How quickly, I reflected, peril could be followed by beauty in the wilderness, each forming a part of the other.

—From Woodswoman by Anne LaBastille

I

Barbara

Louise August 1975

The bed is empty.

Louise, the counselor—twenty-three, short-limbed, rasp-voiced, jolly—stands barefoot on the warm rough planks of the cabin called Balsam and processes the absence of a body in the lower bunk by the door. Later on, the ten seconds that pass between sight and inference will serve to her as evidence that time is a human construct, that it can slow or accelerate in the presence of emotion, of chemicals in the blood.

The bed is empty.

The cabin’s single flashlight—the absence of which is used, even in daylight, to indicate that campers have gone to the latrines—is in its home on a shelf by the door.

Louise turns slowly in a circle, naming the girls she can see.

Melissa. Melissa. Jennifer. Michelle. Amy. Caroline. Tracy. Kim.

Eight campers. Nine beds. She counts and counts again.

At last, when she can no longer defer it, she lets one name bob to the surface of her mind: Barbara.

The empty bed is Barbara’s.

She closes her eyes. She imagines herself returning, for the rest of her life, to this place and this moment: a lonely time traveler, a ghost, haunting the cabin called Balsam, willing a body to appear where there is none. Willing the girl herself, Barbara, to walk through the door. To say she has been in the washroom, to say she forgot the rule about taking the flashlight, to apologize disarmingly, as she has done before.

But Louise knows that Barbara won’t do any of these things. She senses, for reasons she can’t quite articulate, that Barbara is gone.

Of all the campers, Louise thinks. Of all the campers to go missing.

•   •   •

At 6:25 a.m., Louise walks back through a curtain into the space she shares with Annabel, the counselor-in-training. She’s seventeen, a ballet dancer from Chevy Chase, Maryland. Annabel Southworth is closer in age to the campers than she is to Louise, but she stands upright and infuses her words with irony and in general works to ensure that everyone recognizes the firm line between thirteen and seventeen—a line made manifest by the plywood partition that separates the main part of the cabin from the counselors’ corner.

Now, Louise shakes her awake. Now, Annabel squints. Crooks an elbow over her eyes dramatically. Sinks back into sleep.

Louise is becoming aware of something: the smell of metabolized beer. She had assumed it was coming from her own body—from her own skin and mouth. She certainly drank enough last night to feel the effects this morning. But standing over Annabel, she wonders whether the smell, in fact, has been coming from Annabel’s side of the room.

Which concerns her.

“Annabel,” Louise whispers. In her tone, she suddenly recognizes the sound of her own mother. And in some ways she feels like her mother—her bad mother, her irresponsible mother—in relation to this girl.

Annabel opens her eyes. She sits up and winces immediately. She meets Louise’s gaze and her eyes widen, her face becomes pale.

“I’m gonna be sick,” she says—too loudly. Louise shushes her, grabs at the first vessel she can reach—an empty bag of potato chips on the floor.

Annabel lunges for the bag. Retches. Then raises her head, panting, groaning lowly.

“Annabel,” Louise says. “Are you hungover?”

Annabel shakes her head. Scared.

“I think I,” she says—and again Louise shushes her, sitting down on the girl’s bed this time, counting to five in her mind, the way she has done since she was a small child. Training herself not to react.

Annabel’s chin is trembling. “I think I ate something bad,” she whispers.

“Did you go out last night?” says Louise. “Annabel?”

Annabel watches her. Calculating.

“This is important,” says Louise.

Normally she has patience for her CITs. She is practiced in guiding them through their first hangovers. Doesn’t mind when they indulge a little on a night off. As head counselor this year, she generally turns a blind eye to behavior she deems harmless. Partakes in it herself, when the moment feels right. But she otherwise runs a tight ship; earlier this summer, the first counselor to fail to wake up on time after a night of carousing was banned from the next several parties, and that seemed to set enough of an example that no one has repeated the mistake.

Until now. Because last night, while Louise went out, it was Annabel’s turn to be on duty. And Annabel, apparently, wasn’t.

•   •   •

Louise closes her eyes. Runs through the events of last evening.

There was a dance in the community room: the end-of-session dance, which all campers, counselors, and CITs were required to attend. She recalls noticing, at a certain point, that Annabel seemed to be absent—she couldn’t set eyes on her, anyway—but Louise is certain that she was back by the end of the dance.

Because at eleven p.m., when Louise did a quick head count, Annabel was there, along with nine campers—yes, nine—who waved to Louise sweetly as they said good night. She can still see the back of them, walking in little clusters toward Balsam.

This was the last time she saw them. Louise, assured that Annabel was in charge, went off on her own.

Next, she tries to picture the campers’ beds as she tiptoed into the cabin at the end of the night, well after curfew. This would have been at—what—two in the morning? Three? Images return to her in fragments: Melissa R’s open mouth, Amy’s arm hanging down toward the floor. But Barbara herself is nowhere among these memories. Nor is the absence of Barbara.

A different memory asserts itself instead: John Paul, in the Clearing, as he windmilled his arms, first in her direction and then in Lee Towson’s. John Paul with his rich-kid approach to the fight, brandishing his fists as if he were entering a ring. Lee wild and scrappy, still in his apron from dinner service. He made short work of John Paul, left him on the ground, blinking absently up toward the branches overhead.

There will be trouble today. There always is when John Paul gets the notion that she’s fooling around on him.

For the record: she isn’t, this time.

•   •   •

Annabel comes up for air. Puts a hand over her eyes.

“Do you know where Barbara is?” asks Louise. Cutting to the chase. There’s not much time: soon the girls in the other room will be waking.

Annabel looks confused.

“Van Laar,” says Louise, and then she says it again, more quietly. “Our camper.”