“No one else is at our table and no one is paying us any attention.”
“I bet the diva inside of you is so mad about that fact.”
Narrowing her eyes, Kayla replies, “Shut it.”
Shuffling closer, I lower my voice. “Okay, so last night was…eventful. I woke up in the early morning because of a loud noise. Olly did too. We found a dead deer in the food hall.”
“What? In here?”
“Yep.”
“Like, it had died in here?”
“No, like Lillian had killed it and dumped it here. We’re sitting quite close to where it was, actually.”
Her pink-painted lips part.
“It was bleeding. Olly, Andy and I cleaned it up and put the deer in some bushes in the forest. When we came back, there were initials written in blood on the floor. You can probably guess which ones.”
“LC,” Kayla breathes. “Oh my God! Well, she does have a thing about deer.”
I shudder, not wanting to think about that. “When we were all going back to bed, we saw five dolls floating in the lake.”
Her eyes widen, but I don’t slow down, because I’m on a roll.
“We got them out, and four had crosses drawn over their eyes, Andy hid them, and we went through the staff files. Kayla, I found out that Rebekah lives in town. Which means she lied about where she’s from. She’s definitely helping Lillian.
“Oh, and Olly admitted that he and Jake are from one town over. They were in the woods the night of the fire and Olly saw everything, including Lillian get burned by the fire.”
“What?” Kayla hisses. “Are you…What? Last night? This all happened last night?”
“I finally got to bed at, like, six in the morning and had just under an hour of broken sleep. Tonight you and I have to sneak out and go into town.”
“What? No way.”
“Yes way, and we have to do it without anyone else. Just me and you.”
She pales. “In the forest at night?”
“You up for it?”
“Not a chance, Esme,” she replies, her voice thick with fear.
I raise my eyebrows. “We have to, Kayla. We need to end this.”
We have to find Rebekah’s house. I have the feeling that if we do, we’re going to find Lillian.
45
Kayla is so not down with the idea of us sneaking through the woods alone at night while two people try to ruin our lives.
Can’t think why.
I’m not entirely sure why I want to go. All I can think is that I’m so exhausted, I’m delirious. That’s the only excuse for what I’m about to do.
I’m not ready to face the very real possibility that I’ll be doing this alone tonight. I could take Olly. He would come, I know that for sure, but there is something about his secret childhood home that bothers me. And the fact that he and Jake are still pretending they don’t know each other is shady and crazy suspicious.
I paddle in the edge of the cool lake, trying to keep myself awake by picturing all the ways Lillian could screw with me in the forest tonight. The sun shines brightly over camp as if it has no clue of the darkness lurking here.
Kayla is near but she hasn’t said much to me since I told her I want us to go into town.
Nothing like fear to keep you alert.
My group is in the water and being taught by the swim instructors.
If they find a sunken doll, I’m going to throw up.
“How are you?” Andy asks, stopping dead in front of me. One more step and he’d be in the water. He’s possibly paler than me this morning. But I think I win with the dark circles under my eyes.
I saw him walking around the lake with his clipboard earlier. He looked like he was checking things off, making sure equipment was safe and everything was in order. But I think he was actually looking for Lillian.
She won’t be here now. Not after last night. She knows we’re even more on edge, that we’ll be watching like hawks.
“Exhausted but okay. You?”
He nods. “About the same. Who does something like this to a camp of kids?”
“There are a lot of crazy people out there, Andy.”
“Yeah, no kidding. I just want to go to the police, but I’m too scared that this LC will realize what we’re doing and react.” He sighs and moves on, stopping by the kayaks and pretending to check them over.
Kayla grabs my hand. “Okay, my head is going to explode, and I’m still worried that you want to go back into town. Jake is being his usual sweet self to me, and I don’t know how to be around him now that I know he’s lying.”
“Slow down, you really are going to explode.”
“I can’t believe he and Olly were there that night.”
I nod. “Me neither. You know, there is one thing that is still bothering me.”
“One thing?”
Rolling my eyes, I clarify, “Okay, one new thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Why are we all here? Lillian didn’t just luck out that the three of us who were there that night are here now. I think she set this up.”
Kayla frowns. “You’re beyond obsessed with this, Esme.”
Oh, I’m so far past obsessed it’s not even funny. “How are you not? She’s been stalking us and threatening the whole camp. Now we have an address. We know who her BFF is.”
“We think we know.”
I raise one eyebrow. “I have Rebekah’s address! She’s from town.”
Kayla’s doing that thing again where she tries to deny the truth, and it’s infuriating.
My chest burns. “Rebekah is the definition of BS. Look it up. Are you coming with me tonight or not?”
Kayla twirls her long ponytail around one finger. “Well, I can’t let you go alone, can I?”
“You could. Maybe that would be better, actually. Yeah, I could swipe two radios from Andy’s office, and you could keep watch. It’s a bad idea for both of us to go.”
“You’re not going alone.”
“I need you here. If Lillian thinks we’re here she won’t go looking for me. It’s our night to be outside, unless Andy orders another freaking lockdown.”