Chapter Thirty-One
Then
Sixteen Hours Before the Fire
YOU WILL PAY.
Those were the three awful words, written in bright, messy red spray paint, across the wide expanse of the mess hall windows. We all saw the damning message at the same time, as we came over the hill on the way to breakfast.
My hand flew to my mouth, but I couldn’t hide my gasp. Ahead of me, a boy started to cry, pulling on the sleeve of his counselor. All around me, the kids began to whisper and point, their words quickly rising to a deafening storm of fear.
“Please head back to your cabins. Breakfast will be postponed until ten this morning.” My mother’s voice came over the camp speakers, loud but wavering.
No one argued.
I put my arms around the two girls closest to me, Kendall and Harper, spinning them around as quickly as I could. The air was charged with a nervous energy.
“Who did that?” Harper’s question was quiet, her voice strained.
I painted on a smile, though I was sure they could see how fake it was. “Just someone playing a stupid joke.” But it wasn’t stupid, and it didn’t feel like a joke.
“Greer.” My mom’s voice cut through the noise, and I spun. She looked more unsure of herself than I’d ever seen her. I had to physically work to make sure my jaw didn’t fall open.
“Girls, go find Chelsea, all right?” Harper and Kendall nodded sharply, running to catch up with the rest of the group.
“Mom, what’s going on?”
Her eyes closed, for the briefest moment. “We’re sending everyone home.”
My mouth dropped open. A bird chirped above me—somewhere, Chelsea was saying “Kingfisher”—but I kept my eyes firmly on my mom. She was shaking her head, defeated. She looked so, so tired, that I had to will myself not to start crying.
“Are you serious?”
“We have to. The phone’s been ringing off the hook, parents saying they’re coming up here to take their kids home. It makes more sense to stop things now, before anyone else gets hurt.”
“It was probably just those boys from Darter, playing another prank. If we just—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she cut me off, an edge to her voice that she rarely used with me. “We don’t have another choice. I’ve got a camp of five hundred children in my care, and I’ve lost control of the situation, all right?”
I blinked, trying to stop the tears. The guilt, metastasizing in my gut. “But we’ve only got a week left. Can’t we stick it out?”
She was already shaking her head. “No. There was another incident last night. Someone slashed through every single life jacket in the boathouse. With a knife, Greer. And of course it wasn’t Trevor who found it this morning but one of the girls in Catfish who was pulling out a paddleboard.
She posted the photos with that damn Dread’s Cove Phantom hashtag, and, well.
You can imagine how that’s going. So we’re closing.
It’s already done. I emailed everyone and sent out the press release an hour ago.
I was just about to call an emergency staff meeting. ”
All the air felt like it had been sucked out of my lungs.
“It’s bad, sweetheart. I won’t lie to you. I don’t know what happens next. I don’t know how we recover from this.” My mother sighed, and it was the saddest sound in the world. She had lipstick on her teeth, bags under her eyes.
So badly, I wanted to tell her; I almost said it. It was Steph. I was basically shouting it in my head, willing her to hear me. Steph is the Phantom. Steph is the problem. She’s to blame.
But the words died in my throat, got stuck there.
Because it was so much more complicated than that now, wasn’t it?
Yes, it was Steph who had started everything.
She’d been the one sneaking through the woods, going places she shouldn’t have been.
But her actions had inspired a wave of bold and dangerous behaviors that were getting worse by the day.
Because of that, Dread’s Cove was no longer safe.
There was no escape hatch here. If I told my mother, what would happen next?
If this summer had taught me anything, it was that I no longer knew what the hell I wanted.
Yes, I was going to leave—I was moving to Atlanta.
But what if, someday, I wanted to return?
Would admitting this ruin that? Would it sever my last ties to the Cove, irrevocably?
Would it push my mom past her breaking point?
I couldn’t do that to her. I wouldn’t. She’d been through enough.
So once again, I said nothing. Even though I was desperate to. I held my tongue about Steph’s secret life. I pushed it down deep, where no one could see, where no could find out the truth of how much I was willing to ignore.