The blood seeps through our blankets and streams between the gaps in the plank floor, dripping into the crawlspace under the cabin. We stand around the body after Kate and Dave leave, staring.
“‘Clean up this mess!’” Troy mocks, punching Dave’s slight Midwestern accent. “I guess that’s his new catchphrase now, since he can never use that stupid call and response again after Signal DESTROYED IT!”
Everyone laughs and I look around, confused. “What?”
“Earlier, when you told Dave you were learning not to end up like him. It was great.”
“Great?! It was freaking legendary.” Kurt holds up a hand until I high-five him.
“Jada did say he looked like his brain was constipated,” I say, and Jada smiles as everyone bursts out laughing again.
“Okay. Let’s start carving this big boy up!” Troy crouches down beside the body, and I have to grab onto a bunk to steady myself.
“No.” Kurt shakes his head, passing a hand over his face. “We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“We don’t have a tarp or anything sharp enough to cut bone.”
“Yeah, he’s too big to chop. I say we wrap him up.” Erik nods at the corner of one of the sleeping bags. “Roll him, tape him, weigh him down, throw him in the water.”
“After what happened to my mannequin?” I point out. “You really think that’s wise?”
“You threw a plastic mannequin into ten feet of water, Signal. I’m talking about rowing this meaty beast half a mile out and dropping him in the middle of the lake and letting the Circle of Life handle the rest.”
“Yeah.” Nobody nods slowly. “That’s our best bet. With the storm passing through it’s too wet for anything else.”
My stomach flips over at the thought of what “anything else” could mean.
“I can’t handle this,” I mutter.
“Surprise, surprise,” Erik says under his breath, but waves me toward the bathroom. “Could you go find some mops and a bucket for the blood? I think there should be some in the main cabin kitchen.”
I almost run out of the room while the rest close in. I hear a giggling Jada say something about how his hands are so floppy before I have to stop, throw on the faucet in the bathroom sink, and retch over the last toilet stall. The handfuls of trail mix I had for dinner come back up, and once I stop gagging I quickly brush my teeth, then run out into the rain, toward the main cabin.
I land on the front porch, teeth chattering, and as I open the door, muffled voices echo down the hall, from the nurse’s office where Dennis and I were the other day.
“We can’t tell HQ who it was,” Kate insists.
“They’ll figure it out. If we don’t volunteer the information, we look complicit.”
“If we tell HQ they’ll send the campers out early. You want to risk that?”
“If we hide this, we are complicit.”
“We both know if the Director sends the kids out now, we could lose them all.”
A tense throb of silence, as though Dave knows she’s right. Then a chair creaks as though he’s dropped into it:
“That’s the whole point of the attack, isn’t it?” Dave says. “To force our hand.”
There’s a long moment, then steps cross the room. I race back down the hall and duck into the kitchen, my heart in my throat, trying to piece together what I’ve heard as I dig around for cleaning supplies.
The door creaks and I brace myself for Dave’s voice, but instead hear the squeak of wet sneakers and then Javier is standing beside me.
“They need some trash bags.”
I hand him a giant box and keep rattling through bottles looking for the Lysol. But Javier still stands there, and after a moment I sit back on my heels and look up at him, self-consciously pulling my hair back from my face.
“Was there anything else?”
“Nah, I just …” There’s a small crease between his eyebrows. “Your girl is really pretty.”
“Oh, Nobody, yeah.” And I mean it when I say, “She’s actually perfect.”
“Yeah. Well, I think I owe you an apology because … before … I thought maybe you and her … like, it was a relationship of convenience or something?” He laughs nervously. “I made a lot of arrogant assumptions, and I’m sorry for that. So seeing her just now …”
He fumbles for words and I brace for where this is going, neck growing hot.
“It’s just that, like, when Dog Mask came in … and you were holding my hand … I promised myself I’d ask you something.” His eyes meet mine and he steps closer.
“Ask me what?” Why am I getting excited?! He’s probably about to ask me if we’d consider a threesome. Get a hold of yourself.
“Wow, I feel so stupid right now.” He sweeps his hands along the back of his neck with an embarrassed smile that is utterly charming. “You have a gorgeous girlfriend, I know the answer is going to be no, but I still have to ask—”
“Ask me what?” My cheeks go hot as my fingertips turn cold.
“Do you like me?” Javier gives me the sweetest, shiest half-smile I’ve ever seen.
“HELLOOO!”
We both spin around as Jada throws the kitchen door open with a bang, her wet hair clinging to her face.
“Javi! You find the trash bags? We’re all waiting on you!”
“Right.” Javier steps back from me, his face falling back into its familiar guarded expression.
“Uh, Lysol?” She takes the Lysol out of the bucket and throws it back into the cabinet. “Lysol’s no good disinfecting blood. I know you missed the first week, but that was literally our first lesson. We need bleach. Focus, Skipper!” Jada claps for emphasis. “And both of you hurry up! Come on, Javier, let’s go!”
I crouch in front of the cabinet again while she leads Javier out of the kitchen, barely seeing what’s in front of me.
He wouldn’t ask me that unless he liked me too, right? No way. So he must like me, right? Javier … likes me.
So what am I doing in the kitchen?
I dash through the cabin, throw open the door and leap down the porch to the gravel path, where I can just make out Javier and Jada disappearing through the dark.
“Javier! Wait!”
The motion light above me snaps on and captures him in a halo, and he’s too handsome. I just stare at him for a moment as the conviction he must like me fights with the certainty I’m wrong. His hair glitters with raindrops in the motion light, little drops dot his broad shoulders, but he doesn’t go, he stares up at me. I feel like I’m in a dream as I walk toward him, the last of the rain falling softly around us.
“What you just asked me?” I tell him. “Yeah. I do.”
He’s in front of me in two steps, but he hangs back as though he’s afraid he’s misheard.
“Does Nobody know?” he asks.
“I’ll talk to her. But it’ll be fine—”
“JAVIER! COME ON!” Jada screams from the porch of the boys’ cabin.
“It’ll be fine.” I smile. “It’s just …” There’s no way to say this without sounding like a desperate idiot. “You do like me, right?”
And then his lips are pressed against mine, his stubble rough against my chin.
The fog of unreality that’s been surrounding me since he asked if I liked him evaporates against the warmth of his pressing mouth. My spine melts, I sag against him as one of his arms winds around me, his other hand reaching up and slipping into my hair.
“JAVIER!” Jada calls. “EARTH TO JAVIER!”
“You better go,” I whisper, pulling away once it’s clear he can’t hear her. “But we’ll do this again soon?”
He shakes his head as though coming out of a trance. “Very soon,” he says, jaw clenched, eyes pleading.
Pleading to kiss me again.
An unreal joy bubbles up inside me as I turn and practically fly to the kitchen. I put bleach in the bucket and set it under the running faucet, then dance around in a circle. My first kiss. I can’t believe I just had my first kiss! And it was a perfect kiss. With Javier.
Because Javier likes me.
Is he my boyfriend now?
I don’t know, the kiss alone is enough, is everything. I flit around the kitchen on my tiptoes as all my favorite love songs fight for space in my head. I’m weightless, if I jump I’ll float up to the ceiling, bounce out the window, fly into the night.
I wish so badly I could tell Rose.
I haul the bucket and some mops over to the cabin, feeling like I’m glowing in the dark with Javier’s secret revelation. Everyone’s talking too intently to notice when I come in, except Javier, who looks up with shining eyes. I smile so hard I have to duck my head, as Troy’s voice booms out:
“We’re going to need everybody helping if we’re going to carry him down to the dock.”
“Okay, well, let’s just get it onto the porch first so they can mop up,” Erik says.
“Who wants a mop?” I flourish three handles and Jada grabs one.
“C’mon, Dennis.” She foists one on him, and I grab the last, stepping out of the way so Javier, Erik, Troy, Kurt, and Nobody can haul the body to the porch.
“Somebody can’t stop smiling,” Jada remarks to Dennis as she wrings her mop out over the bucket, grimacing at the burning bleach smell. It’s true, I’m smiling down at a pool of blood. But I can’t help it. The best thing just happened to me and nothing else is real. This blood certainly isn’t. I’m not really here cleaning it. I’m going through all the moments I’ve had with Javier in the last few days, trying to figure out when he started liking me.
Because Javier likes me.
“Must be the adrenaline,” Dennis comments, pushing his glasses up his short nose. “We all probably gained a big rush of endorphins after our flight-or-fight responses were triggered.”
“Totally,” I nod.
Once we’ve finished swabbing up, we join the others on the porch around the body, and my warm glow fades pretty quick. They’ve built up several layers of trash bags, each sealed with duct tape, one over the other until Dog Mask, zipped into a sleeping bag with a footlocker of stones on his chest, is cocooned like a plastic mummy. If I pretend it’s just a mannequin inside those trash bags, maybe I can get through this without vomiting again.
“On three,” Erik says. “One … two … three!”
I’m between Nobody and Jada and across from Troy, positioned right at Dog Mask’s knee when we all come to a standing position. It’s way heavier than I’d imagined. I lock my elbows at my sides as we coordinate, in counted-off steps, to carry the dead weight down off the porch and into the wet grass.
“He’s soooo heavy!” Jada groans.
“It’s three hundred pounds of dead weight and a box of rocks. What do you expect?” Kurt says.
After all the digging, my arms twitch with exhaustion and my hands are freezing, but I still flinch away from the folds of the plastic where warm blood pools.
We thread our way through the trees, shivering as the last heavy raindrops fall from above, the wet grass soaking instantly through our shoes. At least we don’t need flashlights. The night has gone from black to royal blue, and I can just make out the treetops against the sky.
When we get to the open field, we move faster as the ground slopes to meet the water, and then Dennis says “uh oh!” in his monotone, and the body tilts ominously. Despite all our hands shooting forward to stop it, mummified Dog Mask tips forward and topples onto the ground with a sickening squelch.
“Dennis, you STUPID BUTTMUNCH!” Troy bellows.
Dennis scowls, rubbing his hands together. “I couldn’t hold it. My fingers are too cold. Kurt let him fall too, why don’t you yell at him?”
“Oh please. The kid who comes in last on obstacle course every day is going to blame me for this?!” Kurt’s face is pale, his shoulder high and tensed from when Dog Mask slammed him into the wall. “You and Jada—”
“Jada what, Kurt?” Jada glares at him. Her hands are as raw as mine from digging. “Did you not see me back in the cabin wrapping this whole monster? Meanwhile you were playing around with his stupid mask—”
“Hey, my hands are cold too!” I blurt, and everyone looks at me. “Why don’t we hold onto each other’s hands instead of the body?”
“Like the body just rests on our forearms, and we hold onto each other?” Kurt asks.
“Yeah?” I breathe on my hands and rub them together. There’s a collective pause. We don’t touch a lot in Teen Killers Club. Not a lot of hugs. But Dennis, clenching and unclenching his fists, nods.
“That could help.”
Erik says matter-of-factly, “Sounds good to me. On three, we lift him up again. Ready?”
We squat down and with a monumental effort somehow lift the body to waist height again. Then, standing in place, we fumble our hands toward each other, grabbing onto each other instead of the corpse. Troy and I lock eyes as both our hands connect, his warm rough fingers digging into my forearms, and I cling back.
“Good?” Javier calls down the line, looking at me.
I nod as everyone else agrees, and then we go on, determinedly clutching onto each other, until we reach the small wood dock and the rack of sunburnt canoes.
The sky is going pale over the water, the stars fading as the black blood of night drains away. I can hear the far-off cries of birds beginning to wake.
Jada and I, being the smallest, pull one of the canoes off the rack and set it halfway in the water so the others can settle the body into it. There’s a collective sigh of relief as the body eases into the narrow boat, and Erik and Javier pull down a much longer second canoe and fasten it to the first one. We all grab paddles, load into the long boat, and push off from shore into the thick gray mist that hangs over the lake.
Two strokes out and I can’t see in front of or behind us. The fog turns the world into a flat gray blank, and as we glide forward trails of mist eddy away from our paddles, giving us glimpses of the black water below.
Erik’s voice cuts through the fog. “This is far enough, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Javier agrees.
Erik and Kurt, at the very back of the boat, tilt the canoe with the body onto its side until Dog Mask slips into the still black water. It swallows him without a splash, only the slightest gulping sound and a swirl of fine bubbles, and then it’s as though he never existed. We sit shivering in silence, waiting to see if he’ll come back up.
“I heard Dave and Kate talking,” I begin. I tell the group what I overheard the other night, and what I’d heard just now while getting cleaning supplies.
“… Whoever headquarters is,” I end.
“Probably whatever deeply buried government program is funding this place—and I’m guessing it’s very buried, considering the shoestring budget we seem to be on,” Erik says, thoughtfully biting his nails.
“I’ve been thinking about this since you told us he tried to set off your kill switches,” says Kurt, hunched in his blue hoody, squinting into the water. “Maybe Dog Mask guy started out as a counselor with Dave and Kate, right? But then he started really thinking it over, learning more about the program, and he couldn’t handle it. So he came back to end the program before it even began.”
“That would fit with wanting to force us out.”
Troy frowns. “But he was also like ‘we won’t go quietly.’ So who’s the ‘we’?”
“I’m telling you, he was a Protectionist,” Jada mutters.
“I guess I just went to prison before Protectionism took off or something. How many of these guys are there?” I ask.
“It’s hard to say. They’re not just in one political party, everybody seems to agree with them on some level,” Javier says.
“‘Class As are evil. We know how to test if someone’s a Class A. So let’s just get rid of them all.’” Erik stares across the water.
“Stupid dumb-ass Protectionists,” Jada grumbles. “I swear as soon as I get retired out of camp, Protectionists are the first people I’m going after.”
“We get retired?” I blink at her.
“After fifteen years, remember?” Jada looks around the boat. “That’s what Dave told me when I signed on. And we get paid for every target we do.”
“I thought it was ten.” Dennis frowns. “Did anyone keep a copy of their contract?”
“No.” Kurt sounds exasperated. “It’s not like we were in a position to negotiate. I didn’t even read the whole thing, because Dave told us the bus was about to leave and it was sign on or stay in prison. But I remember him saying we’d get paid when we retired, because I remember thinking, like, retired? How old will we be, sixty-five?”
“They’ll probably just keep sending us out until we don’t come back,” Erik says flatly.
“Why do you have to be like that?” Javier snaps.
“Be like what, be honest? I don’t know, maybe because it’s an insult to other people’s intelligence to sit here and act like everything’s fine? Protectionist terrorists might be trying to shut down camp so they can pick us off one by one, but by all means, let’s pretend everything’s just—”
“He wasn’t a Protectionist.” We all look to Nobody, sitting bolt upright in the middle bench of the canoe. She nervously keeps trying to pull down Troy’s beanie to conceal as much of her perfect face as she can, but it only emphasizes her high cheekbones, softly backlit by the rose gold break of dawn.
“When we were fighting, I felt it,” she shrinks back a little as we stare, blinking her huge sweet blue eyes and speaking in the voice of a grizzled barfly. “He was having fun.”
“Going back to what Kurt said,” I say after we all recover from the continual shock that is Nobody’s appearance. “Let’s say Dog Mask was a counselor, like Dave and Kate, but then something changed. He left or got fired, whatever, something turned him against the program. So why would Dave and Kate pretend they don’t know who he is? And why would Kate feel like she should be the one to kill him?”
“Does it matter?” Javier’s voice is almost pleading. “He’s dead now.”
“Don’t you want to know who else out there is targeting us?”
“Everyone is. If we’re being honest.” Javier shoots a look at Erik. “The police, the Protectionists, everyone who’s not a Class A—like you said, I know what the world thinks of me. How is that different than how it’s always been? It’s never been a fair fight, but I’m still standing. Whoever wants to take me down, they can come try it!
“COME TRY IT!” he yells across the still water, and then his voice drops again. “Plenty more room where we put the last one.”
The fog has begun to thin, and through it the rippled surface of the lake is blushing pink, warmed by the sunrise.
“Yeah,” Jada whispers, smiling at Javier. “Whoever they are, what difference does it make? We’ll take them.”
“I’m up for another round.” Nobody smiles beatifically, and we all melt at the sight.
“Can I just tell you guys …,” Troy sighs. “I was saving all my M&Ms for last and then that asshole had to come and die on them and I’m mad about it.”
I burst out laughing, realizing I had saved my chocolate for last too, and maybe we all had been secretly regretting our lost trail mix, because then they all join in, we’re drifting in the boat in the middle of the lake, whooping with laughter.
“Can I give you a makeover?” Jada asks Nobody behind me.
“No.”
“Can I braid your hair at least?”
Nobody considers this. “Okay.”
Jada immediately stands, making everyone cry out as the boat rocks, then hops behind Nobody’s bench and buries her hands in Nobody’s hair. Nobody makes little grumble noises, like a wary cat in the arms of a toddler.
“Watch out!” Troy elbows me. “Jada is making a move on your girl.”
“Signal and I broke up,” Nobody announces, and everyone gasps at the drama. I nod, going along with it but more than a little confused, and then Nobody adds: “We’re still friends though.”
“Always,” I say quickly. I have to admit, there’s a weird surge of rejection involved in getting fake-dumped by my beautiful fake girlfriend. What did I do? I look over at Javier, though, and his knowing smile makes my heart race.
I can say, for the rest of my life: I have been kissed. And it was perfect.
“Troy, you hungry yet?” Erik calls.
“Yeah, man. Let’s head back!”
“All hands on deck!”
The canoe moves much faster now. Maybe because our arms got a chance to rest. Maybe because there’s no body dragging behind us. Maybe because we can see the vivid green horizon growing closer, the dewy grass shimmering in the earliest light of a new day.
We climb up onto the shore, and Javier’s arm brushes mine as he falls in beside me.
“So you talked to her?” he asks brightly.
“Actually no. I should check in with her real quick,” I say, cheeks hot.
“Okay. I’ll save you a seat at breakfast?” he says, reaching down to squeeze my hand.
So we’re like, a couple now? Am I still dreaming? No, this exhaustion is real. My sore arms are real. If bad things can be real, good things must be too.
“Yeah, okay,” I want to kiss him on the cheek but it seems like too much, and I see Nobody approaching, so I squeeze his hand back and pull myself away.
“Hey, you.” I wave to her, and she gives me a stiff nod. “So uh …” I slow our pace so we hang back from the others, who are surging toward the main cabin. “Are we okay? When you said we’d broken up I thought, maybe … like, you’re not mad at me or something are you?”
“No,” she says. “You just seem like you’re on the verge of a real relationship. So, thought I’d cut you loose publicly.”
“Wow … that obvious, huh?”
“Yup.” And she gives me an unearthly smile, then drops it, her angelic brow furrowing. “Don’t get me wrong. I still think he’s dangerous. But it’s your life, so …”
“Dangerous?” I slow to a stop. “You think Javier is dangerous?”
“Javier? What?” Nobody frowns. “We’re talking about Erik. You like Erik. It’s obvious.”
“It is?” Erik’s voice, half-choked with laughter, interjects right behind me. I turn and find myself staring into his smiling face as he claps the water off his hands. He just put away both canoes, he’s been walking right behind us.
Nobody rolls her eyes and walks on without us, since I’m apparently frozen in place and Erik is hovering over me delightedly, waiting for my response.
“I don’t,” I stammer. “Like you. At all.”
One eyebrow goes up, his dimples deepening.
“At all,” I repeat.
“Yeah, well, you would if I wanted you to. Like me. Love me even.”
After a moment, I’m able to swallow. “Not a chance.”
“Desperately.” He draws the word out. “It’d take, hmmm …” He closes one eye, calculating. “Three weeks? A month tops.”
“Right.”
“And after all those accusations of me getting into your head about Rose, a Signal with a crush on me sounds like a way more fun person to hang out with—”
“Um, I have never believed you could actually get in anyone’s head, to be clear—”
“Then this is the perfect way to prove it. Three weeks.” Erik’s grin is cocky when I dare a mortified look at him. “Starting from today. I’ll make you fall in love with me if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Um, literally impossible.” I laugh too loud, trying to make it clear I don’t take any of this seriously.
He stops me short, hand on my shoulder, barely suppressing his own laughter, then swallows his smile and says in a serious tone: “Do you even know how beautiful your eyes are?”
“I know you’re joking,” I sigh. “But just FYI, I’m about to start a new relationship with Javier so I just can’t with the compliments. Even sarcastic ones.”
Surprisingly, this is met with silence from Erik. When I glance over, he’s furiously biting at his nails, and then—
REEEEEE-BOOOM!
Jagged planks shoot sideways out of the trees ahead of us, followed by a ball of smoke and the thud of what sounds like stones raining down on the main cabin’s tin roof.
A second blast tears through the air and my ears go silent. A high shrieking note repeats again and again inside my head as Erik’s hot hand closes on my arm. His mouth shapes the words but I can’t hear anything, I only see him shout:
WOODS! NOW!
And then we sprint for the trees as fast as our legs can go.