Chapter Twenty-Seven
Then
Five Days Before the Fire
Steph claimed she’d stopped her Phantom activities, and I’d desperately wanted to believe her.
What hadn’t stopped, however, was the growing hysteria that seemed to permeate every inch of Dread’s Cove.
My mom had been right: The lore of the Phantom really had spiraled out of control.
The canoe incident had emboldened reckless campers to press their luck, and things were getting out of control.
One of the sixteen-year-old boys in Darter had posted a video of an awful prank—during dinner one night, they’d faked sick and snuck into Smallmouth.
They’d put a live salamander in every single bed, then staked out in the trees waiting for the fallout.
When the girls had returned and promptly erupted into bloodcurdling screams, they’d filmed the reaction, and posted it with a caption that read “Dread’s Cove Phantom Lives! !”
It had gone semi-viral, and the calls and emails from concerned parents and the media had begun almost immediately.
That, paired with the all-night disappearance of the Bluegill boys who’d been on a secret mission to find the Phantom, had put Dread’s Cove under a magnifying glass.
Sheriff Ramon and a few of his deputies had to stake out at the camp entrance, turning news vans away.
My mom was barely keeping it together. She was hardly sleeping, instead electing to spend hours in front of her computer, obsessively scrolling the “Dread’s Cove Parents” Facebook group and local newspaper sites for comments calling for her removal.
One night, when she was feeling particularly low, she admitted to me that she and Rig had been weighing the pros and cons of sending everyone home early. That would be a Dread’s Cove first.
With everything going on, I’d decided to wait until the summer season officially ended to tell her that I was moving to Atlanta. Maybe I was procrastinating because I was worried about how she’d react—but I also just didn’t think she could handle any other stressors right now.
I’d been up late the night before, going through my mom’s ever-growing inbox with her in the office, and I hadn’t gotten to bed until well past midnight.
This morning, sensing my exhaustion, Chelsea had offered to take the Brook Trout girls to the rec center, which left me an extra hour at the cabin before lunch.
I’d been grateful, considering we hadn’t exactly been on great terms the past few weeks.
I was lounging in bed, flipping through one of Steph’s magazines, when Margo burst through the door. I sat bolt upright, almost hitting my head on the underside of her bed.
She gave me a single, proper nod in greeting as she crossed to the bathroom. “Forgot my sunscreen,” she offered, and I heard her searching around the cluttered countertop for it.
The air in the room felt tense for a moment. We were hardly ever around each other alone like this. Every now and then, I could feel her watching me. Assessing me. Like she was searching for cracks in my veneer, places to strike.
But that was fine, I reminded myself. Even if Margo wasn’t my biggest fan, I had Steph. And while Margo was away this fall, Steph and I would fully cement our friendship. When Margo returned in six months, I was sure that the three of us would become an unshakable unit. It would be inevitable.
“Hey, Margo,” I said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. As far as furniture goes, what were you planning on buying?”
Margo looked up from the sink and locked eyes with me in the mirror. “What are you talking about?”
I pushed a lock of hair behind my ear as apprehension pooled in my gut. “Um, for the apartment? I already sold all my stuff from my old place, so I was just thinking that if you were going to buy a new bed, I could maybe pay to rent it from you for the fall, or…”
I trailed off when her expression went from confused to apoplectic. It stayed that way—utterly terrifying—for only a few seconds, but it was enough to understand that I’d made a fatal error: Margo didn’t know that I was moving into the apartment while she was traveling.
Steph hadn’t told her.
Margo sniffed and went back to rummaging around the countertop.
After a painful few beats, she found the tube in question and flipped off the bathroom light.
“That won’t be necessary, Little G.” Her dark brown eyes looked almost black as she spoke, and I had to work hard to keep myself from visibly shivering.
I stood slowly, holding my hands up in surrender. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—I just figured Steph would have told you—”
Her nostrils flared, and I knew that had been strike two. Another worst-possible-thing-to-say.
“Forget about it,” I said, blowing out a breath.
“It’s forgotten,” she sang back at me, as if she wasn’t looking at me like she was actively plotting my murder. She made a grand show of checking her watch. “I gotta run. Steph’s waiting for me.”