1. Camp Atonement #2
Marlowe flinched. Her lighter tinked off the boat-edge into the water.
“Shit.” Laughter garbled in her throat, forced past her thudding heartbeat.
She caught a flash of amusement from Heather. “The swans have been restless since the flood.”
Marlowe had always thought trumpeter swans were supposed to sound like what they’d been named after. This one was different, rusty and high-pitched, like a solitary metal chair dragged across stone.
Stalling, Marlowe dug through her rucksack, hunched over and sheltered from the fading light as thick clouds chased the full moon.
She tucked her blade underneath the bag, safe until she needed it, and emerged with her flashlight.
They were in the center of the lake, and her lighter was probably long gone, but Marlowe still swept her light over the edge of the boat. The weak beam flashed across algae instead of open water.
Sunken, milky eyes looked back at her.
Marlowe’s breath stuttered.
A fish, scales dried up and peeling, lay caught on the algae mat surrounding the boat.
Feathers dotted the stagnant sludge, caught in pustules like flies feeding on a disease that had rotted the lake into something unfamiliar.
If the water was this warm, Heather’s body would be recovered by next week.
“When did the algae bloom start?” Marlowe flipped the light to Heather.
She blinked. “The director hasn’t mentioned it. The flood might have disturbed the water.”
“It’s weird, isn’t it?”
“So is you wanting to talk,” Heather said, her voice gaining an edge. “So talk, Marlowe. We don’t want to be caught out here in the storm.”
The harsh flashlight beam carved shadows into her eyes and sharpened the angles of her prim mouth.
Marlowe suddenly had a feeling the knife wouldn’t be enough.
They were on Heather’s ground.
Heather’s camp.
In the boat they hid together their second summer at camp, before teenage foolishness and pious hatred had ended their adventures.
And as Heather smiled, cigarette held neatly in the V of her fingers, Marlowe decided she didn’t know Heather half as well as she thought.
The boat hull shuddered and scraped into something under the surface. They were in the middle of the lake. The lake had always been too deep in the center for rocks, too cold for mats of pondweed.
A wave slapped the side of the boat, spraying her with stinking lake water. Strings of algae clung to her thigh.
Marlowe should do it now. Now, before Heather talked her out of it with that sickly-sweet tone.
“You didn’t tell them it was you.” Marlowe could taste rot now. Coating her tongue, seeping into her skin from the mold-flecked, soggy wooden bench. “You didn’t tell them you asked me to.”
“You’re bringing up cabin 13? That’s what you wanted to talk about?” Heather laughed harshly and stretched her legs out, slender ankles flashing underneath the outline of red hearts. “Really, Marlowe. It was just a kiss.”
Marlowe’s palm itched, the handle of the knife burning into her foot.
Just a kiss.
Waves bashed against the hull. Droplets spattered her hair. Wind had to be pushing waves from the far side. The air pressing down on her was stiff and heavy.
The rusty-chair shriek of the swan’s call echoed faintly from the shoreline.
“You could have stopped it,” Marlowe said.
Heather’s regret had only lasted until the summer after Camp Atonement, in `73.
Heather had found Marlowe at the park, and she’d tasted like sour candy when they kissed under the blistering metal slide.
She’d kissed Marlowe a second time when she brought up cabin 13, and they never spoke of it again.
Marlowe had wanted to leave for the last 9 years, the last hundred times they’d met—and fucked—and she got so close each time, and every damn time, Heather sweetly reeled Marlowe in with the empty promise of change.
“I had everything to lose. Your parents still loved you. You were fine.” Heather, relaxed, poised, took a delicate drag. “Are you ending this arrangement?” Marlowe could feel herself slipping now. She couldn’t. This had to be it. She had to be done.
“Yes.” Marlowe swallowed hard, saliva thick and tobacco-bitter, and flicked the rest of her cigarette into the lake. She smoothed her left hand over the oar handle, her right dangling above her knife.
Heather smiled like her skin hurt and she enjoyed the stretch of it over her skull.
“You don’t want to do this, Marlowe. You don’t want this.
” She stubbed the cigarette out under the oarlock, and residual heat blistered Marlowe’s fingertips.
“Does Mercy Hospital know what kind of company their staff keeps?”
A deafening noise roared in Marlowe’s ears.
They’d believe Heather.
Mercy Hospital never let their reputation be tarnished by infidelity or drug scandals, but they considered homosexuality a blight to be burned out of their organization at the first whisper.
Everyone had always believed Heather.
The knife’s handle warmed as she closed her hand around it. Marlowe’s elbow jolted the flashlight next to her as her muscles twitched and its yellow beam skittered across the water.
Nestled in the algae mats, a swan watched.
Marlowe’s lighter bulged in its throat, silver-scrolled metal blinking through its open beak.