The Last Time I Lied_A Novel

by Riley Sager

  The red light snaps off.

  I wait five seconds before waving the flashlight over my head.

  The red light flicks on again, triggered by the motion. I assume it does this every time someone enters or exits the cabin.

  I have no idea how long the camera’s been doing this. Or why it’s there. Or if there are others scattered throughout camp. All I know is that Franny or Theo or someone involved with Camp Nightingale decided it was a good idea to keep an eye on the cabin.

  The irony of the situation unsettles me.

  Fifteen years later, I’m the one being watched.

  11

  Inside, I’m unable to go back to sleep. I change into my bathing suit and a brightly patterned silk robe bought during a long-ago trip to Cozumel. I then grab a towel from my trunk and slip quietly out of the cabin. On my way out the door, I will myself not to look at the camera. I don’t want to see its red light switch on. Nor do I want to face the lens’ prying eye. I walk past it quickly, face averted, pretending I don’t know it’s there, just in case someone is watching.

  As I make my way to the lake, I sneak glances at the other cabins, checking for cameras on those as well. I don’t see any. Nor do I see any on the handful of light poles that dully illuminate the pathway into the heart of the camp. Or in the trees.

  I try not to let that worry me.

  At the edge of Lake Midnight, I place the towel on the cracked dirt of the shore, drop the robe, and step gingerly into the water. The lake is cold, bracing. Not at all like the heated pool at the local Y where I swim each morning. Lake Midnight is murkier. Although the water’s only up to my knees, my bare feet look blurred and slightly greenish. When I scoop some into my cupped hands, I see swirling specks of feathery algae.

  Steeling myself with a deep breath, I dive under, kicking hard, arms extended in front of me. I emerge only when my chest starts to tighten, lungs swelling. I then start to cut my way across the lake. Strands of mist hover just above the surface, breaking apart when I burst through them. In the water, yellow perch flee my path, startled.

  I stop once I reach the middle of the lake—probably a quarter mile from shore. I have no idea how deep the water is here. Maybe thirty feet. Maybe a hundred. I think about how everything below me used to be dry land. A valley filled with trees and rocks and animals. All of it is still down there. The trees rotted by water. The stones fuzzy with algae. The animals stripped of their flesh by fish, now nothing but bones.

  Not a comforting thought.

  I think of the story Casey told me. The village still at the bottom of the lake, its skeletal inhabitants tucked in their beds.

  That’s even less comforting.

  Paddling in place, I turn back toward camp. At this hour, it’s quiet and still, bathed in pinkish light from the rising sun that peeks above the mountains to the east. The only activity I see is a solitary figure standing at the dock’s edge, watching me.

  Even from this distance, I know the figure is Becca Schoenfeld. I see the splash of color from the scarf circling her neck and can make out the shape of her camera as she lifts it to her face.

  Becca remains on the dock as I swim back to shore, her camera poised. I try not to feel self-conscious as the staccato clicks of the shutter echo across the water. Instead, I swim harder, increasing my strokes. If Becca’s going to watch, then I’ll give her something worth watching.

  That’s another, different lesson I learned in this lake.

  I get to my feet a few yards from shore and wade the rest of the way. Becca has left the dock and is now directly in front of me, gesturing for me to stop. I indulge her, standing shin-deep in the water as she clicks off a few more shots.

  “Sorry,” she says once she’s finished. “The light was so perfect, I couldn’t resist. Such a beautiful sunrise.”

  She holds the camera in front of me as I dry off, scrolling through the photos. Of the last one, she says, “This one’s the keeper.”

  In the picture, I’ve risen from the lake, water streaming down my body, backlit by the sunrise. I think Becca was going for something fierce and empowering. A woman emerging victorious from the surf, now determined to conquer land. But instead of fierce, I simply look lost. As if I’ve just woken up in the water, confused by how I’d gotten there. It makes me feel so self-conscious that I quickly reach for my robe and wrap it tight around me.

  “Please delete that.”

  “But it looks great.”

  “Fine,” I say. “Just promise me it won’t end up on the cover of National Geographic.”

  We settle onto the grass and stare out at the water, which reflects the pinkish-orange sky so perfectly it’s hard to tell which is which. At least Becca was right about that. The sunrise is indeed beautiful.

  “So you’re an artist,” she says. “I read about your gallery show.”

  “And I’ve seen your photographs.”

  Having stated the obvious, we settle into an awkward silence. I pretend to adjust the sleeves of my robe. Becca fiddles with her camera strap. We both keep an eye on the sunrise, which has now gained a few streaks of gold.

  “I can’t believe I’m back here,” Becca eventually says. “I can’t believe you’re back here.”

  “You and me both.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry for acting weird yesterday. I saw you in the mess hall and momentarily freaked out. I don’t know why.”

  “I do,” I say. “Seeing me brought back a hundred different memories. Some of which you weren’t prepared to face.”

  “Exactly.”

  “It happens all the time to me,” I admit. “Almost nonstop. Everywhere I look, a memory seems to be lurking.”

  “I’m assuming Franny lured you back,” Becca says.

  I nod, even though it’s not entirely the truth.

  “I volunteered,” Becca says. “I mean, I already knew Franny was going to ask. She somehow managed to track me down during one of my rare returns to New York and invited me to lunch. As soon as she started talking about Camp Nightingale, I knew what she had planned. So I jumped at the chance.”

  “I took a little more convincing.”

  “Not me. For the past three years, I’ve been living out of a suitcase. Staying in one place for six weeks definitely had its appeal.” Becca stretches out on the grass, as if to prove how relaxed she truly is. “I don’t even mind that I’m bunking with three teenagers. It’s worth it if I can get a camera into their hands and possibly inspire them. Plus, this feels like a vacation after some of the horrible shit I’ve seen.”

  She lifts her chin to the sunrise and closes her eyes. In that light clenching of her eyelids, I can see that she, too, is haunted by the unknown. The only difference between us is that she’s returned to Camp Nightingale to forget. I’m here to remember.

  “Yesterday, when I saw you in the mess hall, I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Let me guess,” Becca says. “It’s about that summer.”

  I give a curt nod. “Do you remember much?”

  “About the summer or the . . . ?”

  She doesn’t finish her sentence. It’s almost like she’s afraid to utter that final word. I’m not.

  “The disappearance,” I say. “Did you notice anything strange the night before it happened? Or maybe the morning I realized they were gone?”

  A memory arrives. A bad one. Me at the lake, telling Franny that the girls were missing as other campers gathered around. Becca stood in the crowd, watching it all unfold through her camera, the shutter clicking away.

  “I remember you,” she says. “How frantic and scared you were.”

  “Other than that, you don’t recall anything out of the ordinary?”

  “Nope.” The word comes out too fast and pitched too high. Like a chirp. “Nothing.”

  “And how well did you know the girls in my cabi
n?”

  “Allison, Natalie, and Vivian?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “You had all spent the previous summer here. I thought you might have known them.”

  “I didn’t. Not really.”

  “Not even Vivian?” I think of Becca’s warning my first morning at camp. Don’t be fooled. She’ll turn on you eventually. “I thought the two of you might have been friends.”

  “I mean, I knew her,” Becca says. “Everyone here knew Vivian. And everyone had an opinion.”

  “What was the general consensus?”

  “Honestly? That she was kind of a bitch.”

  I flinch at her tone. It’s so surprisingly harsh that no other reaction is appropriate. Becca sees it happen and says, “I’m sorry. That was cruel.”

  “It was,” I say, my voice quiet.

  I expect Becca to backtrack a bit or maybe offer a better apology. Instead, she doubles down. Squaring her shoulders, she flashes me a hard look and says, “Come on, Emma. You don’t need to pretend around me. Vivian doesn’t automatically become a good person just because of what happened to her. I mean, you of all people should know that.”

  She stands and brushes dirt from her shorts. Then she walks away, slowly, silently, not looking back. I remain where I am, contemplating the two truths Becca just revealed to me.

  The first is that she’s right. Vivian wasn’t a good person. Vanishing into thin air doesn’t change that.

  The second is that Becca remembers much more than she’d like to admit.

  FIFTEEN YEARS AGO

  The beach at Camp Nightingale—a combination of sand and pebbles strewn along a patch of Lake Midnight decades earlier—felt as uncomfortable as it looked. Not even spreading two towels on top of each other could completely dull the prodding of the stones below. Still, I grinned and tried to bear it as I watched waves of campers tiptoe into the water.

  Although all four of us had changed into our bathing suits, only Natalie and Allison joined the others in the lake. Natalie swam like the natural athlete she was, using hard, long strokes to easily make it to the string of foam buoys marking the area no one was allowed to swim past. Allison was more of a show-off, somersaulting in the water like a synchronized swimmer.

  I remained on shore, nervous in my modest one-piece swimsuit. Vivian sat behind me, coating my shoulders with Coppertone, its coconut scent sickeningly sweet.

  “It’s criminal how pretty you are,” she said.

  “I don’t feel pretty.”

  “But you are,” Vivian said. “Hasn’t your mother ever told you that?”

  “My mother gives me as little attention as possible. Same thing with my dad.”

  Vivian clucked with sympathy. “That sounds just like my parents. I’m surprised I didn’t die of neglect as a newborn. But my sister and I learned how to fend for ourselves. She’s the one who made me realize how pretty I was. Now I’ll do the same for you.”

  “I’m far from pretty.”

  “You are,” Vivian insisted. “And in a year or two, you’ll be gorgeous. I can tell. Do you have a boyfriend back home?”

  I shook my head, knowing how I was all but invisible to the boys in my neighborhood. I was among the last of the late bloomers. Flat as cardboard. No one paid attention to cardboard.

  “That’ll change,” Vivian said. “You’ll snag yourself a hottie like Theo.”

  She gestured to the lifeguard stand a few feet away, where Theo sat in red swim trunks, the whistle roped around his neck nestled in his chest hair. Every time I looked at him, which was often, I tried not to think about that morning at the latrine. Watching him. Wanting him. Instead, it was all I could think about.

  “Why aren’t you in the water?” he called down to us.

  “No reason,” Vivian said.

  “I don’t know how to swim,” I said.

  A grin spread across Theo’s face. “That’s quite a coincidence. One of my goals today is to teach someone.”

  He hopped down from the lifeguard stand and, before I could protest, took my hand and led me to the water. I paused when my feet touched the mossy rocks at the lake’s edge. They were slick, which made me worry that I’d slip and plunge under. The dirty look of the water only heightened my anxiety. Bits of brown stuff floated just below the surface. When some touched my ankle, I recoiled.

  Theo tightened his grip around my hand. “Relax. A little algae never hurt anyone.”

  He guided me deeper into the lake, the water rising against me in increments. To my knees. Then to my thighs. Soon I was up to my waist, the chill of the water leaving me momentarily breathless. Or maybe it wasn’t the water. Maybe it was the way Theo’s broad shoulders glowed in the late June sun. Or the way his crooked smile widened when I took another, unprompted step deeper into the water.

  “Awesome, Em,” he said. “You’re doing great. But you need to relax more. The water is your friend. Let it hold you up.”

  Without warning, he slid behind me and scooped me up in his arms. One wrapped around my back. The other slid behind my knees. The areas where his skin touched mine became instantly hot, as if electricity coursed through them.

  “Close your eyes,” he said.

  I closed them as he lowered me into the lake until I couldn’t tell the difference between his arms and the water. When I opened my eyes, I saw him standing next to me, arms crossed. I was on my own, letting the water hold me up.

  Theo grinned, his eyes sparkling. “You, my dear, are floating.”

  Just then, noise rippled across the lake. Splashing. Urgent and panicked. A couple of girls in the deep end began to shriek, their arms flapping against the water like ducks unable to take flight. Beyond them, I saw a pair of hands rising and falling from the lake’s surface, waving frantically, water flinging off the fingertips. A face poked out of the drink, gasped, slipped back under.

  Vivian.

  Theo left my side and surged toward her. Without him near me, I sank into the water, dropping until I hit the lake bed. I began to paddle, guided by instinct more than anything else, clawing at the water until my nose and mouth broke the surface. I continued to paddle and kick until, lo and behold, I was swimming.

  I kept at it, looking across the water first to Vivian, still flailing, and then to Natalie and Allison, who bobbed in place, frozen with fear, their faces suddenly pale. I watched them watch Theo as he reached Vivian and clamped an arm around her waist. He swam to shore that way, not stopping until both of their backs were on the pebble-specked beach.

  Vivian coughed once, and a bubble of lake water spurted from her throat. Tears streamed down her crimson cheeks.

  “I-I don’t know what happened,” she said, gasping. “I went under and couldn’t come up. I thought I was going to die.”

  “You would have if I hadn’t been here,” Theo said, anger peeking through his exhaustion. “Jesus, Viv, I thought you could swim.”

  Vivian sat up and shook her head, still crying. “I thought I’d try after watching you teach Emma. You made it look so easy.”

  Standing a few yards away from them was Becca. Her camera hung from her neck even though she was wearing a bathing suit. She clicked off a picture of Vivian sprawled on shore. Then she turned to the lake, picking me out of the crowd of still-stunned campers paddling in the water. She smiled and mouthed four words, each of them silent but unmistakable.

  I told you so.

  12

  I remain on the beach until reveille blasts from the ancient speaker atop the mess hall. The music rushes past me and across the lake, its sound skimming the water on its way to the far shore. The first full day of camp has begun.

  Again.

  Rather than battle a horde of teenage girls for space in the latrine, I shuffle to the mess hall, shy in my damp robe and clacking flip-flops. It’s mostly empty, thank God. Nobody but me and the kitchen workers. One of
them—a guy with dark hair and a patchy goatee—checks me out for half a second before turning away.

  I ignore him and grab a doughnut, a banana, and a cup of coffee. The banana is consumed quickly. The doughnut not so much. Each bite brings a flash of Vivian squinting, her lips pursed. Her disapproving look. I set down the doughnut, sigh, pick it up, and shove what’s left into my mouth. I wash it down with the coffee, pleased with my fifteen-years-too-late defiance.

  My walk back to Dogwood is spent swimming against the tide of campers making their way to the mess hall. All of them are freshly scrubbed, trailing scents behind them. Baby powder. Noxzema. Shampoo that smells like strawberries.

  One scent cuts through the others. Something thick and flowery. Perfume.

  But not just any old perfume.

  Obsession.

  Vivian wore it, spritzing it on her neck and wrists twice a day. Once in the morning. Once in the afternoon. The scent used to fill the cabin, lingering there long after she had departed.

  Now I get that same feeling. Like she’s just been here, leaving only her scent behind. I spin among the stream of girls, searching for her in the departing crowd, knowing she’s not there but looking anyway. I reach for my bracelet and tap a pewter beak. Just in case.

  The girls surge forward, taking the perfume scent with them. Left behind is a clammy sensation on the back of my neck. It makes me shiver as I stop into Dogwood to grab my clothes for the day. I sniff the air for traces of perfume, detecting nothing but the tang of someone’s deodorant.

  In the latrine, I spot Miranda, Krystal, and Sasha amid the morning stragglers at the sinks. Miranda stares in the mirror, fussing with her hair. Beside her, Sasha says, “Can we go now? I’m starving.”

  “Just a second.” Miranda gives her hair one last flip. “There. Now we may go.”

  I give them a wave on my way to the shower stalls, all but one of which are in use. The empty stall is the last one in the row. Like the others, it’s a cubicle of cedar walls and a door of smoked glass. A pinpoint of white light glows in the center of that door. Behind me, a similar light peeks through a crack in the cedar wall.