I opened the door and shouted, “You guys can cut it out! I’m not scared!”
But there was no sound in response.
There were no lights, either. No flashlight beams bouncing around. No lights from the other cabins or from the lodge house up the hill.
And there was no moon. Everything looked just as it had the night before. Dim and gray and empty.
“Hailey?” I shouted. No response. “Anna? Sydney?”
Still nothing.
But I’d just heard them leaving the cabin. They couldn’t have gone far.
The hair on the back of my neck prickled. But that was stupid. There was nothing out here except girls playing a mean trick. The only scary things that had ever been at this camp were the lesbians by the woodpile, and they were long gone.
A breeze picked up and blew against my cheek. A warm summer breeze. At first.
But it kept blowing, and after a minute or two, I realized the air around me was growing cooler. Soon I was shivering again.
I didn’t see how Hailey and the girls in the cabin could’ve done that.
“Hailey?” I said again. But I couldn’t shout anymore. I could barely even get the word out.
That was when the whispering came back.
This time, there were no giggles. No furtive shushing.
This whisper sounded exactly as it had that first night. On the path down from the hill.
But this time, it didn’t tell me to go away.
Georgia, the voice whispered. Look down. Look down. Look down.
The repetition went on and on and on. I shook my head and held my hands over my ears, but the whispering never stopped.
Look down. Look down. Look down.
It wasn’t coming from just one side, the way it had before. These whispers were coming from all around me.
Look down. Look down. Look down.
I wanted to scream, but my throat was frozen. My whole body was immobile. I could only move my eyelids.
So I shut them. Maybe shutting my eyes would shut out everything else, too.
And it worked. It actually worked. With my eyes closed, I couldn’t hear the whispers anymore.
The breeze had stopped, too. The cold had begun to let up. The goose bumps that had formed on my arms were fading.
It was over.
I tried to relax, to shake it off. I still couldn’t move, but I was sure that when I could see again, the world would have gone back to normal.
I opened my eyes.
The first thing I saw was Hailey. She was standing right in front of me. So close our noses were almost touching.
I tried to gasp, to back up. But I couldn’t.
She lifted her hands toward me. For a second I actually thought she was going to kiss me.
I didn’t know what to think. My heart was racing. I was scared, but I was also . . . not.
Then she reached for me. And wrapped her hands around my throat.
She squeezed her fingers, closing in, choking me.
I couldn’t breathe. I tried to claw at her hands, but I couldn’t lift my arms.
I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t even close my eyes. But the world was turning black, anyway.
Hailey tipped her head backward, her eyes rolling up, her mouth opening wide. The blackness down her gaping throat was coming forward to swallow me whole.
She began to laugh. Huge, bellowing laughs, the sound rocking the earth under my feet. I was falling, falling—
My eyes flew open. It was still dark, but awareness flooded into my limbs.
I was gasping, reaching for my throat.
The hands were gone. I could breathe.
I didn’t see Hailey anymore.
“She’s awake!” someone hissed.
Something felt sticky on my fingers and my neck.
I was in my bunk bed, down inside my sleeping bag. That was why I couldn’t see. I reached up, but I couldn’t find the opening at the top of the sleeping bag.
A flashlight beam shone bright behind the dark fabric covering me. I reached up again to pull the bag down off my face, but I still couldn’t get to the top. In the process, whatever was making my hands sticky got on my cheeks, and then my face was sticky too.
And all around me, everyone was laughing.
It had been a dream. The girls tiptoeing out, Hailey choking me in the dark . . . It was nothing but a stupid, pathetic nightmare. God, even my dreams were embarrassing now.
I reached up again. I still couldn’t find the opening at the top of the sleeping bag.
Was there an opening at the top? Maybe I’d somehow flipped myself around backward. I tried to wriggle around so I was facing the other direction, but the bag was too narrow.
The laughs in the bunks around me grew louder. Bolder.
“Look at her!” someone whispered.
“Has she figured it out yet?”
“Shhh!”
My heart was racing even faster than it had in my dream. What the hell was going on? I reached up, yanking on the fabric of the bag, but it just came down harder on my head. The bag was hot and stuffy. It felt like I was running out of air.
The laughter in the room around me got louder, then louder still, as my breath started to come out in pants. I was trapped in here, in this dark, sticky place, and everyone else was just laughing, as if—
“Shhh!” one of the girls whispered, but she was still laughing. “The new counselors will come in here if we’re too loud.”
“Those old ladies? They wouldn’t come out of the lodge even if we were down here killing her.”
“Shhh!”
Then I understood what had happened. They’d tied my sleeping bag shut.
I reached up again, forcing myself to inhale the stale air, and found where fabric was bunched up. That was where the opening was supposed to be.
The girls must’ve waited for me to fall asleep and then tied it shut from the outside, with . . . what? A lanyard or something? It couldn’t be very tight. I tried to work my hand up into the opening, but my fingers were sticky and slimy, and even smelled kind of minty. . . .
Toothpaste.
They’d filled up my sleeping bag with toothpaste. Then they’d pulled it up over my head and tied it shut.
My hands, my neck, my face. Everything was covered. The girls must have emptied out every tube they’d brought with them.
Gross. And stupid. So, so stupid.
I choked back a sob.
“I think she’s trying to get out of it,” one of the other girls whispered through the laughter.
“Shhh!”
My fingers finally squeezed through. A moment later I pushed my whole hand out. Then my other hand, until I could wrench it all the way open. The trickle of fresh air made the sticky wetness on my face itch.
But it was still air, glorious air. I jerked the fabric of the sleeping bag down until my head and shoulders were out.
All at once the flashlight beam was bright in my face, and the laughter in the cabin had crescendoed into howls. I reached up and realized the toothpaste was covering my hair too.
“Oh my God!” someone squealed. “It’s like a scene out of a horror movie.”
I turned my back on them, focusing every ounce of energy I had on not crying as their peals of laughter filled the room.
I’d been wrong about Hailey.
I’d thought she was the only one who really understood me. I’d thought I understood her, too. But she’d been lying to me the whole time.