Meg reaches into her backpack and pulls out an armful of personal bags of Oreos. The girls squeal and follow Meg to the campfire ring for a well-deserved snack break. I move to follow them, but then a branch snaps behind me. I swivel, expecting to find a rabbit or a raccoon. But there’s nothing, silence.
I shake my head—it’s probably an animal—and take a step toward Meg and the campers, but then I hear something else, a deep whimper, almost a sob. It lodges in my ears and makes me freeze. I spin around slowly, bracing for what I’ll find. The brush is a few yards away so I can’t make much out in the dark. I peer at it, waiting for something orsomeoneto jump out. There are always older boys hiding in here, waiting to scare the little kids, initiate them into camp. But something about that noise. It wasn’t playful or joyous. It sounded desperate. Like grief.
I stare at the brush and take a step closer. The branches shake again, rustling with deliberate movement. Right then, a pale armemerges from the brush, a barbed wire tattoo circling a bicep.
Cal Drummond.
I stop. He shouldn’t be here. He’s not allowed. In one swift movement, he steps out from behind the brush and looks around, his eyes wild, on fire, almost like he’s being chased. He doesn’t see me, but after a split second he takes off in the opposite direction, running fast, his feet flying out beneath him. He’s headed back to the forgotten horse trail Heller once showed me. The one that leads to Roxwood, away from Alpine Lake property.
My heart pounds hard. Cal’s never even been to camp as far as I know. Why would he come here?
“Goldie!” Meg calls from the campfire. “Better come quick or Kelly’s got dibs on your Oreos.”
“Go for it, Kelly,” I yell. “I have to pee!”
I hear the girls laugh, the crinkling of plastic packaging, and before I can think better, I tiptoe over to where Cal was hiding. I move the branches aside and step into the brush. I snap on my headlamp and shine it all around. There’s nothing unusual, just sticks and leaves, the smell of pine and damp moss. The smell of nature, of life.
I squeeze my eyes shut, wondering if I imagined him here, if Heller’s death is messing with me in strange ways. I will myself to go back to the group, to be a counselor, to do my job.
But when I swipe a branch aside, something hard crunches underfoot. Whatever I stepped onisn’tnature. It’s man-made. It doesn’t belong here in the woods.
I step back and crouch low on my heels, pointing my headlamp down to see what’s there.
When I do, I nearly lose my balance. Right in front of me isHeller’s face, set inside a piece of plastic. He’s smiling and calm, his dark curly hair falling in a wave over his forehead. The photo must have been from the fall, before New Year’s, before he cut his hair short like the other guys on the hockey team. He’s looking out at me from a cracked ID badge, and even with the break line slashing through his face, he looks happy, beautiful. Alive.
I pick the thing up and hold it in my hands. I rub my thumb against it, wiping off some of the dirt, and shine the light against it again. There at the bottom of the badge it saysROXWOOD COUNTY CLERK’S OFFICE EMPLOYEE. I flip it over and there’s a barcode and an electronic stripe. This must be what got him into work.
I stand up straight and clutch the badge. Heller died in the lake, nowhere near Creepy Cliff. But that means Cal dropped it here, right now. If he did that, why did he have it in the first place?
I turn the badge over in my palm, inspecting it against the glow of the night. My pulse pounds in my ears as I try to make sense of this.
Before I can decide what to do, I hear Meg’s voice, cutting through the trees.
“What are you doing, taking a dump? We gotta get going!”
The girls giggle behind her and I shove the ID deep into the pocket of my sweatshirt.
“Coming!” I yell.
I push aside the leaves and make my way over to the girls, squeezing the plastic against my stomach.
“Everything okay?” Meg whispers, while the girls stuff Oreos in their faces.
“Yep,” I say with a fake smile.
Meg ushers the cabin toward the clearing and I bring up the rear again, following the group out of the woods. I try to listen to their chatter, to follow along with their jokes. But I can’t stop my mind from racing, from coming back to the obvious question:
Why was Cal here with Heller’s ID?
CHAPTER 26
Then
Back when we were still friends, before puberty hit and our lives diverged, Cal always asked me to describe camp to him. Once, when we were nine, we were pumping our legs on the swings at the local park and he wanted to know why I liked swimming at camp rather than at the rocky town beach.
“There’s sand over there,” I said. “And lap lanes. And sailboats.”
“And you can go in whenever you want?” he asked.
