“You have to understand,” she says. “After the heavy hitters wanted to send their kids here, they wanted to know which country clubswebelonged to. They wanted to come toourhome for pre-summer cocktail parties. They wanted to pretend like we were their equals—not their employees. Becoming that... that’s how we would make this camp the greatest, the best, the most exclusive. It’s how we kept it alive.”
Her words don’t make sense. “Why are you telling me this? What does this have to do with Heller?”
Mellie wraps her hands around mine. “I’m trying to explain.”
Panic rises in my throat. “Explain what?”
Stu pushes himself to stand. “Why we did what we had to do.”
I push Mellie away and back up so I’m pressed against the wall. “What did you do?”
“It was just a little at first,” Mellie says, her voice trembling. “Upping our salaries. Skimming a few thousand dollars from theAlpine Lake account here and there to pay ourselves bonuses. And then a loan to build the new house so we could throw parties for the VIP families. It was so little compared to what they had. What they paid.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “Isn’t that... embezzlement?”
Shame coats Mellie’s face. “Wehadto do it,” she says. “We always had the intention to pay it back.”
“Did you?” I ask, hopeful this is all some misunderstanding. “Pay it back?”
“We... we couldn’t. There was too much to do. Parents to impress, appearances to be kept.” She runs her hands through her hair and I see tears prick her eyes. “It became clear we had two choices: Declare it legal income and give half of it to Roxwood in taxes or...” She looks up. “Hide it.”
I press my palms to my eyes. “Wait, so you didn’t want to call it legal income because you didn’t want to pay taxes?”
Mellie’s shoulders slump forward. “Just give it away? It would be a waste.”
I shake my head, knowing that’s not true. Even a small amout of additional money would have helped Roxwood do things like fund arts programs and senior centers, or provide free school lunch. Those funds could have increased the school budget or paved roads. They could have helped people like Dylan and Cal and Heller, all the kids whose futures were dimmer because of where we’d been born.
I always thought Mellie and Stu were doing Roxwood a favor by being here, but now... it was all one big betrayal. And then everything clicks into place.
“You enlisted Mark Cantor.” I keep my voice even.
“He was desperate to get Ava into camp. But you know Ava.” Mellie shakes her head. “Poor test scores. No real talent.”
I clench my fists.
“It was a fair trade, Goldie. He set up a bank account for us overseas to hide our little bonuses. Ava came to Camp Alpine Lake no problem.”
“And she didn’t have to take the entrance exam,” I say, remembering what Ava told me all those years ago.
“You have to understand,” Stu says. “It wasn’t illegal back then. Not until after the financial crisis. Then we had to start using those prepaid phone cards to ask the Swiss bank to put cash on our debit cards.”
“But now...” I say.
Mellie turns to me. “Embezzlement and tax evasion? We could go tojailif we were found out,” she says. “You know what that would mean? The end of Alpine Lake. The end of everything we worked so hard to build. Everything we love. Everythingyoulove.”
I shake my head. The idea of losing Alpine Lake is impossible. But so is knowing that Mellie and Stu committed acrime.
A gargled groan erupts from across the room.
“Meg!” I rush to her side, kneeling on the ground next to her. “Heller,” I say through tears. I know I need to get the words out. “Did you kill him?”
Meg looks up at me with hooded, unfocused eyes. A lump is forming on her forehead, red and round, and she grabs for my wrist. “No,” she says, pointing behind me. “They did.”
The rest of my body grows cold as I spin around to find Mellieand Stu standing over us with panic-stricken faces. The realization dawns on me. They have striped senior staff shirts, too.
I clamber to my feet.
“He wasn’t supposed to be at camp,” Mellie says, panicked. Her eyes are wide and bloodshot and I barely recognize the woman in front of me, the woman I trusted with my life only minutes before.
