I stand and spin, scanning the tree line.
No one saw. No one came running. The generators and the radios and the men shouting orders must’ve swallowed the sound. Camp is far enough away that the lake kept our fight to itself.
I look back down at her.
If I leave her here and she wakes up alone, she’ll say whatever she wants. If someone else finds her first, they’ll decide what happened before they even ask. If she wakes up and staggers into camp screaming that I attacked her, it won’t matter that she started it. It won’t matter that she grabbed my hair, slapped my face, tried for my throat.
People in Hell don’t love truth.
They love a story that fits what they already believe.
I take a step toward camp.
Then I stop.
I can’t just leave her unconscious at the edge of the lake. My stomach turns at the thought of her rolling into the water. At the thought of something in that water, real or not, finding her before anyone else does.
I kneel again and shake her shoulder gently.
“Bethany,” I whisper. “Wake up.”
Nothing.
Her skin looks pale in the fading light. Her lips are slightly parted. The blood at her temple is darker now, sticky against her hairline.
A thought flashes through me so fast it makes my head spin.
Something could drag her in.
Something has dragged other girls in.
The image hits like a punch. I see pale hands slipping under water. I see hair fanning out. I see her mouth open in a scream that the lake swallows whole.
I jerk back from my own imagination and stand abruptly.
“I’m getting help,” I say out loud, like she can hear me, like it matters.
I run.
Gravel crunches under my boots as I sprint back toward camp, lungs burning, cheek throbbing, panic rising in ugly waves. Halfway there, I slow down, because reality catches me.
What am I about to say?
That the VP’s wife attacked me and I knocked her out with a board?
That I defended myself?
That I might’ve just detonated whatever fragile truce was holding this lake camp together?
I turn back.
I don’t know why. Instinct. Guilt. Terror.
When I reach the dock again, my breath tears out of me.
She’s gone.
The gravel where she fell is empty. The board lies where I dropped it. The faint smear of blood is still there, dark and undeniable against the dirt.
