TWO

LAST SUMMER, a serial killer paid a visit to Camera Cove.

By the time the dust had settled, four people were dead. George Smith, forty-four, who had only just moved to Camera Cove with his wife and kids. Maria Brindle, twenty-eight, a new mother and the wife of a popular town council member. Joanna “Joey” Standish, a sixteen-year-old girl from a trailer park outside the town limits. The so-called “Catalog Killer” always left a calling card: a page ripped from an old catalog, pinned to the victim’s clothes. All of his victims had been overpowered, tied up, poisoned, and posed…with one notable exception.

Connor.

Seventeen. Tall and good-looking. Always smiling. Loved by everyone. The kind of guy that adults liked to say had “a bright and promising future ahead of him.”

One of my very best friends since childhood. One of my only friends, if I’m being honest.

The last person to die before the Catalog Killer disappeared without a trace.

Connor Williams.

Gone forever.

With the time capsule opened and all mysteries solved, things get awkward. There’s nothing more to say to one another. It’s time to go home.

When Ben stands up, he’s smiling. It’s like his breakdown didn’t even happen.

“I’m going to head out,” he says. “I need to grab a shower before the grad party. Maybe I’ll see you guys there.”

Before Doris or I even have a chance to respond, he’s grabbed his bike and is pushing it through the shrubs back toward the road.

“Did you see that?” Doris asks. “He couldn’t get away from us fast enough. He’s such a pussy.”

“He’s upset,” I say, a bit surprised. I’m used to Doris’s sarcasm, but this is harsh even for her.

“He’s a mess,” she says. “He keeps breaking down in public. It was an awful, terrible thing that happened, and everyone is shook up, but he’s still acting like chief mourner, when the rest of the universe is trying to move on. I mean, suck it up, right?”

“Come on, Doris,” I say. “They were really close.”

“Yeah, I know,” she says. “But so were the rest of us, and you don’t see us having emotional breakdowns in the grocery store. You don’t even see Connor’s mother doing it, for that matter.”

“You don’t see his mother anywhere,” I counter.

Her face softens, conceding. “Yeah, well, that’s to be expected, I guess. It’s just…it drives me crazy that Ben wants to drag all of this on and on for some reason. I just want to put it behind me and get out of here.”

“Maybe we all just deal with things differently,” I say.

“I guess so.” She sounds unconvinced. After a moment, she asks, “What do you want?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” she says, “Ben wants to keep reopening old wounds, and I just want to forget all about it. How do you want this to end?”

I pause, considering. “I think I just want Connor to be recognized, somehow. Not just for how he died, but for what he was going to do with his life. His art.”

“You think he would have been remembered for his art?”

“Absolutely,” I say, picking up the sketch he put in the time capsule. “He was the most talented person I’ve ever known.”

We both stare down at the drawing. The sketch is simple, obviously drawn quickly, but despite its simplicity, he’d managed to capture who we were better than any photograph ever could. The way one of Doris’s eyebrows is slightly raised, a subtle hint of her default skepticism; Ben’s easygoing athletic posture, his twitching mouth ready to laugh at any moment; Carrie’s effortless cool, her arms crossed confidently in front of her chest, a perfect section of hair falling loose from her ponytail to half hide one eye; me, a half step away from the rest of them, my hands shoved awkwardly into my pockets. There’s a slight slouch to my shoulders, but a shy smile on a handsome-enough face. I’m happy with the way he drew me.

Then there’s Connor himself, crouched down in front of the rest of us, smack dab in the middle, ready to pounce. With his thick, wavy hair, square jaw, and muscular arms bulging from beneath his T-shirt, it’s clear that he’s the team leader, the captain of our squad.

We look like a gang of teenage superheroes, the way I sometimes imagined us when were still close.

“He sure did have a hell of an eye,” she says.

I carefully fold the sketch and tuck it away in my backpack, then Doris helps me gather everything else. We shove it all back into the thermos.

I pick up the dog tag and roll it over in my fingers.

“Maybe I’ll bring this back to Mr. Anderson,” I say, tucking it into my pocket as we begin the short hike back to the road. “He’ll probably be happy to get it back.”

Doris shudders. “You’re on your own. I hate going there since Mrs. Anderson died. It’s so quiet and sad. To be honest, he creeps me out.”

“He’s not creepy,” I say. “He’s just lonely.”

“Whatever you say.”

The path winds up from the bluff, a narrow twist of packed gravel and an occasional chunk of granite. Both sides are edged with thick clusters of juniper and bay and wild roses, and pushing through them involves careful maneuvering to avoid getting scratched. The path ends at a low barrier: a rusted wave of steel bolted to two heavy wooden posts. On the other side is the dead end of Anderson Lane.

There are six houses on Anderson Lane. To our immediate right is Anderson Farm, a simple white farmhouse surrounded by a barn and various outbuildings, all with a full, high view of the coastline and the town far below. The other five houses are newer, built on lots that were carved from Anderson Farm in the early 90s, when Joe and Margaret Anderson sub divided a few acres to make some quick cash. My parents built here first, before I was even born, and by the time I was old enough for school, Carrie’s parents had built. A year later, Connor’s family moved in across the street, and by the end of second grade, Ben’s parents and Doris’s had also settled into the neighborhood.

It was a happy coincidence that there was a kid my age in every house on the street, and because we were so far out of town, we automatically fell into a friendship. At the time, it seemed natural, as if we would have found each other even if we’d been scattered all over the county. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized how untrue that was. Friendship is random, and there are no guarantees, even when you’ve known each other your whole lives.

We arrive at Doris’s house first and stop at the end of her driveway.

“Are you going to the party?” I ask her.

She gives me a withering look. “Are you kidding me? I can’t think of anything I’d rather do less.”

“What are you going to do instead?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. Read. Go online and stare at pictures of the Cornell campus on their website. Pray for September to come earlier than scheduled. Why? Are you going?”

“I doubt it,” I say. “I’m not really in the mood for a party. Besides, I’m starting my new job in the morning.”

“Ah, yes,” she says. “The library. A thrilling way to spend the summer.”

I shrug. “It’s a job.”

She unfolds her hand and I realize she’s been clutching her heart pendant the whole time. She looks at it and lets out a deep sigh, her sarcasm and bravado seeming to leave with it. Now she just seems sad and exhausted.

“We were so stupid,” she says. “Anyone who tells you that high school is the best time in your life didn’t grow up in Camera Cove. Even without the Catalog Killer.”

Without warning, she leans in and envelops me in an awkward hug. I hug her back and pat her on the shoulder, and when we pull away, I see that she has tears in her eyes.

“This year has really fucked us all up, hasn’t it?” she asks, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. For a moment, I feel like she’s going to say something else, but then she turns away and blinks hard a couple of times, and when she turns back to me, her expression is closed off again. “Congratulations Mac,” she says. “I’ll see you around.” Then she flips her bag back over her shoulder and hurries up the driveway to her house.

If Connor were alive, the graduation party would have been a no-brainer. The five of us would have gone together. Ben would have scored some booze for us from somewhere. Doris would have had something sarcastic and hilarious to say about everyone else at the party. Carrie would have told all the same, awesome old stories about back when we were stupid kids. Connor would have been at the center of everything, toasting our group, making some cheesy, perfect speech meant to convince us that we would be friends for the rest of our lives. And I would have been happy, like I always was when the five of us were together.

But Connor isn’t here to hold us together anymore, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.

I cross the street, passing Ben’s old house, still empty with a faded For Sale sign stapled to the mailbox. Carrie’s is next, then mine. My parents are in the TV room, watching a movie. I holler to let them know I’m home, then go upstairs into my room.

My room, as always, is a disaster. The bed isn’t just unmade—blankets and sheets tumble off it and onto the floor. Clothes and books and old homework lay tossed in piles, and the surface of my desk is barely visible under a school year’s worth of random debris.

My parents used to make an effort to get me to tidy up after myself, but after the murders, they gave up. I don’t know if it’s because they didn’t feel right about nagging me after what happened, or if they just truly stopped caring. Whatever the reason, things are more out of control now than they ever were, but I really don’t care. What difference does a messy room make when your life has been thrown completely off the tracks?

Connor, whose room was as obsessively tidy and organized as mine is messy, used to joke about the difference.

“I thought gay guys were supposed to be super neat and clean, Mac,” he’d say, lightly punching my arm to make sure I knew he was just joking. “What the hell happened to you?”

If Connor had one flaw, this was it: the way he labelled people, placed them in little boxes.

It was hard to be too annoyed at him about it, because the thing is, he liked us that way. We were his crew, filling in the same roles we always had. I was the shy gay kid. Doris was the uptight nerd. Ben was the jock sidekick. Carrie was the cool girl.

I think sometimes he saw the world in simple terms, like we were just real-life versions of his sketches. If I’m being honest, I found it reassuring, knowing that in Connor’s eyes, I had a part to play.

But there was more to me than that. There still is.

At least, I think there is. Before last summer, before the murders, I was starting to imagine my life after Camera Cove. I didn’t have an air-tight plan, but I could picture myself heading to college, taking interesting classes, meeting boys, maybe even starting to date. I didn’t have Connor’s talent, or Doris’s brains, but I was confident that something would work out for me, that eventually, a future would come into focus.

But then the shit hit the fan, and like everyone else in town, my plans took a back seat to the reality unfolding around us. The problem is that even now, a year later, whatever motivation I once had seems to be gone forever. How can I just up and leave when so much remains unsettled?

I shove the old thermos onto the top shelf inside my closet, wedging it behind a pile of sweaters and tattered magazines. An empty chip bag flutters down to the floor, and I kick it beneath the pile of clothes that’s spilling out of my hamper, shoving the door closed.

I unzip my backpack and pull out Connor’s sketch, unfolding it and then staring at the walls around my room, considering where to put it. My wall art is as undisciplined as the rest of the room. Every square inch is covered: band posters, pictures of hot shirtless guys, cool houses, and expensive watches that I’ve ripped out of magazines, maps of places I want to visit, a scattering of old photos, and many, many drawings done by Connor.

In the years before he died, Connor had become a lot more serious about his art, even studying with a private teacher. But he started out by copying superheroes. These are the most prominent of his pictures on my walls: confident, dramatically posed images of Batman and Rogue and Silver Surfer done in markers and colored pencils and even ballpoint pen. He may have been talented enough to move on to more serious stuff, but he never stopped reading comics.

Using a thumbtack, I stick Connor’s group portrait to the wall, dead center above my desk, then I shove a pile of clothes off my chair and sink into it. I stare across the room at my bookshelf, at the cluttered stacks and rows of comics. Unlike every other surface in my room, the top of the bookshelf is empty, except for one thing. An old plastic grocery bag—a grocery bag I haven’t been able to bring myself to open since the day I got it. Since the day Connor died.

Connor and I might not have seemed like the most likely of friends, but we bonded over an obsession with comics. As kids, we spent every spare cent on them, swapping titles back and forth and getting into endless conversations about them while Ben and Carrie and Doris rolled their eyes.

We were nine when Connor had the brilliant idea of pooling our resources and divvying up titles. Connor bought every new issue of Spider-Man, Iron Man, and X-Men, and I was responsible for Superman, Batman, and Justice League. Every week, like clockwork, we swapped. Right up until the day he died.

Inside the grocery bag is the final stack of comics Connor ever bought. After reading them, he’d tucked them neatly into the bag in methodical, alphabetical order, then walked across the street to drop them off for me. The exact same way we’d been doing it for years. There was nobody home, so he’d left them hanging on my front door, where my mother had found them. She’d tossed the bag on my desk and had forgotten to mention it.

Later that day, the Catalog Killer had caught up with him.

It wasn’t until after his body was discovered and the world came crashing down around us that I found the bag. I couldn’t bring myself to open it then, and I haven’t been able to do it since. It just doesn’t seem right. As if by opening this final thing from him, I’m leaving Connor behind.

I get out of the chair and walk to the bookshelf, reaching up to put my hand on the bag. I press my index finger to its edge, running it up and down the thin hard spines inside.

Connor held these, the day that he died.

I pull the bag of comics off of the shelf and grip it tight along the sides. Still holding the bag, I walk to the window and stare across the street. Connor’s house is dark, except for a light on in the side porch that leads to the kitchen. There are two dormer windows upstairs, and the one on the right stares directly across the road at my bedroom. Connor’s room. We used to sit and look across at each other as kids, flashing elaborate signals with flashlights.

The weight of the bag is heavy in my hands. I sink back into my chair, surprised to realize that my lower jaw is trembling and my eyes are flooding.

Connor isn’t alive. All of this is irrelevant to him now.

I rub the back of my hand across my eyes, take a deep breath, and open the bag. I pull out the stack of neatly bound, glossy papered comics. They’re year-old issues, with storylines long since wrapped up.

I flip open the comic on the top of the stack. The Avengers, Connor’s favorite. I catch my breath when I realize that there’s a piece of looseleaf, folded crisply in half, sitting inside the cover.

I reach for it, my hand trembling as I unfold it. It’s a note, in Connor’s crisp, perfect block letters.

MAC, CAN YOU MEET ME TONIGHT? I’VE FIGURED SOMETHING OUT—SOMETHING IMPORTANT—AND I REALLY NEED YOUR HELP. MEET ME AT THE BEACH AT MIDNIGHT, AND KEEP THIS TO YOURSELF.