The Box in the Woods (Truly Devious #4)(48)

“How come you never mentioned this before?”

“Never came up,” he said.

“We once spent the night in the pool house at Ellingham.”

“Not to swim, though,” he replied.

The concept of Nate the Athlete was so astonishing that





Stevie found she had nothing more to say. People could be surprising, and that unnerved her. She wanted to believe she could see to the bottom, spot the hints. But she had never so much as suspected that Nate was a secret champion swimmer. She had failed this one.

Dylan and some others came out of the water and sat down not far from them. The gesture was entirely normal and friendly; they were making an effort to be social. Stevie knew this, and even appreciated it on some level. On another level, though, and one closer to her surface, she shied away from such approaches. She was never sure why. It’s not like she had trouble talking to people. Maybe it was more the fact that her parents had always pushed her in that direction, told her to make friends, as if the quantity of friends somehow determined your worth. She already had friends—Nate and Janelle. She was with one of them now.

So instead of looking at the new people, she looked over at the imposing rock on the other side of the lake.

“That’s Point 23,” Dylan said, following her gaze. “They call it that because twenty-three people have died jumping off of it.”

“It wasn’t twenty-three people,” said a girl. “People have died, but not that many.”

“It’s twenty-three,” Dylan repeated. “Why else would they call it that? I jumped it last summer. It was awesome.”

“You’re an idiot, Dylan,” the girl replied. “Besides, if you get caught jumping off that rock, they kick you out of camp.” She snapped her fingers dramatically. “Like, you’re gone.”





“Raptured?” Nate said in a hushed whisper.


The girl wrinkled her nose, indicating that the joke was not all it could be. It was time to turn the conversation to something more Stevie’s speed.

“Do people ever talk about the murders?” Stevie said.

The girl poked out her lower lip a bit in thought. Another girl, dressed in a black bathing suit, with black hair and nails to match, leaned in.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “The Box in the Woods thing. That was a serial killer from the seventies called the Woodsman.”

Stevie fought back the urge to editorialize.

“They caught the guy,” the girl went on, wrongly. “You can go out into the woods and see where it happened, but there’s not much there. I went the first year I worked here. It’s really weird. You can still see stuff that was there from when they were murdered.”

Again, this was not true. Stevie twitched internally.

“You know you want to,” Nate whispered.

She elbowed him.

Perhaps sensing that Nate and Stevie were not the chatty kind, the group talked among themselves. There was a public grill, and several of the counselors had brought over hot dogs. Dylan and that group got some and sat back down to eat.

“Hold my camera,” Dylan said to one of the girls.

While she did so, he took a hot dog roll and pressed the entire thing into his mouth, squashing it in and making himself gag. Nate watched blankly, too defeated to comment.

Stevie, however, was transfixed.





“Son of a bitch,” she said.


This came out a bit louder than intended and got the attention of the group, including Dylan.

“Son of a bitch,” Stevie said again, jumping to her feet and scrabbling for her phone.

“Not you,” she heard Janelle say behind her. “She’s . . . um . . .”

Stevie was already marching off toward the parking lot, looking for a clearer phone signal, and waiting for someone on the other end to answer her call. Finally, they did.

“We have to talk,” she said. “Now.”





15



STEVIE CHOSE THE PLACE FOR THE MEETING—THE UNUSED TREEHOUSE, the one that was meant to be Nate’s home for the summer. His bunk sat ready for his arrival behind a thin wooden wall.

Now that she had seen this place, Stevie felt like the treehouse thing was maybe overselling it. It was really a second-level building, accessible via a set of wooden steps, with an open area below for storing excess sporting equipment. Mostly it was a screened-in box with a bunch of empty shelves under the windows, and bench seats that had probably had cushions on them at one point. It was next to a tree, which was likely how it got the name. It was a hot, spidery mess lit by one ineffectual overhead light.

“See,” Janelle said to Nate when they entered. “You’re not missing out on much.”

This had not cheered Nate up.

Stevie sat on the least cobwebby window seat and watched the ground below, waiting for her guest. She finally saw him approach, dressed in flowing orange harem pants and a Box





Box T-shirt. Carson came up the steps two at a time.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Sounds important.”

“I know who left the message on our wall,” Stevie said. “And the box on your path.”

“Oh! Oh, great!” He nodded, but his eyes darted a bit and he tucked his hands into his slouchy harem pant pockets.