But before we can answer, Levin bounds over to the front of the beach, announcing who’s won tonight’s events. The losers groan and throw their arms up in frustration, though their gloomy dispositions won’t last long. Every year, water carnival ends with the best barbecue of the year, featuring Christina’s famous corn on the cob, which she blackens on a big charcoal grill and dips in buckets of butter and chicken fat.
When I get my serving, I plop down on the sand and bite into it, relishing how the grease drips down my fingers and coats my lips. It’s best eaten when the sky is a mix of purples, pinks, and oranges, like it is right now. One of those sunsets that buries itself deep in your chest, folding into your memory, daring you toremember it always. I shove my bare feet deeper into the sand, relaxing my limbs, rolling my neck. My lips are chapped from the wind and the sun, and my hair dances around my shoulders. This place, this perfect place. This is how I want to keep it.
I scan the waterfront, gazing out at the white wooden docks, the makeshift boat launch, the inflatable trampoline. How can you look at it all and not think of thefun, all the carefree laughter and friendship and breath-holding competitions? All the buddy checks and waterskiing and swim lessons?
But I know how. Because now all I can think about is Heller, fighting for his final breaths as something—someone—held him down below.
We need to find out who was in that golf cart after Ava left.
They’ll have answers.
Theymay have killed him.
I look up at the security camera, the one on the swim hut that we reset. If only we hadn’t gone skinny-dipping. If only we had been smarter. If only...
I wipe my butter-and-chicken-fat-covered hands on my towel and push myself to stand, so I can throw my corn cob in the dumpster, propped up against a tree near the wooden latrine. No one ever comes over here because it smells like garbage and shit, so the paths are a little more overgrown, but at least it’s quiet. That’s what I need now. Quiet.
A bird caws overhead and a tree branch rustles. I look up, expecting to find a robin or a chickadee, but there’s something else there. Something I’d never noticed before.
A black security camera that nearly blends into the dark woodits secured to. By the looks of it, it’s from before they updated the system, which means it wouldn’t be hooked up to the rest of the network, the ones we reset that night. But there’s a blinking red light indicating that it’s recording.
And it’s pointing right at the waterfront.
CHAPTER 50
Then
“It’s gotta be here somewhere.” Mom was rummaging through a metal rack of old tech stuff in Stu and Mellie’s winter cabin. It was a cold day in April and she wanted to keep me company while I did some paperwork for Stu and Mellie.
“What exactly are you looking for?” I asked, peering up at her from the desktop. She had taken down an old VCR, a DVD player, a few CD-ROM drives, and even a shoebox full of floppy discs.
“They never throw anything out,” she said, elbow deep in junk. “I bet they have it.”
“Havewhat?”
Mom stood up straight and wiped her dusty palms on her jeans. “The first summer your father and I worked at camp, Stu was obsessed with his new video camera. It was one of those old clunky ones. But he had this video of Lou and me dancing at the staff party at the end of the summer.”
“So?”
Mom sighs. “It’s our twentieth anniversary on Friday,” she said, smiling. “It would make the perfect gift. Help me?”
She extended her hand and I groaned but grabbed it.
“You take that box, I’ll take this one.” She pointed to a cardboard box the size of a shopping cart and I started sorting through it with reluctance.
They were all labeled things likeColor War 1998andTennis Tournament 2005.
Mom turned Queen on the speaker and started singing to herself as we went through everything.
“Do Stu and Mellie ever use this stuff?” I asked, picking up an old Wii system.
“Doubt it,” Mom says. “Hoarding habits left over from when they had nothing.”
My head jerked up. “What?”
“Back when they started this camp, they barely paid themselves a salary,” Mom said. “Ate canned tuna and beans for five years until they hiked up the prices and started wining and dining the Manhattan crowd.”
“Huh,” I said.
