The Lake

by Natasha Preston

  “I agree.” I turn to him. “Kayla too…and Jake?”

  Olly subtly shakes his head. Does Jake not know about this? He was there the night of the fire, but Olly said Jake didn’t see anything, that he called Olly from somewhere deeper in the woods. Maybe Olly never told him. But then why did Jake agree to lie about how long he’s known Olly?

  “All right,” I whisper, nipping off a chunk of croissant.

  “Morning, campers,” Andy says as he enters the food hall with way too much energy for someone rolling on one hour’s sleep.

  I’m a zombie.

  Olly and I exchange a tired glance.

  “Who’s ready for music and swimming?”

  Not me.

  The campers cheer, and I wince.

  No one is particularly hyped about walking the trails anymore, so we’ve been keeping close to camp. This week, we’re supposed to camp out in shelters we make ourselves. No freaking way.

  It’s on Andy’s color-coordinated schedule that he printed for counselors and CITs. I want to scribble crosses all over it like the creepy dolls’ eyes.

  I don’t know if he’s thrown the dolls away yet or if he plans to store them. I couldn’t care less about that, what I want to know is why Lillian put them in the lake. What kind of mind thinks that up? It’s sick.

  I pick at my food.

  “You tired, Esme?” Rebekah asks.

  Are you?

  Tia must sleep like the dead if she’s not waking up every time Rebekah sneaks out of their room and back in.

  I have the upper hand here. Rebekah doesn’t know that I’ve found out she’s Lillian’s accomplice.

  “I’m fine,” I reply with a smile. I probably look like I’ve been drugged.

  She knows I’m not fine because she knows that I was outside removing the dolls from the lake. But neither of us can admit it.

  We have to keep on playing the game.

  “I’m going to go find the particular guitar that Ellen likes.” Rebekah rolls her eyes. “She doesn’t do well if she doesn’t get that one.”

  “I’ll come with,” Tia says. “I need the bathroom before the campers make my ears bleed.”

  My eyes slide to Jake. He’s still lying too.

  Why, though? I guess he doesn’t know that Olly told me the truth.

  But why would he need to lie about where he’s from in the first place?

  It doesn’t make sense.

  There is something I’m missing, or rather something Olly hasn’t revealed yet.

  I watch Rebekah and Tia leave, and then I turn to Olly. It’s on the tip of my tongue. I’d love to grill them both on why they lied.

  “Let’s go, man,” Jake says to Olly. “I need to piss.”

  Lovely.

  Olly doesn’t look at me when he leaves with Jake, but he does chuck a “see you later” over his shoulder.

  Is he mad at me again?

  We were fine when we left for bed…I think. It was early and I was tired. Am I forgetting another argument we had?

  “Something wrong?” Kayla asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  She glares. “Yes you do. Fill me in.”

  “I’m not sure that now is a good time. We’re in a room full of people.”

  “No one else is at our table and no one is paying us any attention.”

  “I bet the diva inside of you is so mad about that fact.”

  Narrowing her eyes, Kayla replies, “Shut it.”

  Shuffling closer, I lower my voice. “Okay, so last night was…eventful. I woke up in the early morning because of a loud noise. Olly did too. We found a dead deer in the food hall.”

  “What? In here?”

  “Yep.”

  “Like, it had died in here?”

  “No, like Lillian had killed it and dumped it here. We’re sitting quite close to where it was, actually.”

  Her pink-painted lips part.

  “It was bleeding. Olly, Andy and I cleaned it up and put the deer in some bushes in the forest. When we came back, there were initials written in blood on the floor. You can probably guess which ones.”

  “LC,” Kayla breathes. “Oh my God! Well, she does have a thing about deer.”

  I shudder, not wanting to think about that. “When we were all going back to bed, we saw five dolls floating in the lake.”

  Her eyes widen, but I don’t slow down, because I’m on a roll.

  “We got them out, and four had crosses drawn over their eyes, Andy hid them, and we went through the staff files. Kayla, I found out that Rebekah lives in town. Which means she lied about where she’s from. She’s definitely helping Lillian.

  “Oh, and Olly admitted that he and Jake are from one town over. They were in the woods the night of the fire and Olly saw everything, including Lillian get burned by the fire.”

  “What?” Kayla hisses. “Are you…What? Last night? This all happened last night?”

  “I finally got to bed at, like, six in the morning and had just under an hour of broken sleep. Tonight you and I have to sneak out and go into town.”

  “What? No way.”

  “Yes way, and we have to do it without anyone else. Just me and you.”

  She pales. “In the forest at night?”

  “You up for it?”

  “Not a chance, Esme,” she replies, her voice thick with fear.

  I raise my eyebrows. “We have to, Kayla. We need to end this.”

  We have to find Rebekah’s house. I have the feeling that if we do, we’re going to find Lillian.

  45

  Kayla is so not down with the idea of us sneaking through the woods alone at night while two people try to ruin our lives.

  Can’t think why.

  I’m not entirely sure why I want to go. All I can think is that I’m so exhausted, I’m delirious. That’s the only excuse for what I’m about to do.

  I’m not ready to face the very real possibility that I’ll be doing this alone tonight. I could take Olly. He would come, I know that for sure, but there is something about his secret childhood home that bothers me. And the fact that he and Jake are still pretending they don’t know each other is shady and crazy suspicious.

  I paddle in the edge of the cool lake, trying to keep myself awake by picturing all the ways Lillian could screw with me in the forest tonight. The sun shines brightly over camp as if it has no clue of the darkness lurking here.

  Kayla is near but she hasn’t said much to me since I told her I want us to go into town.

  Nothing like fear to keep you alert.

  My group is in the water and being taught by the swim instructors.

  If they find a sunken doll, I’m going to throw up.

  “How are you?” Andy asks, stopping dead in front of me. One more step and he’d be in the water. He’s possibly paler than me this morning. But I think I win with the dark circles under my eyes.

  I saw him walking around the lake with his clipboard earlier. He looked like he was checking things off, making sure equipment was safe and everything was in order. But I think he was actually looking for Lillian.

  She won’t be here now. Not after last night. She knows we’re even more on edge, that we’ll be watching like hawks.

  “Exhausted but okay. You?”

  He nods. “About the same. Who does something like this to a camp of kids?”

  “There are a lot of crazy people out there, Andy.”

  “Yeah, no kidding. I just want to go to the police, but I’m too scared that this LC will realize what we’re doing and react.” He sighs and moves on, stopping by the kayaks and pretending to check them over.

  Kayla grabs my hand. “Okay, my head is going to explode, and I’m still worried that you want to go back into town. Jake is being his usual sweet
self to me, and I don’t know how to be around him now that I know he’s lying.”

  “Slow down, you really are going to explode.”

  “I can’t believe he and Olly were there that night.”

  I nod. “Me neither. You know, there is one thing that is still bothering me.”

  “One thing?”

  Rolling my eyes, I clarify, “Okay, one new thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why are we all here? Lillian didn’t just luck out that the three of us who were there that night are here now. I think she set this up.”

  Kayla frowns. “You’re beyond obsessed with this, Esme.”

  Oh, I’m so far past obsessed it’s not even funny. “How are you not? She’s been stalking us and threatening the whole camp. Now we have an address. We know who her BFF is.”

  “We think we know.”

  I raise one eyebrow. “I have Rebekah’s address! She’s from town.”

  Kayla’s doing that thing again where she tries to deny the truth, and it’s infuriating.

  My chest burns. “Rebekah is the definition of BS. Look it up. Are you coming with me tonight or not?”

  Kayla twirls her long ponytail around one finger. “Well, I can’t let you go alone, can I?”

  “You could. Maybe that would be better, actually. Yeah, I could swipe two radios from Andy’s office, and you could keep watch. It’s a bad idea for both of us to go.”

  “You’re not going alone.”

  “I need you here. If Lillian thinks we’re here she won’t go looking for me. It’s our night to be outside, unless Andy orders another freaking lockdown.”

  She opens her mouth to challenge me.

  “Kayla, you know I’m right.”

  “Will you at least take Olly?”

  “Hell no.”

  “It’s him or me.”

  I roll my eyes. “We’ll discuss this later, but I don’t think Jake and Olly need to know any more than they do already.”

  “So it’s all on me and you.”

  Now we’re a team, huh?

  “That’s the way it’s been from the start, Kayla. This is our responsibility.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “That doesn’t mean we’re not to blame. We didn’t help Lillian.”

  “Because she was crazy and we were scared.”

  That’s not a very good excuse.

  We’ll end up going around in circles if we keep talking. “Whatever. You should get back to the beach, your group is playing.”

  With a huff, she wanders off, whipping her hair the way mean girls in movies do. She’s really playing the part now that she’s dating the quarterback.

  I’ve annoyed her. She wants a say in what happens next, but she doesn’t want to step up and try to figure this out.

  If she’s not with me, then she can’t make any demands. I’m going into town tonight and she can stay here. And I’m not going to think about it so that I can’t talk myself out of it. All I know is that I can’t keep doing this.

  “Esme, can I have a word?” Olly asks.

  Cora looks up from where she’s standing waist-deep near the girls. “Take ten, Esme, I’ve got this.”

  Well, I can’t say no now.

  I give her a tight smile. “Thanks.”

  Slipping my flip-flops on as I step out of the lake, I ask, “You want to walk?”

  “Let’s go to the food hall instead. I told Andy I would get the snacks ready for after the activity.”

  “Okay.”

  We walk up the steps and into the kitchen.

  “What are we having?”

  “Orange wedges, watermelon, crackers and yogurt are on Andy’s list.” Olly holds up a piece of paper with today’s snack highlighted in case Olly didn’t see the date beside it.

  I bet Andy’s never been late or unorganized in his life. Lillian is really messing with his order.

  “I’ll grab the fruit. Can you get the rest?” I ask.

  “Uh-huh.”

  We work in silence at first. Olly glances at me occasionally as I slice oranges into wedges.

  “What did you find?” he asks.

  “Sorry?”

  “Last night, in the files. What did you find?”

  I put the knife down. “What do you mean? We didn’t find anything.”

  His eyes narrow. “Esme.”

  “Can we please not have the same argument over and over? I didn’t find anything. But while we’re talking, do you want to go into more detail about why you and Jake lied about knowing each other? It can’t just be because you were there the night of the fire. Why have you never said anything about knowing me? Didn’t you think it was weird that we all just happened to be back at camp at the same time?”

  He chucks the box of crackers down on the countertop and turns away from me.

  “You’ll think whatever the hell you want anyway, so forget it, Esme.”

  I watch with my mouth catching flies as he shoves the door open and storms out of the kitchen.

  46

  I used to love the mystery of night.

  Things can exist in the dark that can’t in the light. Elves and unicorns could be running around for all we know.

  No, I haven’t lost it. I know logically that’s not true, but if you can’t see something, then how can you be sure it doesn’t exist?

  Five-year-old me loved the thought of her toys coming alive at night and mythical creatures flying around outside.

  It’s not such a fun thought anymore. Not since I know what is lurking in the dark.

  I’m currently sitting around a campfire listening to a conversation about football. I like football as much as the next nonobsessive American, but I don’t want to spend hours talking about it.

  I tap my fingers against my soda can and wish everyone else would get up and do something else. When we break off and go our own ways, I can get away. The radio is in my pocket already and Kayla has one too.

  While Andy was briefing everyone, I swiped two radios from the staff cabin. It was embarrassingly easy to do. I can see how Lillian managed to get keys.

  Olly watches me from the other side of the fire.

  I don’t know what he’s thinking, but we’re still in a fight. Usually, he would be sitting next to me. Tonight, however, he sat as far away from me as he could.

  His little tantrum over my simple question hasn’t been forgotten. I still have a lot of questions and he clearly doesn’t want to answer any of them. There has to be a reason for that.

  “Why is he staring?” Kayla asks, looking anywhere but at the boys across from us.

  I shrug, not really in the mood to talk to her about it. “I don’t know, but it’s starting to freak me out. He’s going to have to find something else to look at if I want to get away.”

  “You remember at school when you needed to call your cousin about Bieber concert tickets, so I told the teacher you were about to hurl? She let you go to the bathroom.”

  “Please don’t tell everyone I’m about to hurl.”

  She laughs. “I just mean I’ve got your back.” She takes a breath. “You have to be careful out there, Esme.”

  Kayla will always be my best friend, and I love her, but she is blowing so hot and cold at the moment. I don’t know how much I can rely on her.

  “I’ll be careful. This could all be over tonight.”

  Sighing, she looks up at the sky. “I hope so. I hate being scared.”

  “We’re going to be fine.”

  “I can’t die,” she whispers, curling her hands into fists.

  “You’re not going to die.” I can practically see her heart rate spike. “Kayla, it’s going to be all right, I promise.”

  She purses her lips, and I know she’s th
inking of her grandma. It was awful. Kayla watched her nana die in that car and thought she was next.

  Taking a deep breath, she gets up and plasters on a big smile. “Okay, let’s end this tonight.”

  We both raise our hands in a little wave at the same time.

  A wave of nausea almost makes me double over.

  “We’re going to bed, guys,” I say, rising to my feet.

  Olly looks up at me with a slight frown, but he says, “Night,” with everyone else.

  Kayla and I tiptoe through the main room where the girls are sleeping and into our room.

  I pull the door closed and turn to her. “Right, I’ll go out of the window. They won’t see me from this side of the cabin.”

  Kayla’s eyes dart from the door to the window. “Please, please, please be careful.”

  “I’ll be fine. Rebekah is out there with the rest of them.”

  “You still think she’s involved?”

  “Hopefully we’ll know soon.”

  “Should I go back out and make sure she doesn’t leave?”

  “Nah, I don’t think she’s going anywhere tonight. She’s been yawning for the last hour.” I’m still tired from the never-ending deer-and-doll night too.

  Let’s not think about that.

  “I’ll keep watch out the window and see if she sneaks off,” Kayla says.

  If Rebekah does sneak off, Kayla will see her from our bedroom.

  “Radio me if she does. Like the very second, but use a code word in case any of the girls from the main room hear.”

  “What code word?”

  “Er…clover.”

  Kayla scrunches up her face. “That lucky weed?”

  “I need all the luck I can get.”

  “Okay. I’ll say ‘clover’ if I see Rebekah heading your way.”

  I open the window, haul myself up and swing my legs out. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  “Careful, Esme.”

  “That’s my middle name.”

  “Your middle name is Mallory and it means ‘unfortunate one’!”

  It’s a family middle name. We haven’t all been unfortunate. Just me, actually.

  I wave my hand, dismissing her. “See you soon.”

  Dropping to the ground, I watch Kayla close the window, and then I creep through bushes to meet the little trail into town.