Chapter 7
A note was passed to me during the following morning's first activity, delivered via an eleven-year-old who clearly felt very important for having been entrusted with it.
The building that housed the director's accommodation and staff offices was older than the rest of the camp; the kind of structure that had been added to and modified over decades without ever quite cohering into a single architectural vision.
The senior counselors' office was the second door on the left of the main hallway, and it was slightly ajar.
I was about to knock when I heard Sutton's voice, followed by another one I recognized as belonging to another Legacy girl named Delia. Their conversation sounded a little heated, so I stopped and drew back a couple of steps. Part of me didn’t want to intrude, and another part of me was simply curious.
“I already told you. That note was a stupid prank,” Sutton said. “It’s just like Rhys said last night.”
“But what if it wasn’t? What if someone really knows?”
Sutton scoffed. “How?”
“One of the others could’ve said something.”
“Why would they?” Sutton's voice had an edge to it now. “I mean, come on, Dee. Nobody would ever do that, because it would turn out just as bad for them as it would for us. So we really don’t need to worry.”
I took another step back from the door, placing my feet with careful deliberateness to avoid the floorboards creaking, and stood there in the dim corridor with my pulse racing.
What if someone really knows? Delia had asked.
Knows what, exactly? I had to wonder. And who are the others she referred to before?
As I took another step backward, one of the floorboards creaked despite my best efforts to be careful.
“I think someone’s coming,” Delia said in a hushed voice.
Unless I wanted to be caught eavesdropping, I knew I had to approach right now, as if I’d really just arrived. I stepped forward and rapped on the semi-open door. “Sutton? I got your note.”
“Come in,” she replied breezily.
I pushed the door all the way open and stepped in with a polite smile. Delia gave me a tight smile of her own and stepped past me into the hall.
“We’ll talk more about that dietary requirement thing later,” Sutton called after her. Then she turned her attention to me. “Take a seat, Alissa.”
I did as she said, and she sat across from me.
“You’re not in trouble, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said, arching a perfectly shaped brow. “In fact, everyone says you’ve been doing well so far. The kids really seem to like you.”
“Oh. Good.”
“Anyway, I called you in here because it turns out your theory was dead on,” she said. She paused, unlocked her phone, and handed it to me. “Piper sent me this text last night.”
I scanned the message.
Hey, girl. So sorry for disappearing without a word.
I really thought I could do it, but being back here after last year…
I just can’t. So I called Ian and he came to get me.
I’m staying at his place in Saranac Lake for now, just trying to clear my head.
I’ll come back to visit you at camp in a few days before I head back to the city.
I promise. Please don’t hate me! Sorry again. Xx
“So, yeah… she’s not coming back. At least not to work,” Sutton said as I handed the phone back. She set it face-down on the desk with a small sigh. “That means we’re short a counselor. And that means throwing you in the deep end.”
“How so?” I asked, tilting my head.
“Well, standard practice with new counselors is to keep them on lighter activities for the first couple of weeks, just to ease them into things and give them a good idea of how it all works,” she said.
“But with Piper gone, her spots need covering, and the three of you with the most flexibility in your current schedules are you, Simon, and Grayson.” She folded her hands on the desk.
“So your schedules are getting completely rearranged. More physical stuff, more responsibility. Like yesterday, with the Wilderness Wander.”
“Yesterday was fine for me,” I said, smiling faintly. “Honestly, I can handle whatever you throw at me.”
“Good. That’s one less headache for me,” she replied. “I’m meeting with Simon and Grayson soon. Hopefully they’re just as amenable.”
“I’m sure they will be.” I paused for a beat and nodded toward her phone. “Is Piper usually this flaky?”
“She’s pretty flaky, yeah. But not like this. She’s never left camp before.”
“What did she mean when she said she can’t handle it after what happened last year?”
Sutton let out another sigh, rubbing her temples with one hand. “You’ve heard about the girl who drowned here last summer, right?”
“Yes. Carly Martin.”
Sutton nodded. “I think Piper’s still feeling guilty about that, because she and Noura were the assigned counselors for Carly’s cabin. They slept through everything that happened that night.”
“Ah.”
“I get why Piper feels bad, but it’s not her fault,” Sutton went on. “I mean, it’s not like either of them could’ve known a kid was going to sneak out to go swimming at two in the morning.”
“How do you know it was two in the morning?” I asked. “I heard she sneaked out alone, and no one saw her.”
Sutton blinked. “Oh, I mean… that’s just an educated guess,” she said.
“Noura told us she got up earlier in the night, around half past one, because she needed the bathroom. She said she saw all five girls lying in their beds when she left, and they were all there when she got back, too. And she takes a while to get back to sleep, so it stands to reason that Carly must’ve sneaked out around two.
Maybe even later. Obviously no one can be sure of the exact time, because there’s no surveillance cameras here. ”
Her long-winded explanation made sense, but at the same time, it was impossible to miss the slightly flustered expression on her face, or the way her voice had faltered a little as she spoke.
“The ‘no cameras’ thing surprises me, actually,” I said. “Given the clientele. You'd expect these parents to want every square inch monitored, right?”
Sutton shook her head. “Camp Blackpine's whole appeal is that it's old-school. Apart from the food choices, that is,” she said, raising a brow. “The people who send their children here want them to have the same experience of freedom they had when they were young. No screens, no surveillance, no constant monitoring. That’s why we’re not supposed to use our phones in front of the kids. And also why there’s no security cameras anywhere. ”
“Oh, right.”
“A lot of people like it that way. Including me.” Sutton gave me a small smile. “It’s a nice break from the real world. And it also means we can have our sneaky bonfires in the woods. Have some drinks. Get into trouble.”
“Oh, yeah? What sort of trouble?” I asked, keeping my voice light and airy with a touch of playfulness.
Sutton’s smile faded. “It’s just a figure of speech.”
“Right.”
“Anyway.” Sutton straightened, visibly resetting. “That's all I needed to tell you. Major schedule changes incoming. I’ll give you the new one later this afternoon.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“For now…” She trailed off, squinting at a nearby computer screen. “You’re needed at paintball instead of the creative writing class. Maren won’t have any problem running that alone.”
“Got it.”
With our conversation over, I stepped out of the building and stood in the crisp late morning air for a moment, contemplating what I’d overheard earlier.
I was almost certain it was about Carly’s death, given how Delia was freaking out about the prank note that referenced ‘what happened last year’.
She’d sounded rattled in a way that even Sutton, with all her polished composure, hadn't quite managed to talk her out of, and that kind of anxiety didn't come from some minor mishap.
It was the anxiety of someone who was sitting on something bad.
Something they were genuinely afraid might surface.
Something like a person knowing more about a tragic death than they’d ever admitted, perhaps...
It was also clear that Delia knew exactly what Sutton knew, but she was considerably less adept at acting like she didn't. That meant out of the two of them, Delia was the most likely to crack.
The trick was getting close to her without making it obvious that I had an ulterior motive. So what I needed was proximity. Shared activity time; the kind of low-stakes environment where things slipped out naturally.
I wouldn’t know my new schedule until this afternoon, though, so right now, all I could do was remain hopeful.
I turned toward the path that led to the paintball range, mentally preparing for whatever the game had in store. I made it about forty feet before I registered a figure approaching the same path from another direction.
Tall. Dark hair. Handsome.
Rhys noticed me at the same moment I noticed him, and he lifted a hand to wave.
“Heading to paintball?” he said by way of greeting, falling into step beside me.
“Yup,” I replied, eyes drifting over to his khaki cargo pants and scuffed black lace-up boots. “I’m guessing you are too, based on those combat boots you’ve got on.”
“Yup. Ever done it before?”
“Once, yeah,” I replied. “With some friends from college. I was shockingly bad.”
“Good to know,” he said, and I could hear the smirk in it without looking.
We walked in silence for a few steps, and then he spoke up again.
“Speaking of college,” he said. “I looked up the journalism program at NYU after Sutton mentioned what you’re studying.”
I kept my expression neutral. “Oh. How come?”
“It’s just how my mind works. Once I hear about something interesting, I need to know everything about it,” he said. “Anyway, I was reading about all the different classes and browsing the faculty profiles, and I noticed that only one of the professors is originally from New York. Peter Farrelly.”
My stomach dropped, but I maintained my neutral expression.
“So I’m guessing he’s the one who used to come to Blackpine back in the day,” Rhys went on. “The one who scored you this job.”
“That’s right,” I said evenly.