“You’re all playing,” Rona ordered to their collective groan.
“Fine, then you have to answer with the truth, too,” warned Lanny, pointing at each of the girls individually.
“Absolutely,” Rona agreed with a lift of her shoulder.
“You first,” Donovan told her.
“Fine. Go ahead. Ask me anything.”
“Did you fuck Steve Burckman?” Donovan shot back immediately.
Wendy gasped and Brooke declared, “Donovan!”
“Well?” His gaze was fixed on Rona.
Unlike her friends, she was unperturbed. “Steve Burckman’s an asshole. Let’s get the rules straight here. Whatever the question is, it should be asked of everyone. So, if you want to know who someone slept with, you ask, ‘Who’s the last person you slept with?’ You can’t be so specific—”
“Was Steve Burckman the last person you slept with?” Donovan cut in.
“Shut up, asshole. I never slept with him,” she snapped back.
“We’re not asking that question!” Brooke stated loudly. “I’m not discussing my love life.”
“Like you have one,” sniggered Lanny.
“What’s the point, then?” asked Owen.
“We need a different question. How about, ‘What’s the worst thing you did that really pissed off your parents?’” Brooke suggested.
“We’ll take Brooke’s question,” agreed Rona.
“Too tame,” groaned Lanny. “Ask something else.”
“Nope. That’s the question. Brooke asked it, and it stays. I’ll start.” Rona began walking in a slow circle around the campfire and Emma eased herself up into a cross-legged sitting position, curious.
“I was fourteen. It was the summer before high school and I was with my cousin who’d just turned eighteen and he and I were the only ones awake at this backyard barbeque party at my aunt’s.”
“Uh-oh,” said Owen. “Sounds like a sex thing.”
“We started kissing. No big deal. A little touching. Just a little experimentation.”
“Maybe a little statutory rape,” drawled Donovan.
“It didn’t go near that far.” She glared at Owen as if he’d said it. He raised his hands in all innocence. “But our parents caught us and my cousin got a blistering with a hack paddle, and I got grounded for all of freshman year.” Rona reseated herself by Donovan.
“Your cousin?” squeaked Wendy, which made all the guys laugh and then pretend like they were barfing their guts out at the thought.
“Oh, stop it,” said Brooke tiredly.
“What’d you do?” Owen asked her.
Emma had seen the way Owen looked at Brooke and wondered if Brooke had noticed.
“No. My turn,” Lanny interrupted. “My mama caught me with enough ganja in my room to get the whole town high. She threw me out of the house, and I had to live with my dad and stepmother, the wicked bitch of Laurelton, for half a year before she let me back in.”
“What about you?” Owen asked Brooke again. “You’re the one who wanted this stupid question.”
Emma slid her eyes to Brooke, who lifted a hand to brush back her hair, a move meant to buy time. Brooke then shrugged and said, “I took out my mom’s car when I was fifteen before I had my license. When I drove back home my dad was standing in the picture window, waiting for me. They’d gotten home before I did and man, I was in serious trouble. Couldn’t see my friends. Grounded, like Rona.”
“This is a dumb question,” said Owen, bored.
“What about you?” Donovan asked Emma.
Before she could answer, Ryan demanded the same thing of Wendy.
“Sorry. I don’t have any story,” she answered. “I haven’t done anything to piss my parents off. I’m the good girl.”
“Bullshit, Wendy,” said Rona on a short laugh. “You just haven’t got caught yet.”
“You know something we don’t?” Lanny asked Rona, who just shrugged.
Brooke seemed about to say something but held it back.
Emma looked at Rona, then Brooke, then Wendy. The three of them had all just graduated from Laurelton High together. Emma still had another year of school at River Glen, but felt light-years older.
“Emma?” Donovan turned back to her. All of their faces, ghoulishly lit by the fire, seemed to stare at her with black eyes. A bat swooped over them and then another before they headed north, in the direction of Suicide Ledge. Out of the corner of her eye Emma thought she saw movement in the trees just outside the camp clearing. She glanced quickly that way but there was nothing she could see.
“You’re stalling,” said Lanny.
They were all waiting with bated breath. Emma smiled to herself and thought . . . A bunch of fourth graders . . .
“Actually, the ‘pissed off’ stuff is still coming,” she told them.
“What does that mean?” asked Ryan.
“Shut up.” Donovan’s eyes were on Emma.
“My mom doesn’t know it yet, but I’m getting married soon.”
That caused a moment of surprised silence, then Lanny cried, “Married?”
“Are you pregnant?” asked Owen.
“Yeah . . .” Rona was staring at her like she’d grown a second head.
Emma laughed aloud. “You should see your faces!”
“You’re joking,” accused Brooke.
“This is truth,” Rona reminded.
Emma just shrugged. She wasn’t about to explain herself.
Owen was next and told them he’d stolen some beer out of the neighbor’s garage refrigerator. His parents had been embarrassed and the neighbor had suggested Owen mow their very large backyard for the entire summer, which pretty much sucked. Donovan was questioned about what he’d done and he said he’d taken up with his dad’s girlfriend for a while after they broke up, which hadn’t gone over well with dear, old Dad. Like Lanny, he was shipped off to the other parent for a while. Ryan never got around to saying what he’d gotten in trouble for, other than muttering his dad was a hard-ass and didn’t like anything he did.
The campfire broke up soon afterward with everyone drifting back to their bunks. It was Ryan who slipped up beside Emma, matching his strides to hers as she headed to her cabin. “Are you really getting married?” he asked her somewhat earnestly.
“What’d you do to piss off your parents?” she countered. This was the first time he’d even spoken to her directly.
He glanced back toward the surrounding fir trees. The half moon had been obscured by clouds, but it broke free and shone brightly on the edge of the woods. For a second Emma thought she saw a white hand on the bole of a tree but she blinked and it was gone.
“Got involved with the wrong girl,” he said with a kind of half chuckle.
“And your parents found out?”
“Them and everyone else. Hey, do you think we could hang out some? Summer’s almost over and I don’t want it to be.”
Emma felt differently. She wanted this interminable summer to end. “Sure,” she said, more to ease away to the solitude of her bunk than because she was dying to spend more time with him.