The Last Time I Lied(73)

“I think we’re past lying to each other, Em,” Becca says. “I know what happened right before the three of them disappeared. I was in the cabin next to Dogwood, remember? The windows were open. I heard every word.”

My heart falters in my chest, skipping like a scratched record.

“It was you, wasn’t it? You painted the cabin door. And put the birds inside. And you’ve been watching me.”

Becca jerks the bottle from my hands. I’ve been officially cut off.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Someone’s been toying with me ever since I got here,” I say. “At first, I thought it was all in my head. But it’s not. It’s really happening. And you’ve been doing it.”

“I didn’t write on your door,” Becca replies with a huff. “I have absolutely zero reason to mess with your head.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because it’s the truth. I’m not judging you for what you told Vivian that night. In fact, I wish I’d said some of it myself. She definitely had it coming.”

I stand, feeling shockingly unbalanced. I look to the bottle still gripped in Becca’s hand. Only a third of the whiskey is left. I have no idea how much of that is my doing.

“Just stay away from me for the rest of the summer.” I start to walk away, trying hard to stay upright as I call over my shoulder, “And as for what I said to Vivian that night, it wasn’t what it sounded like.”

Only it was. Most of it. All that Becca’s missing is context.

What she actually overheard that night.

Why it happened.

And how it was so much worse than she could ever imagine.





FIFTEEN YEARS AGO


“Where’s Viv?” I asked Natalie, who merely shrugged in response.

Allison did the same. “I don’t know.”

“She was just here.”

“And now she’s not,” Natalie said. “She probably went back to the cabin.”

But Vivian wasn’t in Dogwood, either, which we discovered when we returned a few minutes later.

“I’m going to look for her,” I announced.

“Maybe she doesn’t want to be found,” Natalie said as she scratched at a new round of mosquito bites.

I went anyway, heading to the latrine, which was the only logical place I thought she could be. When I tried the door, I found it locked. Strange. Especially at that late hour. I took a walk around the side of the building, pulled along by curiosity. When I reached the gap in the planks, I heard the sound of running water coming from inside.

The shower.

Humming just beneath it was another noise.

Moaning.

I should have left. I knew it even then. I should have simply turned around and gone back to Dogwood. Yet I couldn’t resist taking a peek. That was something else Vivian had taught me. When you get an opportunity to look, you’re a fool not to take it.

I leaned toward the gap. I looked.

What I saw was Vivian. Facing the shower wall, her palms flat against it, breasts pressing into the wood. Theo stood behind her. Hands over hers. Hips thrusting. Face buried against her neck and muffling his grunts.

The sight of the two of them, doing something I’d only heard whispered about, cleaved my heart in two. It hurt so much I could hear it breaking. A sick, cracking sound. Like wood shattered by an ax.

I wanted to run away, afraid that Vivian and Theo would be able to hear it, too. But when I turned around, there was Casey, a lit cigarette dangling from her lips.

“Emma?” Smoke pushed from her mouth with each syllable. “Is something wrong?”

I shook my head, even though tears had already started to leak from my eyes. The movement set them free, flinging them away from my face.

“You’re upset,” Casey said.

“I’m not,” I lied. “I just—I need to be alone.”

I slipped past her, running not to the cabin but to the lake, where I stood so close that water lapped at my sneakers. Then I cried. I had no idea for how long. I just wept and wept, the tears falling directly from my eyes into the water, mixing with Lake Midnight.



* * *



—

After crying so much that my tears ran dry, I returned to Dogwood, finding Vivian, Natalie, and Allison all there. They sat in a circle on the floor, smack in the middle of a game of Two Truths and a Lie. In Vivian’s hand was the flask she had told me about. Its existence truly wasn’t a lie. Now she took a slow drink from it, as if to prove how foolish I had been to doubt her.

“There you are,” she said, holding out the flask. “Want a swig?”

I stared at her damp ponytail, her pinkened skin, her stupid locket. And at that moment I despised her more than I had despised anyone in my life. I could feel the hatred boiling under my skin. It burned.

“No,” I said.

Allison continued with the turn I had interrupted. Her choices were, as usual, either self-aggrandizing or stupid. “One: I met Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. Two: I haven’t consumed bread in a year. Three: I think Madonna’s version of ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’ is better than Patti LuPone’s.”

“The second one,” Vivian said, taking another hit of the flask. “Not that I care.”