She Dims the Stars(22)

There’s a creak and then the sound of the main door being slammed shut. A shuffling of feet through the water on the floor alerts me to someone else in the bathroom, and just when I start to hold my breath and my heartbeat gets louder in my ears, I hear the click clack of flip flops on the floor, and I know it’s not one of the guys coming to find me. It’s another camper.

Of course it is.

I exhale and turn around, lifting my foot to flush the toilet so I don’t seem like some kind of weirdo, and let the commode noise die down before I reach for the door handle. There’s a huge colorful butterfly sculpture attached to the yellowed tile up by the screened windows, and I pause for a moment, wondering who would put that much effort into decorating a restroom before the sound of the other person washing their hands brings me back to reality.

Gaining my composure, I step out and head toward the sinks when I notice that the other occupant of the bathroom is the girl from the boat. She’s got a towel wrapped around her chest, her hair thrown into a ponytail, and her sunglasses perched on top of her head again. She smiles at me from the mirror’s reflection.

“Hi.”

“Hey,” I say and turn the water on to wash nothing from my hands. When I’m done, I reach for a paper towel, but she hands me one instead.

“September.”

“What?” I ask, leaning back to look her over. Her cheeks are sunburnt, and her bright green eyes are a little red so I’m wondering if she’s high or if it’s the lake water.

“I’m September. What’s your name?” She extends a slender hand my way, and I blush as I realize that she’s just being nice and that this is probably how my mom did shit back in the day. Just talked to people. It takes a few drinks for me to get this friendly. This girl is offering up her hand like she’s ready to be best friends.

“Audrey. I saw you come by on your boat.”

She grins. “It’s a rental. I’ve only got it for another day. Are you in the lot next to the little red tent?”

“Yeah, how did you know?”

“We’re neighbors for a couple more nights.” She turns to her reflection in the mirror again and presses the pink spots beneath her eyes. “These are gonna hurt like a bitch once the sun goes down. I probably won’t get any sleep at all.”

“One of the guys I’m with snores like an eighty-year-old man who forgot to plug in his CPAP machine, so you probably won’t get any sleep anyway. My apologies in advance.”

Her laugh is loud and genuine, and her smile reflects in her eyes. But the sound also bounces all along the walls, across the tile, and with it comes the sound of fluttering.

“What the hell?” Her eyebrows draw together as she looks around. “Did you hear that?”

“Maybe it’s a bird in the rafters?” I strain to look up into the darkened ceiling.

“No. That wasn’t a bird.” She steps forward and pushes open one of the stalls and we both peek in to see if there’s anything there.

“That’s weird,” I say as the door slams shut, rattling the other stalls.

She turns to me with wide eyes. “What’s weird?”

“There wasn’t a butterfly statue in that one.”

“What. The. Fuck …”

The reverberation of the doors reaches the last stall where I was standing and we hear the sound again, this time more urgent than before, and faster than a scream can leave my mouth, that thing that was in the stall with me rises and takes flight right above our heads.

“That’s a f*cking moth, Audrey!” September is screaming and it’s making the thing go crazy. It’s three feet tall, I swear, and it has no sense of personal space, because it’s flying at us intermittently as we are screaming and covering our heads.

“I thought it was art!” I’m ducking and weaving, trying to make it to the door and she’s right behind me, slipping through old water, and Mothra is getting more agitated by the second. I reach the door, throw it open, and we both run screaming out into the open air, crouched low as the beast with wings follows us out and pivots up and over the bathhouse.

Cline and Elliot are running full speed toward us, and I’ve never been so happy to see someone before in my entire life. Elliot has his arms out and I grab him hard, practically jumping into his arms and wrap myself like a sloth around his body.

September is brushing dirt from her knees, and her towel has fallen away, and I watch as Cline stoops to pick it up for her. From the corner of my eye I see them make eye contact for the first time and something inside me stirs. An unraveling of rope around my heart. A thread that was knotted begins to loosen and fray.

I press my face into Elliot’s neck and smile, squeezing him a little tighter. “That’s September. She’s our neighbor. She has a boat.”





My laptop is plugged into a charger inside the car, and I’m trying to catch up on some lost time I should have been dedicating to the game instead of this impromptu road trip. I’m easily distracted by the camp fire and Cline’s new fascination with September. My attention also drifts to Audrey’s attempt to stay out of their way while they set up stuff for dinner.

She hovers just out of their general vicinity, closer to the tent until one of them walks over to get something from the cooler, then she does a quick turn and finds something else to do. It’s an awkward dance that’s keeping me from concentrating on the task in my lap.