Nobody Knows But You

by Anica Mrose Rissi

  I didn’t know the half of it with your parents, of course, but I could tell right away, weeks before you told me a single word about the divorce or your dad’s affair, or how they’d shipped you off to Camp Cavanick so they could rip each other’s lives—and yours—apart without having to factor you in at all, that your dad’s checked-out obliviousness was an attack.

  Not caring one way or another about a person who cares desperately about you is a perfect way to inflict a serious wound. It can push someone to extremes. Make them question their self-worth. Cause them to spiral with need.

  I didn’t sense that need in you yet. But I saw it in your mom, in how he’d pushed her to the edge and didn’t care if she toppled over it.

  She didn’t have your Teflon talent.

  I wonder if you chose me because at first you wanted to be seen.

  Your Teflon took many forms over the summer—calm, charm, flirtation, evasion, fibs, stories, diversions, lies—but you never used it to protect yourself from me. Not until the end, until our big fight about you and Jackson, when you promised and apologized, hugged me, agreed, and shut me out.

  It was the subtlest shift, but I felt it. Saw the light flick off in your eyes. You looked at me like I could be anyone.

  That still hurts as much as the rest of this.

  Here’s another thing I don’t get. All summer long, you wrapped us all around your little finger, tugged the strings in such a way that no one even minded having a puppet master. Everyone. Including me.

  Except Jackson. He had you hook, line, and sinker—and every time he practiced catch and release, you swam back, begging to be hooked again.

  Why did you ever let a guy like that take control of your heart?

  You were so smart, Lainie. You were so everything. And you let him turn you into nothing. It’s almost like you believed, deep down, you never deserved anything more.

  You deserved so much better than this. I wish I could have made you see that, before it was all too late. I wish I still could.

  I would give you the world if I had it.

  Love,

  Kayla

  August 31, still (sort of) (I guess technically September 1, but it never feels like the new day before dawn)

  (I am not getting my beauty sleep. Here’s hoping dark circles are in this year.)

  Dear Lainie,

  It’s 2:53 a.m. and I have to get up for school in a few hours, but I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about you and Jackson. Not the end of you and him, but the beginning. I’m still trying to understand how this whole horrible thing started, and why. Why you needed him like that when you had me.

  I can figure out the when. It must have been a Saturday, because we were signing up for electives, and I guess it would have been the start of week four, since it most definitely was after the Fourth of July, but not right after, because that’s the week you told people that outrageous story about the townie and the leftover fireworks and our late-night adventure at Burps and Brews, which never happened. But if it had, it would have been in the middle of week three. And Jackson wasn’t part of our stories yet then.

  I didn’t notice the date because I didn’t find meeting him significant. It was just a random day and he was just a random guy who you talked with while we waited for sign-ups.

  He was behind us in line, but was Nitin with him? I don’t remember. We might have met Nitin later. I think you asked about Jackson’s shirt and he answered and we started talking, but I was only half paying attention to it all. I was distracted by bug bites and humidity and needing to pee. I probably noticed the basics: messy hair, hipster glasses, jawline mole (beauty mark!), southern accent. Kind of nerd hot, I guess, if you like scrawny guys in sci-fi T-shirts. Which apparently you did. Or at least, you liked this one. Maybe the cheekbones?

  He asked what we were signing up for. “Tennis,” you said, deadpan, though you hadn’t touched a racket in your life.

  He laughed and you were mock offended. “What, you don’t believe me?” you said. He held up both hands, palms out, an apology. You backed down. “What are you signing up for?”

  “Tennis,” he said earnestly.

  You both grinned. I scratched my ankle.

  “Well, when it’s our turn to volley, you’d best believe you’re going down,” you said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  He stuck out his hand. This was a boy who liked a challenge—in that way, you were evenly matched. “Game on,” he said. You shook on it.

  It was our turn at the sign-up and of course all the pens were gone, but I’d brought one, having learned this might happen. I wrote my name and our cabin, put improv for my first choice and silk-screening second, dropped the slip in the box, and stepped aside for you to do the same. But you took my pen, wrote TENNIS in block letters, and turned it in, leaving the second line blank. So much for signing up together, like we’d discussed.

  You handed my pen to Jackson, satisfaction mixed with a dare in your eyes, and walked away without bothering to see what he’d write. I stood there, torn between following after you and waiting to get my pen back. Jackson was staring at me, or through me. I shrugged and walked off.

  I knew what he would write. I couldn’t imagine anyone resisting you.

  By the time I caught up, you’d forgotten him.

  It was hot out. We went to the lake to swim.

  Fin. (If only.)

  You never think someone you know will get murdered like this, let alone that someone else you know will be the primary suspect. It’s almost as unfathomable as killing someone yourself.

  I mean, sure, I’ve had moments of panic when my parents were late to pick me up and my brain spun on every possible worst-case scenario, including picturing them bleeding to death from a robbery gone wrong. Or times when I made myself cry, thinking what it would be like if my brother got hit by a bus or caught in a school shooting. But I never really thought one of those things might happen. Imagining something awful in such morbid detail is supposed to make you safe from it actually coming true. I don’t know how the science works, but it’s like picturing disaster somehow prevents it.

  Maybe my mistake was a failure of imagination. I completely failed to imagine on that day that Jackson would become significant. I didn’t think to picture any of us ending up injured or heartbroken, let alone dead. And therefore, I failed to protect us.

  When should I have seen it coming?

  I watch a lot of true crime, but even that didn’t prepare me for this. What I got from TV is: Women and girls are victims, and it is always, always the boyfriend.

  But Jackson wasn’t your boyfriend; he was someone else’s. He’d told us early on about his girlfriend back home.

  The Monday after your sign-up whim, you said only that tennis was “fine” but “too hot” before you changed the subject to the rumors about Chef Beverly, and I didn’t know to notice. (There’s no way a camp could hire a cook with a criminal record, though . . . is there? Even if it’s just a small misdemeanor?)

  On Tuesday you reported that Jackson was hilarious, and the two of you were planning a tennis revolt: new rules for the unathletic, which I listened to in detail, laughing along, though the nuance went over my head.

  By Wednesday you were bubbling over about Terrible Tennis, the brilliant new game you two had invented, and how clever and amazing Jackson was. (“You’ll love him. He’s like me but a rich boy. Creative and super dark.”) He and Nitin sat with us at campfire that night—Nitin and me toasting our marshmallows patiently, evenly, while you and Jackson stuck yours right in the fire, then dealt with the flaming mess.

  I didn’t love the new pairings suggested by our s’mores habits (you and I already seemed like a perfect set: one steady, the other ready to burn it all down), but I honestly wasn’t threatened or worried. You told Jackson my weird skill of being able to hum while I whistle, and he kept trying to do it, and I kept trying to teach him, until we laughed so hard we nearly fell into the fire, and if
anything, you were the one left out.

  By the end of the week, you’d invited him and Nitin to sneak out with us. That night, walking back to our cabin under the tapestry of stars, the crickets chirping all around us (Me: “Did you know only male crickets chirp?” You: “No, Randy, I did not. Thank you for that whimsical knowledge bomb”), you hooked your arm through mine and asked, “What would I ever do without you?”

  I laughed and said, “Well, you’re stuck with me, so I guess we’ll never find out.”

  How many things can one person be wrong about?

  I know by the end you thought I hated Jackson, but I didn’t. At the beginning, I almost liked him. I never found him as amazing as you did—or as he clearly found himself—but I liked that he was arty and strange. A little full of himself and not a great listener, but usually interesting enough and not horrible to have around. I wouldn’t have chosen to invite him to hang with us, but I didn’t object when you did. I thought you’d get bored with him eventually, the way you did with almost everyone else—especially once you realized he wasn’t anywhere close to your league.

  But the weirdest thing happened: He seemed to get bored with you instead.

  I mean, not exactly. But while your interest in him intensified, his interest in you stayed right where it had started, and refused to budge. It’s not that he wasn’t into you. It’s that Jackson’s primary interest was always, and remained, himself. And I don’t think you’d encountered that before—a person you couldn’t charm into liking you exactly the amount you wanted them to.

  I think maybe that’s why you kissed him. To gain back the upper hand.

  But after the kiss, you weren’t just into Jackson. After the kiss, you were obsessed.

  You hid it pretty well, how imbalanced things had become.

  But I was the witness, the confidante. I was the one you could trust.

  At night on the dock, you cried on my shoulder, or went manic with fun like to prove you didn’t care—as if he was your audience even when we were alone together. I hated that. But I preferred it to the nights when he was with us, and your neediness multiplied like fruit flies on a rotten banana. Nights you begged me to come with you, only to sneak off with him alone, to do who knows what for who knew how long, while I waited in the dark to make sure you’d get home.

  It hurt to watch you bend and twist, trying to prove you were enough for him. Trying to fit some idea of what he needed you to be. He was barely worthy of clinging to the bottom of your shoe, let alone making out with you. But he was what you wanted.

  Each time he thoughtlessly stomped on your heart, I was there to pick up the pieces. I needed you, and if you needed me, I would be there every time. There was no on-again, off-again with you and me. Only Till Death Do Us Part.

  But Lainie, as many times this summer as I wished Jackson gone, I never wished anyone dead.

  Love,

  Kayla

  Camper and Counselor Interviews, Statements, and Posts

  August 14–November 24

  “It wasn’t a secret. Everyone knew Jackson had a serious girlfriend back home. Lainie didn’t seem to care about that. Neither did Jackson, for that matter.”

  “When you’re at camp, all that matters is camp. I think what Lainie and Jackson had was real. They seemed really cute together, even though they fought a lot. It wasn’t real fighting, though, just pushing each other’s buttons. It was their thing. They were both competitive people. But they were so into each other. Anyone could see that.”

  “Lainie and Jackson’s relationship ran super hot-and-cold. They’d be teasing each other one second, and breaking up again the next. Then ten minutes later you’d see them laughing and cuddling, or practically tearing each other’s clothes off in public. You never knew what was serious or what was a huge joke with them. I think they both kind of fed off the drama, to be honest.

  “This seems awful to say now, given what happened, but . . . that relationship couldn’t have ended in anything but fireworks. They were explosive from the start.”

  “I guess I knew they hooked up, but I didn’t know it was anything serious. Jackson flirted with anything that moved, and Lainie was always with Kayla. He was kind of slutty, if you ask me. I was surprised someone like Lainie would go for him. I thought she was way over his level.

  “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “I had no idea Jackson had someone else back home. I was shocked. But camp is this total bubble, you know? Like all that matters is who you are there, and nothing about back home feels relevant. You know? I don’t know. It’s hard to describe. It’s not like I’m a different person at camp and with my camp friends. It’s more like that I’m more of who I really am with them, because you come to camp without the baggage of people thinking they already have you all figured out. It’s a clean slate. Nobody at camp knows anything about your past except what you tell them, but also, you know people better here. Your camp friends know you better than anyone else. Like, the real you. All that time you spend together is intense. You can live out a whole relationship in, like, a day.”

  “I have no idea what Lainie saw in him in the first place, but when they weren’t fighting, they definitely made out a lot. I assumed it was just a summer thing, mostly physical. I never would have guessed either of them was invested enough for it to end so badly.”

  “I remember one meal, about a week before the end, when Jackson and Lainie had a huge fight over nothing. It started out kind of joking, a faux-fight over ketchup or something, but then he was saying X, and she was saying Y, and suddenly it got really serious, and we were all just like, whoa. It was super heated. Jackson definitely had a temper. They both did.

  “Anyway. The fight was getting worse and she was all up in his face, just egging him on. And right when it seemed like he might actually, like, hit her, Kayla said something that sliced through the tension, and bam, it was over, just like that.

  “Lainie joked back to Kayla and smiled at Jackson, and his cheeks stopped burning red. Soon they were kidding around like normal and I would have thought I misread it—that they weren’t fighting at all, it was just some joke I wasn’t in on—if it weren’t for what happened later. If one of them hadn’t turned up dead.

  “I wish now I could remember more of what happened in that fight. I didn’t think at the time it would be important. But Kayla was like that—she could defuse Lainie before she blew up. Which isn’t how Lainie was normally, only how she got around Jackson. He really knew how to set her on fire.”

  September 4

  Dear Lainie,

  I made it through the first week of school, despite my unforgiving brain keeping me up until all hours, and my unforgiving alarm going off at 6:40, no matter what time I finally fell asleep. You used to rib me for being tired the mornings after we’d sneak out (I swear it’s not human how much energy you always had), but you should see me now. Zombie city. It doesn’t help that once I drag myself up and at ’em, the reward is another day of high school.

  It feels different this year. Not the classes or the building or the pointlessness or the smell, but something. The vibe. I don’t know if it’s me, or what people think they know about me, but I’m finding it harder to be inconspicuous. Ironic that now that I want to slip through the days unseen, my classmates have suddenly noticed me. I guess once you cracked me out of my shell and rendered me uninvisible (uh, visible? Wow, good job, brain. Have I mentioned I need sleep?), it became impossible to go back. Or maybe it’s literally you: Maybe they’ve seen the rumors in videos and comments online, and my proximity to the murder makes me seem different. I don’t know.

  This kid Jared, who I’ve never talked to, came up to me in the cafeteria today and said, “Hey, my cousin was at that camp with you.” When I didn’t respond, he added, “She said you were cool.” It came out kind of accusatory, like I’ve been denying him and everyone else by holding back on my coolness all these years. I didn’t know what to tell him. (“Uh . . . sorry?”) I didn’
t ask who his cousin was. I just shrugged and walked away.

  There’s a new bulletin board outside the guidance office labeled “Wall of Shameless Brags.” Ms. Heaton, the head counselor, put a little desk in front of it with sticky notes and pens (the pens disappeared in a day, so now there’s only one of them, attached to the desk with string) and when there’s something we’re feeling proud of or glad about, we’re supposed to write it on a Post-it and stick it on the wall, and feel all affirmed or whatever.

  Ms. Heaton is way into it. The second morning, I walked by and saw she’d rearranged all the Post-its in the shape of a heart, and today they made a cresting wave. I think maybe Ms. Heaton should have been an elementary school art teacher instead of a guidance counselor. If she keeps this up, she won’t have time to help anyone get into college.

  The idea of it is cool, I guess. Positivity and self-esteem. It’s true we’re all socialized to sort of put ourselves down, or at least downplay our accomplishments. And there shouldn’t be stigma around shouting about the stuff we’re proud of, or being proud of who we are. But since no one signs their names to the Post-its and the brags are all anonymous, doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose? I feel like you would have a lot to say about that.

  You’d think a school bulletin board with such an earnest mission would get abused pretty quickly, but people seem to be respecting it and keeping it positive so far. Either that or Ms. Heaton is monitoring it like a hawk.

  Anyway, I made my first contribution to the brag board today. On my way back from chem lab, I wrote I’ve held on to my best friend’s secrets. I stuck it in the wave, right at the crest, and wondered how long it could last.