UGH.
You played it cool, but I watched it eat away at you. It was my job to do triage while you spun and obsessed, and that ate away at me too. But your drama wasn’t about me. I was just the best friend.
When I finally convinced you to scrape up your dignity and stop letting him play this game, he turned around and made out with Emma.
Poor Emma. You’d barely even noticed her worshipping at our feet all summer, wishing she could be you. But Jackson noticed. It made her easy prey when he needed a willing target to be part of his sleazy revenge.
Jackson needed a new groping post. She leaped to volunteer.
You didn’t blame her for that—you’re not a hypocrite. And besides, she was only thirteen. You laid your wrath on Jackson, where it belonged.
It’s the one time the joke about killing him didn’t seem like only a joke.
You grumbled under your breath about wanting to slice him to pieces, and I suggested ways to make it as painful and humiliating as possible. We killed him a thousand times in our minds in gruesome, graphic detail, until you could look at him across the mess hall with Emma clinging to his side and laugh, genuinely laugh.
His deaths were a rebirth. They brought you back to you.
I thought you’d gotten over it—the worst of it, anyway. You stopped mentioning his name every eight seconds. You got swept up in your usual schemes. Your mood improved to a high that was almost manic. I caught you humming.
I should have known. But I was happy you were happy, and happy to have you back.
The next time we snuck out, you practically flew toward the dock. I stumbled on a root, keeping up with you.
“Careful,” you said as you caught me before I fell. “It’s all fun and games until somebody turns up dead.”
“Is that a rule?” I asked.
You squeezed my arm before letting go. “More like an observation.”
“It’s true that if either of us is in danger of tripping to death, it’s me,” I said. I was born clumsy.
You flashed me a grin. “Don’t worry. I’ll always catch you.”
We settled in at the dock and when I heard the sound of footsteps, I froze, afraid we were caught, but you beamed and Jackson appeared on the path, with Nitin behind him.
“Were you expecting company?” I asked, but the answer was clear. Jackson dropped beside you with a “Hey, babe” and Nitin shrugged apologetically before sitting down to close the circle. I tried to stare some sense into you, but you let all opinions except Jackson’s roll right off you.
Soon you and he slipped off down the path for some privacy. Nitin had a pack of cards and we played Egyptian Rat Screw in the moonlight, keeping our slaps light and stealth, chasing the cards whenever they blew. We completed three full rounds before you returned, and not quick ones. When I was distracted, we were evenly matched.
I was exhausted the next day. Exhausted and grumpy.
You were floating. Jackson was insufferable. I decided this time I would stay out of it. There was no use wasting my breath talking sense into you when clearly you didn’t want to hear it. I would save my energy for when he dumped you again and you needed me.
It didn’t take long.
That guy was so damn predictable. Weren’t you bored by the repetition?
Now everyone thinks they know all about how the jealousy burned in your gut until you flared up and couldn’t take it, and on the next-to-last night, you killed him. Killed him for being a flirt. Killed him for choosing his girlfriend. Killed him for being careless with your heart.
Honestly, Lainie, there are nights I wish I could believe that too.
Dr. Rita found that interesting. “You’d rather believe she snapped and killed him than that he dove in shallow water and hit his head on a rock? Tell me more about that.”
“Not really,” I mumbled. “But at least it would mean she stood up for herself.”
“You see her as a victim here. First Jackson’s victim, and now a victim, a target, of the police.”
“I guess so,” I agreed, to get her off my back and be allowed to change the subject sooner. I’ve started hating talking to Dr. Rita about you. She doesn’t get it. I can’t explain you. She keeps twisting it all wrong.
Jackson was like a pebble in your shoe that for some reason you refused to shake out. That’s not being a victim, it’s making a bad choice. A temporary one. Even if you walked for miles with it, it wouldn’t destroy you. You’d be fine and forget it once the pebble was finally gone, whether you came to your senses and got rid of it or it bounced out on its own.
That’s how it should have been. You should have dumped him and kept walking.
The idea that you killed him in a fit of uncontrolled passion is laughable. Ironic, even. Because even at your most upset, you were always in control of your reactions. When you allowed yourself to rage at him, it was just that—you allowed it. You never let your guard down fully with others. Not in public, and not with Jackson. Only with me.
They got Teflon Lainie. When something stuck to you, it was because you let it. You were never unprepared or unhinged.
If you were to kill someone, it would be cold-blooded. Premeditated.
Don’t worry, I would never tell the cops that.
Haha?
Love,
Kayla
Camper and Counselor Interviews, Statements, and Posts
August 14–November 24
“Lainie killing Jackson was, like, a thing. An inside joke or something. I don’t know. I’m not sure when it started, but it happened all the time. Like, they’d be walking toward each other across the green and Lainie would cock her finger like a gun and make a clicking sound with her tongue, and Jackson would flail his arms and fall dramatically, or clutch his chest and stumble over, or act like half his face had been blown off. Or at dinner or campfire she’d lean over and say ‘bang bang,’ and he’d die. It seemed silly at the time, but it’s creepy now, looking back.”
“This one time I was sitting with Kayla and Lainie at breakfast. Not with them, but at their table, I guess. And they were talking, quietly at first, but pretty soon it got louder, about all the ways they would like to kill Jackson. Not real ways, I didn’t think at the time, but gross stuff. Things like skinning him alive or roasting him like a marshmallow or suffocating him with his own balls. It was sick. They were giggling and Lainie kept glaring over at him and Emma—they were together for, like, a minute, so I guess that was why. But it was really gross. And disturbing. I wish I’d said something to someone then. I didn’t think she would actually do it. But I definitely think she was capable. That stuff she said . . . I think she really hated him then, even though they got back together.”
“There was a night in July when a bunch of us played Assassin, and they were in my group. Kayla was Moderator and she chose Jackson as Assassin, and Jackson killed Lainie, and all of us guessed it immediately because of course he did. And after it was out there, Lainie was like, ‘Then I rose from the dead and killed you back! Now we’re both gone, like Romeo and Juliet.’ And Jackson grabbed her around the middle and said, ‘My ghost too shall have revenge!’ And Kayla grumbled, ‘Romeo and Juliet killed themselves, not each other,’ but Jackson and Lainie were too busy making out to notice, and everyone thought they were adorable.