aboard. Jade doesn’t know how she's going to get through the semester without stabbing Lainey, who is taking shots of her and Silas on a selfie stick, in the face. Jade can’t even escape them at dinner. As she’s flashing her smorgasbord plate from the buffet to Miguel who is filming the restaurant, Jade spots Lainey and Silas being all lovey-dovey at the next table over and Lainey’s former high school best friend, Sheffia, who Lainey ghosted and claimed was a user, settling in on her other side. At her table, Miguel’s roommate Tate joins them, as does Miguel, plus a brooding boy who doesn’t give his name. He does however give Jade a sympathetic look when Lainey and Sheffia spot Jade and Lainey loudly claims Jade is stalking her or something. Jade flees the restaurant.
The next day classes start. During lunch, Jade sees Brooding Boy again and finds out his name is Felix. She also tries to speak to Silas, but Lainey catches her, literally by the wrist, and tells her to leave them alone. Again. Jade flees. Again.
The first port of call is London. After getting up late and a debacle with IDs, Jade, Navya and Divya head to the last remaining bus to Tower of London that Felix has kept waiting for them. While walking the ramparts, Jade spots Silas by himself, but not for long as Lainey is there, she was just kneeling down videoing the ravens, getting the perfect shot for her social media. Suddenly, as Jade is wishing Lainey would just disappear, Lainey looks up in horror and launches herself back as a large stone slab crashes to the ground, right where she had been kneeling. Someone must have chucked it. Jade stays put rather than be blamed. Unfortunately it isn’t a perfect plan as Tate points right at her.
Jade tells them she didn’t do it but Lainey demands this has to stop. Once the crowd disburses a Beefeater comes over and blames the Tower ghosts, or the remodeling work. All throughout the other activities, Lainey seems wary. At the pub, the designated meet up point, Divya and Navya tell Jade they believe she didn’t try to hurt Lainey and are sure everyone else thinks the same. When Lainey finally leaves Silas to go to the bathroom, Jade approaches him, trying to make sure he believes her innocence. Lainey isn’t gone that long and catches Jade with Silas. This time, Lainey demands to know why Silas is talking to her after everything she’s done. What has she done?
Mortified, Jade returns back to her table with Divya and Navya, who have left, and Felix has taken their place. Felix is able to get Jade to word vomit her life story. Felix wants to know why all her anger is directed at Lainey, and not Silas who dumped her for her best friend? Jade doesn’t want to be analyzed by a psych major anymore and makes her trademark escape. This time, however, Felix follows her and they grab a cab back to port together.
Two days later, Jade, the twins, and Tate are at Windsor Castle. They get separated and Jade takes a selfie in front of an Elizabeth I portrait and uploads it to Instagram, where she sees a post from Lainey who is at Windsor Castle too, except Lainey must have hired a car rather than take the bus. Wandering alone, trying to complete an assignment, Jade overhears Lainey angry whispering to Silas. Walking away lest she be accused of stalking again, or worse, she finds her friends in a bedroom. Where Felix accuses her of stalking because Lainey and a downcast Silas have just walked in. Somehow Jade is able to convince Felix to help her find out what Lainey and Silas think she has done to be so hateful, though he thinks they’re just plain assholes.
Back on board the ship, it’s time for a Battleship tournament that Jade wants to play so she and Silas can have some time together to talk if they both win successive rounds. Felix thinks this is a terrible idea, however if Jade can play him in the same bracket, he’s a captive audience. Currently, Jade is kicking Felix’s butt. As they’re talking, Felix mentions how Miguel is pissed at Lainey not just because she beat him out for the YouTuber role, but something about her attacking him and followers. When Lainey loses her match, she drags Silas with her so Jade purposely loses against Felix so she can find out what happened between Miguel and Lainey.
Turns out Miguel has received over a million new followers on each of his socials, and now he’s been called out for buying followers. It could ruin him. It has to be Lainey and her self-serving, scheming bastard father Derek Silverton because the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Tate, who is casually spending time with Sheffia, refuses to ask Sheffia about it assuming Lainey gossiped about it. Jade asks what Sheffia has said about her, but the only thing she’s mentioned was after the Tower rock incident, Sheffia said “she totally did it. That girl’s vile.” Vile?!
The next port is Portugal. As Jade, the twins, Tate, Miguel and Felix are waiting for fish cakes, Jade manages to connect to the internet. First she gets a guilt trip email from her mom, and secondly she sees that Sheffia is not a ten minute walk away at the big arch. Persuading the others that golden hour would be the best time for pictures, they head back down to the square. Felix can tell her plan is to quiz Sheffia about Miguel’s sudden influx of followers. Sheffia spots Tate and comes over, Felix spots Lainey and Silas so Jade thinks it’s a great idea to pretend they’re together. Apparently it works because Silas looks angry and Lainey forces him away, abandoning Sheffia. When Jade tries to see if Sheffia is okay, she finds out that Lainey blames Jade for forcing their friendship to end, but Sheffia doesn’t want to hear that Lainey dropped her calling her a user.
There is an eighties themed party during the voyage to the Azores. Jade, somehow, has persuaded Felix into a fake relationship. On the deck, Lainey stops taking video of the festivities when she spots Jade and drags Silas to the dance floor. Jade manages to get Felix to fake sway since he refuses to dance. As Silas is watching them, Jade suggests they kiss which he obliges. Silas, however, pushes Lainey away after watching the fake swaying and fake kissing, almost pushing her in the pool. Silas storms off, and Felix, seeing the mission is successful, walks away while Lainey stares at Jade looking tearful. It doesn’t feel like anything was really accomplished.
Jade doesn’t see Felix for two days until they reach the Azores and she can finally apologize for the fake kiss that doesn’t seem to have been a fake kiss for either of them. Turns out, he hadn’t been avoiding her, he had a psych test. Because of an incoming tropical storm, they’ll only be in port one day so most plans are nixed, Felix however has done some homework and found some lava tubes they can explore. It feels like a real date. As they’re having a cute moment, Silas interrupts but Lainey calls to him, tearing him away. Jade is obviously tickled pink Silas is jealous of her and Felix, but Felix is pissed she so obviously wants the douchebag, however the sour moment passes and they linger around the town. Jade buys an ornate letter opener for her mom and they nearly miss the last boarding.
Once aboard they grab dinner, Tate interrupting at one point to accuse Jade of knowing that Sheffia’s parents worked for Lainey’s dad at the pharmaceutical company Sanatek. He hates Derek Silverton because he blames him for his mother's death and figured Jade must have known Sheffia’s link. She didn't, and explains this, but also lets slip Silas interned at Sanatek. After dinner, they head to the library/games room where Navya, Divya, Miguel and Tate are sitting. They’re going to play drunk Monopoly and rope Jade and Felix in too, oh and Silas who just so happened to walk in the room.
Silas was only looking for Dramamine, which Navya fetches for him, but he doesn’t return straight to Lainey. Everyone gets wasted except Felix, so obviously tensions run high and mouths start to flap. Silas hates seeing Felix and Jade holding hands, and he says Lainey told him she wasn’t coming on this trip anymore and accuses Jade of breaking up with him and of being “the bitch who wanted nothing to do with me.” Jade shouts him down for gaslighting her and for posting pictures of him and Lainey being all cute over the summer which they knew she would see and, in a fit of anger, raises the letter opener she had hidden in her hair, intending to ram it into the table, but actually stabs Silas in the leg.
After panicking and fetching Silas’s premed roommate, they decide to pull the dagger out. Jade's thoughts race over the pre-stab conversation, and realizes Lainey is to blame because she lies and turns people against each other. Jade grabs Lainey’s room card from Silas because she’s too drunk and too angry to wait to talk to her, and heads for Lainey’s cabin. Before Jade can wake Lainey, Felix pulls her out of the cabin and to the deck. She looks crazed, what with the bloody dagger still in her hand and all. Felix helps calm Jade and cleans the dagger, and he also finally tells Jade that he like-likes her, and Jade realizes she like-likes him and they start making out until they fall asleep on lounge chairs.
Screams jolt Jade awake. She and Felix race after them and find Silas outside Lainey’s cabin. He manages to say Sheffia has gone for help, but there was so much blood in Lainey’s cabin, he thinks she is dead. Security pulls Silas, Jade, and Felix to the library while the Captain inspects Lainey’s cabin and they check the rest of the ship. From the bloody mess in the cabin, Jade concludes that Lainey must have gone overboard. This is confirmed when the Captain orders the ship to circle back to try and search for Lainey.
Shortly after, the Captain enters the library to question them and calls for Tate, Miguel, Navya, and Divya. Despite the bickering and the attempts to throw suspicion in each other's direction, the Captain is able to get a sense of the evening, but mainly discerns that they were all drunk. When they go to the deck to retrieve the letter opener, it’s gone.
The Captain informs the rest of CoB of Lainey going overboard. The whispers of accusation start straight away and Jade, after her trademark running off in a panic, decides she needs to find out who the murderer is while Felix, who followed her, sensibly, tells her to lay low. Outside, they overhear someone called Briana say she heard a splash outside her cabin at around 2am, and her room seems to be under Lainey’s. As Jade is telling her she needs to inform the Captain, Silas asks if he can talk.
Straight away, Silas asks if Jade did it. No! Rude! They finally have a conversation they should have had months ago. Jade finds out Silas slept with Lainey before they broke up, and realizes Lainey must have orchestrated their whole break up. Lainey sent the text from Silas to Jade (now deleted) breaking up, Lainey sent the email from Jade to Silas (now deleted) breaking up. She blocked Jade on Silas’s phone so he got none of her texts. If she did this to them, surely she’s made other enemies in a similar way. They can’t tell anyone otherwise they’ll be the number one suspects for her murder. At breakfast with Felix, Jade tries to make a list of suspects: Miguel because of the buying bot followers incident, Tate because of Lainey’s father, Sheffia because of their history, possibly the weird adult learner who seems to be creeping everywhere, nicknamed Sketchy Bob. Felix just thinks it’s Silas but Jade can't possibly think that.
They first try to find Miguel, but he’s nowhere to be seen. When they stumble on Divya, they try to see what she may know. Not much, though she remembers Tate saying his mom died of a heart attack because she had a heart condition and the drug prices were jacked up and she couldn't afford her medication. Jade wants to tell the Captain, but then they spot Tate going into the gym in jeans and a button-down and then straight out. Very sus. Jade stops Tate and is able to get him to confess that he dropped the rock at the Tower so Lainey would go crying to her dad. Tate also admits that he and Miguel went to one of the classrooms to try Meth, and Sheffia told Tate that Silas does it all the time.
Jade thinks Tate killed Lainey, but Felix believes Tate is innocent and that it was Silas. They need to find Miguel because he’ll be able to clear things up so they head to his favorite breakfast restaurant but he's not there. In desperation, Jade spots Sketchy Bob and decides to ask him since he is always watching. As they’re talking, fruitlessly so, a classmate interrupts and says he heard Jade heard the splash last night. Jade corrects him and then the boy gives her an interesting piece of information: Navya, who was supposedly asleep, was seen booking it down the stairs near Lainey's room. Reporting it all back to Felix, they go to speak to Navya. Navya is back in the cabin and clearly doesn’t want to speak to them and is acting very shady, doubling down on being asleep. She may not have killed Lainey, but she’s covering up something for someone.
On the way to Tate and Miguel’s cabin, Jade and Felix feel the boat turning again, back toward Gibraltar, the next port. The door to Tate and Miguel’s cabin is open and they cautiously walk in. In the bathroom they find Tate dead from a hanging. Jade tells the Captain everything about the Tower, Tate’s mom, and her accusing Tate of Lainey’s murder. As Jade is watching them examine Tate’s body, she spots something in the bruising around Tate’s throat… a thumb print.
Jade and Felix are sent to class. As soon as her three hour business writing workshop is over, Jade races to meet Felix at one of the restaurants. Outside she spots Sheffia, clearly upset. Jade tries to console her, and Sheffia mentions something about Silas who has suddenly appeared. Jade, thinking she wants Silas as a friend, calls him over but Sheffia bolts. Silas sits down with Jade and she asks him about his drug use. Turns out it was drugs that lost him his scholarship. He said he needed a pick-me-up before his baseball games because he wasn’t getting enough sleep being with her. Bullshit. His drug use was on him. She would have supported him through rehab, but instead it seems to be ammunition Lainey was able to use. Luckily Felix walks by and “accidentally” drops soda all over Silas. Whomp whomp. Felix warns Jade against talking to Silas because he overhead security talking about putting both Jade and Silas in the brig because they're sure they murdered Lainey together.
Felix wants to make sure the whole mess is pinned on Silas and that she's not involved, but Jade doesn’t believe Silas did it or is capable of it. Spotting Jamal, Jade asks to talk to him because they need to check on Silas’s alibi. Jamal confirms he was awake the whole night, interestingly though, he mentions how cut up Tate was about Lainey and how Tate and Sheffia were never together-together, he was just using her to get close to Lainey.
Jade has decided they need to search Tate’s room for evidence and figure out what happened to Miguel, so they’ll need to steal a maintenance or custodian keycard. Easy! Yeah, no. When Jade tries to steal the keycard from Julia, her deck's custodian, Julia takes Jade for a cup of tea, thinking she needs to talk. Clearly, Jade needed it. When Julia’s cart flies past the storage room they were sitting in, Jade grabs a custodian shirt and heads to find a maintenance office. Locating Operations on Deck 2, Jade plans to set off a fire alarm in one of the classrooms and, as maintenance are dealing with it, Felix can sneak into Operations and nab a master key card.
Inside an empty classroom, Jade is trying to climb up to the smoke sensor when Sketchy Bob comes in. Jade is instantly on edge and interrogates him. Turns out, Sketchy Bob is doing Campus on Board in memory of his daughter who died the previous year because she always wanted to do it. He also mentions how Lainey reminds him of her. Jade leaves and heads to the library to set the sprinklers off in there, but instead of using the lighter, she pulls on the sprinkler which causes her to fall as the water sprays down. As she falls, she lights the lighter and it sets fire to a pile of game boxes. Thankfully there is a fire extinguisher. Jade decides she needs to stop investigating because she’s causing more chaos and looking guiltier for it, which is the first sensible thing she has said.
However, that sensible thought is straight out of Jade’s mind because when she meets up with Felix, she finds out he’s nabbed a master key card. They head straight to Lainey’s room and nothing stands out except a lot of blood. Hang on… Lainey’s laptop is missing, but her phone is still there. Next they head to Tate’s room. On the surface, nothing is out of place, but again they find Miguel’s laptop is missing, and under Tate’s bed, they find a backpack stuffed with US twenty-dollar bills, gold and platinum jewelry including some of Lainey’s. There is also evidence of one of Miguel’s skincare bottles being broken and cleaned up, but no remains are in the trash, and also all of Miguel’s bottles, which were meticulously ordered by size the last time Jade saw them, are out of order.
Jade decides she needs to talk to the CoB dean despite Felix’s protests. When Jade knocks on the dean’s office door however, the dean isn’t there, but Miguel is. He’s alive! It turns out that Miguel had broken into the ship salon’s back office and hardwired to the staff internet trying to get his socials back online. Because Jade’s mouth isn’t connected to her brain, she asks Miguel if he’d seen Tate with Lainey’s laptop before he died. Miguel did not know Tate was dead and crumples at the news. Well done, Jade. Tate didn’t take Lainey’s laptop, Miguel did, and he has it with him. He was trying to hack in to find the bot bomb receipts. As they start accusing each other of murder, Miguel says Lainey wasn’t even in her room when he stole the laptop. In other potential investigation routes, Miguel tells them Sheffia was pissed yesterday at both Tate, for dumping her, and Lainey, for losing Tate. This is all very messy, so it’s time to talk to Sheffia.
Before Jade and Felix can reach Sheffia sitting between Silas and Jamal in one of the restaurants, Divya intercepts them. She asks Jade if it’s true that she stabbed Silas which she worked out from the glaringly obvious clues. Jade confirms, and though Divya says she’ll keep quiet, neither Jade nor Felix trust her. They now need to speak to Navya. As they approach, Navya books it but they catch up with her. Jade apologizes, and Navya believes Jade isn’t a murderer because she owns up to her mistakes. Friends again, Jade asks about Navya being in the stairwell. Navya dumped Divya’s booze overboard because all this time she's been drinking WAY TOO MUCH. Jade needs to tell the dean, the Captain, or some reasonable adult that it may not have been Lainey heard going overboard, it may have been bottles. Felix, however, doesn’t think that’s a good idea because they haven’t got anything concrete except them sneaking into crime scenes.
Jade heads back to her cabin to change, stepping on a folded notebook page. Inside it feels eerie and like she isn’t alone. Spooking her, Divya comes tearing into their cabin and finds out that Navya has dumped her booze. Thankfully, she missed her drug stash behind Jade’s bed. Divya and Navya have very different ideas of their relationship and what kind of relationship they want. Once Divya is gone, Jade opens the note. It’s from Sheffia who knows who killed Tate. Quickly, Jade leaves to find Sheffia. On the deck, people are screaming at something in the pool: Sheffia dead surrounded by a cloud of blood. Whispers pointing to Jade start and Jade runs away from the pool and to Felix’s cabin.
Panicked, Jade tells Felix Sheffia is dead and she is being blamed. Felix wants to see for himself, it could have been an accident. Heck no! Side note: it doesn’t look like Felix has a roommate, but he said… anyway, he looks at the note, and Felix says it’s smudged and could be misread. Jade’s eyes wander round Felix’s room again at all the open cases and mess and spots two passports, which is believable that he’d have dual US/UK citizenship, but on them are two different names: Felix Amara and Tyler F. Hassan?! His sensible explanations still seem sus and Jade googles Tyler F. Hassan. The first hit is about a son finding his parents dead by opioids, opioids sold by Sanatek. Things start clicking in Jade’s mind, all pointing toward Felix being a murderer and then she spots her dagger on a shelf above his bed.
Jade accuses Felix of the murders, of pinning it on her, of killing Lainey and her dying thinking Jade hated her, and just when Jade was falling in love with him! Felix tells her she has it wrong, everything was supposed to be pinned on Silas. As Jade dives for the letter opener, the bathroom door opens and a girl with a dark brown pixie cut and baggy clothes steps out, but Jade would know Lainey anywhere.
Jade dives for Lainey, holding her tight. Time for explanations. Lainey is faking her death with her cousin Felix’s help. At first, Lainey did it to get away from her dad because she can’t follow in his crooked footsteps and he wants her to be a mini-me. She and Felix started planning on how she could disappear but her dad always monitored her money, so she decided to blackmail him. All Lainey needed to do was get the information of all his dodgy deals from his work laptop, but Silas caught her in the act and offered to help. Now, Lainey had a USB with lots of terrible information on Derek Silverton like how he covered up his own sister and brother-in- law's deaths, who happen to be Felix’s parents, from a Sanatek drug and information about human drug trials before animal trials were complete. But why blame Silas?
Silas wanted more than an internship in trade, he was going to blackmail Lainey. He never said it was sex he wanted, but that's what it seems like. Turns out Lainey is the good actress her mom always wanted, she’s been pretending she’s been in love with him the whole time, knowing it would be worth it in the end. She also says that Sheffia was there to spy on her, which was the only way her dad would let her come on CoB. In Portugal, Lainey got her hair cut and dyed and faked being sick to avoid being seen around the ship with a completely new look. The blood splattered around her cabin was her own which she obtained from a kit she bought online to draw your own blood and has been doing it for a while, keeping the blood in the mini fridge. But wait… they didn't actually kill Lainey, but did they kill Tate and Sheffia?!
Realizing she is in a room with a potential murderer, Jade pulls her trademark running for it but Felix gets to the door first, blocking her exit. Neither Felix nor Lainey are responsible for Tate or Sheffia’s deaths. The backpack they found in Tate’s room was planted in Silas’s room to help point all the fingers at him. From day one, Lainey has had a master key card bribed off one of the registration guys. Suddenly, realization dawns on Jade that Tate stole the backpack from Silas’s room, thinking he was stealing his laptop to look for evidence against Sanatek, but then seeing what was inside, and then learning about Lainey’s “murder,” things started adding up and he must have been worried that he would be blamed. Sheffia must have seen Silas leave Tate’s room after killing him. Trying to frame him for murder may have turned him into a murderer. Well, there is only one way out of this… frame Silas for blackmail, and if the truth about Derek Silverton comes out, so be it, screw that bastard. Jade sticks her hand out for the USB drive.
Jade plugs the USB into Silas’s laptop in his cabin, and of course he returns while she's in there. Turning the brightness down on the laptop so the upload can work in the background, Jade dashes toward Silas blaming Jamal for letting her in. Jade tells Silas everyone thinks they did it together. Of course Silas only thinks of himself because he’s really an asshole and Jade just never noticed before. When his laptop makes a notification alert, Silas becomes suspicious of Jade, accusing her of being on the laptop before he came in, though the screen is now off. Silas demands to see Jade's phone, checking she isn’t recording.
Jade shows Silas her phone and once he confirms she isn’t recording, the truth comes out. Tate showed Silas the backpack he took from Silas’s room and he demanded half to not tell anyone that Silas killed Lainey. Silas got mad when he spotted Tate’s phone peeking out of his pocket, camera out. Tate refused to stop recording and they started to fight and Silas strangled him then made it look like Tate hanged himself. Sheffia knocked on the door, she must have heard something that sounded wrong inside, and sat waiting outside Tate’s cabin until Silas came out. After he saw Sheffia slip the note under Jade’s door, he knew she knew and had to talk to her. There was a chase, then a struggle, then she fell and knocked her head, but then he pushed her into the pool. Suddenly Silas stops talking. He spots the dagger Jade planted in his room on the shelf above his computer. Time for her trademark exit.
Unfortunately, Jade isn’t fast enough and Silas grabs the dagger, pinning her to the door and pressing the dagger to her neck. Felix is on the other side of the door, shouting Jade’s name. Jade drops the master key in her hand and kicks it under the door to Felix, unfortunately the door has a deadbolt which Silas uses. In all the sudden movement, Silas cuts Jade’s neck. As Silas panics, outside, the sounds of a drill removing the deadbolt can be heard while Jade tells him if he kills her they'll know he killed Lainey, Tate and Sheffia. Suddenly the door flies open. In the chaos, Jade grabs the USB, Felix runs over to Jade, security tackles Silas and the Captain walks in.
The next afternoon, Felix is leaving the boat with two large suitcases, Lainey inside one of them. Jade is going to stay on for the rest of CoB. Felix isn’t the only student opting to leave, Miguel is leaving too, and several others. Before he disembarks, Felix tells Jade he wants to see her again, at Stanford. Jade agrees and says they can start from the beginning. Navya and Divya meet Jade on deck watching the disembarkation. Surprisingly, a disheveled Derek Silverton storms up the pier. As he approaches Silas being led away in handcuffs, he growls “you destroyed everything,” pulls a gun and shoots Silas in the chest. Felix uses the distraction to make sure he and Lainey escape. Unwittingly, Derek Silverton’s actions help solidify the lies and secure Lainey’s escape.
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