I stand there while Mae and Cass take an eternity to pick out a movie to rent, giggling, putzing around, staring at the poster of that missing little kid again. As I do, I watch the new girl float around the lodge, examining things—the moose heads and taxidermy fish, like I did my first time here—put off by her confidence but also completely mesmerized by it.
I hate her. I want to be her.
Later that afternoon, I take Mae and Cass to the pool alone.
On the way there, I see Daniel from a distance. I haven’t seen him all day, not since Uncle Elliott found us in the woods together. He’s standing by the pool again, skimming leaves off the water with the net. When I see him, I stop without meaning to, my mind wandering, going back to last night in the woods, imagining him leaning in, breathing into my ear to take my shorts off, so that Mae runs into me from behind.
“Why’d you stop?” she asks.
I don’t say. Instead, I say, “You guys go. I’ll be right there,” not taking my eyes off him.
Mae and Cass jog ahead. I hold in a breath, feeling my smile slowly build. I watch him drag the net over the water’s surface. I take in his hair, his eyes, and go mentally back to last night again, to him asking,Do you wanna?before laying me down on the ground. Lowering himself between my legs. My heart beats hard again, remembering how everything happened.
Or almost happened.
Daniel looks up. I wave, hoping to catch his attention, but he doesn’t see me. I start walking again, faster this time to catch him before he goes. I close in on the pool. It’s busy now, all the chairs spoken for, so that Mae and Cass fling their shoes and towels on the ground and go running into the pool, jumping in without testing the water first.
I reach the gate.
It’s as I open the gate that I see her. The pretty new girl from the lodge.
She sits on one of the chairs across the pool from Daniel. She’s leaned back, her already-tanned legs spread out in front of her. Her eyes, as far as I can tell, are closed, and her face is turned up to the sun, her long hair falling over her shoulders.
I look at Daniel.
He sees her too.
And it’s the look on his face and how completely dialed in he is that makes it hard to swallow, hard to breathe. There’s a pain in my throat. My lungs tighten.
Time slows down.
I look at her again. I look at him.
The girl must have ESP because she opens her eyes just then, like she knows someone’s watching her even with her eyes closed. She looks around the pool, wondering who. She findshim, and when she does, she pulls her knees into her chest. She sits up straighter in the chair and shields her eyes from the sun.
They stare at one another for so long that I start to feel physically sick. I lose my balance, stumbling back a step from the gate. I stand there, frozen, as some little kid comes running past, almost pushing me out of the way to get in, his dad, behind him, muttering something likeslow downandnot a race.
“You coming?” the dad asks, holding the gate open for me. I shake my head and mumble no. “Suit yourself,” he says. Instead, I watch Daniel wave at the girl. His smile is cool and effortless, the kind of smile I feel in the pit of my stomach because it’s not for me and it’s not intended for me to see.
The girl smiles back, a smile that slowly widens, changing the look of her whole face, making her even prettier if possible. She lifts her hand. She waves, and then Daniel waves again, like he didn’t already wave first. She throws her head back and laughs.
My heart hurts.
I wonder if this is what a heart attack feels like, or if this is worse.
Courtney
Detective Evans asks for my permission to speak to Wyatt alone. We’re at the police station, getting our fingerprints taken. The station is compact and uninspired, windowless, the ceilings low, the lighting artificial and harsh.
“He doesn’t need a guardian present?” I ask.
“No. Not if you say that it’s okay for me to speak with him.”
I say that it is, before Detective Evans leads Wyatt to a nearby room, and I watch from a distance, through the glass, put off but also mesmerized by Wyatt’s indifference and self-control. He sits low in the chair, hunched over the table that his elbows rest on. I watch his mouth move, trying to read his lips, but I can’t. When he speaks, it’s brief, but when Detective Evans speaks, it goes on much longer, and then they sit in silence, neither of them moving until Wyatt sits back in his chair, sinking even lower, his eyes looking down at his hands while Detective Evans watches him, and though Detective Evans looks young to me—he’s probably fifteen or twenty years younger than I am—he’s a full-grown man in comparison to Wyatt, both physically and mentally, sitting there at the table in pants and a button-down, cuffed once at the wrist, the long sleeves covering his arms despite the fact that it’s warm in the police station.
This goes on for almost twenty minutes.
Detective Evans is serious when he comes out of the room.
