Camp Atonement
Summer of `72 was the year they preached about forgiveness at Camp Atonement—even back then, Marlowe considered it bullshit.
Church folks stretched forgiveness over the rotten bloat of their sins as if words alone could conceal infidelity and murder and lies without a shred of consequence. Forgiveness was freedom. Resentment invited the devil. Temptation only preyed upon the innocent.
Bullshit.
A chunk of time-scarred wood broke free in Marlowe’s hand as she shoved the rowboat into dark water. Flecks of white paint clung to her chapped-red knuckles and shewiped them on her shorts before hoisting herself into the spongy rot of the boat.
Marlowe didn't believe in the power of forgiveness any more than she believed she was a serial killer. Mosquitoes were the only critters she murdered, the only trophies she kept were from her cereal boxes, and Heather was the only dead body she was going to leave at the bottom of Pike’s Lake.
On the shoreline, Heather stood in white pajamas under the full moon, thin arms crossed over the empty outlines of tiny red hearts. In the month since Marlowe had seen her last, summer had burned the ghost from Heather’s milky skin and splashed sunspots across her narrow nose. Her brunette hair curled in the July heat, wisps escaping a ribbon and catching in the wide corners of her hazel eyes.
Heather didn’t look like the face of evil.
But Heather was the kind of evil whose breath reeked of bake-sale cookies and hollow prayers, whose own cowardice made her the devil. Heather was the quiet kind of devil, the worst kind, consuming in the dark what she hated in the morning.
“The camp closed after the flood this time.” Heather always had a syrupy sweet drip to her voice, like she’d been created for campfire songs instead of ragged moans in a dive bar bathroom. Tonight her tone ran cool. She shiftedside to side in her sandals. “We really shouldn’t be out here either. Fish and Wildlife closed the lake off within the first week after a few of our kids found a trumpeter swan nest.”
Our kids.
As if Counselor Heather, who’d done fuckall when the camp was caught in a freak flood last week, could possibly care enough about the poor little shits shipped off to Bible camp to call themour kids.
“After dark the rules don’t matter so much.” Humidity plastered Marlowe’s kitchen-scissor bangs to her forehead as she jammed the second oar into the lock. She shook the rest of her dirty-blonde hair away from the nape of her neck.
Irregular night shifts at the hospital packed bruised bags under her sunken eyes and sent veins webbing through the white skin of her muscled thighs. Marlowe felt as she always had in Heather’s presence: inferior, bitter, sweaty.
Before Marlowe knew she liked girls, she’d thought her childish feelings were envy. She wished for her hair to be darker, puffed out her hollow cheeks in the damp-concrete stench of the camp bathroom, stared at herself in the cracked mirror until a spider crawled across her reflection and her eyes went bloodshot. She swore she saw green and gold flecks hidden in the warm brown iris.
Anything to be special.
Anything to be like Heather.
Anything to have Heather as her own.
Marlowe’s life only went to shit when Heather wanted her back.
Heather took Marlowe’s offered hand and stepped into the boat, balancing between the wooden ribs. 9 years ago a camp counselor had helped Marlowe launch the same boat from the other side of the deep lake—the Camp Atonement side, where Bibles were as important as bug spray, and scripture readings, not s’mores, were a requirement.
Camp had been fun, in the childlike way where revival was normal on Friday nights and boys and girls were always separated for reasons explained as vague temptation. Back then, Marlowe knew girls were supposed to like boys, and she did—even if most of the ones from camp grew up with aspirations no bigger than to cheat on their wife and get away with it by having their congregation pray over theirsacred marriage.
The first girl Marlowe had ever liked sat gingerly in the bow across from her, tucking her sandaled feet away from the sludgy pool of water in the bottom.
Heather twisted a limp chestnut brown curl between her fingers and pursed her lips. “They let us stay in the cabins even after the flood. You could have come thereinstead of making me walk all the way here. At least we were in the rec room when I got your call,” she added, as if Marlowe didn’t already know the counselors playedCluein the rec room every night.
Miss Marlowe, with the Knife, in the Boat. She could have smiled, if nerves weren’t grinding her teeth. “It’s too risky.”
“We’re technically trespassing. My cabin would’ve been better.”
“Technically, I don’t give a fuck.” Smooth wood grew sticky under Marlowe’s palms and she adjusted her grip on the oars, pulling them back on course for the lake center. “This won’t take long.”
The boat drifted through ghostly waterlilies, broad leaves reducing their pace to a sluggish crawl. She tempered her breathing, gaze fixed on the pines jutting along the shoreline. The cloying scent of earthen rot from the rowboat crawled into the back of her mouth and burrowed into her throat.
Last week, when their flooded town reeked of decomposing leaves and bloated fish, Marlowe had finally given in to the grudge she’d held since cabin 13 that clung to her like the rotten memories. The mildewed sweetness of clothes left in the washer too long still made her skin itch, and Marlowe hadn’t been able to take a bath for weeksafter she smelled mold in her bathroom pipes. Dealing with it at work was easier. She could burn away the flood of memories with industrial-grade sanitizers and the stench of antiseptic as she mopped up patient rooms.
“You’re acting weird.” The red ribbon in Heather’s hair fluttered stiffly behind her.
“Tired. Got called in last night.” It wasn’t a total lie—Mercy Hospital had needed everyone from clinical staff to cleaners when a speedboat drunkenly slammed into the old bridge downtown, leaving six cars and ten casualties in its wake—but it wasn’t the truth either.
