Endangered

1. Camp Atonement

Camp Atonement

Church folks stretched forgiveness over the rotten bloat of their sins as if words alone could conceal infidelity and murder and lies without a shred of consequence. Forgiveness was freedom. Resentment invited the devil. Temptation only preyed upon the innocent.

Bullshit.

A chunk of time-scarred wood broke free in Marlowe’s hand as she shoved the rowboat into dark water. Flecks of white paint clung to her chapped-red knuckles and she wiped them on her shorts before hoisting herself into the spongy rot of the boat.

Marlowe didn't believe in the power of forgiveness any more than she believed she was a serial killer. Mosquitoes were the only critters she murdered, the only trophies she kept were from her cereal boxes, and Heather was the only dead body she was going to leave at the bottom of Pike’s Lake.

On the shoreline, Heather stood in white pajamas under the full moon, thin arms crossed over the empty outlines of tiny red hearts.

In the month since Marlowe had seen her last, summer had burned the ghost from Heather’s milky skin and splashed sunspots across her narrow nose.

Her brunette hair curled in the July heat, wisps escaping a ribbon and catching in the wide corners of her hazel eyes.

Heather didn’t look like the face of evil.

But Heather was the kind of evil whose breath reeked of bake-sale cookies and hollow prayers, whose own cowardice made her the devil. Heather was the quiet kind of devil, the worst kind, consuming in the dark what she hated in the morning.

“The camp closed after the flood this time.” Heather always had a syrupy sweet drip to her voice, like she’d been created for campfire songs instead of ragged moans in a dive bar bathroom.

Tonight her tone ran cool. She shifted side to side in her sandals.

“We really shouldn’t be out here either.

Fish and Wildlife closed the lake off within the first week after a few of our kids found a trumpeter swan nest.”

Our kids.

As if Counselor Heather, who’d done fuckall when the camp was caught in a freak flood last week, could possibly care enough about the poor little shits shipped off to Bible camp to call them our kids.

“After dark the rules don’t matter so much.” Humidity plastered Marlowe’s kitchen-scissor bangs to her forehead as she jammed the second oar into the lock. She shook the rest of her dirty-blonde hair away from the nape of her neck.

Irregular night shifts at the hospital packed bruised bags under her sunken eyes and sent veins webbing through the white skin of her muscled thighs. Marlowe felt as she always had in Heather’s presence: inferior, bitter, sweaty.

Before Marlowe knew she liked girls, she’d thought her childish feelings were envy.

She wished for her hair to be darker, puffed out her hollow cheeks in the damp-concrete stench of the camp bathroom, stared at herself in the cracked mirror until a spider crawled across her reflection and her eyes went bloodshot.

She swore she saw green and gold flecks hidden in the warm brown iris.

Anything to be special.

Anything to be like Heather.

Anything to have Heather as her own.

Marlowe’s life only went to shit when Heather wanted her back.

Heather took Marlowe’s offered hand and stepped into the boat, balancing between the wooden ribs.

9 years ago a camp counselor had helped Marlowe launch the same boat from the other side of the deep lake—the Camp Atonement side, where Bibles were as important as bug spray, and scripture readings, not s’mores, were a requirement.

Camp had been fun, in the childlike way where revival was normal on Friday nights and boys and girls were always separated for reasons explained as vague temptation.

Back then, Marlowe knew girls were supposed to like boys, and she did—even if most of the ones from camp grew up with aspirations no bigger than to cheat on their wife and get away with it by having their congregation pray over their sacred marriage.

The first girl Marlowe had ever liked sat gingerly in the bow across from her, tucking her sandaled feet away from the sludgy pool of water in the bottom.

Heather twisted a limp chestnut brown curl between her fingers and pursed her lips.

“They let us stay in the cabins even after the flood. You could have come there instead of making me walk all the way here. At least we were in the rec room when I got your call,” she added, as if Marlowe didn’t already know the counselors played Clue in the rec room every night.

Miss Marlowe, with the Knife, in the Boat. She could have smiled, if nerves weren’t grinding her teeth. “It’s too risky.”

“We’re technically trespassing. My cabin would’ve been better.”

“Technically, I don’t give a fuck.” Smooth wood grew sticky under Marlowe’s palms and she adjusted her grip on the oars, pulling them back on course for the lake center. “This won’t take long.”

The boat drifted through ghostly waterlilies, broad leaves reducing their pace to a sluggish crawl. She tempered her breathing, gaze fixed on the pines jutting along the shoreline. The cloying scent of earthen rot from the rowboat crawled into the back of her mouth and burrowed into her throat.

Last week, when their flooded town reeked of decomposing leaves and bloated fish, Marlowe had finally given in to the grudge she’d held since cabin 13 that clung to her like the rotten memories.

The mildewed sweetness of clothes left in the washer too long still made her skin itch, and Marlowe hadn’t been able to take a bath for weeks after she smelled mold in her bathroom pipes.

Dealing with it at work was easier. She could burn away the flood of memories with industrial-grade sanitizers and the stench of antiseptic as she mopped up patient rooms.

“You’re acting weird.” The red ribbon in Heather’s hair fluttered stiffly behind her.

“Tired. Got called in last night.” It wasn’t a total lie—Mercy Hospital had needed everyone from clinical staff to cleaners when a speedboat drunkenly slammed into the old bridge downtown, leaving six cars and ten casualties in its wake—but it wasn’t the truth either.

The hospital knew better than to call her in for a boat accident.

Marlowe had stayed home in her bland little apartment and ran through scenarios of tonight, the night she was going to kill the woman she had the misfortune of knowing better than the rust spots on her `58 Chevy.

There were a dozen ways Marlowe could have done it, and a hundred more preferable than being in open water; but it was only right Heather’s headstone also guarded an empty grave.

Sharp, black spruce trees melted into blurred darkness behind them and tucked-away frogs in the bulrushes resumed their incessant trilling.

Despite the heavy stillness, waves licked hungrily at the boatside, jostling her as she rummaged in her rucksack.

Flashlight, knife for killing Heather, pack of cigarettes.

Marlowe’s holy trinity for tonight.

Their boat drifted as she slipped a cigarette in the corner of her mouth and found her lighter in the bottom of her pack. The small weight of the swirled silver comforted her, even though she told herself she didn’t need it.

Rolling paper and tobacco sparked under her lighter flame, and Marlowe desperately sucked in mint smoke. Heather pursed her lips.

“I know what you’re gonna say, so don’t,” she mumbled around the cigarette.

“Businesses have started making people smoke outside now. It’s a changing time, Marlowe.”

She spread her hands, casting a look across the dark lake. “Good thing we’re outside.”

Heather said nothing, like she always did.

On the other side of Pike’s Lake squatted the dilapidated cabin they had locked Marlowe in as Heather had said nothing. Camp Atonement assumed her silence meant forgiveness for the wicked, wicked girl who had stolen a kiss from her.

Marlowe knew Heather’s silence was regret.

After camp, after everything, Heather was still there, smothering her remorse in dropped notes and corner phone calls, as if every hidden night she spent with Marlowe could erase her shame and lies.

Nine years of hate sex harbored in sketchy motels and forest roads had done nothing to dampen the coal of resentment blistering in Marlowe’s chest.

Thoughts of leaving had plagued her since the first time they’d fucked on a blanket yanked from Marlowe’s truck in a fevered haze, the scratchy wool scented with the pungent lotion Heather smeared herself with. She still used the same lotion now.

Pine and vanilla fingerprints clung to Marlowe’s chapped hands in a greasy film, bitter on her lips, her tongue.

Heather was a mark Marlowe could scrub from her body until it was raw, but she’d still feel hands on her ribs, taste her after she swallowed a swig of alcohol mouthwash and retched into the sink.

And when she couldn’t get rid of Heather’s memory and rubbed the same thick, sticky lotion into her body until she writhed under the phantom touch, Marlowe gagged on her own fingers and wished they were Heather’s.

Addiction was dangerous.

Heather was fatal.

“Can I have one?” Heather suddenly held out her hand, beckoning at the pack on Marlowe’s bare thigh next to the balancing lighter.

“You’ve never smoked.” Still, she slid her one and Heather took it, pressing it between her lips, and leaned in.

Her breath ghosted across Marlowe’s cheek and she could almost taste the shitty, burned camp coffee. Black, no sugar. Heather would’ve sipped her coffee in cabin 9, on the porch, in a tin mug etched with Camp Atonement.

They puffed until red smoldered at the ends and Marlowe was sure Heather could smell the nervous sweat rolling off her. Tapped-off ash fell to the bottom of the boat.

Heather leaned back and took a long drag. She didn’t cough. “You said you wanted to talk. So let’s talk.”

In the oppressive stillness, Marlowe’s hair smothered her shoulders. Her rucksack leaned heavily against her feet and Marlowe knew once she pulled her knife out, there was no—

A brassy sound scraped through the air.