Thirteen #2
While Beck scans the store looking for another probably-Republican to go risk her skin to talk to, I go for another angle.
The little girl here with her mom is wearing a Fortnite shirt. My heart racing, I stroll into the aisle she’s in—sodas, classic—and grab a Sprite.
“I like your shirt,” I say to her.
I understand kids deeply. Kids are allowed to—expected to, even—have special interests. All you need to do to get a kid on your side is speak their language.
She grins, thank god. “Do you play?”
I force myself to breathe again. “Yeah. I play with my brothers.”
There was a time when I did, anyway. When Owen and I were eleven, right before we graduated elementary school. He and I were actually pretty good as a duo, but then Mom made us play with seven-year-old Liam and our win ratio got slashed to almost nothing.
“Have you seen the new update? It’s awesome.”
I haven’t played in years, but the lingo has stuck with me, thank god.
“Yeah. I feel like they made the weapons too OP—”
The mom walks up to us, grabbing the girl’s hand. “Sorry about her. She doesn’t stop talking about that game.”
“It’s okay.” I can’t quite make eye contact with the mom. “Are you on vacation? My friend,” I motion to Beck, who’s grabbing something from the dairy aisle, “and I are.”
“She had a doctor’s appointment. We’re local,” the mom says. She studies us. “You two better be careful. What with what happened with those girls.”
I grab Beck, as if this information is totally new. “What happened?”
The mom sighs. “These out-of-town girls were killed in the woods. No one knows if it was animals or some sicko, but I always tell my daughter to be careful around that national park. They’re just not as safe as they used to be.
With all the fires those camp kids were doing that night, I was surprised they didn’t burn the whole place down. ”
I itch to pull out my phone and take notes. Paisley, Harlow, and Opal were talking about a witch. Someone was lighting extra fires and that could’ve been any of the three campsites. People generally avoid the woods.
“Is it just because of the fires?” Beck asks, yogurt in hand. “Or is it bad news for other reasons?”
The mom looks at Beck, at the tattoos on her arms, and her lip curls.
Heat rushes to my face, somewhere between embarrassment for Beck and anger on her behalf.
“People don’t go there to camp. Drug deals happen all the time.
It’s only inevitable that ODs, suicide, and murder would follow.
Sketchy activity has been going down for years, long before those girls. ”
The new information buzzes in my chest. I don’t really buy the whole drugs-to-murder pipeline, but I do buy that my friends partook while here.
We have to watch the video Paisley sent again.
Could they have possibly been on drugs they bought from some shady character around here?
I’ve never seen any of them buy drugs, but they don’t resist when we go to parties together.
It gives me the strangest hope that maybe they excluded me simply because I wouldn’t have wanted to do drugs in the woods with them.
(A hit of weed at a party is fine, but the woods, no.
I watch too many horror movies to think that would go well.) Maybe it wasn’t that they hated me as a person.
Drugs are also the kind of thing that would get them fixated on that witch legend.
“Does any of the sketchy activity involve a witch?” I ask.
The woman grabs her daughter’s arm and yanks her away from us. “We have to go.”
Beck sighs as we watch her leave. “Someone will talk to us.”
Beck moves to the checkout counter, dropping her yogurt so hard on the surface that it nearly bursts. The mother is still in view, telling the daughter to wait outside while she goes into the bathroom. The girl stares at Beck as Beck leans on the countertop.
“So, do you know about the town witch?” Beck asks the guy at the register.
The man looks up at us with dead eyes. “Those girls tell you about a witch?” He scans the yogurt. It’s dirt cheap, so much so that I almost wonder if the thing’s expired.
I shuffle my way closer to the counter. “No, we heard about it from a ranger. Why?”
He snorts. “It’s a bullshit ghost story kids tell each other. They say there’s a witch in the woods killing people. It’s supposedly been doing it for generations.”
I exchange a look with Beck. “But people have died here?”
He bags Beck’s yogurt and throws a plastic spoon inside. “People die everywhere.” He clears his throat. “But that’s what happens when white folks try to turn nature into a theme park. People get too cocky and die.”
My stomach drops. I eye the necklace bouncing against his white T-shirt; it’s a symbol I’ve seen on a few storefronts advertising Serrano art and weaving work.
Without knowing anything, I know he’s right about Paisley, Harlow, and Opal.
None of them except Opal has mentioned going camping before.
I’m sure they had no idea what they were doing and messed up a ton.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they really messed something up.
And now they’re dead because of it.
I can’t believe it was them who died. I can’t believe they’re now the warning this man can point to.
“Three girls recently died here,” I say.
“Yep,” he says.
“Did you see them that night?” Beck asks. “Was anyone following them?”
“A witch didn’t kill them,” the man says, his voice suddenly harsh.
Beck and I jump, the store falling into stone silence.
“It could’ve been the witch,” the little girl whispers.
I hold a gasp in my throat as I wheel around to face the girl. She’s got an openness on her face, like she’s about to talk about unicorns and not something evil. Beck furrows her brow.
“What do you mean?” I ask, my own voice going higher in anticipation. I hold myself still, avoiding any instinct to move closer to the girl or shake her shoulders until she says everything she knows.
The cashier rolls his eyes. “Sooner believe it was Bigfoot than a witch, little lady.”
“She’s real,” the girl insists. She’s got a jacket wrapped around her waist, her Fortnite shirt wrinkled at the collar from too much wear, her adult teeth dwarfing her face as she speaks.
This is a real kid who lives here. Somehow, she feels more local than her mother.
“I’ve seen her running through the woods by my backyard.
Right outside the park, by the motel.” Her lips twitch.
“I know she’s real. And she was covered in blood the night those girls disappeared! ”
A woman in the parking lot, a woman out by the welcome center, a woman on the road…
Was it too dark for me to see the blood on her? Did we see the same woman that night?
My ears ring. The world feels weightless.
“Emma?”
My own name echoes in the chambers of my head.
“Emma!”
Beck grabs my shoulder, knocking me out of my trance. The mom emerges from the bathroom and takes her kid out without saying a word to us. Once Beck releases me, I steady myself on the counter. Beck slides a candy bar across.
“I think she needs a blood sugar boost,” Beck tells the cashier.
He humphs. “Don’t listen to that kid. That mom’s bought cameras from me before. If someone had been running bloody through her backyard, she would’ve known.”
Beck and I start our walk back to the campsite.
“We should be looking for a woman,” I say.
“It’s a great start,” Beck says, winking at me. Butterflies flap in my stomach. Beck slaps my shoulder blade. “Look at you go, detective!”
I bask in the warmth of the moment. That little girl gave us more than any adult we could’ve talked to. And it happened because I was able to think on my feet and get information out of a good source. Maybe I’m not so terrible at this after all.
“We still have a lot of work to do,” I reply because I can’t take a compliment. “I’d guess half this town is women.”
The truth digs into my bone marrow. That little girl and I saw the same bloody woman. I can’t prove it yet, but I know we saw Paisley, Harlow, and Opal’s killer.
Now we just have to figure out who it is.
And if she’s still here.
Beck stops suddenly. I bump into her.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Uhh, look at the car,” Beck says.
A dark puddle leaks from under the car, seeping under the tires and settling into the gravel. I blink, and it almost seems deep red. But no. I keep blinking, until I realize it’s gasoline.
Beck’s fuel line is broken.