By the end of the week, you’d invited him and Nitin to sneak out with us. That night, walking back to our cabin under the tapestry of stars, the crickets chirping all around us (Me: “Did you know only male crickets chirp?” You: “No, Randy, I did not. Thank you for that whimsical knowledge bomb”), you hooked your arm through mine and asked, “What would I ever do without you?”
I laughed and said, “Well, you’re stuck with me, so I guess we’ll never find out.”
How many things can one person be wrong about?
I know by the end you thought I hated Jackson, but I didn’t. At the beginning, I almost liked him. I never found him as amazing as you did—or as he clearly found himself—but I liked that he was arty and strange. A little full of himself and not a great listener, but usually interesting enough and not horrible to have around. I wouldn’t have chosen to invite him to hang with us, but I didn’t object when you did. I thought you’d get bored with him eventually, the way you did with almost everyone else—especially once you realized he wasn’t anywhere close to your league.
But the weirdest thing happened: He seemed to get bored with you instead.
I mean, not exactly. But while your interest in him intensified, his interest in you stayed right where it had started, and refused to budge. It’s not that he wasn’t into you. It’s that Jackson’s primary interest was always, and remained, himself. And I don’t think you’d encountered that before—a person you couldn’t charm into liking you exactly the amount you wanted them to.
I think maybe that’s why you kissed him. To gain back the upper hand.
But after the kiss, you weren’t just into Jackson. After the kiss, you were obsessed.
You hid it pretty well, how imbalanced things had become.
But I was the witness, the confidante. I was the one you could trust.
At night on the dock, you cried on my shoulder, or went manic with fun like to prove you didn’t care—as if he was your audience even when we were alone together. I hated that. But I preferred it to the nights when he was with us, and your neediness multiplied like fruit flies on a rotten banana. Nights you begged me to come with you, only to sneak off with him alone, to do who knows what for who knew how long, while I waited in the dark to make sure you’d get home.
It hurt to watch you bend and twist, trying to prove you were enough for him. Trying to fit some idea of what he needed you to be. He was barely worthy of clinging to the bottom of your shoe, let alone making out with you. But he was what you wanted.
Each time he thoughtlessly stomped on your heart, I was there to pick up the pieces. I needed you, and if you needed me, I would be there every time. There was no on-again, off-again with you and me. Only Till Death Do Us Part.
But Lainie, as many times this summer as I wished Jackson gone, I never wished anyone dead.
Love,
Kayla
Camper and Counselor Interviews, Statements, and Posts
August 14–November 24
“It wasn’t a secret. Everyone knew Jackson had a serious girlfriend back home. Lainie didn’t seem to care about that. Neither did Jackson, for that matter.”
“When you’re at camp, all that matters is camp. I think what Lainie and Jackson had was real. They seemed really cute together, even though they fought a lot. It wasn’t real fighting, though, just pushing each other’s buttons. It was their thing. They were both competitive people. But they were so into each other. Anyone could see that.”
“Lainie and Jackson’s relationship ran super hot-and-cold. They’d be teasing each other one second, and breaking up again the next. Then ten minutes later you’d see them laughing and cuddling, or practically tearing each other’s clothes off in public. You never knew what was serious or what was a huge joke with them. I think they both kind of fed off the drama, to be honest.
“This seems awful to say now, given what happened, but . . . that relationship couldn’t have ended in anything but fireworks. They were explosive from the start.”
“I guess I knew they hooked up, but I didn’t know it was anything serious. Jackson flirted with anything that moved, and Lainie was always with Kayla. He was kind of slutty, if you ask me. I was surprised someone like Lainie would go for him. I thought she was way over his level.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I had no idea Jackson had someone else back home. I was shocked. But camp is this total bubble, you know? Like all that matters is who you are there, and nothing about back home feels relevant. You know? I don’t know. It’s hard to describe. It’s not like I’m a different person at camp and with my camp friends. It’s more like that I’m more of who I really am with them, because you come to camp without the baggage of people thinking they already have you all figured out. It’s a clean slate. Nobody at camp knows anything about your past except what you tell them, but also, you know people better here. Your camp friends know you better than anyone else. Like, the real you. All that time you spend together is intense. You can live out a whole relationship in, like, a day.”
“I have no idea what Lainie saw in him in the first place, but when they weren’t fighting, they definitely made out a lot. I assumed it was just a summer thing, mostly physical. I never would have guessed either of them was invested enough for it to end so badly.”
“I remember one meal, about a week before the end, when Jackson and Lainie had a huge fight over nothing. It started out kind of joking, a faux-fight over ketchup or something, but then he was saying X, and she was saying Y, and suddenly it got really serious, and we were all just like, whoa. It was super heated. Jackson definitely had a temper. They both did.
“Anyway. The fight was getting worse and she was all up in his face, just egging him on. And right when it seemed like he might actually, like, hit her, Kayla said something that sliced through the tension, and bam, it was over, just like that.
“Lainie joked back to Kayla and smiled at Jackson, and his cheeks stopped burning red. Soon they were kidding around like normal and I would have thought I misread it—that they weren’t fighting at all, it was just some joke I wasn’t in on—if it weren’t for what happened later. If one of them hadn’t turned up dead.
“I wish now I could remember more of what happened in that fight. I didn’t think at the time it would be important. But Kayla was like that—she could defuse Lainie before she blew up. Which isn’t how Lainie was normally, only how she got around Jackson. He really knew how to set her on fire.”
September 4
Dear Lainie,
I made it through the first week of school, despite my unforgiving brain keeping me up until all hours, and my unforgiving alarm going off at 6:40, no matter what time I finally fell asleep. You used to rib me for being tired the mornings after we’d sneak out (I swear it’s not human how much energy you always had), but you should see me now. Zombie city. It doesn’t help that once I drag myself up and at ’em, the reward is another day of high school.
It feels different this year. Not the classes or the building or the pointlessness or the smell, but something. The vibe. I don’t know if it’s me, or what people think they know about me, but I’m finding it harder to be inconspicuous. Ironic that now that I want to slip through the days unseen, my classmates have suddenly noticed me. I guess once you cracked me out of my shell and rendered me uninvisible (uh, visible? Wow, good job, brain. Have I mentioned I need sleep?), it became impossible to go back. Or maybe it’s literally you: Maybe they’ve seen the rumors in videos and comments online, and my proximity to the murder makes me seem different. I don’t know.