Chapter Five
Now
I was practically asleep standing up by the time I got back to my mom’s cabin. My feet were wrecked from the stupid wedges I’d been bold enough to wear, and I could feel the blisters growing hot on my heels, even just from the short walk.
The sky was black, the stars mostly hidden now by clouds, giving me the itchy, claustrophobic feeling that I was trapped inside a room with no exit.
Wes had offered to walk me back, but Chelsea had insisted he help clean up, and I didn’t feel like giving her another reason to be pissed at me.
So I’d smiled at them both—even as she refused to meet my eye—and said I’d see them for breakfast.
I’d wanted to ask her. The question had been on the tip of my tongue—Did you see Margo? I’d almost grabbed her arm, pulled her back, forced her to look me in the face and listen. Just to make sure that I hadn’t lost my mind.
When I put my hand on the doorknob, I stilled. I hadn’t locked it, for reasons I was unsure of now. I swore I could hear someone inside, rustling around. I pressed my ear to the door and listened.
Then, I heard it: the sure sound of a cabinet clanking shut.
My heart thumped painfully against my rib cage. Someone was going through my mom’s cabin. One of the snaky reporters, no doubt, trying to dig up some dirt on Anita and her troubled daughter.
Or it might have been one of the old campers, feeling sad and nostalgic. Equally creepy, maybe slightly less exploitative. I wasn’t prepared to see anyone else losing it. I could hardly stay standing myself. There was a gaping black hole threatening to suck me inside at any given moment.
Or maybe, a more sinister voice whispered in my ear, maybe it’s something worse.
Someone with far darker plans. I couldn’t help but think of that summer, and the Phantom.
All the unexplained break-ins, the vandalism, the dark figure skulking through the trees—how scared everyone had been—but I made myself push the thought down.
The Phantom was gone. I was sure of it.
Despite my better judgment, the cheap wine swirling around in my stomach won out, and I pushed the door open. It was dim, only the light of the moon shining in through the high kitchen window.
And a silhouette, in the shape of a person, just beneath it. The scream that ripped through my throat was met with a laugh that made my ears ring.
“Miss me?” came a lilting voice that I hadn’t heard in years.
Perched on my mother’s kitchen counter, as comfortable as if she owned the place, was Margo Pierce. In each hand, she held a glass of whiskey, like we were on a game show, and I’d just won the grand prize.
“What the fuck?” I put a steadying hand on my chest, willing myself to breathe.
“Nice to see you, too, Little G.”
It had been five years since we’d seen each other, since she’d called me that stupid nickname, but she looked the same, even up close like this. Perfect, poreless skin from the SPF she slathered on. Eyes that could cut glass.
I tripped over my feet while turning on a lamp; she’d been sitting in near darkness, presumably to scare the ever-loving shit out of me. It had worked.
“Very funny,” I said, gesturing around, not sure at what. This had to be a trick, some kind of setup. But I didn’t know why. “What the hell are you doing in here?”
“Sit, sit,” she said mildly, rather than answering, before shoving a glass into my hand and guiding me toward my own couch. I didn’t know what else to do, so I sat down and gaped at her.
“What is this?”
“This is whatever shitty whiskey I found in the cabinet. Don’t blame me for your bad taste.” With her pinky up, she took a delicate sip, then made a face like she was drinking gasoline. “God, this is so bad.”
“No, I mean, what is this? What do you want?”
“I’m writing a story about the ongoing legacy of Dread’s Cove, same as every other writer here.
” With her free hand, she jiggled the press badge around her neck, as if that was somehow an explanation in and of itself.
“Though, between you and me, I would have preferred to be here without an assignment. But I wasn’t lucky enough to get one of those fancy VIP invitations.
You really hurt my feelings, keeping me off the list.”
“Chelsea organized this. Take it up with her.” I could hear my voice shaking; I was trying and failing to keep my cool.
She knew it, too. I could see it building—the gleam in her eye, the excitement. This is where she’d always thrived: exploiting other people’s insecurities.
“How did you even know this was happening?”
“Oh, stop it,” she said. She pinched me on the arm, hard enough to hurt. “The whole goddamn state has been salivating over this for months. Everyone loves a redemption arc. Come on. You know I hate it when you pretend you don’t know how rich and famous you are.”
Fine, I’d walked myself into that. “But this is—”
“This is every bored adult’s wet dream, isn’t it? Cosplaying like they’re a kid again, at summer camp? Please, be sure to give Baby my sincere congratulations on a fantastic idea. Didn’t know she had it in her.”
And then, for the briefest moment, her expression changed into something more somber. “I am sorry about your mom, by the way. For the record, I always liked her.”
I couldn’t process or accept her unexpected condolences. For a moment, I could only stare.
“But you hate this place, and…” I trailed off, unable to finish that thought. We both knew what I meant. And you hate me.
“I do,” she agreed, which didn’t help. It only made me picture exactly why that was true, with a disturbing clarity. It played out across my mind, uninvited as always: the morning after the fire.
The way that Margo had lost her mind, had threatened to sue all of us, kill all of us, for not looking hard enough, in the dark and in the smoke—for letting her best friend burn alive.
I’d been speechless—utterly terrified, by the wildness in her eyes.
Between the two of them, I’d gotten so used to Steph being the live wire, the impulsive one.
She was the one you had to keep a close eye on so she didn’t slip through your fingers.
Margo was more collected. She thought things through and kept things close. So close that you never really could be sure what she was thinking, or what she wanted.
Until she snapped.
I’d never seen anything scarier than Margo that final morning.
The things she’d said, voice hoarse from her screams, when the flames had finally burned out and her best friend was lost forever to the woods.
She’d left a few hours later with the first responders, soot in her hair and smeared across her face, without saying another word to any of us.
I thought of the embarrassingly long texts I’d sent her in the months that followed, begging her to talk to me. All the calls that went right to voicemail.
But now, she was back, sitting next to me, drinking my whiskey, and offering me words of comfort on the eve of my mother’s funeral. My mouth was dry, and I tried to swallow. “So then why—”
“You don’t look bad, by the way.” She gave me a performative once-over, raising her eyebrows in some kind of half-assed approval I was supposed to be grateful for. “I always knew you’d look better with some layers in your hair. As usual, I was right. Though, remember, Botox is your friend.”
She winked, her sincerity from a moment ago already gone. But I knew her game. She was trying to throw me off, disorient me. I wasn’t going to let it work.
“Is it yours?” I shot back, more quickly than she was used to. “Because you’re looking a bit puffy.”
For a long moment, we considered each other. She ran an idle finger around the rim of her glass and cracked her neck, like she was squaring up for a fight.
“Didn’t see you all cozied up to Lifeguard Ken tonight. What’s the story there?”
“Hey, weren’t you going to be an author?” I asked, ignoring her dig at Trevor, even as my stomach clenched. “How come you haven’t published anything? Just writing about other people’s successful careers, right? Not your own.”
“Touché,” she said, raising her glass to mine before taking an alarmingly large sip of her drink. She made a face as it went down, then topped off her glass from the bottle she’d brought to the coffee table. I opened my mouth to ask again, to demand answers, but she beat me to it.
“It was sort of a coincidence, if you must know. I wasn’t assigned to the story originally. But my boss saw the press release last week, about your mom, while we were having coffee. She knew that I’d been best friends with her, that girl who died in the Dread’s Cove fire, so she asked me about it.
“I told her that Steph and I had spent the summer working here together, that I’d been here the night that…when it happened.” She scrunched her nose and looked away from me, and for a wild moment, I wondered if she might be trying not to cry.
“Anyway,” she continued, swirling what was left of her drink.
“She thought that my personal connection to Steph and Dread’s Cove would really add some color to the story.
I agreed to come out here, take that filthy bus through the mountains, and cover this whole fucked-up funeral-slash-party weekend.
So I could tell this story from the heart, as someone who knew Steph.
But, more important”—she paused, giving me a thin, lethal smile—“tell yours.”
And here it was. The real reason she’d returned, the reason she had broken into my cabin and was trying to get me to share a drink and relive the past with her.
She wanted my interview, the one I’d staunchly said no to, from every angle, from every asker.
I should have seen it coming, the second I’d seen her disapproving frown in the mess hall.
It was so fucking Margo, to assume that she’d be the exception. That because of our history, and what little time we’d spent together, she’d be able to convince me. To guilt me into saying yes.
The thing is, I did feel guilty. About too many things to count. But I was also selfish. I was also scared.
“No.” I said the word flatly but with finality. “I’m not doing an interview. But I really do hope you have a nice weekend.” I stood, stretched my arms over my head in an overdone show of exhaustion. “I’m pretty tired. You can let yourself out.”
Margo didn’t stand or give any indication that she was close to leaving.
On the contrary, she grabbed the bottle of whiskey and topped herself off before nestling back into her corner of the couch.
“Well, I was thinking I’d stay with you instead.
I’m supposed to be sleeping in a cabin, if you can believe that.
” She said cabin the same way one might say garbage dump or vat of toxic waste.
I sighed, felt the beginnings of a headache prickle at the base of my skull. “This is also a cabin, if you hadn’t noticed. We actually exclusively have cabins here, at summer camp.”
She waved a hand at me in bemused annoyance, like I was being intentionally obtuse. “Yes, fine, but this cabin has air-conditioning, Wi-Fi, a wine cellar, and showers with serviceable water pressure. Let’s not act like sleeping in an open-air bunk bed is the same thing.”
My heart rate spiked painfully at the mention of the wine cellar, but I pushed that dormant fear away. Now wasn’t the time.
I opened my mouth to argue with her, but nothing came out.
Because really, what was I going to do, force her to leave?
Get into a fistfight? Throw her shit out the front door, spill her suitcase on the porch?
She was already here. And all the things I’d been trying to avoid—speaking to her, looking her in the eye—well, we’d already ripped that bandage right off. It was done, and I was alive.
Welcome Back Weekend would only last a few days.
I’d smile in public and cry in the shower and drink copiously, and then it would be over, and she’d be gone.
I didn’t know what exactly she thought she’d get out of me, if she really thought she’d convince me to go on the record with her, but it didn’t matter, in the end.
Although I lived alone in Atlanta, my apartment was on the second floor. I could hear my upstairs and downstairs neighbors at almost all hours of the night, which had become a comforting sort of white noise over the past few years. I’d barely slept at all last night. It had been far too quiet.
At the very least, having a roommate for the next few days might give me a little peace of mind.
“Fine,” I said at last, and the corner of her mouth twitched, almost imperceptibly. “You can stay in the guest room. But I’m not doing an interview. I’m serious.”
Val had called me last week and said that several of the attending journalists had reached out to her, trying to nail down a time to talk to me, one-on-one.
Part of the original thinking behind this weekend—as much as Chelsea wanted to claim it was only about celebrating the children—was to get our foot back in the door with the press.
But I didn’t want to talk about my mom while someone shoved a recorder in my face.
I didn’t want to relive the night of the fire, dredge up the old rumors about the Phantom, or tell stories about Steph.
I didn’t want to pose for a photo; I didn’t want to talk about my plans for Dread’s Cove.
I’d barely been able to handle the idea of spending a long weekend here.
I had no idea what was next. I wasn’t the girl I used to be, with a vision and a timeline. Now, I took it a day at a time.
“Thank you. Whatever you say, boss lady. I should really start calling you Big G now, shouldn’t I?”
She was humoring me. But I would let her, because the whiskey and the wine were making my eyelids droop, it was warm in here, and it felt nice to sit on my mother’s couch and pretend that everything was fine.
Nothing had felt close to fine in so long. And over the past two weeks, every part of my life had become damn near intolerable.
Tomorrow, I would mourn my mother. I would stand at the edge of the dock as cameras flashed at my back, and I would weep for all the years I’d spent away from her. For a little while longer—even a few minutes, if that’s all I could have—I wanted to keep those feelings at bay.
There was a voice in the back of my mind, warning me that it was too easy, saying yes to Margo. Reminding me that she couldn’t possibly have come here just to make her peace or write some feel-good story. She was smart, and secretive, and I’d be right to be nervous around her. To watch my back.
But if I squinted, with the lights dim like this, it almost felt like it was five years ago and Steph was sitting beside her.
Like the whole summer was still stretched out before us, and the rest of our lives were just getting started.
Anything was possible. Steph was alive, and my mom was, too. The world hadn’t ended yet.
For now, that was enough.