I nod. “Your friends at home must get it, right?” Craig’s from the North Shore of Long Island, where it’s basically law that you attend some sort of sleepaway camp. I imagine his friends at Yale are the same way.
Craig shrugs. “Yeah, but I’m the only one whostillgoes.”
“What does everyone else do?”
“I don’t know, get fancy internships or some shit. Seems like half my dorm got gigs on Capitol Hill.”
“Huh,” I say, trying to picture what that would be like. “But you’ll come back next year, right?”
Craig flashes me a small smile and takes another hit of his vape. “I wish,” he says. “My parents said this has to be my last summer here. Tryna make the most of it.”
“The pay too shitty?” Even with room, board, and meals covered, we barely make minimum wage at Alpine Lake, though none of the lifers seem to mind.
Craig shrugs. “Gotta move on. Do something real. Flesh out that résumé.”
A lump forms in my throat. I’ve watched so many older kids graduate out of here, finish their eight summers as campers, work through their junior counselor year, become a regular counselorand then... yeah, I guess not many stick around after they get to college. After life becomes more complicated than midnight raids, ice cream sundae bars, and skinny-dipping in the lake. When climbing a corporate ladder seems appealing. Necessary.
Suddenly it dawns on me: I am going to be the only one left.
As if Craig reads my mind, he cups my chin with his warm hand. “Hey,” he says. “Don’t think about that right now, okay? Days here last weeks. Weeks last months. Right? That’s what we say.”
He starts to go on about how we need to live in the now, but all of a sudden, I can’t focus because something taped to the corkboard on the side of the building catches my eye.
“Let’s get back in there, yeah?” Craig says.
“You go ahead,” I say, trying to find my breath. “I need a little more air.”
Craig ruffles my hair and throws back the door. When it swings shut, I reach out and touch Heller.
A picture of him. Printed in black and white. It’s his school photo. The one where his hair falls over his left eye and his smile is a bit crooked. It’s tacked right next to some other flyers advertising babysitters and guitar lessons.
But when I look closer, I see the photo is a clipping from the local paper, theRoxwood Read, which is mostly known for writing about whatever news is coming out of Town Hall and how to renew your fishing license.
And there, on the front page, is Heller McConnell’s face.
I pull the clipping down and try to read it, but the letters dance in my head, foggy from the booze. I squeeze my eyes shut, and when I open them, I can finally make out the headline.
SUSPICION LINGERS IN HELLER MCCONNELL’S DEATH AS FAMILY TRIES TO MOVE ON
The air starts to spin around me.
I want to read the whole thing but Imogen calls my name from the door. “Come on, Goldie!” she says. “Ava’s threatening to do a stage dive from the table if you don’t get back in here.”
I rip the article from the board and stuff it in my pocket, vowing to read the whole thing later, when I’m alone.
But as I head back inside, all the air wooshes out of my lungs.
Heller’s death wasn’t an accident.
CHAPTER 28
Then
I found out Heller was cheating on me right around Thanksgiving. The Wednesday before.
We had a half day at school and a group of Heller’s friends had gathered at his hut in the woods before heading to Truly’s to see all the kids who had graduated the year before.
I was sitting in between Ruthie Dollinger and Trina Smith, two basketball players who had been orbiting Heller and his friends since middle school. They had gone through periods of being mean to me, tripping me in gym and pointing out whenever I bled through my jeans. But since I was with Heller, they wanted to hang out, as if I had always been one of them.
