I would make it look like an accident. No one would be at fault but Jackson. He was always making bad decisions—showing off could lead to poor judgment. He wasn’t exactly known for his forethought.
It would be tragic, and we would mourn him.
Together.
It would bring us closer.
Don’t you see what this all could have been?
Love,
Kayla
Camper and Counselor Interviews, Statements, and Posts
August 14–November 24
“I hope they lock her up forever. It disgusts me, what she did. Jackson had his whole life ahead of him, and she took that. She just . . . took it. Because, what—he wanted to be with someone else? She didn’t get to own and control him? It’s disturbing. Really disturbing, that kind of mind-set. I’m sure she thought she’d get away with it too. People like that always do. But not this time. I’m glad. Poor Jackson, getting mixed up in that. Can you imagine? They should lock her up and toss the key, teach everyone like her a lesson.”
“It doesn’t make sense. Would a girl like Lainie really kill a guy like Jackson, just because he didn’t want to be with her? I don’t think so. I can’t wrap my head around it. It doesn’t add up. There has to be more to this story.”
“I can’t believe I ever envied Jackson and Lainie’s relationship. This is so messed up.
“I don’t care how heartbroken I was, I would never react by stabbing the person or pushing them off a cliff, or poisoning their omelet or whatever. I definitely wouldn’t bash them over the head with whatever she used to kill him. They never found the murder weapon, right? That’s messed up too. This is real and it happened with people I actually know and spent time with and that’s just . . .
“I don’t want to date anyone now. I keep looking at people I’ve known for years and thinking, Would you bash someone’s skull in if they dumped you? How do you know? Like, how do you know if a person’s safe? I might be overreacting or unreasonable or whatever, but really: Who can you trust?”
November 20
Now Today
ELAINE BAXTER’S FATE NOW RESTS IN THE HANDS OF the jury. After two days of testimony from witnesses for the defense—including fellow campers who described the deceased, Jackson Winter, as “a risk-taker” who “seemed to consider himself invincible”; a cabinmate who said she “thought” Baxter “might” have returned to their cabin much earlier during the night in question than a prosecution witness previously testified; and two counselors who each described seeing Baxter appear “legitimately shocked” and “distraught,” “nearly hysterical with grief as the reality sank in,” and seeming “to have no idea what had happened” on the morning Winter’s body was discovered—Elaine Baxter waived her own right to testify on Thursday afternoon, as legal experts had predicted, and the defense rested its case.
On her way out of the courthouse, Baxter addressed reporters for the first time in a seemingly unplanned outburst. Breaking away from her lawyer, who usually ushers Baxter quickly past the many cameras and microphones her trial has attracted, Baxter said, “I never hurt anyone. I would never hurt Jackson. There’s probably nothing I can say to make you believe me, but I’m innocent. I am innocent. People think what they want to think, but I didn’t do it. He was my friend. The last time I saw him, he was alive. He was alive, and I miss him. I miss him so much. Everyone who thinks I did this is wrong.” She did not answer follow-up questions.
On Friday morning, the prosecution and defense delivered their closing statements, and Judge Rodriguez gave final instructions to the jurors and released them to the task of deliberations.
Reporters and spectators gathered outside the courtroom—and, especially, Jackson Winter’s parents and other family members—now must wait, however long it takes for the jury to reach their verdict. The question in everyone’s mind is, which version of Elaine Baxter will the jurors find most compelling: the scorned ex-girlfriend with a history of blatant lies and deceit, who turned to violence when her jealousy peaked; or the misunderstood and unfairly maligned girl who lost a close friend in this tragedy made doubly tragic by the fact of her being falsely accused? We won’t know until the verdict is delivered.
November 24
Dear Jackson,
Lainie was convicted of your murder today. They found her guilty of wrongfully and intentionally causing your death, and she’ll be sentenced to anywhere from fifteen years to life, at a hearing next month. I thought you’d want to know.
Your family gets closure just in time for Thanksgiving, and I guess I do too, in a way, though there are parts of this wound that will never heal. Perhaps you can relate, haha.
When I testified (I didn’t want to, but they don’t exactly make it optional), I promised to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and I did that. Well, I mostly told the truth. As the king of broken promises and convenient half-truths, you can forgive me for that, right?
Good boy.
It’s weird to snark at you like usual and have you unable to snark back. It is indescribably weird being at the center of all this, yet also essentially irrelevant now. But I’m not the one who excluded me first. Lainie did that. She did it because of you.
Do you even know what really happened that night? Or was it too fast, too unexpected, too painful to process before you died? We were friends of a sort, once upon a time, and I think you deserve to know the story of your own death. So I’ll tell it to you, just this once. Maybe I’ll print the letter and burn it so the ashes and fumes can waft into your consciousness, if you still have one—that or a soul or whatever. I don’t think I believe in an afterlife, but if you’re in one, I hope it’s fine. I don’t need you to rot in hell for eternity. I’m not a monster.
I’m just a girl who couldn’t stand to lose her best friend.
I lost her anyway. But at least you lost her too. You’re the only one of the three of us who got what was deserved.
You get why you deserved it, right? I’d like to think you understand that. Though I guess if you had an ounce of self-awareness, or the teeniest bit of empathy for the needs of other people, we wouldn’t exactly be in this place. If you could have seen Lainie for who she was—if you appreciated even a fraction of how beautiful and brilliant and vulnerable and strong and anxious and gutsy and ugly and wonderful and imperfect and Lainie-ish she could be—then none of this would have happened. Because if she were a person to you—a real, full person—you wouldn’t have treated her the way you did. You wouldn’t have yanked her around and played with her emotions like a cat batting a ball of string.
It was a game to you. She was a challenge. You saw her as a pretty, shiny, impressive thing, and you wanted to win her. You wanted to win her so you could pull her down off the pedestal you’d placed her on. You wanted to bring her to the edge and watch her fall, because your ego couldn’t stand to see her above you.
She didn’t ask to be put on that pedestal, but when you yanked, she had to scramble to stay up. Because she liked you. She really did. And though you didn’t want her existing above you, you couldn’t handle her being real and on the ground like a normal, actual human, either. You needed her to be an idea of a girl—hot, messy, unattainable. Unattainable to everyone but you.
She wasn’t a toy or a trophy for you to acquire and discard. You were the disposable one, Jackson. That’s what we proved in the end.
She let you do it, though. You thought it was funny to rile her up, to stoke her emotions by pretending you couldn’t see them, and she played her part, like a dancing bear when the music starts. (Do you know how they train those bears? They heat the floor until it’s burning hot, and the bears dance to save their feet from sizzling. When the music plays again, it triggers the memory of the pain, and that’s enough to make them dance again. Fucked up, right?) She bent and contorted, danced away and came back, trying to be the idea of a girl you saw in her.
It was obvious you didn’t see her at all. You didn’t want to. You ju
st wanted a power trip. And you got one. Was it fun? Was it worth it?
Lainie was real to me. She was real, and she was everything. I’d never had a friend like that. Not even close. I may never have one again.
You didn’t care if you hurt her, but I cared. You didn’t care what she needed, but I did. You didn’t care about what was good for her, or what she wanted, or what you damaged. You only cared about yourself. And you wore her down, eroded her self-worth, until you were all she cared about too.
She was ready to give up everything for you, even me. I wouldn’t let her. I refused to let you destroy us. I would end this twisted dance.
If anyone told me at the start of summer I would kill someone by the end, I’d have assumed they were a lousy fortune-teller, in need of better meds, and deeply, deeply confused about what I’m capable of. I’m still surprised I had it in me, to be honest. Surprised and kind of proud. I was dreading the whole thing, every millisecond leading up to it, but when I finally stepped out from behind that tree and slammed the flashlight into your head, it hit your skull with the kind of thunk I can only describe as satisfying. My arms vibrated from the force of the impact, and you fell to the ground, eyes wide-open, but clearly unconscious. I pushed you over with my foot and hit you again for good measure. The second hit broke the skin—a small gash, but still bleeding—and I knew I needed to move you quickly so there wouldn’t be a trail of blood.
I pulled off your sneakers, shorts, and shirt (thanks for wearing a button-down that night—it would have been tough to get a T-shirt off without it touching the blood that matted your hair). You’d have dived in fully naked, of course, but I couldn’t bring myself to remove your underwear. It wasn’t for your sake, please understand. I left them on to preserve my dignity. I was sick of seeing too much of you all summer long. I didn’t need your dick flopping around in my mental image bank.
I hefted you by sliding one arm beneath each of your armpits, and dragged you down the bank. This was harder than it sounds, by the way—you were scrawny, and I’m not weak, but it’s not easy dragging close to six feet of dead weight even a short distance. I kicked off my shoes, lowered you into the water, and held you there, facedown, hoping that drowning wouldn’t wake you. I couldn’t breathe until I was certain you weren’t, either. You made it clear by sinking. (I always think of dead bodies as floating, but I looked it up after on a school computer, and you were normal: Corpses sink when the air in their lungs is replaced with water. They only pop back up later, when decomposition fills the body with gas. Neat, huh? If you’d been dead, not just unconscious, when we got to the lake, you’d have stayed on the surface.)
I left you in the shallow water—I figured dead bodies can drift, so that was realistic, and moving you around might create suspicious evidence—and did my best to make the ground between the lake and the trail look like no one had been dragged over it recently. I was lucky there were all those long pine needles around. Camp Cavanick really is the best place ever.
I took your clothes and shoes to the dock and left them there in a messy pile, like you would have before you dived in. The flashlight I’d used for your head wounds I threw as far into the lake as I could, and listened for the plop as it went under. (That wasn’t a surprise. I knew flashlights sink.)
I went back to the scene of the crime to make sure nothing looked amiss, then returned up the hill to my cabin. It was strange walking back in the darkness by myself, but less strange than it had been walking down there. I didn’t like sneaking out without Lainie. The night was ours. It wasn’t right being out in it alone. That wasn’t how things should be—but it would be different from now on.
The crickets chirped and the breeze was soft, and I felt calm and okay. Things would be better now.
In the morning, you would be missing. Once they found you, there would be shock, then sadness, disbelief, mourning. We would remember the good with the bad—how stubborn you could be, and infuriatingly overconfident. How quick you were to tease and slow to form grudges, since you never took anything seriously. Your habit of pushing boundaries and need to show off, and the risks those caused you to take. Risks like sneaking out after midnight. Risks like diving into shallow water. Risks like laughing off things other people knew to take seriously.
We would bury you, but keep the best memories. Our shared loss would bring Lainie and me closer—as would our shared relief. You would rest in peace after your tragic accident. And we would move on.
At the door to the cabin, I realized my one mistake. I was still wearing Lainie’s hoodie, which I’d found on the ground where she’d left it earlier, when she took it off for you. She must have forgotten to retrieve it later, but what if in the morning she remembered? Or what if someone else got to it first? I couldn’t leave it where I’d found it—that would suggest to the next finder she was with you. But if I took it off in our cabin, hung it up on the hooks by the door, she might realize it hadn’t been there all night and connect the dots to how it made its way back. Both risks seemed too big to take.
I looked down and saw the choice had been made for me. I couldn’t leave it where I’d found it or return it to where it belonged. It had your blood on the sleeves. Blood that definitely wouldn’t be there if you had died from a risky dive, all alone.
I peeled it off and hid it beneath the cabin steps. There would be time in the morning to find a better spot for it. For now, I needed to crawl into bed and sleep.
And I did. I slept so well, knowing you were gone. I’d done what I had to, because that’s the kind of friend I am. The kind who will fight for what matters and have no regrets.
That’s it. That’s the story. It’s a good one, right?
All’s well that ends well, but the end of this one got twisted.
It got all turned around, and she let it. She refused to remember what’s true.
Nobody else knows how it should have been.
Nobody knows but you.
Kayla
November 28
Dear Lainie,
We need to talk about the morning after. About how when news broke that Jackson was gone, you broke too. And then you let it break us. You used it to break us, when it was supposed to do the exact opposite. I’ve been turning this around in my head for months, the mental Rubik’s Cube of what went down. I don’t think it will ever make sense.
If you could live it all again today, would you choose differently? I would.
I would kill Jackson much, much sooner.
You were crabby that morning, and moving slowly—probably tired from your excursion with Jackson the night before, and feeling down about it being the last full day of camp. Lots of people were sad about that. There was an overall gloomy mood in the mess hall, and you stayed quieter than usual, like you needed to really focus on pushing around the scrambled eggs and soggy Froot Loops on your tray. I jumped in to fill the space with chatter, then tried to damp myself down so I wouldn’t annoy you. (When Adele acts that way, too chipper in the early morning, I want to slosh my orange juice in her face, so I get it. But moms are supposed to get on our nerves. Best friends aren’t.) You weren’t listening to me anyway. You were watching over my shoulder for Jackson to appear, and getting crankier by the second when he didn’t. Maybe things hadn’t been all copacetic between you two last night after all.
“Hey,” I said, to pull you out of it. “You okay?”
You sighed and dragged your fork through the eggs you hadn’t tasted. “Yeah. Just . . . distracted. Sorry. What were you saying about sled dogs?”
“What?” I laughed, and you laughed too. I hadn’t said anything about sled dogs. “Now who’s random?” I teased. You smiled. We were good.
You pushed your tray away. “Let’s skip out on packing and swim across the lake.”
“To the island?” I said.
“Yeah! I always wanted to do that.” You’d never mentioned it before, and I wasn’t sure we could actually make it (let alone make it back), but your eyes had the spark of a hat
ching plan—a plan for you and me—so I was in.
“What are they going to do, kick us out on the last day? They don’t need another bucket of garlic peeled,” you said. Your sulkiness was gone and your enthusiasm contagious, and I honestly forgot about what (or who) was already in the lake that might stop us, until I saw Hot Hot Raúl, the paddleboard instructor, run across the mess hall to find Director Skip. Raúl spoke rapidly and quietly into the director’s ear, motioning wildly, and Skip rose from his seat, his eyes cartoonishly wide. The two of them rushed out a side door, and the other adults at the table looked at one another and shrugged. I glanced around. Most of the room hadn’t noticed.
My heartbeat thudded in my ears. It was happening.
I reached for my juice glass and lifted my chin toward the door through which they’d left. “I guess the lake is on fire,” I said.
You rolled your eyes. “Yeah, right. Or Hot Hot Raúl wants to snitch on some turtles they caught mating under the boathouse.” Raúl was simmering hot, but a stickler for rules, and you never forgave them for being strict about PDA and life vests. Their stubbornness crimped your style.
I wondered how Jackson’s body had looked when Raúl found it. Was it still submerged? Had it drifted from where I’d left it, or gotten bloated? How long did corpses take to start deteriorating in water? Did fish bite them? I’d been fine without a phone all summer, but now my fingers itched for Google. Maybe because I couldn’t bounce those questions off you.
(I would tell you everything someday, but the less you knew then, the better. I kept it to myself to protect you.
Ugh. I really was naïve.)
We heard the ambulance before we saw it. It drove straight to the lake, lights flashing, a county police car seconds behind it. We stood and surged toward the commotion with everyone else, but a second cop car pulled up and parked near the mess hall. Two officers jumped out and corralled the bewildered-seeming counselors who weren’t already down by the lake to step up and do some crowd control. We were ordered to stay in the mess hall or on its patio, where of course everyone squeezed to look. The cops continued down to the lakefront on foot, and I stood on tiptoe to see the swarm of people already making a mess of what they didn’t seem to realize was a crime scene. Good.
Nobody Knows But You Page 15