by Lily Sparks
“Okay.” And then, as he turns to walk away, “After lights out.”
* * *
I have no idea what that means. When after lights out? Where are we going to read them? The bathroom has a back door that opens out onto the woods—should I meet him there? I lay in my bunk, duck boots laced up under my blankets, twitching every time I hear Troy and Kurt snore, waiting for the sound of Erik climbing down from his bunk. But I don’t hear anything. Did he forget? Is he asleep?
And then a figure looms over me, darker and denser than the night filling the cabin.
“Erik?” I whisper, terrified it’s not him.
“Shhh.” I can just make out Erik’s outline before he pivots and heads for the front door, so I crawl out of my bunk and follow him.
I have to practically jog to keep up with his long strides across the overgrown meadow behind our cabin, the grass gone purple in the starlight, and into the black shapes of the trees.
“You got them?” I whisper.
“Oh yes.” He has his lantern but he doesn’t turn it on, it just swings from his hand. “Right under the shelf, like you said.”
“I kept wanting to get them during the Zap Sauce lesson, but I never got the chance.”
“No? Too busy holding hands with Javier?”
“Wow.” My jaw drops. “I didn’t realize you were monitoring my motions in class, creeper.”
“Creeper?!” Erik stops short, his stricken expression rendered in indistinct blues by the starlight. “In what world am I a creeper?”
“Maybe in the world where you creeped, crept, whatever, into my cabin the first night I was here?” I point out. “Nobody even said you ‘marked’ me.”
“I marked you? And what’s this?”
He reaches out and pulls up my sleeve, exposing the dark line of Javier’s dandelion.
“So Javier draws on your arm, even though he knows you’re in a relationship.” Erik’s words get faster, along with his pace, as we wind uphill through the trees. “and I’m the creep?! Okay, Signal.”
“Come on. Javier is a nice guy.”
“Javier is a sociopath.”
“Aren’t we all!”
“You’re not,” he says, then flicks on a lantern, his green eyes iridescent discs like a cat’s. The shallow light reveals a few rows of benches in front of a small raised platform and firepit, now filled with pine saplings. Erik sits on the first bench and pulls a roll of curled-up paper from inside his hoodie.
“Anyway. I am willing to look past your vicious name-calling,” Erik says, “so we can discuss why a stack of year-old clippings on your case is hidden in the pantry. Someone’s been hoarding them away, and they might be—pay attention here, because I’m about to use this word in its appropriate context—” His eyes flash. “They might be a creeper. Should we search Javier’s bunk for scrapbooking supplies?”
“Seriously though.” I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. “Who do you think collected these?”
“Kate and Dave, obviously. But don’t worry about it too much, it’s not like they hold life and death power over you or anything.” He reaches for the “Remembering Rose” clipping, which is two whole sheets of recent newsprint, the paper still bluish and slippery. “Ready, Watson?”
“Okay, Sherlock,” I say, and sit beside him on the cold bench. He spreads the paper across our laps and we both lean in and examine the smeary type through clouds of our breath:
LEDMONTON, OR — It’s been a year since the small town of Ledmonton was rocked by the brutal murder of 16-year-old Rose Rowan, the Ledmonton High junior found decapitated in a woodland shed last October.
The popular teen’s life was cut short by her obsessive classmate, Signal Deere, who clung to a grade school friendship despite the growing estrangement between the girls: Rose was outgoing, dedicated to her boyfriend and church community; Signal was a callous loner seemingly obsessed with the macabre. When Rose tried to distance herself, Deere snapped.
The lurid details of the “Girl From Hell” case dominated Oregon headlines last year, but less examined was the devastation Deere’s crime wreaked on her once-idyllic community.
“He just up and left,” Mrs. Lambe says, clutching a framed photo of her son, Michael Lambe, the Senior Class President and Rose’s boyfriend when tragedy struck. “Right after the trial, he packed his car and drove off. Didn’t graduate. Lost all his scholarships. He calls once in a while but won’t tell us where he is.” Mrs. Lambe’s blue eyes, so much like her son’s, fill with tears. “Mike, if you’re reading this, we love you and we miss you.”
Pastor Lambe and Rose’s youth group hosted a service where parents, Tom and Janeane Rowan, and the trustees of the Windward estate announced they would be establishing a scholarship in Rose’s name …
The low hoot of an owl makes me look up, straight into Erik’s staring face, like he’s reading me instead of the article.
“Did you get to the part about Mike yet?” I ask.
“I already finished.”
“I’ll save you a seat at the library,” I joke, but feeling distorts my voice and I can’t hold back. “Mike just ‘up and left’? Why would he do that, unless …”
“Unless what?”
“Unless he felt guilty?”
Erik squints at me for a moment. “You really are, like … like a five-foot-tall piece of cotton candy or something.”
“First of all, I’m five four and three quarters—”
“Signal, I’m sorry to tell you this, but whoever killed Rose feels no guilt.” Erik is not smiling, “Because he is a psychopath. And they don’t feel guilt, or fear, or love. They just act like they do. Nice Guys especially, they get a high from lying, it makes them feel superior. If Mike were our Nice Guy, there’s no way he’d leave. Playing the grieving boyfriend would be too much fun. In fact, he’d probably do some big tearful speech at graduation about ‘the one we lost,’ then do the same speech again, howling with laughter, on the drive home.”
I try not to picture it, focusing instead on the saplings and thin brush around us, thrown into sharp relief by the lantern light. Beyond them is just blackness.
“… Are you a psychopath?” I ask him.
“You think I’d tell you if I were?” Erik smiles, the stark light of the halogen lamp dividing his face into light and dark, its symmetry undeniable. “At least you know I’m not a Nice Guy. Did you know only forty percent of serial killers are psychopaths? Not even a majority. And the percentage of Class As with psychopathy is even lower. Twenty-five percent.” He tilts his head. “But then, what bearing does group average have on an individual? None whatsoever. I’m a Class A. So are you. But we couldn’t be more different.”
“We’re not that different.”
“We’re a photo and the negative,” he says quickly, then: “You don’t remember seeing anything inside the shed at all. Not even like, looking over Rose’s shoulder when you followed her inside—”
“Just blackness.” I don’t want to think about being inside the shed.
“I could try to hypnotize you?” Erik offers.
Absolutely not. “I tried that. With professionals.”
“And nothing came back?”
“Nothing that made sense,” I say, crossing my arms against my chest. “Pieces. I don’t even know if they’re real or forced memories or what.”
“Okay. Tell me the pieces.” His eyes are intent on mine.
“Are you trying to hypnotize me right now?!”
“No! I just have dreamy eyes.”
I chuckle, but then Rose’s face in black dots stops me. The page has slipped from our laps. I pick it up and smooth it as the wind rushes over us like a sheet pulled over our heads.
She was always so beautiful. Even at her worst, and I had seen her worst: I remembered Rose’s face half-buried in her pillow, sickly pale under a net of dark hair, the morning after the very last time I slept over. She had come back a blurry, underwater version of herself at three AM,
eyes glazed, so high she could barely form words.
“Rose, I have to go …,” I’d whispered.
“… Okay.” She ground the heels of her hands into her face. “Can you come back Friday? I can pick you up.”
“I can’t cover for you anymore. You need to tell someone about Mr. Moody, Rose. This secrecy is … it’s just toxic, okay?”
“Um, I don’t need relationship advice from a girl who’s never been kissed, thanks.”
I’d planned a speech the whole time she’d been gone that night, but I knew then it was pointless. No matter what I said, she would only hear a shrill loser who refused to grow up, demanding she become a kid again.
So I just walked out instead.
I was halfway down the street before I remembered my math book was still on her desk.
Hoping she’d gone back to sleep, I crept in the side door, through the kitchen, and tiptoed to the foot of the stairs, when Janeane’s voice floated down from Rose’s room:
“… She’s over here all the time now, she never says hello or goodbye, and your father and I are a little concerned—”
“You’ve known her longer than Tom,” Rose snapped. “Who is not my ‘father’ and you know I hate when you call him that—”
“Well, Tom said you put a lock on the inside of your door.”
“It’s my door!”
“It’s his house. It’s our home. We don’t need locks in our home. Whatever you and Signal are doing should not require locking out the rest of the family!”
“We’re not doing anything. I’m just sick of you snooping through my room!”
“I don’t snoop,” Janeane said. “I would never snoop. I would only go into your room if I thought you had gotten hold of something that would put you in danger.”
Rose laughed bitterly. “Let me guess. Tom’s pills are ‘missing’ again?”
“Tom has chronic pain. He has a doctor’s prescription—”
“Shame he can’t make it last the whole month.”
“Someone is taking those pills, Rose!”
I turned and padded back down the hall, back to the kitchen door, when a massive hand landed on my shoulder.
“Signal.” Tom stood by the sink with a cup of coffee. He had a bull-dog jaw, a red nose with the coarse pores of an orange peel, and powerful shoulders from college football, hunched from the years he’d spent behind a desk at the car dealership.
He held up a pack of American Spirits.
“I found these in the planter out back.” He tossed them on the counter between us. “You have any idea where they came from?”
Rose’s mom was supposed to have quit years ago.
“They’re mine,” I lied.
“It’s a filthy habit. And I won’t have it around my Rose. I know your mom lets you run wild, but in this house …” In my peripheral vision, I saw Janeane’s willowy shape hover at the kitchen door.
Sensing Tom was winding down, I nodded dumbly, crushed the cigarettes into my pocket and stumbled outside.
“Signal!” Janeane ran after me down the driveway in her bathrobe, the tip of her nose pink. “Signal, I’m so sorry.” She grimaced. “You didn’t have to cover for me.”
“I didn’t take Tom’s pills,” I said, handing the cigarettes back to her.
“Well, thank you for telling me that.” She had the grace to look ashamed. “You know, it’s hard to believe, but I was sixteen once.” It wasn’t that hard. She was still beautiful. Just sadder. “I can remember how much I hated my mom. And now I find myself doing everything she did. And I get it.” She looked back at the house, squinting in the morning light. “She was just trying to protect me.”
She turned back to me, pleading.
“Signal, you would tell me if Rose was doing drugs, wouldn’t you?”
I should’ve told her the truth. I should’ve confessed everything about Mr. Moody. But I didn’t. And now Rose’s smile is just a cloud of black dots.
That’s why I said I was sorry in court. And that’s why I owe them both the truth.
“I remember music.” My voice warbles. “Not what song, or the lyrics … this is so pointless.” I press my hands over my eyes so all I can see is darkness swimming with washes of staticky color.
“Tell me anyway,” Erik says. “What else was there?”
“I remember a thermos.”
“What kind?”
“The kind like you’d get in an old plastic lunchbox. It had the Transformers on it?”
“Really! Was there anything in it?”
“I don’t know, this is stupid—” I’m about to sit up and take my hands from over my eyes, but his hands press gently over them, like he’s leading me into a surprise party.
“Wait, wait, don’t open your eyes yet. Just wait a minute. See if it comes.” The heat of his fingers on the back of mine is searing in the cold night, but it anchors me in the safety of the moment. When his hands slide away, the thermos rises in my mind so clearly, like there’s a spotlight on it. It tilts toward me, and the smell stings the back of my throat.
“It smelled alcoholic, but I don’t remember any taste.”
“Okay.” His voice is so gentle. “What else?”
“Lightning.” The word sticks in my throat. “A huge beam of light that blanked everything out. But there wasn’t a storm that night, so that doesn’t make sense.”
“Don’t try to get it to make sense. Just let it come up, and—” Suddenly he darts forward and snaps off the light, his voice dropping low:
“We have to go.”
And directly below us, winding up the gravel path fast, are the searching beams of Kate and Dave’s flashlights.
Chapter Ten
Color War
“They’re doing a bed check.” Erik sweeps the clippings under the low stage and turns off the lamp. “Come on—” He takes my hand and we run downhill, racing to get to the cabin before Kate and Dave. When we hit the lawn, I head for the back door, but his iron arm sweeps me along the side of the cabin:
“Window,” he whispers. “The back door creaks.” Erik effortlessly catches me up around the waist and lifts me to the window in one powerful gesture. I bruise my shin hard on the sill but manage to climb in and slide into my bunk just as feet land on the stairs. The hinge of the door sighs and a flashlight beam sweeps the mildewed wall. I struggle to keep from panting until the door closes.
“All accounted for,” Dave says.
“I saw a glow on the hill.” Kate sounds uncertain. “And we know he’s still around. That campfire was only a few hours old.”
“We just have to keep them close until we find him. And then …?”
“I’ll do it,” she says, and I hear the flick of her lighter. “I owe him that much.”
Their steps fade into the roll of the lake and the wind in the eaves and Dennis’s soft, steady breath overhead. When I can no longer puzzle over Kate’s words, the thermos tilts in my mind. Rose stands behind it, her face clearer and clearer as sleep pulls me into darkness.
“Chug it, ho.”
* * *
Morning comes before I’m ready to get up. But I pull myself out of bed with everyone else, and manage to not come in last on the obstacle course. I spend the second run-through watching from the tarp, and when Dave is out of earshot, lean discreetly toward Erik:
“Hey, uh, Erik?”
He turns to me. The missed sleep has made his eyes bloodshot so they glow green.
“Hey, I uh … I think I remembered something from the shed—”
Dave’s shrill whistle cuts the air.
“Attention, campers! On your feet, on your feet, make a line! Camp Naramauke’s first annual Color Wars starts RIGHT NOW!!”
We look around at each other uncertainly.
“Those of you who went to summer camp might have done a Color War before. There’s teams and songs and talent competitions,” Dave says, rattling a coffee can at the start of the line, right under Nobody’s nose. It’s full of brightly
colored Sharpies. “Our version, as you might imagine, is a little different.”
“We have three winners in our Color War. The first winner is whoever can ‘slash’ as many of their fellow campers’ throats as possible. And it has to be a line that could kill: I want to see that carotid artery crossed, guys! The second winner is whoever manages not to get their throat slashed. And the third winner is whoever wins the Scavenger Hunt. Though it’s very possible for all those wins to go to one camper.”
“What do we win?” Dennis asks.
“One hour of screen time on Kate’s laptop. No social media logins, but otherwise you’re unsupervised. Watch a show. Check your sites. Whatever.”
There’s a collective gasp, then howling cheers, then the air goes tense as we hush ourselves and become as quiet and focused as runners before a starter pistol fires.
Dave starts down the line, holding out the can. “So pick a color, watch your neck, and we’ll announce winners after dinner.”
I choose blue and immediately am on my guard, stomach turning over, arm hairs on end. We all move warily on our way down to the lower field to eat, walking far apart and eyeing each other between nervous giggles.
Once on the field, we sit in a circle facing each other. I get so distracted keeping an eye on Erik I almost don’t hear the soft footsteps in the grass behind me, and whip around to find a sheepish Dennis hovering, his orange Sharpie uncapped.
“Nothing personal, Signal,” Dennis says, actually starting to smile at my betrayed expression. “You’re just my only chance.”
“Then you’ve got no chance!” I say, uncapping my Sharpie with a flourish and giving him an overly dramatic grimace. “I’ll be right behind you when you least expect it.”
“Challenge accepted,” he says, and slinks back to his lunch bag. I figure when we get up again I’ll strike.
But before lunch is even over Jada makes the first move, springing herself on Troy. They go end over end across the quilts in the center of the circle as the rest of us hoot and cheer. Neither will let the other stand—they roll around clutching each other’s wrists and staring into each other’s eyes like the rest of us have disappeared. Jada, a good foot shorter than Troy, eventually manages to get her knee in the middle of his chest and pins him down like she did with me in the field, but Troy seems reluctant to wrestle her off. He’s got her wrists in each hand now, his face gone bright red, and he laughs, “Whoa, you got some arm strength!”