“Hey, c’mere, hey, Lauren.” He was grabbing for my arm, or my hip, or some part of my body, to pull me closer. But he missed me in the dark, and I made it past him and away from the fire pit and headed down the hill. The decline forced speed on me, and I started running.
I followed the pathways between the sleeping cabins and peeked in through holes in the sagging skins over the windows: the screens and mosquito nets that couldn’t be that much help in keeping back the mosquitoes. The steps leading up to the cabin doors were buried in snow. I noted more animal prints—tracks from deer and raccoons, claw marks that had to be from birds, and a larger set that could belong to a giant owl hiding in the trees. Nothing human, not until me.
There were only five cabins for campers to sleep in. It took three visits with the flashlight to find it.
Cabin 3. Abby’s cabin.
But I didn’t know that at first.
All the furniture had been left inside the cabins for the off-season, the rows of beds with their plastic-cased mattresses stripped of sheets and their yellowed, lumpy pillows left behind in zipped pouches for next summer’s girls.
Jamie was the one who helped me discover Abby’s bed. He’d followed me in, as he’d been following me around all the cabins, and he said, “Hey, check out the walls.”
This was how I discovered that the girls at Lady-of-the-Pines liked to carve their names or initials and the dates of their stay onto the rough-hewn walls beside their beds. Over the years, enough girls had done this that there was a yearbook of sorts, an inmates’ record on the walls of a prison cell.
I circled the cabin hoping, taking my time to check the latest set of names
marking each metal-framed bed, which were arranged in two long rows against the walls.
I had a feeling I’d find her, somewhere, and then I did. Abby hadn’t just carved her name into the wooden wall behind the bed she slept in. She didn’t bother to note the year she spent here the way the other girls had. What she’d carved was a clue:
abby sinclair
luke castro
forever
Jamie said it before I did. “Weird.
Remember that Luke Castro kid from school? What a douche.”
I knew who he meant—some guy who’d graduated a year or two ago. He played on some sports team, or hung around with the guys who did. I didn’t really remember.
“Maybe it’s the same Luke Castro,” I said, and even as the words came out of my mouth I knew it had to be the same Luke—this carving of his name together forever with Abby’s told me so.
I don’t think Jamie noticed how I lingered at this particular bed over all the others, how my finger reached out to trace the shape of the lopsided heart Abby had carved into the soft, splintery wood near where she rested her head each night. He had no idea I was trying to picture how she’d carved it, and with what. I was looking back into memories I didn’t own, wanting in.
I heard him down at the other end of the cabin, talking to himself—or, no, someone must have called his cell, because he was talking to someone on the phone. His back was to me and his voice was low, like he didn’t want me to know who it was.
It was then, with no one looking, that it began.
I stood up. I walked on legs that didn’t feel like mine toward the back of the cabin, where there was a line of empty cubbies and a dark bathroom. I kept going, toward the bathroom. I couldn’t hear Jamie on the phone anymore. My ears picked up on something else: a rhythmi c slap-slap-slap coming from floor level. Startled, I stopped. The slapping sound stopped. I started walking again, and the sound picked up as before.
It was coming from my own feet, the noise of my own footsteps traveling the floor into the tiled room that held the showers. I could almost imagine that I didn’t have on my combat boots and was wearing summer flip-flops instead. Flip-flops like the one Abby had on in my van.