Quinn
Nine Years Ago
“We don’t have to find you, you know?” he calls out.
I step from one rafter to the other, and then kneel down and peek through the slits in the ceiling beneath me. My niece and nephews are below, searching the great room of the main lodge of our family’s summer camp. At only ten—a couple of years younger than me—I don’t think they know that the ceiling above them is false, the rafters I stand on hidden away up here by the previous owners decades ago to conserve heat.
I’m so close to them and they can’t even see me.
“If we turn off the lights,” Kade goes on. “You’ll come to us!”
I drew the short straw, so I have to hide. If they find me, then I’m the one who has to steal the keys to the ATVs for a no-parents’ midnight ride this weekend.
I really don’t want to steal anything. I’m not good at breaking rules.
“Quinnnn…” Hawke sings in a calm tone, and I watch him look from left to right like a cyborg scanning for heat signatures. “I know you can hear me, and I don’t have to shout. Where are you?
I smile. Hawke is actually only a year younger than me, and I don’t usually stump him.
I never really felt like the oldest out of the kids. I’m still wondering where I fit. My older brothers are their parents, and since the age gap between my brothers and me is more than twenty years, they act more likemyparents too. Their kids grew up more like my cousins, but not in the same way that they’re cousins with each other. I never understoodwhyit felt different, but I just knew that someday it would be.
Maybe I liked that I’d be treated more like an aunt to them when we grew up. Or maybe I didn’t. All I knew was that something separated them and me, and it was more pronounced when we were all together like this, because that’s when I noticed the couples. How everyone broke into a natural pair. Dylan and Hunter. Kade and Hawke.
The babies, A.J. and James, would also grow up together.
They didn’t exclude me. But none of them gravitated to me like they did to each other.
Even the adults were all in pairs.
“Quinn!” Dylan yells, searching underneath lunch tables, dressed in her Chucks and hoodie.
Kade’s twin, Hunter, follows her. Always within reach of each other. “Quinnie!” he calls.
“Quinnie-bean!” I hear Kade tease from farther away.
I hate those names. I should tell them, but everyone teases each other in this family, and I don’t want to make it awkward.
Hawke stalks slowly, out of view, and I plant my hands on the rafter under me, pushing myself up. I leap from one beam to another, following their voices in the faint light streaming up from below.
It’s a little dark up here, but it was the only hiding place I suspected they didn’t know about.
They trail through the lodge, and I don’t peer down to see which rooms they search. The kitchen, the pantry, the offices…
Taking out my compass, I flip the lid, finding north. I turn to where the needle points, knowing the lake is ahead of me—out of the lodge, across the lawn, and to the beach. Then I pivot to the left, knowing the way out is that way.
“We’re coming for you, Quinn!” Hunter threatens.
Followed by Kade, “I just hope we find you beforesheeedoes.”
She…
I glance over one shoulder, then the other, looking above me and all around.
Undergrove.
That’s what they call her. The spirit who lives on the tiny island in the middle of the lake. A summer camp urban legend. I scan the far recesses of the dark corners, the walls of the attic disappearing into a black void. Shecouldbe there.
But I shake it off and kneel back down. He’s just trying to scare me out of hiding. I don’t believe in ghosts.
