The kids make a fuss but take off, cutting through the icy lake with their flimsy strokes, heads bobbing up and down for air.
Levin is quiet and I wonder what the waterfront means to him now that he found a dead body here. All I want to do is ask him if he saw someone fight with Heller. Someone full of rage and ire, someone with a motive. Someone like Jordan Adler.
“Are you thinking about him?”
My head snaps up and I find Levin looking at me like he’s reading my mind.
“I am, too,” he says. “Hard not to.”
“Can I ask you something?” My voice is almost a whisper.
“I guess.”
“People in Roxwood... they think something bad happened to Heller. That it wasn’t an accident.”
Levin’s eyes stay straight ahead, watching the kids shiver in the water. “That’s not a question.”
“You found him,” I say. “Was he... Was there anyone else...”
“Are you asking me if I think that boy drowned by accident?”
Before I can answer, a bolt of lightning slices through the sky, striking down somewhere far, but not far enough, away. I yelp and Levin blows his whistle three times, long and loud, the signal for everyone to get out of the water as fast as they can.
“You heard him!” I yell. “Everybody out!”
The boys hoot and holler, thrilled that morning swim is canceled, and soon everyone is on the sand, bundled in towels and sweatshirts, making a mad dash for the trail that will lead them back to their cabins before the rain starts.
“Goldie,” Levin yells. “Tie up the kayaks?”
I rush over to the wooden stand, ducking under the canopy of trees. The sky erupts and sheets of rain drop from the sky.
Everything’s wet within seconds, but I flip a few boats upside down on elevated wooden racks and tie knots around the ends to keep them from getting swept away by the wind.
Pleased with my effort, I swivel on my heel and prepare to run back to the beach.
“Ow!” Levin’s always saying to wear sandals over here, even though it’s mostly grass and woodchips. But something’s bound to prick you once in a while. I steady myself against a tree and lift my foot up to see the damage. It’s a little red in the soft fleshy area of my heel where something poked it, but there’s no blood.
I set my foot back down on the muddy ground but then something shiny catches my eye. I bend down to see a flash of silver nestled in between twigs. It has a sharp edge, like one of those fancy silver bracelets the girls are always wearing after their bat mitzvahs.
It’s camp policy to leave all valuables in the cabin while swimming. They instituted that after Ava lost a diamond earring in the lake when we were ten. Mrs. Cantor left a furious message for Stu, telling him not to let her bring those things down to the water.
Not that anyone could have told Avano. Not really.
I grasp the charm and pull the piece of jewelry up from the ground, ready to hand it off to one of the group leaders who can give it back to whichever kid lost it.
But when I feel the weight of it in my hand, I stop.
No.
It can’t be.
It is, though. I squeeze the object tighter, feeling its sharp edges and hard lines, the tiny chain running through the charm. I know what I’m going to find when I open my fist. But when I do, it doesn’t make it any easier.
There in my palm is a silver lightning bolt. It’s hanging from a thin chain with a small clasp, dainty and elegant, which is broken in my hand, as if someone ripped it from its owner. It’s Heller’s lightning bolt.
I lean back against the tree and slide down so I’m sitting on my heels as rain falls around me. I hold the chain up, letting the charm dangle back and forth.
I close my fist around the necklace and start to stand. But something stops me. There’s no reason for any piece of Heller to beoncamp property at all—not if he died like everyone said he did, by drowning in the lake. If that were true, then he never would have set foot on the waterfront.
