Eighteen
By morning, every pain I felt accumulating midway through the night aches three times as hard.
My bones scrape the ground as I try to sit up.
It’s cold in here, and even knowing it’s going to be colder outside, I need to escape this tiny space.
I scoot my way out of the shared sleeping bag and grab my phone, moving as silently as I can so as not to wake Beck.
The tent zipper squeals loudly, but Beck’s breathing stays even.
I’m not sure why I cringe at the sound, as if there would be some dire consequence to Beck waking up when I do.
I don’t even know what time it is, only that everything from last night—talking about our social traumas, sharing a sleeping bag, the figure outside the tent—feels more like a medication-induced dream than any reality.
But one whiff of the fresh pine air and I start to feel more settled in my body and life again.
The chair beside the embers of our fire feels more comfortable than anything I slept in last night, despite the frame digging into my sitz bones.
I need coffee, but I don’t know where to find any.
We might have to go into town for that, so instead I settle for the next best thing to keep me okay: Winona Ryder interviews.
I’ve downloaded enough that I can watch them without service.
Both our portable chargers are full battery, and we’ve hardly used them so far, so I sacrifice a bit of battery to keep myself calm.
I exhale, focusing on the cadence of Winona’s voice, trying to remember how she looked in Dracula, what it made me feel.
Death shouldn’t be comforting, but I’d suddenly give anything to be locked away in some gothic castle up on a hill overlooking an unassuming Eastern European town.
There’s nowhere to disappear to in houses.
They have delineated outlines, a limited amount of spots to exist.
This forest feels endless.
Beck emerges from the tent, rustling around to zip it up again.
“Whoa.”
I turn around, the sound of a real voice foreign in my ears. “What?”
Beck presses something between her fingertips, rushing over to the firepit to show me like she thinks it’ll slip out of her hands.
It’s a button. A generic brown plastic button for a shirt.
Still, my stomach bottoms out at the sight.
“Is this yours?” Beck asks.
I look up at her, not even trying to hide the fear in my eyes. In fact, begging Beck to see it without me having to say. “No, it’s not.”
Natalie also doesn’t have buttons like this on her uniform.
Beck drops down into the other camping chair, eyes fixed on the woods. “Did you hear something last night? Like, someone walking? I thought I dreamt it.”
I turn the button over in my fingertips. “It was real. There was someone outside our tent. Someone with long hair.”
Beck’s hands fly to her mouth. “Fuck. Who?”
Something in me says it probably wasn’t—we’re alive, after all—but the answer still doesn’t feel like it’s someone safe. “I don’t know.” I look back in the direction of the visitors’ center. “We can see who else is registered for the next-door campsites and—”
Someone emerges from a break in the trees to the left of our site. Not where we entered.
The girl I saw briefly in the welcome center yesterday.
She now sports a baseball cap with a logo I don’t recognize, tall and slender in a big T-shirt, leggings, and hiking boots.
I focus on the leggings, imagining Paisley out here.
How she would’ve been dressed in leggings because that’s how she always looked when we did even slightly active activities. Even if it’s too hot out to wear them.
“Do you two have any flints?” she asks.
Beck and I exchange a look. It’s the morning, and she doesn’t seem to have a weapon. Still, my heartbeat picks up. “No,” Beck says.
She doesn’t move back to wherever she came from. “Matches? Extra lighter? I can’t start my fire.”
“The ranger can help you with that,” I say, feeling like an annoying teacher’s pet.
Beck looks to me, dubiousness at this woman so obvious in the turn of her mouth. “I have some matches in my bag. Hold on.”
Beck looks to me again, as if asking are you okay alone?
I nod and she skitters over to the tent.
As the sound of our tent zipping and rustling fills the forest air, I look everywhere but at this woman as she joins the area around our firepit.
But I can’t just be awkward until Beck returns.
We need to ask every person we come across for information.
“Are you on vacation or something?” I ask her.
She sniffs. “Sort of. Van life.”
Somehow, that explains the leggings. “Oh. Got it.”
“Name’s Ivy, by the way. You two alone?” she asks, rubbing her hands together against our nonexistent fire.
“Just us.” I pause. “Are you?”
She sucks air in through her teeth. “Yeah, but I’m not camping in a tent right now.”
What an oddly ominous thing to say. Goose bumps form on my arms as I keep the conversation going. “And how old are you?”
“Nineteen. And you both are what? Sixteen?”
“Eighteen. Adults.” Beck is, anyway. I will be soon.
Beck walks back into the conversation.
Ivy rubs her nose. “Sure, but being a legal adult doesn’t help when you’re dealing with people who go missing in the woods.” She turns, looking right at Beck. “You look a lot like that girl who died here. The daughter of the actress.”
A chill runs through my stomach. Beck’s jaw tenses as she moves ever so slightly in front of me. “And?”
“I know why you’re out here. I’m looking for someone too.”
I stop breathing.
All this time, Paisley, Harlow, and Opal’s deaths have been a terrible incident in a vacuum. They were a one-off tragedy. When I’d looked up the national park, there weren’t that many huge deaths in the couple centuries the park has existed.
But now there’s another missing person?
“Is there something you wanna tell us about my sister?” Beck asks.
“Do you want to hang here for a bit?” I ask.
Ivy sits on the ground near our chairs. “Yes.”
I light our fire once again. It rushes to life, desperate and smoky. I cough as the cloud of smoke hits me, but the winds quickly change direction.
When the smoke hits Ivy, she doesn’t even flinch.
“So, I’m a solo traveler. I’ve been driving my van around the country for about a year now. I’m taking a gap year trying to hit up as many national parks as I can.” She exhales. “And this is my second time at this park. I was here in October.”
Beck tenses up like she’s been dropped into freezing cold water. But I feel like I’ve suddenly returned to life.
Holy shit.
“Were you…?” I gasp out.
Ivy picks up a stick and pushes twigs around in the fire. “I was. I met your sister.”
My stomach tightens as her words sink in, but it almost feels like the anticipation of roller coaster.
Like there’s something about to be released, a weight off my shoulders.
All this time, this was all I wanted. After searching through news articles and second- and third- and fourth-hand accounts of what happened that night, we finally found someone who was there.
Someone real who interacted with the real people who were my friends.
This has to be the beginning of the true story.
“All the campsites were occupied that night,” Ivy says.
“I rented a spot in the parking lot and there were these college boys, your sister and her friends, and this other solo traveler. She was nineteen too. Her name was Vanessa. The college boys invited all five of us over to their campsite for some drinks. Your friends were into the guys, so Vanessa and I ended up talking. She was a loner and a bit of a free spirit and came from a family who didn’t really care where she went. But she was cool.”
“And she…went missing?” I say.
“Yeah. So, basically, the guys collected us around nine to go to their campfire. Everyone was together for like an hour. I got tired and told everyone I was going to bed. Vanessa said she was going to go night hike to this waterfall deeper in the woods. I told her that was a stupid idea, but she insisted she’d tell the ranger she was going out there.
When I woke up, your friends were found dead at the bottom of a ravine, and Vanessa had completely disappeared.
When I talked to Natalie and the other ranger, they both said they’d never heard from Vanessa at all.
” She squeezes her eyes shut a moment. “I thought that when the ISB went out searching for your sister’s body, they would’ve found Vanessa. But there was no sign of her.”
Somehow, Vanessa’s story feels even more sketchy than Paisley, Harlow, and Opal’s. At least my friends were found. This woman is still missing.
“And you don’t think there’s any chance she just left her shit and ditched?” Beck asks. “Maybe she was running from something.”
Ivy shakes her head. “Ordinarily I’d believe you, but she left a whole bag of her shit with me.
Family photos, a childhood stuffed animal, photos of her life.
She didn’t want to risk it getting exposed to the elements, since there was a chance it was gonna rain that night.
She planned to meet back up with me the next morning but never showed. Trust me, something happened to her.”
“Did you go to the police?” I ask.
She gives a dry laugh. “The police around here are useless, and the only white girls cops don’t care about are white trash girls.
” She rubs her temples. “And honestly, I don’t even know what I’m gonna do.
I guess go search the woods in the daylight.
But I thought I’d try to talk to you both when I saw you in the visitors’ center.
It felt like fate that we both came here on the same weekend.
Your sister and her friends never mentioned Vanessa to you before they…
” Ivy frowns. “…went dark.” I cringe even at her attempt at softening the word died. “Did they?”
“Nope,” I say. “Did you see anything weird happen with our friends?”
She shakes her head. “Well, I’d offer you my number, but the service sucks. But don’t be strangers if anything comes up. There’s something wrong with this town.”
My heart hiccups in my chest.
There’s something wrong with this town.
Just like the texter said.
Could Ivy have been the one who reached out to me? We’re alone. Why would she not disclose it? But at the same time, she has a motive to lure us out here. If her friend disappeared, it would make sense that she’d be so suspicious of the town.
But who did Vanessa and Paisley, Harlow, and Opal meet who would’ve killed them all? I doubt those college boys were smart enough for that.
“Be careful,” Ivy says.
It’s only when she gets up again that I see it.
Her puffer jacket has buttons on it.
Brown buttons.
I clench my fists, holding back every urge to move, to grab her, to run.
She looks to Beck and smiles. “So, how about the matches?”
Beck shakes her head. “If you remember anything else, please do tell us. I’m sorry about your friend.”
Beck doesn’t realize.
Ivy whips her gaze over to me. Fear courses cold through my veins, but I hold a straight face.
Does she know that I know?
Beck gives her the matches.
She pauses, eyes on me. “Sorry about your friends too.”
She lingers. One second, two, three. As if she has one more thing to say.
Then she disappears back into the trees.
I wait. A beat, two, listening until I can’t hear footsteps or rustling or anything but the spitting of the flames.
“She was in our campsite last night,” I say, my breathing getting harder. “Her buttons match the one we found.”
Why would she tell this whole story about her missing friend, say she was there with Paisley, Harlow, and Opal, and then not mention she was stalking our tent last night?
Whatever reason it is, my gut is telling me Ivy’s hiding something from us.
We need to find out what.