Chapter Thirty-Three
Then
An Hour Before the Fire
Evacuating five hundred kids from a summer camp in the mountains was an exhausting affair. By the time the final bus left, and Dread’s Cove was quiet and still once more, all I wanted to do was sleep.
The worst part had been saying goodbye to Kendall. To my surprise, she’d sobbed into my arms, making me pinkie promise to write to her.
“Of course I will,” I told her. “I swear. And if you want, you can come back next summer.”
“I’ll think about it,” she’d sniffled into my shirt. “I’ll miss you, Miss Greer.”
“I’ll miss you, too.” I’d squeezed her hand and felt tears prick the backs of my eyes as she zigzagged her way toward the bus, her little pink suitcase bouncing on the gravel lot as she dragged it behind her.
After everyone had gone, my mother had holed herself up in her cabin, requesting no visitors. I understood. She wanted to lick her wounds in peace. Though the thought of her, staring out at the dark lake all alone, made me sick with sadness.
It was done. Over. Official. Dread’s Cove was closed for the season. Tomorrow, the nonresident staff would be bussed out—including Steph, Margo, and Trevor—and we’d start the work of turning the linens, closing down the lake, resetting for fall.
Just like every year. Except I would be leaving soon, too.
That night, we’d scrabbled together a few bottles of bottom-shelf liquor and lukewarm wine, heading out to the beach for one final hurrah. It was a quiet affair; nowhere near as rowdy as usual. It was like none of us knew what to say to one another, or if we could even trust one another anymore.
With a shaky hand, I poured a healthy splash of vodka into a Solo cup. My second of the night—or third? I couldn’t remember. Someone squeezed my shoulder, and I tensed before turning to see Trevor.
He put a soft hand on my face, and I leaned into it. As I snaked my arms around his neck, I locked eyes with Margo. She was twenty or so feet away, talking to Wes and Garrett, both hands on her hips. It was dark, so I couldn’t be sure, but I thought her lip may have curled. In disgust.
It was gone in a fleeting second, and she even lifted her cup to mine in a sort of cheers.
I gave her a small smile back. The two of us were playing a game of cat and mouse, waiting to see what would happen next.
Once again, I thought about what I’d overheard between her and Steph last night, when I’d been pretending to be asleep.
I had a sneaking suspicion that she’d only told Steph about her acceptance to that Emory program to prevent me from being able to sublet her room.
Steph hadn’t said anything to me about it—I had to assume nothing had changed, even if it made me nervous.
All I could do was stay the course, trust her.
I didn’t have any other choice. Besides, we’d been through enough together at this point, hadn’t we?
In a week, I was moving to Atlanta with her. I was starting my new life. Not even Margo could get in the way of that.
I saw a flash of Steph’s dark, glossy ponytail just inside the tree line, which surprised me. I hadn’t seen her in a few hours. After dinner, she’d been practically catatonic, forgoing any late-night plans in favor of packing, telling us she planned to turn in early.
“I’ll be right back,” I said in Trevor’s ear, untangling his arm from over my shoulders. He squeezed my hand before I walked away.
I found her sitting against a tree, holding a nearly empty bottle of pink wine by the neck. “What’s up? I thought you were packing.”
“I need to talk to your mom. But she wouldn’t answer the door.”
Up close, she looked worse for the wear. Her hair wasn’t all that glossy, after all—it was wet, unbrushed, like she’d just washed it. And her eyes were glazed over. Even with as much cheap liquor as I’d consumed tonight, I could tell immediately that she’d had far more.
While we’d been out here, she must have been imbibing alone.
“She’s asleep,” I said. “Why? What’s going on?”
“She knows the truth. I know she does.”
I felt my eyes bulge, my pulse quicken. My mom knew the truth—about her? About what she’d been up to this summer?
“What are you talking about? Did she catch you—” I froze, realizing what she must have meant. “Wait. No. Was it you? Did you slash up the life jackets? Is that what you mean?”
“No,” she said on a hiccup that turned into a burp, and I tried not to grimace at the sour, awful smell. “No, I didn’t cut up some stupid life jackets. Calm down. I just need to talk to her. It’s very, very important.”
I frowned. “You’re kind of freaking me out. Tell me what’s going on.”
She gripped my elbow, hard enough that her nails broke the skin. I tried to snatch my arm back, but her grip was tight, unyielding. I tensed as her hot breath hit my face. “Earlier this summer, I asked her a question, and she lied. She lied. Do you get what I’m saying? I have proof, okay?”
I racked my brain for what she could possibly be talking about—what kind of weeks-old lie she was referring to—but I was coming up empty. That third cup of vodka was starting to make me dizzy. “Slow down. You asked her what? If you would just tell me—”
“I can’t slow down. I’m out of time. But she knows something. Your mom knows something. I found—” She clamped her mouth shut, hard enough that I heard her teeth knock against each other, and I narrowed my eyes.
She’d been snooping again, clearly. Another lie. Another thing I’d been too naive, too desperate, to accept at face value.
“You found what?”
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter. But you can let me into her cabin, so I can talk to her. That’s all I’m asking.”
I wrenched my arm away, almost stumbling in the process.
I felt the beginnings of it, simmering in my chest. Anger.
“Are you actually insane? You want me to just let you into my mom’s place in the middle of the night, so you can, what, accost her while she’s sleeping?
No. Absolutely not. Today was probably one of the worst days of her life. Haven’t you done enough?”
She raised a single eyebrow. “And what exactly have I done that’s so terrible? Enlighten me.”
“You have a loose relationship with the truth.” This was a reckless, stupid conversation to have; I knew that Steph quite literally held my new life in her hands.
Everything I wanted—everything I was so close to getting—was once again resting on a razor’s edge, and she could push me off the cliff at any time.
But she was also drunk, confused, bitter, and frankly, so was I.
I’d bent over backward for her, and somehow, it still wasn’t enough.
So, I kept talking. “The only liar here is you. You’re the one who’s been sneaking out all summer.
You wouldn’t even have told me about it if I hadn’t caught you red-handed.
And now…you’re acting all paranoid and weird, saying things about my mother, who has never been anything but nice to you. ”
She was looking at me utterly stone-faced, and I pushed a sweaty lock of hair behind my ear, felt the rage bubble up, faster than I could stop it.
“This is all your fault. Dread’s Cove is closing because of what you did.
You started all of this, and you’re not even sorry about it.
” A single, manic laugh escaped my lips, and I clenched my fists at my sides like a pre-tantrum toddler.
“If you hadn’t been sneaking around, those boys wouldn’t have followed you and almost died.
None of this Phantom shit would have happened if you hadn’t been the kindling. ”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this honest with anyone.
I wasn’t finished yet. “And what about us? I heard you and Margo last night. She asked you to tell me I couldn’t live with you, and you said, ‘I’ll talk to her.
’ Well, you haven’t.” I swallowed hard. “What is it that you want to say to me? Were you going to completely fuck me over? Pretend this summer never happened, pretend that we haven’t been making plans? ”
For the first time since we’d started talking, her eyes seemed to actually focus on me. “Well, if I’m so terrible, then why didn’t you tell on me, Little G? What have you been waiting for?”
“Because I thought we were friends, goddamn it. Because I care about you, and I didn’t want you to leave.”
“We are friends,” she confirmed, and as pathetic as it sounds, I almost breathed an actual sigh of relief. “But you know what? A real friend would help me right now.”
There was a prickling, at the base of my skull. A headache, caused by exhaustion and anger and exasperation and the vodka I’d ingested far too quickly.
“If you would just give me a straight answer for once, we can—”
“All I can tell you is that I need to talk to your mom, right now. That’s it. So are you going to help me or not?”
“No,” I breathed. “I’m not.”
In our two months of being friends, I couldn’t remember a time when I’d said no to something Steph had asked of me. She clearly couldn’t, either. For a long moment we only stared at each other.
And then, she threw a hand over her mouth, lurched forward, and threw up in the grass at my feet.
I reached for her immediately. She pulled at my collar, then buried her face in my shirt. It only took me a moment to realize that she was sobbing.
All at once, my rage died like a candle being snuffed out.
“Let’s just get you some water, and then we can go back to the cabin. And you can get some sleep. We’ll talk to my mom tomorrow, okay? We’ll figure this out. First thing.”
“Fine. Okay.” The ire was gone from her voice, too. She just sounded exhausted, like she might fall asleep any second.
“And then next week, I’ll meet you in Atlanta,” I said, as much a promise to myself as it was to her, and I squeezed her hand as I pulled her back to standing.
She almost tripped, bringing us both down once again, but I steadied her.
“I’m sorry I got mad. It’s been a terrible day, but—everything’s good, okay?
This fall is going to be amazing. We’re making our own road map, remember? ”
“Our own map,” she said. “A map.” She said the word with reverence, then craned her neck to look behind her, out into the trees. “A fucking map.”
“Stay here,” I told her, though she no longer seemed to be listening. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
It took me less than thirty seconds, I was sure of it. I barely let her out of my sight, but to dig through the cooler for a water bottle.
By the time I got back, she was gone.