by Riley Sager
I spent the rest of the meal eyeing Vivian’s plate, taking a bite of oatmeal only when she did, trying to make the portions match up exactly. I didn’t touch the banana until she did. When she left half of it on her tray, I did the same. The bacon and toast remained untouched.
I told myself it would be worth it.
* * *
—
Vivian, Natalie, and Allison left the mess hall before me, preparing for an advanced archery lesson. Senior campers only. I was scheduled to take part in an activity with girls my own age. I assumed I’d find them boring. That’s what one night in Dogwood had already done to me.
On my way there, I passed the girl with the camera. She veered into my path, halting me.
“What are you doing?”
“Warning you,” she said. “About Vivian.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t be fooled. She’ll turn on you eventually.”
I took a step toward her, trying to match the same toughness I had summoned the previous night. “How so?”
Although the girl with the camera smiled, there was no humor there. It was a bitter grin. On the cusp of curdling into a sneer.
“You’ll find out,” she said.
8
Arriving at the mess hall for dinner, I find Franny standing at the head of the room, already halfway through her welcome speech. She appears more robust than before. It’s clear she’s in her element, dressed for the great outdoors before a packed room of girls while extolling the virtues of camp life. She sweeps her gaze across the room as she speaks, making momentary eye contact with each and every girl, silently welcoming them. When she spots me by the door, her eyes crinkle ever so slightly. An almost-wink.
The speech sounds just like the one I heard fifteen years ago. For all I know, it could be exactly the same, summoned from Franny’s memory after all these years. She’s already recited the part about how the lake was formed by her grandfather on that long-ago New Year’s Eve and is now delving into the history of the camp itself.
“For years, this land served as a private retreat for my family. As a child, I spent every summer—and quite a few winters, springs, and falls—exploring the thousands of acres my family was fortunate enough to own. When my parents passed away, it was left to me. So, in 1973, I decided to turn the Harris family retreat into a camp for girls. Camp Nightingale opened a year later, where it welcomed generations of young women.”
She pauses. Just long enough for her to take a breath. But contained in that brief silence are years of omitted history. About my friends, the camp’s shame, its subsequent closure.
“Today, the camp welcomes all of you,” Franny says. “Camp Nightingale isn’t about cliques or popularity contests or feeling superior. It’s about you. All of you. Giving each and every one of you an experience to cherish long after the summer is over. So if you need anything at all, don’t hesitate to ask Lottie, my sons, or Mindy, the newest member of our family.”
She gestures to her left, where Chet stands against the wall, pretending not to notice the adoring gazes of half the girls in the room. Next to him, Mindy smiles and gives a beauty-pageant wave. I scan the room, looking for Theo. There’s no sign of him, which is both a disappointment and a relief.
Franny clasps her hands together and bows her head, signaling that the speech is over. But I know it’s not. There’s still one part left, completely scripted but performed with the polish of a career politician.
“Oh, one last thing,” Franny says, pretending to think of it just now. “I don’t want to hear a single one of you call me Mrs. Harris-White. Call me Franny. I insist upon it. Here in the great outdoors, we’re all equals.”
From her spot along the wall, Mindy starts clapping. Chet does, too, albeit with more reluctance. Soon the whole room is applauding as Franny, their benefactor, takes another quick bow. Then she’s off, skirting out of the mess hall via a side door opened by Lottie.
I make my way to the food stations, where a small crew of white-uniformed cooks dish out greasy hamburgers, fries, and coleslaw so runny that milky liquid sloshes around the bottom of the plate.
Rather than join Sasha, Krystal, and Miranda, who are surrounded on all sides by other campers, I head to a table near the door where eight women are seated. Five of them are young, definitely college age. The camp counselors. The other three range in age from midthirties to pushing sixty. My fellow instructors. Minus Rebecca Schoenfeld.
I recognize only one—Casey Anderson. Little about her has changed between then and now. She’s still got that pear-shaped frame and red hair that grazes her shoulder when she tilts her head in sympathy upon seeing me again. She even gives me a hug and says, “It’s good to see you back here, Emma.”
The other instructors nod hello. The counselors merely stare. All of them, I realize, know not only who I am but also what happened while I was here.
Casey introduces me to the other instructors. Teaching creative writing is Roberta Wright-Smith, who attended Camp Nightingale for three summers, beginning with its inaugural season. She’s plump and jolly and peers at me through a pair of glasses perched on her nose. Paige McAdams, who went here in the late eighties, is gray-haired and willowy, with bony fingers that clasp my hand too hard when she shakes it. She’s here to teach pottery, which explains her grip.
Casey informs me she’s been assigned to that catchall camp staple of arts and crafts. She’s an eighth-grade English teacher during the school year, available to help out here because her two kids are away at their own camp and it’s her first summer alone since she divorced her husband.
Divorce, it turns out, is a dominant theme among the other instructors. Casey wanted to escape six weeks alone in an empty house. Paige needed a place to go until her soon-to-be ex-husband moves out of their Brooklyn apartment. And Roberta, a creative-writing professor at Syracuse, wanted to go somewhere quiet after recently parting ways with her poet girlfriend. I’m the only one, it seems, who doesn’t have a former spouse or partner to blame for being here. I’m not sure if that’s liberating or merely pathetic.
I suppose I have more in common with the counselors, those college juniors who’ve yet to be touched by life’s disappointments. They’re all pretty and bland and basically interchangeable. Hair pulled into ponytails. Pink lip gloss. Their exfoliated faces glisten. They are, I realize, exactly the kind of girls who would have attended Camp Nightingale had it been open during their adolescence.
“Who else is psyched about the summer?” one of them says. I think her name is Kim. Or maybe it’s Danica. Each of their names left my memory five seconds after I was introduced to them. “I definitely am.”
“But don’t you think it’s weird?” Casey says. “I mean, I’m happy to help out for the summer, but I don’t understand Franny’s decision to open the camp again after all these years.”
“I don’t think it’s necessarily weird,” I say. “Surprising, maybe.”
“I vote for weird,” Paige says. “I mean, why now?”
“Why not now?”
This comes from Mindy, who’s swooped up to the table without notice. I find her standing behind me, arms crossed. Although it’s unclear how much she’s heard, it was enough to make the edges of her plastered-on smile twitch.
“Does Franny need a reason for doing a good deed?” she says, directing the comment to Roberta, Paige, Casey, and me. “I didn’t know it was wrong to try to give a new generation of girls the same experiences the four of you had.”
If this is an attempt to sound like Franny, she’s failing miserably. Franny’s speeches might be scripted, but the emotion behind them is real. You believe every word she says. Mindy’s tone is different. It comes off so sweetly sanctimonious that I can’t help but say, “I wouldn’t wish my experience here on anyone.”
Mindy gives a sad shake of her head. Clearly, I’ve let her down. Holdin
g her hand to her heart, she says, “I expected more from you, Emma. Franny showed a great deal of courage inviting you back here.”
“And Emma showed courage by agreeing to come,” Casey says, leaping to my defense.
“She did,” Mindy replies. “Which is why I thought she’d show a little bit more Camp Nightingale spirit.”
I roll my eyes so hard the sockets hurt. “Really?”
“Fine.” Mindy plops into an empty chair and lets out a sigh that reminds me of air hissing from a punctured tire. “I’ve been told by Lottie that we need to make a cabin check schedule for the summer.”
Ah, cabin check. The nightly examination of all the cabins by counselors to make sure everyone is present, accounted for, and staying out of trouble. Naturally, it had been the highlight of Vivian’s day.
“Each night, we need two people to check on the cabins that don’t have counselors or instructors staying in them,” Mindy says. “Who wants to volunteer first? And where’s Rebecca?”
“Sleeping, I think,” Casey says. “I saw her earlier, and she said she needed a nap or the jet lag was going to kill her. She was on assignment in London and came straight here from the airport.”
“I guess we’ll have to pencil her in later,” Mindy says. “Who wants to do it tonight?”
As the others wrangle over the schedule, I see the mess hall’s double doors open and watch as Rebecca Schoenfeld steps inside. Unlike Casey, she’s changed quite a bit. Gone are the braces and the adolescent pudge. She’s become harder, compact, with a worldly style. Her hair, once a frizzy mass kept in place with a scrunchie, is now sleek and short. She’s accented her shorts-and-polo ensemble with a brightly colored scarf. Beneath it hangs her camera, which sways as she walks. Her movements are another change. Instead of the shuffling teenager I remember, she walks with swift precision—a woman on a mission. She crosses the mess hall to the food station and grabs an apple. She takes a bite on her way out, stopping only when she spots me on the other side of the room.
The look she gives me is unreadable. I can’t tell if she’s surprised, happy, or confused by my presence. After another sharp bite of apple, she turns and exits the mess hall.
“I need to go,” I say.
Mindy emits another deflated-tire sigh. “What about cabin check?”
“Sign me up for whenever.”
I leave the table, abandoning my tray, the food barely touched. Outside the mess hall, I search in every direction for signs of Becca. But she’s nowhere to be found. The areas in front of both the mess hall and the arts and crafts building next door are empty. In the distance, I see Franny slowly making her way to the Lodge with Lottie by her side. Beyond the Lodge, on the patch of grass that leads down to the lake, I spot the maintenance man who was fixing the roof when I arrived. He pushes a wheelbarrow toward a rickety toolshed situated on the edge of the lawn. Lots of activity. None of it from Becca.
I start to head back to the cabins when someone says my name.
“Emma?”
I freeze, knowing exactly who the voice belongs to.
Theo Harris-White.
He calls to me from the open door of the arts and crafts building. Like Franny’s speech, nothing about his voice has changed. Hearing it sends more memories shooting into me. They hurt. Like a quiver of arrows to the gut.
Seeing Theo for the very first time, shyly shaking his hand, trying not to notice how his T-shirt swelled across his chest, confused about why the sight made me feel so warm inside.
Theo waist-deep in the lake, skin sun-kissed and blazing, me cradled in his arms, practically trembling from his touch as he lowers me in the water until I’m floating.
Vivian nudging me toward the extra-wide crack in the latrine’s exterior wall. Through the gap escaped the sound of a running shower and Theo absently humming a Green Day song. Go on, Vivian whispered. Take a look. He’ll never know.
“Emma,” he says again, this time without the questioning inflection. He knows it’s me.
I turn around slowly, unsure what to expect. Part of me wants him to be ruddy and balding, the march toward middle age leaving him thick around the waist. Another part of me wants him to look exactly the same.
The reality is somewhere in between. He’s aged, of course. No longer the strapping nineteen-year-old I remember him being. That youthful glow has dimmed into something darker, more intense. Yet he wears the years well. Too well, to be honest. There’s more bulk than before, but it’s all muscle. The flecks of gray in his dark hair and five o’clock shadow suit him. So does the slight weathering of his face. When he smiles at me, a few faint wrinkles crepe the skin around his mouth and eyes. I hate that it only makes him look more attractive.
“Hi.”
It’s not much of a greeting, but it’s the best I can manage. Especially while I’m being blindsided by another memory. One that eclipses the others.
Theo standing in front of the Lodge, looking exhausted and disheveled after a day spent searching the woods. Me rushing at him, crying as I pound his chest and scream, Where are they? What did you do to them?
Until today, it was the last thing I ever said to him.
Now that he’s right here in front of me again, I expect him to be angry or bitter about what I’d accused him of doing all those years ago. It makes me want to flee the same way Becca had left the mess hall, only faster. But I stay completely still as Theo steps forward and, shockingly, gives me a hug. I pull away after only a second, afraid touching him for too long will prompt even more memories.
Theo takes a step back, looks at me, shakes his head. “I can’t believe you’re really here. My mother told me you were coming, but I just didn’t think it would happen.”
“Here I am.”
“And it looks like life is treating you well. You look great.”
He’s being kind. I saw my reflection in the blank screen of my phone. I know how I look.
“So do you,” I say.
“I hear you’re a painter now. Mom told me she bought one of your works. I haven’t had a chance to see it yet. I just got back from Africa two days ago.”
“Franny mentioned that. You’re a doctor?”
Theo gives a little shrug, scratches his beard. “Yeah. A pediatrician. I’ve spent the past year working with Doctors Without Borders. But for the next six weeks, I’ve been demoted to camp nurse.”
“I guess that makes me the camp painter,” I say.
“Speaking of which, I was just working on your studio for the summer.” Theo jerks his head toward the arts and crafts building. “Care to take a peek?”
“Now?” I say, surprised by his casual willingness to remain alone with me.
“No time like the present,” Theo says, head cocked, his face poised somewhere between curiosity and confusion. It is, I realize, the same look Franny gave me earlier on the Lodge’s back deck.
“Sure,” I say. “Lead the way.”
I follow him inside, finding myself in the middle of an airy, open room. The walls have been painted a cheerful sky blue. The carpet and baseboard are as green as grass. The three support columns that rise from the floor to the ceiling in equal intervals have been painted to resemble trees. The areas where they meet on the ceiling contain fake branches that drip with paper leaves. It’s like stepping into a picture book—happy and bright.
To our left is a little photo studio for Becca, complete with brand-new digital cameras, charging stations, and a handful of sleek computers used for processing pictures. The center of the room is an elaborate crafts station, full of circular tables, cubbyholes, and cabinets filled with string, beads, leather bands the color of saddles. I spot several dozen laptops for Roberta’s writing classes and a pair of pottery wheels for Paige.
“I’m impressed,” I say. “Franny did a great job fixing this place up.”
“This is all Mindy’s hand
iwork, actually,” Theo tells me. “She’s really thrown herself into reopening the camp.”
“I’m not surprised. She’s certainly—”
“Enthusiastic?”
“I was going to say ‘overwhelming,’ but that works, too.”
Theo leads me to the far end of the room, where a semicircle of easels has been set up. Along one wall is a shelf holding tubes of oil paints and brushes clustered in mason jars. Clean palettes hang next to windows that let in natural light.
I roam the area, fingers trailing over a blank canvas leaning on one of the easels. At the shelf of paints, I see a hundred different colors, all arranged by hue. Lavender and chartreuse, cherry red and royal blue.
“I put your supplies over there,” Theo says, gesturing to the box I brought with me. “I figured you’d want to unpack them yourself.”
Honestly, there’s no need. Everything I could possibly want is already here. Yet I go to the box anyway and start pulling out my personal supplies. The well-worn brushes. The squished tubes of paint. The palette so thoroughly speckled with color that it resembles a Pollock painting.
Theo stands on the other side of the box, watching me unpack. Fading light from the window falls across his face, highlighting something that’s definitely different from fifteen years ago. Something I didn’t notice until just now.
A scar.
Located on his left cheek, it’s an inch-long line that slants toward his mouth. It’s a single shade lighter than the rest of his face, which is why I had missed it earlier. But now that I know it’s there, I can’t stop looking at it. I’m about to ask Theo how he got it when he checks his watch and says, “I need to go help Chet with the campfire. Will I see you there?”
“Of course,” I say. “I never turn down an opportunity to have s’mores.”
“Good. That you’re coming, I mean.” Theo’s departure is hesitant. A slow amble to the door. When he reaches it, he turns around and says, “Hey, Emma.”
I look up from my supplies, the suddenly serious tone of his voice worrying me. I suspect he’s about to mention the last time we saw each other. He’s certainly thinking about it. The tension between us is like a fraying rope, pulled taut, ready to snap.