“Do you know what happened to Vanessa?” I asked.
Lindsey wrung out her shoulder-length hair and pulled a bag of marinated chicken out of a cooler. “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Will you shuck the corn while I start the grill?”
“Smooth subject change,” I said, snarky.
“What do you want me to say? I don’t know. Maybe she just has psoriasis or something.”
“Or she got viciously attacked by a Yorkipoo?” I plopped down at the nearest picnic table.
“What’s your deal, Nat?”
“What’s your deal?” The rough husk of a corncob made a satisfying crunch as I peeled it. “You’re being weird. What’s wrong?”
Lindsey sighed, her expression softening. “I don’t know. Sorry. It’s just…everyone has big plans to go college, and I haven’t figured out what I’m doing yet. It’s hard.”
“Lindsey, it’s okay,” I said, feeling guilty for giving her a hard time. “We’re young. We don’t have to have everything figured out yet.”
“But most people do. I just don’t want to be stuck here, with my life on pause, while everyone moves away and moves on.”
I reached over to squeeze her hand. “I may be moving away, but I won’t move on. You can come visit me whenever you want.”
She gave me a small smile. “I know.”
Devious laughter drew my eye to the shore. Abbie had corralled everyone to play tug-of-war in the shallow water, and Bryce and Grayson had taken the opportunity to try to pants Levi. Levi dropped the rope and stumbled across the sand, yanking his swim trunks well above his waistline, managing not to reveal anything. He lunged at Grayson, but Grayson escaped vengeance and trotted around with his fists raised victoriously.
“New rule! No pantsing!” Abbie yelled, her strict tone broken by a giggle.
Levi shook sand out of his hair and strode toward the pavilion, dabbing water off his chest with a towel. “Can I help with anything?”
“You can help Nat,” Lindsey offered.
Levi sat down next to me, his swim trunks dripping water onto my toes. I listened to the corn husks breaking, tuning out Grayson’s laughter. His voice was always a decibel or two higher than was comfortable for everyone else, even out here on the lake.
Levi’s bare foot brushed mine under the table and my shoulders gave a tiny jolt.
“Sorry,” he said.
I tried to think of a clever joke, but too much time passed.
Juliana traipsed out of the water in a cutout swimsuit that probably cost more than my whole summer wardrobe. She gathered her silky black hair and extracted her phone from her beach bag to take a selfie.
“I’ve been getting tons of comments on the photos I’ve taken here.” She perched next to Levi, scrolling through hundreds of replies on a post. “I had no idea the San Solano massacres were so famous. Everyone wants to know if I’m going to see the haunted cabin.”
“We could go,” Abbie said. Somehow, she was able to hear their conversation over Grayson, now rummaging through a family-sized chip bag like a starving raccoon next to her. “We’d have to be careful not to get caught, but I think it would be fun.”
“Abbie,” I said in a warning tone. “The police will be watching like hawks until after the anniversary of the murders.”
“This is our last summer here, all together,” Abbie said, gesturing grandly. “We’re expected to get a little wild, right?”
“Yes!” Juliana said with a cheer. She draped an arm over Levi’s shoulder. “Let’s get the booze. I want to hear about this Malachi chick.”
Juliana’s enthusiasm drew everyone in like a tractor beam. Soon the whole group had gathered on the pavilion. She produced an expensive-looking bottle of tequila and passed it around while my friends clambered to tell the story for her followers. Levi turned down the liquor, while Juliana found so many creative reasons to touch him that she couldn’t have made more contact if she’d suddenly sprouted eight sticky tentacles. She flipped her camera so they could take a selfie together.
I snuck away to join Lindsey at the grill. Vanessa stood nearby, arms crossed. The two were whispering. They stopped.
“You aren’t drinking, Nat?” Vanessa asked.
I shook my head. “I’m driving, and my ass is grass if my parents catch me drinking. At the very least, they’d stop paying for my phone and change the Wi-Fi password until I leave.”
“Same,” Vanessa said.
“A lot of people thought Malachi started the fire that burned down the church,” I heard Abbie explaining to the camera. She paused to take a swig of tequila before passing it on. “But her parents said they were with her when the flames of their cooking fire suddenly leaped out of control. Malachi said she was angry and did it with her mind.”
“Tell her about Easter!” a junior girl said, making grabby hands at the tequila.
Abbie explained about the baptistery filling with blood when the reverend baptized his daughter.
“No way!” Juliana exclaimed. “She seriously laughed? That’s so creepy.”
“Everyone in the church saw the same thing!” Abbie’s cheeks were turning red with exhilaration.
“It wasn’t real,” Grayson said. “She dyed the water or something. People thought she was possessed, but she was just messing with them. She was a preacher’s kid with daddy issues.”
“There’s no such thing as ‘daddy issues,’ Gray,” Vanessa snapped. As if cued by her anger, a wave of heat from the charcoals gusted out from the grill and forced me to take a step back. “It’s called trauma.”
“Malachi was abused by her father, and she acted out,” I added, and felt the camera’s gaze on me.
“People have always felt threatened by rebellious, strong women,” Vanessa went on. “It was a full-on, twentieth-century Bible Belt witch hunt.”
“How do you think the victims died, if Malachi and her followers didn’t kill them?” Abbie asked.
“Maybe a suicide pact?” Vanessa offered. “They gathered in a church and drank poisoned wine. That sounds like some sick Jonestown crap to me.”
“But they tested it, and there wasn’t any poison,” I pointed out.
“Not that the people who analyzed it could detect,” Vanessa said with a shrug. “The first one was in 1921, and forensic testing still wasn’t that great fifty years later. If they had kept enough of a sample to test now, I bet they’d find poison.”
“Do y’all ever wonder if maybe Malachi really did have magic powers, though?” the junior girl asked. “Like, what if everything in Lillian Pickard’s book is true?”
“I think there’s only one way to find out,” Juliana said, turning the camera back on herself. “And it’s to take a tour of the haunted cabin where Malachi did her demon magic. Eek!”
Lindsey cussed under her breath.
Blessedly, no one had brought up my connection to Malachi. Even Grayson knew better than to subject my family to more unwanted attention.
After dinner we migrated back to the water. The slanted light of dusk turned everyone’s eyes to gemstones and the water to flames. I felt as though I were stuck in sweet sap, pretending this summer could last forever.