“But you noticed things.”
“Little things,” Casey says. “I noticed her walking alone around camp a few times. Which never happened the previous summers. Vivian was always surrounded by people. And maybe she just wanted to be left alone. Or maybe . . .”
Her voice trails off as she takes one last draw of her cigarette.
“Maybe what?”
“She was up to no good,” Casey says. “On the second day of camp, I caught her trying to sneak into the Lodge. She was hanging around the steps on the back deck, ready to run inside. She said she was looking for Franny, but I didn’t buy it.”
“Why would she want to break into the Lodge?”
Casey shrugs again. The gesture contains a note of annoyance, almost as if she wishes she’d never brought up the topic of Vivian. “Your guess is as good as mine,” she says.
* * *
—
My final stop on cabin check is Dogwood, where I find all three girls on their beds, phones in hand, faces awash in the ice-blue light of their screens. Sasha is already under the covers, her glasses perched on the tip of her nose as she plays Candy Crush or some similarly frustrating time-waste of a game. A cacophony of chirps and beeps erupts from her phone.
In the bunk below her, Krystal has changed into baggy sweats. The matted teddy bear sits in the crook of her arm as she watches a Marvel movie on her phone, the soundtrack leaking out of her earbuds, tinny and shrill. I can hear blips of gunfire and the telltale crunch of fist hitting skull.
On the other side of the cabin, Miranda reclines on the top bunk, now dressed in a tight tank top and black shorts so small they barely qualify to be called that. She holds her phone close to her face, doing a faux pout as she takes several pictures.
“You shouldn’t be using your phones,” I say, even though I was guilty of doing the same thing earlier. “Save your batteries.”
Krystal tugs off her earbuds. “What else are we going to do?”
“We could, you know, talk,” I suggest. “You may find it hard to believe, but people actually did that before everyone spent all their time squinting at screens.”
“I saw you talking to Theo after dinner,” Miranda says, her voice wavering between innocence and accusation. “Is he, like, your boyfriend?”
“No. He’s a—”
I truly don’t know what to call Theo. Several different labels apply.
My friend? Not necessarily.
One of my first crushes? Probably.
The person I accused of doing something horrible to Vivian, Natalie, and Allison?
Definitely.
“He’s an acquaintance,” I say.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Sasha asks.
“Not at the moment.”
I have plenty of friends who are boys, most of them gay or too socially awkward to consider a romantic relationship. When I do date someone, it’s not for very long. A lot of men like the idea of being in a relationship with an artist, but few actually get used to the reality of the situation. The odd hours, the self-doubt and stained hands that stink of oil paint more often than not. The last guy I dated—a dorky-cute accountant at a rival ad agency—managed to put up with it for four months before breaking things off.
Lately, my romantic life has consisted of occasional dalliances with a French sculptor when he happens to be in the city on business. We meet for drinks, conversation, sex made more passionate by how infrequent it is.
“Then how do you know Theo?” Krystal says.
“From when I was a camper here.”
Miranda latches on to this news like a shark biting into a baby seal. A wicked grin widens across her face, and her eyes light up. It reminds me so much of Vivian that it causes a strange ache in my heart.
“So you were at Camp Nightingale before?” she says. “Must have been a long time ago.”
Rather than be offended, I smile, impressed by the stealthiness of her insult. She’s a sly one. Vivian would have loved her.
“It was,” I say.
“Did you like it here?” Sasha says as bombastic music rises from her phone and exploding candy pieces reflect off the lenses of her glasses.
“At first. Then not so much.”
“Why did you come back?” Krystal asks.
“To make sure you girls have a better time than I did.”
“What happened?” Miranda says. “Something horrible?”
She leans forward, her phone temporarily discarded as she waits for my answer. It gives me an idea.
“Phones off,” I say. “I mean it.”
All three of them groan. Miranda’s is the most dramatic as she, like the others, switches off her phone. I sit cross-legged on the floor, my back pressed against the edge of my bunk. I pat the spaces on either side of me until the girls do the same.
“What are we doing?” Sasha asks.
“Playing a game. It’s called Two Truths and a Lie. You say three things about yourself. Two of them must be true. One is false. The rest of us have to guess the lie.”
We played it a lot during my brief time in Dogwood, including the night of my arrival. The four of us were laying on our bunks in the darkness of the cabin, listening to nature’s chorus of crickets and bullfrogs outside the window, when Vivian suddenly said, Two Truths and a Lie, ladies. I’ll start.
She began to utter three statements, either assuming we already knew how the game was played or just not caring if we didn’t.
One: I once met the president. His palm was sweaty. Two: My parents were going to get a divorce but then decided not to when my dad got elected. Three: Once, on vacation in Australia, I got pooped on by a koala.
Three, Natalie said. You used it last year.
No, I didn’t.
You totally did, Allison said. You told us the koala peed on you.
That’s how it went every night. The four of us in the dark, sharing things we’d never reveal in the light of day. Constructing our lies so they’d sound real. It’s how I learned that Natalie once kissed a field hockey teammate and that Allison tried to sabotage a matinee of Les Misérables by spilling grape juice on her mother’s costume five minutes before curtain.
The game was Vivian’s favorite. She said you could learn more about a person from their lies than their truths. At the time, I didn’t believe her. I do now.
“I’ll start,” Miranda says. “Number one: I once made out with an altar boy in the confessional during Christmas mass. Number two: I read a hundred books a year, mostly mysteries. Number three: I once threw up after riding the Cyclone at Coney Island.”