August 14–November 24
“I don’t think it could have happened the way everyone says it happened. Like, why would you kill someone over something like that? I think it must have been an accident or, like, bears or something, I don’t know.”
“My first week at camp I was totally scared to walk back to the cabin or to the bathrooms alone after dark. I always made someone go with me. People told all these stories at campfire one night, and it freaked me out.
“There’s a counselor who drowned in the lake a long time ago, and his ghost still haunts the boathouse. When he cries, it sounds like the loons at night. You can hear them across the lake. Not to mention ax murderers.
“I heard a noise the first week, and I really thought there might be someone or something hiding in the woods, waiting to kill us. I never thought to be scared of other campers, though.
“I don’t think my parents will send me back next year. This kind of ruined camp for a lot of us, you know?”
“How come nobody’s talking about Nitin? Where was he that night? He and Jackson seemed tight for the first part of camp, but I never saw them together toward the end. If they had some kind of falling-out, that might be relevant. I don’t know. Nitin always seemed nice, but that’s suspicious too. Like, he almost was too nice for Jackson. I don’t know what they had in common, besides being in the same cabin.
“It’s always the quiet ones you have to look out for.”
“The night we hooked up, Jackson told me about Lainie’s temper. We didn’t talk about her much because we were . . . you know . . . but that’s one thing he said. ‘That girl has a major temper,’ or something like that.
“He wasn’t afraid of her or anything but, like, maybe he should have been. All these people talking about ‘maybe it was an accident’ or ‘maybe it was Nitin’ or maybe it was me, even, need to face the facts. She had a temper. She had a temper and she killed him. End of story.
“I can’t believe I hooked up with him a few weeks ago and now he’s dead.”
“I thought their relationship seemed really passionate. To be honest, I was kind of jealous. I wanted to have a summer romance that interesting and dramatic.
“Now I don’t know what to think.”
September 13
Dear Lainie,
I’m supposed to be writing a persuasive essay, due tomorrow, on whether cell phones should be allowed in school, but I’ll most definitely be asking for an extension and telling Mr. Rabbani it’s been hard for me to focus on anything but you.
So far my teachers have been very understanding about the “extenuating circumstances” affecting my academic performance. I’ve been doing less work, yet making better grades, than at any other point in my high school career. So, thanks for that, I guess?
I would much rather still be a plain old, regular slacker and have my best friend back. No lie.
Ugh.
Here’s something you told us that still makes me laugh, even if it’s fake: the kid you went to school with whose name is Groovy Nipples.
We were out on the dock—a warm night. I remember you had your feet in the water and it splashed if you kicked when Jackson tickled you now and then. Nitin and I were commiserating about our teachers’ faces lighting up when they realized we were related to our exceptional older siblings, and that sinking feeling we’d get, knowing the bar had been raised too high and we were guaranteed to fall—splat!—on our asses right below it.
You lifted your head off Jackson’s shoulder. “It could be worse,” you said. “Your parents could have named you Groovy Nipples.”
No one pointed out the non sequitur. “Groovy Nipples is not a name,” I said, looking away from Jackson’s fingers sliding up your back, under the tank top, as though Nitin and I weren’t right there, less than three feet away.
“It absolutely is,” you said, “unfortunately for Groovy Nipples Eaton.” You told us about the girl at your school whose parents were total hippies and probably high off the birth meds and who knows what else when they named her.
“Is Nipples, like, a middle name? And Groovy is her first name?” Nitin asked, squinting like that would bring the answers into focus.
“No, it’s one name, like Mary Kate or Wilma Sue.”
“Okay, no one is named Wilma Sue,” I said. You shrugged.
Jackson nuzzled your neck. Nitin shot me a quick eye-roll and I liked him more than ever, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be handed off on him. If we were grouping off in twos, that wasn’t the correct pairing. Everyone except me seemed to have missed or forgotten that. (Though Nitin might have preferred you or Jackson at that point; who knows.)
“Does she have siblings?” I asked, to pull you back to us.
“An older brother. Paul.”
I shook my head. “Is that true?”
You pulled your feet from the water and swiveled to face me. Jackson turned too. He looked bored now that he wasn’t groping you. “Do you want it to be?” you asked.
“That’s not an answer,” I said.
You wiggled your toes. “Truth is stranger than fiction, Randy.”
Jackson poked you in the side and you dodged his fingers and giggled, gasping for breath when he went for the full tickle.
It was fake. You weren’t ticklish. I knew that was true. We’d had a whole conversation about “mind over matter” and your conviction that ticklishness is all in one’s head . . . though I’m still hopelessly ticklish and haven’t been able to train myself out of it, even with your best attempts at coaching me. I’m weaker-willed than you, I guess.
I’d tested you, though, and you were a woman of steel through all my little pokes and jabs and scuttles and soft touches. Never breaking, no matter where I ran my fingers. You were faking it for him, to stroke his ego or keep his attention, and that was annoying to watch, like all PDA—but it also made me a bit smug. He thought he could control you, but I knew you were the one manipulating him.
“Why do you call her that?” Jackson asked when the tickles had stopped and you’d tucked yourself against him.
“What?” you said.
“Randy.”
You sneak-attacked with a nudge of tickles in his side. His giggle was high-pitched. That form of excuse to touch each other was getting old, fast. “Why do you think?” you teased.
Jackson grinned. “Because she’s so randy? Like, horny all the time?”
I wanted to vomit. You rolled your eyes. “Yes, it’s a comment on the perpetual wetness of Kayla’s vagina,” you said, your voice dry. I would have been okay, I think, if you’d stopped there, but you went on. “Randy is uncommonly lascivious,” you added. “She whacks off so hard our whole bunk bed shakes. And you should hear the moaning. It lasts all through the night.” Nitin shifted uncomfortably and I shot daggers that bounced right off you as you and Jackson laughed.
Guys like Jackson love it when a girl talks about sex, no matter what she’s saying. It fogs their brains and stimulates their salivary glands and distracts them from anything else that’s happening. You knew that and played it to your full advantage. You used me in that moment to draw Jackson to you.