Nobody Knows But You

by Anica Mrose Rissi

  I’m angry that in the end, you chose Jackson over me. That’s a twisted way to see it, perhaps, but I feel that way and it hurts. It hurts that you were so focused on him, you didn’t think about the damage you might cause to us. It makes me furious, and that fury makes me crumple with guilt and hurt more.

  I’m angry you were careless with both our hearts.

  I’m frustrated that I can’t feel angry at you for long. Sadness floods in quickly. A million other emotions too.

  But what good is being angry? It doesn’t bring you back to me. It can’t resurrect Jackson, or bury him for good. It doesn’t change what happened, bring truth to light, or help me make sense of it, finally. It just makes me feel further from you. Lonelier.

  Fuck this. It’s not helping.

  Love,

  Kayla

  P.S. On top of all this, I have a math test tomorrow. Are you glad that at least you’re not in school? I wonder if someone brings you your homework. I wonder if you’ve figured out why 1 + 1 – 1 = 0.

  Camper and Counselor Interviews, Statements, and Posts

  August 14–November 24

  “Lainie and Kayla were the kind of friends who tell each other everything. If any of this was at all premeditated, you have to wonder how much Kayla knew.”

  “Of the two of them, Kayla was the calm and steady one—the straight man to Lainie’s outrageousness. But it wasn’t imbalanced. Kayla was Lainie’s rock. She went along with Lainie’s wild schemes but kept her grounded, for the most part. Without Kayla, Lainie might have just dived right off the deep end long before this. Kayla usually kept her from going too far.”

  “I remember seeing Kayla at campfire one night, just kinda staring into the distance with this look in her eyes like the light had gone right out of them. That was only a day or two before Jackson died. I thought at the time she was probably sad about the end of camp, like most of us were, but god, it could have been anything.

  “I wonder what it’s like for her now, and if she believes it’s possible Lainie could have done it. I don’t think so, most of the time. It’s like, there has to be some other explanation. Someone else involved. But then I hear some of the things that people are saying and I don’t know anymore. I just don’t know.”

  “It didn’t look like things changed when Lainie and Jackson got together, but Lainie did kind of ditch her sometimes, and I’ve been there. It stinks. When your best friend is with someone else, you’re going to feel like a third wheel sometimes, no matter how hard they work to include you. Because that’s the thing: It shouldn’t have to be work. But it is. It’s inherently imbalanced. Even if you haven’t really been replaced, you’ve sort of actually been replaced, at least temporarily. And there’s nothing to do besides wait it out. So I felt sorry for her, as her counselor. It had to be hard.”

  “I saw someone online saying Kayla was Lainie’s rock, but I think she was more like Lainie’s guard dog. The small, fierce kind with hyper-alert eyes, ready to growl and bare her teeth at anyone who came too close. Loyal and protective, and much more vicious than she looks. Like if she were to sink her teeth into your ankle, you’d have to saw through your own leg to get her off. Know what I’m saying?”

  October 21

  Dear Lainie,

  I had a good session with Dr. Rita today. She helped me work through something that has been pricking at the back of my brain for a while but I haven’t quite had the words to describe it. It’s about the concept of identity, sort of, and the challenge of “reconciling multiple versions of the self,” as Dr. Rita put it. It was surprisingly helpful to think it through out loud with her. Mostly it was a relief to hear she didn’t think my questions were weird. She made me feel kind of smart for asking them.

  I’ve been thinking a lot since camp about authenticity. About who really knows us, and how well we can truly know ourselves.

  I know: deep thoughts. They’re not completely random, though.

  All summer I had this vague awareness that if the people who think they know me at home saw who I was at camp, they would probably barely recognize me. I was different there. I was different with you. But it wasn’t fake or inauthentic. If anything, it was more real. There were no preconceived notions. I could just be who I was in that moment. Which was someone pretty different from who I’d been at home.

  If where you are and who you’re with and what you’re doing and thinking about changes, how can something not change in you too? But I was still myself, of course. Wasn’t I?

  (Ugh, this is coming out just as convoluted as when I tried explaining it to Dr. Rita. Don’t worry, there’s more clarity later . . . I hope. But yeah, there’s zero succinctness. Sorry.)

  If Camp Me was the truest version of me but doesn’t match who I’m able to be at home, why shouldn’t the same be true of Camp You?

  Yes, this philosophizing stems from trying to wrap my head around everything people have been saying about you online. I’m not supposed to go near it, but I can’t stop lurking and scrolling and watching. It’s addictive. And it’s creepy in an uncanny valley way—like watching some kind of gossip-generated version of you. They’ve made a Frankenstein’s monster of sewed-up, mismatched parts: a person who sort of moves like you and talks like you, and everyone says is you, but it’s most definitely not you. Not the you that I know. I can’t look away, and I want to run screaming in the other direction too. (You most definitely could go as yourself for Halloween this year and everyone would be instantly horrified, haha.)

  But even though people from home would be surprised by who I was at camp, they wouldn’t be able to point to a lie of it. There was no lie. It was just me being who I was, in those circumstances, with that best friend, who saw me as I most wanted to be and therefore allowed me to be that version of myself. It wasn’t planned. It just was, in large part thanks to you.

  You also had a version of yourself you wanted to be last summer. You had several versions.

  Each of them felt purely you, at least to me. But I understood the performance. To people who didn’t see and know the real you, the different versions seem full of contradictions. There are inconsistencies. Lies. And that’s what’s causing all this trouble now.

  I’m the only one who saw your full truth. I still see it. I’m trying to keep holding it tight.

  But truth can be slippery. Hard to look at straight-on. It’s too open to interpretations and viewpoints.

  Lies are more solid. Sometimes they feel more real.

  Quick diversion, because it just popped into my head and I know you miss my randomness: Remember the night we played Truth or Truth? (Jackson complained about no dares, but you were right—truths are the good part.)

  It was my turn to ask a question and I lobbed you an easy one: “If you could have any superpower, what would you choose?”

  “Telekinesis,” you answered immediately. “If I could move things with my mind, I wouldn’t have to get off the couch to get snacks when I’m feeling lazy.”

  “And you could freak people out by making shit fly around the room. Think how great that would be in, like, gym class,” Jackson said.

  You barely glanced at him. “Yeah, I’d probably just use it for snacks.”

  You’d been kind of snippy with Jackson all evening, but he hadn’t appeared to notice, which only made it worse. You two were “just friends” again due to an episode of guilt over Meghan that had hit Jackson hard that afternoon. I wasn’t holding my breath that it would last.

  You turned to Nitin. “Truth or truth?”

  He grinned. “Truth.”

  “What’s something nobody else at camp knows about you?”

  Nitin shifted his weight. I wondered how you would answer the same question. “Well . . . no one knows it’s my birthday,” he said.

  “What? Today?” I said. You and Jackson looked equally surprised.

  “Yeah. As of midnight.” It must have been around one a.m.

  You swatted his knee. “You didn’t tell us!”
<
br />   Nitin shrugged, kind of cutely. “Actually, I just did.”

  You snort-laughed. “Did you just ‘Well, actually’ me?” He shrugged again. I hadn’t realized he had this impish side. You shook your head and nudged him, almost flirting. “It’s your birthday, so we’ll let it slide.”

  “Are you sixteen or seventeen?” I asked.

  It was dark, but I sensed his blush. “Fifteen,” he admitted. He lowered those ridiculously long lashes.

  Jackson leaned in. “No way. You’re younger than us?”

  “Only by a year,” he mumbled.

  Jackson started to say something, but you cut him off. “Nitin’s an old soul. Fifteen going on forty.” You leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Happy birthday,” you said. He was practically glowing.

  “Old soul,” Jackson muttered, sour. You’d finally captured his attention. “What does that make me?”

  You rolled your eyes. “You’re an ass-soul. Obviously.”

  He smirked and I felt the heat switch back on between you. You’d be sucking face again by morning, I was sure.

  “What am I?” I asked, hoping to pull you back to me.

  You looked straight at me, your gaze a flare of starlight. “You’re perfect. Never change.”

  But you’d already changed me.

  Part of what I’m struggling with since the end of camp is that I feel like I lost not only you, but also the person I was with you. Camp Me. Randy. The best me. I wonder sometimes if I even was her, or if she’s just a story you invented, brought to life. Because really, is there a me who could ever be that daring, bold, and brave without you? Now that you’re gone, I’m nowhere near as funny or interesting.

  Dr. Rita says I’m still plenty interesting (she has to; we’re paying her) and the way I’m feeling makes sense: that a big part of who I was this summer was your best friend, and the loss of a defining friendship like ours (even under less traumatic circumstances) can leave one feeling adrift. It “can shake the foundation of who you are,” which is why, she says, it’s a risk to attach yourself to someone else. When someone you were leaning on steps or falls away, it’s a struggle to regain your balance and relearn how to stand on your own. But that doesn’t mean the person I was with you is lost completely.

  Dr. Rita says she hopes that as I find stability within myself and continue to heal, I’ll come to view the risks of leaning on someone again as ultimately worth it. That part of our work together is rebuilding my ability to trust, though that trust has been deeply betrayed.

  I don’t like to think of you as betraying me.

  What happened between you and Jackson happened between you and Jackson. It had nothing to do with me. And yet . . . you let me down. I can admit that. Even if your worst crime was just being thoughtless, it still hurt me.

  Dr. Rita says phrasing it that way to myself is real progress.

  Woo-fucking-hoo.

  Okay but here is a thing I keep spinning on: If you told me a string of tiny lies and I believed them . . . does that make our friendship untrue? What if they were lies you were telling yourself too?

  I think you wanted to deceive yourself about Jackson, and to do that, you had to deceive me too. You didn’t mean to hurt me. I was a casualty of your war with yourself. But that doesn’t make my wounds less deep.

  I think I still know you despite those lies. Maybe I know you better because of them.

  But it depends on this: What else did you lie to me about? And why?

  Love,

  Kayla

  October 22

  Channel 5 News

  “Jury selection began today in the second-degree murder case of Elaine Baxter, the alleged ‘Summer Camp Slayer,’ who is charged with the death of her on-again, off-again summer-camp sweetheart, Jackson Winter, whose body was found by a camp counselor in Jaspertown Lake on the shores of Camp Cavanick property in August. The jury selection process is expected to move swiftly, with opening statements set for November second, according to defense attorney Michael Desir, who gave a brief interview outside the courthouse this afternoon.

  “Desir praised Judge Candice Rodriguez’s decision not to allow news cameras inside the courtroom, saying Miss Baxter, who has entered a plea of not guilty, ‘deserves a fair and impartial trial, not a media circus,’ in which she will have the chance to prove ‘once and for all her complete and total innocence’ and ‘finally be able to put this outrageous allegation behind her and fully mourn the tragic loss of Jackson Winter, who was her close friend.’”

  “This story is doubly tragic for the two teenage lives being destroyed by it. Lainie Baxter is a sixteen-year-old girl guilty only of falling in love, and she is as devastated by Jackson Winter’s death as she is innocent of it.”

  “Prosecutor Marsha Davis called the sentiment ‘a pretty tale’ and indicated she is confident the state’s case against Baxter will prove otherwise.

  “Much has been made in the press of the initial statement Elaine Baxter gave to police on the morning Jackson Winter’s body was found, claiming not to have seen him since they’d said goodnight at curfew the evening before. Baxter later retracted that statement and admitted to having snuck out of her cabin to meet Jackson by the lake after midnight—a rendezvous she claims ended with a last kiss around two o’clock in the morning, which is close to the time the coroner’s report estimates as the time of his death.

  “Prosecutor Davis has stated on record in the past that Elaine Baxter, quote, ‘is a known liar who, by her own admission, lied to police in her initial statement about the circumstances surrounding Jackson Winter’s death, and, the state will prove, has been lying about it ever since,’ end quote.”

  October 31

  Dear Lainie,

  Here’s something I don’t know about you, that I suddenly wish I could ask: What’s your favorite Halloween candy? Don’t say candy corn, please, or it will change everything I think I know about you. I’m picturing you loving something weird, like Dots or Smarties (which, I learned tonight, are called Rockets in Canada. Not that I was in Canada. Just collecting random facts as usual).

  Mine is Mounds, followed by peanut-butter cups, followed by little boxes of Junior Mints. I’m also down with Nerds, lollipops, and malted milk balls—but no Tootsie Rolls, candy corn, or other sugary wax masquerading as edible. I won’t stand for it.

  Adele and Peter gave out KitKats this year. If you were here, I would split this one with you, but instead I’ll have to eat both halves myself. Nom nom. Adele wore her witch hat and a fake nose (long, warty) to answer the door to trick-or-treaters, and Peter sported Harry Potter glasses that might as well have been regular glasses, since he wasn’t wearing the rest of the costume. They made an enormous bowl of buttered popcorn and seemed stunned, then delighted, to learn I wouldn’t be joining them for a movie marathon after dinner. (No slashers or murder mysteries in the queue this year. My parents are nothing if not tasteful.) Instead, I went to a party.

  I’m invited to parties now, apparently, although I never go. But I accidentally mentioned this one to Dr. Rita when telling her about Dina Who I Usually Have Lunch With (which is exactly how I think of them, I guess to avoid having to use the word friend. I don’t know if they’re my friend, exactly, though I think they probably want to be, and we maybe act like we’re friends, in that we sit together regularly and talk about our lives and don’t dislike each other or anything, so maybe they think that’s what we are already. I don’t know. It’s not like it was with you. And I’m not sure I’m really ready to have another friend—definitely not a best friend—though I haven’t straight-up told them that. We’ve only been eating together a few weeks). They invite me to stuff outside of school sometimes, and usually I say no, but sometimes I’ll agree to hang out for a while and do homework together or whatever. When they mentioned this party, I said I probably wouldn’t go, but for some reason I told Dr. Rita about it. She thought it would be good for me to get out, be social, make friends. Distract myself from the impending
trial.

  Replace you, she meant, but of course you can’t be replaced.

  I told Dina Who I Usually Have Lunch With I might go with them after all, and they said “cool” and that it was fine if I didn’t want to wear a costume, but they would bring me some wings or something just in case. Which turned out to be great because otherwise I would have been the only one not dressed up, and not wearing wings and the glitter I let Dina dab on my cheeks would have made me stick out and seem awkward.

  High school is strange.

  The party wasn’t bad. I felt self-conscious at first, especially when Dina started talking to some kids I don’t know and didn’t feel like being introduced to because I hate standing around on the edge of a group I don’t belong in. I’d rather just stand by myself. I wandered into the kitchen and kept my chin up and my shoulders back, trying to look confident and at ease—the way you used to stand—and poured myself some punch. I imagined I was you while I sipped it, looking around to see who was there, and pretty soon I started to relax. I remembered that all summer, I’d fit in.

  I poured more punch and walked into the living room, where Dina waved from across the room. They were dressed as a cereal comma, with a punctuation mark cut from a Honey Nut Cheerios box taped to their button-down shirt. In between us people were dancing and as I watched, I found myself moving my head and hips to the music, and realized I felt kind of fuzzy-warm and happy, like my brain was a furry little animal—like silly, funny Ollie had moved in to live in my skull—and everything at the party looked softer and happier too. A little blurry if I moved too fast, but that was fun.

  I put my cup down and danced for real. This guy Ian from my math class grabbed my hand and twirled me around, and I twirled him back, and the music got faster. We dipped and the world spun, and I borrowed his hat and touched my own cheek, then his, to loan him some of Dina’s glitter. Now I was a pirate fairy and he was a boy who sparkled.