Sixteen
Despite the assurance from Natalie, a universe’s worth of worries fly through my head as we unzip the tent that night.
As Beck and I left the welcome center, we passed around theories, but nothing has stuck.
All that the doll really proves is that Paisley and co.
met Cheryl at some point. Cheryl conveniently didn’t mention that when we were talking about Paisley, Harlow, and Opal’s deaths.
But I don’t know if I buy that Cheryl herself is a murderer.
A wind blows through our hair as we step shoeless through the tent door.
Tents offer such a well-constructed illusion of safety.
It must be some trick of the brain, believing that any structure between them and nature has the capacity to keep threats out.
I yearn for my Homo sapiens ancestors and their caves.
I think about the Serrano people and the Kiich houses they used to make.
I think about the Dyatlov Pass and how whatever got those hikers had them ripping their tents open like paper.
Then Beck zips the tent closed and secures the lock we brought.
Once I hear the click, I can finally suck air into my tender lungs.
The ground is so hard I feel every bone in my body hit as I sit down; it’s barely warmer than outside, but the wind is muted as it howls, like the tent has turned the volume down halfway.
As Beck gets on her hands and knees to access her duffle bag, I zoom in on a screenshot from the video of the doll as the real thing lies less than ten feet from us. My skin crawls, like I’m looking at photos of a dead body as it decomposes close enough for me to smell it.
The plants seem to be made into clothing for the wooden doll, the weaving work tight and clean like those scoubidou key chain things I used to make at summer camp.
I tug at my Opal bracelet, my chest heavy imagining the three of them sitting around a campfire “decorating” this doll.
I wonder if they talked about me or if the conversation was like it always is with us: talking about different boys and our classmates’ drama, discussing whatever movie, new or old, someone saw for the first time, or squealing over any positive-trending news in Paisley’s acting career. I don’t know which hurts more.
But as for this weird doll itself, the craftiest one in the group was Harlow, so is this hers? It looks like it took a while to make and Harlow’s not exactly one who does something that’s not utilitarian. If they were going to do camp arts and crafts, why use plant fiber?
“It can’t be a coincidence, right?” I mumble. “They talk about the legend of some witch and then start making witchy plant crafts?”
“Where would they even learn how to weave clothes out of plant fiber?” Beck asks, her back still to me as she digs in her bag.
“Maybe they googled it?”
“With the service here?”
I shrug.
I wish we had more of the video Paisley took. For all that we got bits of information on the witch, no one gave us an inch about Opal, Paisley, and Harlow. We need to know where they went throughout that night and who they talked to. We need to know if there are more videos somewhere.
We need to know how the texter got that video off Paisley’s missing phone if they didn’t have the phone themselves—and where the hell the phone is now.
I put the doll down, disgusted. A whole day here and all we have is a strange keychain, a no-show texter, and some ghost story a Fortnite kid told us.
After all the googling before we arrived, all the talks around town, all the searches in the area.
Maybe we are in way over our heads. Maybe there’s truly nothing to find.
Maybe it really was just an accident and no one’s to blame.
Maybe the little girl was making things up just like the texter.
Maybe we’ll never find my voice note and I’ll just have to go home and finish high school and live my life in their shadows, knowing I could be yanked back into this case until the day I die.
I huff, burying my face in my rolled up sleeping bag.
“Hey,” Beck says. The warmth of her fingers brushes along my shoulder blade, awakening every nerve down my spine.
What is she doing touching me like this?
Does she just do this to people or is she trying to connect in some other way?
I think about how she leaned into those girls at the convenience store.
But this feels different. This feels more meaningful.
“I’m starving,” Beck says. “Let’s make dinner and call it a night. It’s getting too dark to do anything else anyway. We can come up with some new angles tomorrow.”
I resist every urge to lean back into her palm like a cat begging for deeper touch. “Okay.”
She only takes her hand off me so we can venture back outside the tent and get food started. So much for that being a moment.
The memories of Beck’s touch come back to me pretty quickly as I prepare dinner, helped by the fact that we choose a very easy meal: hot dogs and foil-cooked potatoes and peppers, and s’mores for dessert.
The hot food is soul-nourishing. Beck cleans up the dishes, and all we talk about is Friday the 13th and the best chocolate and marshmallow consistency to make s’mores.
It’s nice to not talk about the deaths, but something about Beck feels restrained.
I don’t want to ignore my instincts. Hardly any time has passed since they confirmed Paisley was dead. Even if Beck had a feeling Paisley was dead since October, it can’t be easy to process that confirmation.
“Are you okay?” I ask Beck as we shut ourselves into the tent for the night.
“Yes, but I’ve been doing,” her voice cuts off with a shuddering inhale, “everything in my power not to think about them dying here.” She audibly swallows, her fingers curling.
I sniffle, my sinuses thick. “Is there any specific way to do that?”
“I’ll tell you if I figure out one that works.”
She drops down onto her rolled-out sleeping bag. The spot where she touched me earlier in the evening seems to grow colder at Beck’s perceived rejection, but I get it: She’s not in the mood to be vulnerable. She places her pocketknife, Taser, and pepper spray right within arm’s reach next to her.
I unroll my sleeping bag, my skin heating as I take in how little breathing room we have in this place.
Our sleeping bags touch along the lengths, but with each of us square in the middle of our sleeping bags, there’s still enough distance.
Barely. The memories slip in of how Owen and I would cuddle and kick each other and breathe in each other’s carbon dioxide when we camped.
When you’re family, it’s annoying but bearable.
It became downright fun when we’d whisper stories to each other after Dad’s snoring filled the tent.
I wish circumstances were different and it was us here for another family trip instead of me investigating a murder.
Beck turns her bare back to me to slip on a sleeping shirt. She has a tattoo on her shoulder blade that ripples as she moves. My stomach flutters.
Scratch the part about wishing I were here with my brother.
There’s barely six inches between our sleeping bags.
We both lie down parallel to each other, staring up at the tree branches brushing against the mesh tent roof.
It’s a beautiful summer night, if I’m being honest. The leaves on the trees are fluffy, the crickets buzz in the distance, and the temperature has dropped just enough that the sleeping bag is the perfect amount of warmth.
If I look to my left, I’d be able to see Beck’s chest rising and falling as she breathes.
I don’t need to think about what Beck’s shampoo smells like up close. What it would take to find out.
“Not to be obnoxiously straightforward, but you’re queer, right?” Beck asks.
The sound of her voice alone full-body startles me, but my heartbeat returns to normal way more quickly than usual.
This kind of conversation would usually give me vertigo with how vulnerable I feel talking about it.
The scripts are never easy to write in my head.
But after going through a day of witch talk, cut fuel lines, and missing phones, this feels incredibly wieldy. I know the answers to this.
“Yeah, bi.”
“You never formally announced it or anything, did you?” Her sleeping bag crinkles as she sits up. She faces me, using her forearm as a kickstand. I mirror her body language.
Ugh. “Nothing sounds worse than talking about who I’m attracted to in a public forum.”
“That’s fair. But you’d have to hard launch if you ever got a girlfriend, so it’d happen eventually.”
I laugh. Yeah, like that’s going to happen. I’ve resigned to maybe starting to date in college. Maybe after. Whenever I figure out people. “Sure.”
Beck gives a long, almost forlorn sigh, her eyeline falling away from me. “I think about that a lot. I’ve known I was gay since I was a little kid. The tomboy aesthetic and being obsessed with animated female villains can only mean so much, you know?”
Hearing Beck say that feels like the whole universe released a breath.
And then it’s like there was never a world before she said those words.
She snickers, looking at a hand she’s pulled out of the sleeping bag.
“I was such a little perv, man. I love sports, I love running around and using my body and that high of winning with a bunch of people, but locker rooms were like my ultimate happy place. Ever since I was ten, eleven, twelve, I loved how comfortable everyone felt in their bodies. It wasn’t a big deal to see.
I had a crush on every teammate I ever had before I got onto varsity. Man, girls are amazing.”
“Does anyone know?”
Beck shrugs. “I mean, I’m not hiding it. I don’t know who can see this haircut, my tats, and how I treat most guys in our grade and think I’m straight.”