Becca Schoenfeld. Notable photojournalist. Her image of two young Syrian refugees holding hands while covered in blood made front pages around the world. But more important for Franny’s purposes, Becca’s also a veteran of Camp Nightingale’s final summer.
She noticeably wasn’t one of the girls who sought me out on Facebook. Not that I expected her to. Becca was a mystery to me. Not standoffish, necessarily. Aloof. She was quiet, often alone, content to view the world through the lens of the camera that always hung around her neck, even when she was waist-deep in the lake.
I imagine her sitting at this very table, that same camera dangling from its canvas strap as Franny convinces her to return to Camp Nightingale. Knowing that she’s agreed changes things. It makes Franny’s idea seem less like a folly and more like something that could actually happen. Although not with me.
“It’s an awfully big commitment,” I say.
“You’ll be compensated financially, of course.”
“It’s not that,” I say, still twisting the napkin so hard it’s starting to look like rope. “I’m not sure I can go back there again. Not after what happened.”
“Maybe that’s precisely why you should go back,” Franny says. “I was afraid to return, too. I avoided it for two years. I thought I’d find nothing there but darkness and bad memories. That wasn’t the case. It was as beautiful as ever. Nature heals, Emma. I firmly believe that.”
I say nothing. It’s hard to speak when Franny’s green-eyed gaze is fixed on me, intense and compassionate and, yes, a little bit needy.
“Tell me you’ll at least give it some thought,” she says.
“I will,” I tell her. “I’ll think about it.”
3
I don’t think about it.
I obsess.
Franny’s offer dominates my thoughts for the rest of the day. But it’s not the kind of thinking she was hoping for. Instead of pondering how wonderful it might be to go back to Camp Nightingale, I think of all the reasons I shouldn’t return. Crushing guilt I haven’t been able to shake in fifteen years. Plain old anxiety. All of them continue to flutter through my thoughts when I meet Marc for dinner at his bistro.
“I think you should go,” he says as he pushes a plate of ratatouille in front of me. It’s my favorite dish on the menu, steaming and ripe with the scent of tomatoes and herbs de Provence. Normally, I’d already be digging in. But Franny’s proposal has sapped my appetite. Marc senses this and slides a large wineglass next to the plate, filled almost to the rim with pinot noir. “It might do you some good.”
“My therapist would beg to differ.”
“I doubt that. It’s a textbook case of closure.”
God knows, I haven’t had much of that. There were memorial services for all three girls, staggered over a six-month period, depending on when their families gave up hope. Allison’s was first. All song and drama. Then Natalie’s, always in the middle, her service a quiet, family-only affair. Vivian’s was the last, on a bitterly cold January morning. Hers was the only one I attended. My parents told me I couldn’t go, but I went anyway, ditching school to slide into the last pew of the packed church, far away from Vivian’s weeping parents. There were so many senators and congressmen present that it felt like watching C-SPAN.
The service didn’t help. Neither did reading about Allison’s and Natalie’s services online. Mostly because there was the chance, however slim, that they could still be alive. It doesn’t matter that the state of New York declared all of them legally dead after three years. Until their bodies are found, there’s no way of knowing.
“I’m not sure closure is the issue,” I say.
“Then what is the issue, Em?”
“It’s the place where three people vanished into thin air. That’s the issue.”
“Understood,” Marc says. “But there’s something else going on. Something you’re not telling me.”
“Fine.” I sigh into my ratatouille, steam skirting across the table. “I haven’t painted a thing in the past six months.”
A stricken look crosses Marc’s face, like he doesn’t quite believe me. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly.”
“So you’re stuck,” he says.
“It’s more than that.”
I admit everything. How I can’t seem to paint anything but the girls. How I refuse to continue down that path of obliterating their white-frocked forms with trees and vines. How day after day I stare at the giant canvas in my loft, trying to summon the will to create something new.
“Okay, so you’re obsessed.”
“Bingo,” I say, reaching for the wine and taking a hearty gulp.
“I don’t want to seem insensitive,” Marc says. “And I certainly don’t want to belittle your emotions. You feel what you feel, and I get that. What I don’t understand is why, after all this time, what happened at that camp still haunts you so much. Those girls were practically strangers.”
My therapist has said the same thing. As if I don’t know how weird it is to be so affected by something that happened fifteen years ago and fixated on girls I knew for only two weeks.
“They were friends,” I say. “And I feel bad about what happened to them.”
“Bad or guilty?”
“Both.”
I was the last person to see them alive. I could have stopped them from doing whatever the hell it was they had planned to do. Or I could have told Franny or a counselor as soon as they left. Instead, I went back to sleep. Now I still sometimes hear Vivian’s parting words in my dreams.
You’re too young for this, Em.
“And you’re afraid that being back there again will make you feel even worse,” Marc says.
Rather than answer, I reach for the glass, the wine catching my wobbly reflection. I stare at myself, shocked by how strange I appear. Do I really look that sad? I must, because Marc’s tone softens as he says, “It’s natural to be afraid. Friends of yours died.”
“Vanished,” I say.
“But they are dead, Emma. You know that, right? The worst thing that could happen has already taken place.”
“There’s something worse than death.”
“Such as?”
“Not knowing,” I say. “Which is why I’m only able to paint those girls. And I can’t keep doing that, Marc. I need to move on.”