“Why not now?”
This comes from Mindy, who’s swooped up to the table without notice. I find her standing behind me, arms crossed. Although it’s unclear how much she’s heard, it was enough to make the edges of her plastered-on smile twitch.
“Does Franny need a reason for doing a good deed?” she says, directing the comment to Roberta, Paige, Casey, and me. “I didn’t know it was wrong to try to give a new generation of girls the same experiences the four of you had.”
If this is an attempt to sound like Franny, she’s failing miserably. Franny’s speeches might be scripted, but the emotion behind them is real. You believe every word she says. Mindy’s tone is different. It comes off so sweetly sanctimonious that I can’t help but say, “I wouldn’t wish my experience here on anyone.”
Mindy gives a sad shake of her head. Clearly, I’ve let her down. Holding her hand to her heart, she says, “I expected more from you, Emma. Franny showed a great deal of courage inviting you back here.”
“And Emma showed courage by agreeing to come,” Casey says, leaping to my defense.
“She did,” Mindy replies. “Which is why I thought she’d show a little bit more Camp Nightingale spirit.”
I roll my eyes so hard the sockets hurt. “Really?”
“Fine.” Mindy plops into an empty chair and lets out a sigh that reminds me of air hissing from a punctured tire. “I’ve been told by Lottie that we need to make a cabin check schedule for the summer.”
Ah, cabin check. The nightly examination of all the cabins by counselors to make sure everyone is present, accounted for, and staying out of trouble. Naturally, it had been the highlight of Vivian’s day.
“Each night, we need two people to check on the cabins that don’t have counselors or instructors staying in them,” Mindy says. “Who wants to volunteer first? And where’s Rebecca?”
“Sleeping, I think,” Casey says. “I saw her earlier, and she said she needed a nap or the jet lag was going to kill her. She was on assignment in London and came straight here from the airport.”
“I guess we’ll have to pencil her in later,” Mindy says. “Who wants to do it tonight?”
As the others wrangle over the schedule, I see the mess hall’s double doors open and watch as Rebecca Schoenfeld steps inside. Unlike Casey, she’s changed quite a bit. Gone are the braces and the adolescent pudge. She’s become harder, compact, with a worldly style. Her hair, once a frizzy mass kept in place with a scrunchie, is now sleek and short. She’s accented her shorts-and-polo ensemble with a brightly colored scarf. Beneath it hangs her camera, which sways as she walks. Her movements are another change. Instead of the shuffling teenager I remember, she walks with swift precision—a woman on a mission. She crosses the mess hall to the food station and grabs an apple. She takes a bite on her way out, stopping only when she spots me on the other side of the room.
The look she gives me is unreadable. I can’t tell if she’s surprised, happy, or confused by my presence. After another sharp bite of apple, she turns and exits the mess hall.
“I need to go,” I say.
Mindy emits another deflated-tire sigh. “What about cabin check?”
“Sign me up for whenever.”
I leave the table, abandoning my tray, the food barely touched. Outside the mess hall, I search in every direction for signs of Becca. But she’s nowhere to be found. The areas in front of both the mess hall and the arts and crafts building next door are empty. In the distance, I see Franny slowly making her way to the Lodge with Lottie by her side. Beyond the Lodge, on the patch of grass that leads down to the lake, I spot the maintenance man who was fixing the roof when I arrived. He pushes a wheelbarrow toward a rickety toolshed situated on the edge of the lawn. Lots of activity. None of it from Becca.
I start to head back to the cabins when someone says my name.
“Emma?”
I freeze, knowing exactly who the voice belongs to.
Theo Harris-White.
He calls to me from the open door of the arts and crafts building. Like Franny’s speech, nothing about his voice has changed. Hearing it sends more memories shooting into me. They hurt. Like a quiver of arrows to the gut.
Seeing Theo for the very first time, shyly shaking his hand, trying not to notice how his T-shirt swelled across his chest, confused about why the sight made me feel so warm inside.
Theo waist-deep in the lake, skin sun-kissed and blazing, me cradled in his arms, practically trembling from his touch as he lowers me in the water until I’m floating.
Vivian nudging me toward the extra-wide crack in the latrine’s exterior wall. Through the gap escaped the sound of a running shower and Theo absently humming a Green Day song. Go on, Vivian whispered. Take a look. He’ll never know.
“Emma,” he says again, this time without the questioning inflection. He knows it’s me.
I turn around slowly, unsure what to expect. Part of me wants him to be ruddy and balding, the march toward middle age leaving him thick around the waist. Another part of me wants him to look exactly the same.
The reality is somewhere in between. He’s aged, of course. No longer the strapping nineteen-year-old I remember him being. That youthful glow has dimmed into something darker, more intense. Yet he wears the years well. Too well, to be honest. There’s more bulk than before, but it’s all muscle. The flecks of gray in his dark hair and five o’clock shadow suit him. So does the slight weathering of his face. When he smiles at me, a few faint wrinkles crepe the skin around his mouth and eyes. I hate that it only makes him look more attractive.
“Hi.”
It’s not much of a greeting, but it’s the best I can manage. Especially while I’m being blindsided by another memory. One that eclipses the others.
Theo standing in front of the Lodge, looking exhausted and disheveled after a day spent searching the woods. Me rushing at him, crying as I pound his chest and scream, Where are they? What did you do to them?
Until today, it was the last thing I ever said to him.
Now that he’s right here in front of me again, I expect him to be angry or bitter about what I’d accused him of doing all those years ago. It makes me want to flee the same way Becca had left the mess hall, only faster. But I stay completely still as Theo steps forward and, shockingly, gives me a hug. I pull away after only a second, afraid touching him for too long will prompt even more memories.
Theo takes a step back, looks at me, shakes his head. “I can’t believe you’re really here. My mother told me you were coming, but I just didn’t think it would happen.”
“Here I am.”
“And it looks like life is treating you well. You look great.”