I was too shy to take off my top, but I felt pretty daring for dropping my skirt, which got soaked anyway when I pulled it back on after. I worried on our walk home how we’d explain if we got caught—our prefab excuse that I was saving you from sleepwalking wouldn’t fly with our hair and my shirt dripping wet. But we didn’t get caught. And part of me knew you would talk us out of trouble if it came to that.
Only Jackson stripped completely—and only once he was underwater, thank goodness—but the next day the whole camp knew we’d been skinny-dipping. (Hmm, I wonder who told them that?) I climbed out first to spare my virgin retinas getting burned with the sight of his bare ass. You stayed in, treading water, and the wind blew your soft laugh across the lake.
That was only about a week after we met them. Did you already love him then?
I still don’t get it.
Tomorrow I start my junior year, and you . . . do not. It’s weird and wrong in a million different ways.
This Back-to-School Eve feels lonelier than other years. Instead of wondering if this year I’ll make any new friends, I’m missing the best one I lost. Instead of geeking out over school supplies and texting you possible outfits, I’m writing you a letter I’ll never send and considering wearing first-day pajamas. Instead of hoping nobody notices the giant zit on my chin, I’ll be walking down the halls wondering who knows about what happened.
I don’t dread being called on at random this year. I dread being asked, “Hey, weren’t you at that camp where someone got murdered?”
It’s everywhere online. Most reporters aren’t naming names, but so what when everyone else is. You and Jackson are famous. Infamous. Social media’s worse than the news. Kids we barely spoke to keep posting all this shit—feeding rumors, leaking “evidence,” sharing bullshit theories. Like they know anything about anything. Like they know anything about you.
All summer I loved how our names were always linked: Lainie and Kayla, Kayla and Lainie. No one mentioned me without you or you without me, except once they started mentioning Jackson. But even then. So people are talking about me now too. Reporters keep poking around. My parents’ lawyer gave my only statement: No comment.
I send my calls straight to voicemail, then trash them, unplayed. There’s only one person I would talk to, and you’re not calling.
I deleted all my accounts, but it’s still hard to look away. Of course I’m curious. Of course I’m constantly obsessing over who knows what and how, or thinks they do. Over when they’ll announce the charges. Or whether they’ll need me to testify—and if so, what I will or won’t say.
Even now, I’m keeping your secrets. Every one that I can.
I saw your mom on TV today. A camera followed her from the parking lot into work. She ducked and shielded her face at first, then screamed at them to leave her alone. She looked wrecked. (The most disgusted I’ve ever seen you is when you said of your mom, “She just lets things happen to her. Lets them happen, then overreacts. She only fights back when it’s too late. It’s bad strategy, first of all. And second, it’s pathetic. I will never be like her.”)
“That poor woman,” Adele said. “Kayla, honey, let’s change the channel. You don’t need to be watching this.”
My parents have been treating me like an eight-year-old ever since they picked me up from camp. Under normal circumstances I would be annoyed, but it has been easier to just go along with it. They haven’t really known what to do with me ever since I turned thirteen—their oldest patients are twelve, and my perfect brother stayed unnaturally good-natured through high school, so I’m the first moody teenager they’ve had to deal with.
(“What do you think is the source of this unconscious hostility you’re displaying?” Adele asked me, straight-faced, the first time I rolled my eyes in her presence. “What makes you think it’s unconscious?” I shot back. It did not go over well.)
But this crisis, and my willingness to let them step in and take charge—to let my parents and the lawyer and Dr. Rita make the decisions for me, as long as they leave me alone—has been a break from all that. Adele and Peter are back in their comfort zone, and I . . . well, I’m in shock and mourning and depressed, if Dr. Rita’s to be believed, and that saps a lot of energy. It’s hard to care about being babied when you no longer care about anything at all.
Your mom was furious the first time I saw her too—the first day, moving into our cabin. We never talked about that (I guess now we never will), so I’m not sure if you noticed me the way I noticed you.
I don’t remember the specifics. We must have introduced ourselves when we realized we were sharing a bunk, and probably our dads shook hands and chatted about traffic or something or other, but I can’t conjure any of that now. The first time we said hi or whatever is lost to history, absorbed by the rafters and cabin walls covered in decades of initials, doodles, quoted lyrics, clever sayings. Girl graffiti.
What I remember most about the first time I saw you wasn’t you, really, but your Teflon coating—that smooth, calm, impenetrable shield you built up around yourself like a force field, letting everything and everyone outside it bounce off. Your dad’s distracted distance. Your mom’s icy rage that shot out her pores like frozen daggers, piercing everything else around her. Everything except you.
The cabin was swarming with parents, siblings, and campers moving in. I was trying to make my bed without getting in anyone’s way, when, a few feet behind me, your mom shouted at your dad, “Could you just fucking listen to me for once?” and everyone near us went quiet.
Your dad smiled vaguely, like her reaction was somehow amusing. Your mom threw up her hands and stormed outside, and the screen door slammed shut behind her. People stared while pretending not to. Your dad shrugged.
You went on folding your clothes into the dresser, as though none of it was happening—and if it was, it had nothing to do with you.
My parents widened their eyes at each other, ever so slightly. I could see they thought your mom was the problem. I could see they were flat-out wrong.
My parents might be clinical psychologists, but I’m a way better judge of most people than they are—at least, people over five feet tall. You used to joke I’m so hyper-observant because of all the TV I’ve watched, and we’d laugh, but I think there’s something to that. All those true-crime shows and procedural dramas train the viewer to really notice other people’s behaviors and tune into their thoughts. I’m pretty good at picking up on subtle cues that reveal people’s feelings and motivations.
I didn’t know the half of it with your parents, of course, but I could tell right away, weeks before you told me a single word about the divorce or your dad’s affair, or how they’d shipped you off to Camp Cavanick so they could rip each other’s lives—and yours—apart without having to factor you in at all, that your dad’s checked-out obliviousness was an attack.
Not caring one way or another about a person who cares desperately about you is a perfect way to inflict a serious wound. It can push someone to extremes. Make them question their self-worth. Cause them to spiral with need.
I didn’t sense that need in you yet. But I saw it in your mom, in how he’d pushed her to the edge and didn’t care if she toppled over it.