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.”
“No,” says Annabel, and collapses backward on her bed.
It is then, of course, that reveille sounds over the speakers mounted on trees throughout the campground—meaning that on the other side of the plywood partition, eight twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls are reluctantly waking up, making their small noises, exhalations and sighs, propping themselves up on elbows.
Louise begins pacing.
Annabel, still horizontal, now watches her—beginning to understand the problem.
“Annabel,” says Louise. “You need to be honest here. Did you go back out last night? After the campers were in bed?”
Annabel appears to hold her breath. Then she exhales. Nods. Her eyes, Louise notices, are filling with tears.
“Yes, I did,” she says. There’s a childish tremor in her voice. She has very rarely been in trouble in her life: of this Louise is certain. She is a person who has been told, since birth, about her value in this world. The ways she makes others happy. She is crying openly now, and Louise struggles not to roll her eyes. What does Annabel have to be afraid of? There’s nothing at stake for her. She’s seventeen years old. The worst thing that could happen to Annabel is that she might be dismissed, sent up the hill to her rich parents—who are friends, in fact, with the owners of the camp. Who are, at this very moment, guests at their house on the grounds. Meanwhile, the worst thing that might happen to Louise—an adult, thinks Louise, castigating herself—the worst thing that might happen is—well. Don’t make too many leaps, she tells herself. Just stay in the present.
Louise walks to the curtain. Pulls it back ever so slightly. In doing so, she catches the eye of Tracy, Barbara’s bunkmate, a quiet girl who stands paused on the bunk’s ladder in mid-descent, having noticed, apparently, the issue.
Louise drops the curtain.
“Is she missing?” Annabel says. Again, Louise shushes her.
“Don’t say missing,” says Louise. “Say she’s not in her bunk.”
Louise scans their little room, looking for evidence of their behavior last night. She gathers what she finds into a brown paper garbage bag: an empty bottle of beer that she drank on the walk back from the Clearing; the end of a joint that she smoked at some point; the vomit-filled potato chip bag, which she handles with two stiff fingers.
“Is there anything else you wouldn’t want someone finding?” she asks Annabel, who shakes her head.
Louise closes the garbage bag, folds it, makes it compact.
“Listen to me,” she says. “You might have to be in charge of the campers this morning. I’m not sure yet. If that happens, you need to get rid of this. Just put it in the garbage enclosure on the walk to breakfast. It needs to be gotten rid of. Can you do that?”
Annabel nods, still green.
“Right now,” she says to Annabel, “just stay here. Don’t come out for a while. And don’t—” She hesitates, searching for words that sound serious but not self-incriminating. She’s talking, after all, to a child. “Just don’t say anything about last night to anyone, yet. Let me think a few things over.”
Annabel goes quiet.
“Okay?” says Louise.
“Okay.”
