It’s late. The kind of late that’s more accurately early. It’s dark, but I can hear the chirping of birds. Dawn isn’t far away. I haven’t slept a wink. I lie on my back, staring at the slats in the bunk above me. Owen rustles overhead. He hasn’t slept either. There’s a crinkling to my left as Mercy wraps up the bag of crackers she’s been munching. Raina let her stay in our cabin because camp hasn’t officially started yet. None of us has slept. We’ve been racking our brains, trying to figure out what could have forced Mike into the Starling unexpectedly.
“What about Sarah Bauer?” Mercy says, her voice filling the silence.
Sarah Bauer. Last year she got to go to Argentina for the World Freestyle Kayak Championships. If there was anyone at Camp Clearwater better at riding the Starling than Mike, it was Sarah. A counselor like Mike, Sarah had been coming to Camp Clearwater for many years and was on a mission to compete in the Olympics. No one doubts she’ll do it. Sarah and Mike were always trying to one up each other. Their competitiveness drove Mr. Evans crazy because it usually resulted in one or both of them pulling some stupid stunt that Mr. Evans considered a bad example to the rest of us. But Sarah Bauer seemed to always need to prove how much better than Mike she was. And Mike hated to lose.
I turn my head, and Mercy is up on one elbow, sleeping bag pulled up to her ears, cheeks stuffed with crackers.
“What about her?” Owen asks.
“Remember two summers ago?” she says. “When Sarah challenged Mike to that insanely stupid midnight run of the Nebula?”
I did remember. Mercy had tapped on the window of our cabin. She was outside with a few other girls. It was way after lights out, and being out of bed meant big trouble. But Sarah had challenged Mike to take on the Nebula in the dark, and word was Mike had accepted the challenge. And since Mercy and a bunch of the girls were already out of bed, I figured they wouldn’t suspend all of us. So we went down to the Starling, ten of us in all.
Sarah and Mike were getting their boats ready. It was dangerous. It was stupid. We all knew that. But when Mike had expressed concern, Sarah accused him of being too scared. Mike couldn’t have that. They would have both gone through with it, too, if Andrew Chin hadn’t set off that flare to start the race. He had stolen it from the equipment shed on the beach, thinking it would be a pretty cool way to kick the whole thing off, like a gunshot. Real professional. What none of us counted on was how bright it would be. Mr. Evans saw the light and caught all of us just as Sarah and Mike were about to shove off. Everyone scattered as soon as they saw Mr. Evans’s flashlight, but Mike and Sarah were knee-deep in the Starling and couldn’t take off as quickly.
Mr. Evans was furious. Mike said later that he thought Mr. Evans’s skin was going to peel right off his face from the way it strained while he yelled at them. Mike also said that Mr. Evans wanted to suspend the counselors, but instead he put them on LDU duty for the rest of the summer. That might not sound so bad, but trust me, no one wants LDU duty. Liquid Disposal Unit. All the soggy, soiled, juicy waste from mealtime has to go somewhere, like dishwater and salad dressing and melted ice cream and pickle juice and old spaghetti sauce. It all gets dropped over a mesh cloth over a grate. LDU duty is having to deal with all the grossest food bits left once the liquid has drained out. Mike hated Sarah for it.
“Did anybody see Sarah tonight?” Mercy asks.
I think back to the vigil, to the weeping faces in the crowd. None of them belonged to Sarah Bauer. “I didn’t see her.”
“Me neither,” agrees Owen.
“That’s weird, right?” Mercy sits cross-legged on her bunk. “I mean, she and Mike have been coming to Clearwater since what? Birth? And she can’t even turn up to show a bit of support for a guy she’s known almost her whole life?”
“They weren’t exactly friends, Mercy,” Owen points out.
“It’s just common decency though, isn’t it? I mean, even if you didn’t like the guy, it’s just the right thing to do. Why wouldn’t she come?”
“Maybe she couldn’t,” I say. “Exams or something, I don’t know.” Sarah Bauer may be a vicious competitor, but I don’t think she’s a psychopath.
Mercy waves a hand. “Exams? Please. Like she couldn’t get an extension for something like this. I’m checking her social media.”
“And what exactly are you looking for?” asks Owen as Mercy takes out her phone. “It’s not like her status is going to say totally tricked Mike into getting lost on the Starling!”
“I know that, dumb-dumb,” she says, the light from her phone casting her face in a ghostly white light. “But maybe it’ll say why she isn’t here now.”
“I don’t know,” says Owen. “I know she pushed Mike’s buttons and all, but she’s still a good person. I had her when I was a green shirt, and she was cool.”
I was in Owen’s cabin when we were green shirts, and Sarah took us on a day trip to Eagle Falls. I have to agree with him. She was all right, as long as Mike wasn’t around. I couldn’t imagine she’d do anything to hurt someone.
“What the…?” whispers Mercy.
I sit up. “What is it?”
She turns her screen so I can see—a picture of Sarah in her kayaking gear, smiling for a selfie with another smiling face. Mike’s.
“What’s Mike doing on the river with Sarah?” asks Mercy.
I take the phone from her and stare at the picture. Since when are Mike and Sarah friends? I look at the date at the bottom.
“It says the photo was added two weeks ago,” I say. “That’s, like, a week before Mike went missing.”
“See?” says Mercy. “I told you Sarah had something to do with it.”
Owen leans so far over the edge of his bunk to look at the phone that he nearly falls out.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” he says. “Look at them. They’re smiling.”
“Exactly! When have you ever seen those two smiling together?” says Mercy. “And now suddenly here they are together a week before Mike goes missing? And look what’s in the background.”
Behind Sarah and Mike is the unmistakable face of Witch Rock, just upriver from where they snapped the photo.
“This picture was taken on the Starling,” says Mercy. “Sarah Bauer is from Clarenville. What’s she doing coming all the way to Guilford Falls to hang out with a guy she hates?”
Owen doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know how to answer those questions. None of us do. Only Sarah Bauer does.
I hand Mercy back her phone. “I say we go ask her.”