The Last Time I Lied(75)

I also feel something else. A shiver of awareness jumping along the skin of my arms, the back of my neck.

I look up, expecting to see Casey again. Or, worse, Mindy.

Instead, I see Vivian.

Not all of her. Just a glimpse as she rounds the corner of the latrine. A spray of blond hair. A slip of white dress scraping the cedar wall. Before disappearing completely, she turns and peers at me from around the edge of the building. I see her smooth forehead, her dark eyes, her tiny nose. It’s the same Vivian I remember from camp. The same one who later haunted me.

I instinctively reach for my bracelet, finding instead only a patch of skin where it should have been wound around my wrist.

It’s not there.

I check my left arm, just to be sure. It’s bare. That bit of string keeping the bracelet together had given way. Now it’s lying somewhere on the grounds of Camp Nightingale.

Which means it could be anywhere.

Which means it’s gone.

I flick my gaze to the corner of the latrine. Vivian is still there, peering at me.

I’m not going crazy, I think. I’m not.

I rub the skin of my left wrist, as if that will somehow work the same magic as the bracelet. It doesn’t help. Vivian remains where she’s at. Staring. Not speaking. Yet I keep rubbing, the friction heating my flesh.

I’m not going crazy.

I want to tell her that she’s not real, that she has no power over me, that I’m stronger than everyone realizes. But I can’t. Not with my bracelet God knows where and Vivian right there and fear shooting like a bottle rocket up my spine.

So I run.

I’m not going crazy.

Away from the latrine.

I’m not going crazy.

Back to Dogwood.

I’m not.

My run is really an uneasy combination of swaying, tripping, and lurching that ultimately lands me at the cabin door. I fling it open, push inside, slam it shut. I collapse against the door, breathless and frightened and sad about the lost bracelet.

Sasha, Krystal, and Miranda sit on the floor, hunched over a book. My presence makes them look up in surprise. Miranda slams the book shut and tries to slide it under my bunk. But she’s too slow, the gesture too obvious. I can clearly see what they were reading.

Vivian’s diary.

“So all of you know,” I say, still out of breath from my awkward trip.

It’s not a question. The guilt burning in their eyes already tells me that they do.

“We googled you,” Sasha says, a finger pointed Miranda’s way. “It was her idea.”

“I’m sorry,” Miranda says. “You were acting so weird the past two days that we had to find out why.”

“It’s okay. Really, it’s fine. I’m glad you know. You deserve to be aware of what happened in this cabin.”

Exhaustion, whiskey, and sadness get the best of me, and I find myself listing to the side. Like a sailor on a rocking ship. Or my mother on Christmas Eve. I try to right myself, fail, plop down onto the lid of my hickory trunk.

“You probably have questions,” I say.

Sasha’s the first to ask one. Of course. Insatiably curious Sasha.

“What were they like?”

“Like the three of you but also very, very different.”

“Where did they go?” Krystal asks.

“I don’t know,” I say.

Yet I would have gone with them. It’s one of the few things I’m certain of. That, despite Vivian’s hurtful betrayal with Theo, I still wanted her approval. And had she asked, I would have willingly followed, marching behind them into the darkness.

“But that’s not the whole story,” I say. “There’s more. Things no one but me knows.”

Seeing Vivian again has messed with my emotions. I want to laugh. I want to cry. I want to confess. Instead, I say, “Two Truths and a Lie. Let’s play.”

I slip off the trunk, joining them. It’s a sudden, ungainly slump that makes the three of them recoil when I hit the floor. Even Miranda, who I thought was the bravest of the group.

“One: I have been to the Louvre. Twice. Two: Fifteen years ago, three of my friends left this cabin. No one saw them again.”

I pause, hesitant to speak aloud something I’ve avoided saying for fifteen years. But no matter how much I want to stay silent, guilt compels me to keep talking.

“Three: Right before they left, I said something. Something I regret. Something that’s haunted me ever since.”

I hope you never come back.

The memory of that moment arrives without warning. It feels like a sharpened sword swooping toward me, slicing me open, exposing my cold heart.

“I told them I hoped they’d never come back,” I say. “Right to Vivian’s face. It was the last thing I ever said to her.”

Tears burn the corners of my eyes—grief and guilt bubbling out of me.

“That doesn’t mean what happened to them is your fault,” Miranda says. “Those were words, Emma. You didn’t make them disappear.”

Sasha nods. “It’s not your fault they didn’t come back.”

I stare at the floor, avoiding their sympathy. I don’t deserve it. Not when there’s still more to confess. Still more I’ve kept hidden from everyone.

“But they did come back.” A tear slips out, rolls down my cheek. “Later that night. Only they couldn’t get back into the cabin.”