“Race you to him?” Nobody asks.
“Are you out of your mind?!” I hiss.
“It’s chase or be chased,” she says, matter of factly. “Together on three.”
The man in the dog mask does not move at all. A dead thing could not be more still.
“One …”
Run toward a huge, hulking stranger!? Who’s been following us through the woods?!
“Two …”
If she goes alone, it’s one on one. If we turn and run, she’s right, we’re prey. Two of us, well, maybe it could scare him. Maybe he thought we were just normal girls.
“Three!” Nobody yells.
She sprints toward him and I race after her with an exasperated scream. Just as Nobody is close enough to reach for him, her red hand clawing through the air, the man in the dog mask turns and scrambles away. He’s clumsy but surprisingly fast, with the careless hurry of an injured animal.
“Wait!” I yell, reaching for Nobody’s sleeve. “Nobody, wait!”
But she’s deaf to me. He’s running for the ravine, slipping and sliding in the dark mud that surrounds the stream of water hidden by the trees, turning his head to glance back at us. I can feel Nobody’s excitement as she flies away from me, her legs stretching endlessly forward, bounding toward the creek he’s scampering through. Erik’s words ring through my mind: Watch your step or you’ll cross the fence.
He’s leading her toward the creek. If she crosses that invisible line, she’ll die.
I duck under a low-hanging oak branch as I race after her, shrieking at the top of my lungs: “NOBODY! THE CREEK! THE CREEK!!!”
She glances back, just enough to break her stride, and I leap and pounce on her, in a gesture that’s pure Erik. Dog Mask, who’d disappeared through the trees, returns to the clearing. He stares back at us, cocking his head to one side, giving the rubber dog features a strangely disappointed cast.
“He’s trying to get you to cross the fence,” I gasp, hugging her tight. “He’s trying to trigger your kill switch.”
Nobody’s pale blue eyes lock with mine. Then she picks up a massive rock and hurls it at him with startling accuracy. He disappears into the brush, but she doesn’t follow this time.
“Well, that’s a stupid test,” she says, and we walk in silence through the deepening orange of dusk. And it’s strange to know the sky would still glow and the birds would still sing if we were still back there lying dead in the creek.
“There you are.” Kate is sitting on the low steps to the girls’ cabin, stubbing out a cigarette as we approach. “Jada got here half an hour ago. Where’ve you two been?”
“Dave had us do some pop quiz,” Nobody says.
Kate stands and puts her hands on her hips, her voice stern. “No, no he did not. Dave and the boys got back before Jada did. Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying, okay, ask him! He had some guy follow us wearing a stupid dog mask.”
Kate’s mouth drops, then snaps closed. She stiffly turns and walks away without another word in response.
“That wasn’t a test,” I tell Nobody, but she just shrugs.
“Whatever. I’m starving.”
I could cry at the smell of hot food when we go to the main cabin for dinner. I’ve never been so hungry in my life. There’s a vegetarian entree too, macaroni and cheese, but before we can start shoveling it onto our plates Kate blows her whistle for our attention.
“Campers, listen up! After dinner and dish duty, we’re going to combine cabins. The girls will be moving in with the boys!”
A hubbub breaks out across the room, but somehow my voice rises above it when I ask: “Is this because of the guy we saw?”
Everyone starts asking me questions at once. Kate has to blow her whistle again.
“Yes, okay! We had a trespasser at camp today. We found a boat pulled on shore. We believe he’s a local fisherman or hiker. Dave is off investigating now. Until we’ve sorted it out, we’re going to be using the buddy system: don’t go anywhere alone, always travel with at least one buddy. And if you run into an adult who isn’t me or Dave, don’t engage. At all. We clear?”
“Can we hunt him too?” Troy grins.
Kate gives him an exasperated look. “Let’s try not to crap where we sleep, guys.”
I take a quick shower in the relative privacy of the girls’ cabin before we pack up, and finally wash the obstacle course off me. The water is painfully cold, but nothing has ever felt as cozy as the giant turquoise fleece I bundle up in afterward.
After dressing I join Nobody and Jada in packing up our stuff, which takes a surprisingly long time considering how few things we have to gather—sheets, footlockers, bath supplies—and haul it all through the dark to the boys’ cabin. We’re significantly slowed by the fact Kate will not let us walk alone. She makes us all go together as a threesome as we drop our belongings off by the door to the boys’ cabin. Only once all our things are in a big leaning pile on the shallow porch does she disappear into the trees, walkie-talkie crackling on her hip.
The boys’ cabin is identical in layout to the girls: four unvarnished wood bunks in each corner and uninsulated knotty-pine walls awash in waves of mildew.
“I smell gym socks,” I tell Nobody as we stagger into the cabin, comforters bundled in our arms. “And … flowers?”
“You’re welcome. We cleaned up for you!” Troy grins, pushing a broom and chewing on the end of one of his blue hoodie strings.
“This is ‘cleaned up’? Yikes,” Nobody mutters.
“The top bunks are all taken, and Troy sleeps under me, but the other three bottom bunks are free,” Kurt adds, leaning back in his own top bunk across from the door, then starts noodling out “More Than Words” on his guitar.
Javier is on the top bed of the back-left corner bunk, writing in a notebook, and he gives me a small wave. I’m about to walk straight to the bunk under his when Jada shoves past me and dumps all her bedding there, claiming it.
Okay, fine. I turn to the bunk bed behind me. Dennis is up top, reading a worn copy of The Art of Intrusion.
The door to the bathroom bangs open and I whip around to see Erik walk out, hair sopping wet from the shower, towel knotted around his waist, his chest clenched tight against the cold.
Jada drops what’s in her hands and practically spins on her heel to get out of his path.
“Whoever has the gardenia soap in there, I just used it,” Erik announces to the room. Muscles I didn’t even know existed flash along his sides as he bends to pluck a white thermal off his bunk and pull it on.
“That’d be Troy!” Kurt throws a pillow down at his brother. “He specifically requested it from Kate when we first got here.”
“I like a sumptuous scent, okay?” Troy fires back. “Most alpha males do. Floral smells boost testosterone. That’s why in ancient times kings wore leis and corsages and flower crowns into battle.”
“They did?”
“To be honest, no they did not.”
“Stupid!” Kurt laughs.
BANG! Jada’s footlocker slips from her hand in the middle of the room, hits the ground and hatches open, scattering a cosmetic portrait of her insecurities across the floor: concealer, zit cream, extra-strength deodorant.
“PARTY FOUL!” Troy shouts, and there’s a high wolf whistle from Kurt and a tiny gasp above me from Dennis as Troy picks a red lacy bra up off the floor.
I duck down to snatch up the box of super-size tampons that are within reach and tuck them in the corner of the footlocker before anyone notices, and then, cursing inwardly, drop to my knees and help pick up the rest.
Kurt snatches the bra from Troy and fires it across the cabin like a slingshot. It hits the wall with a rattle and slides down under Erik’s bunk as the guys burst out laughing.
“Wow, it’s almost like you’ve never seen a bra before.” Erik bounds up to Kurt’s bunk and has him in a headlock. Kurt laughingly punches at Erik’s arms, hard, as Troy attempts to wrench him off. I use the distraction to slip across the room, kick the bra from under Erik’s bunk and pack it away with the rest.
Once we’ve gotten everything back in the footlocker, Jada latches it and slides it under her bunk with a shove, not acknowledging me. But Nobody shoots me a discreet thumbs-up, the masked person’s version of a smile.
“Erik,” Dennis calls from over my head as I tuck in the corners of my fitted sheet. “What do you think Dave took with him to go ‘investigate’ that hiker? Long-range rifle with a silencer?”
“Dave should be forced to use only the soup-can lid shivs he had us make our first day at camp.”
“Oh man, dude, those were the dumbest!” Kurt pipes up. “What do you think the hiker has on him? A Swiss Army knife?”
“That guy was not a hiker.” I turn around, my pillow hugged to my chest, midway through putting on a fresh case. “Nobody and I saw him, and he was wearing a big weird rubber mask. Who goes hiking in a mask?”
“Dog Mask. Old timey. Very creepy,” Nobody agrees, the cabin going silent. The boys telegraph a glance around the room, and Erik’s dark eyebrows fly up as he stares at me.
“Interesting!” Erik rubs his hair with his towel, peering at me through its folds. “Yeah, I don’t imagine animal masks are a hot item at the old REI. What happened exactly?”
“He followed us through the woods after nature time with Dave or whatever.”
“We tried to get him,” Nobody adds defensively. “But he got away.”
There’s a shifting sound above me as Dennis sits up, and Javier’s eyes search my face.
“Yeah, when we ran at him, he bolted straight for the creek. Like he was trying to get us to follow him across the fence.” I sit down on my bunk, legs unsteady. “Like he was trying to set off our kill switches.”
“How would he know where the fence is, though!?” Troy insists. “This camp is like, a top-secret program that got going, what, two weeks ago?”
“If that’s what Signal says happened, that’s what happened.” Erik bites at his nails and stares at me, damp hair hanging in his alert face. “So how would he know about the fence?”
“I don’t know, but Kate knows who he is, I think. When we described him to her, she got weird.” But before I can say more, the door swings open and Kate strides in:
“Fifteen minutes till lights out, guys! Early to bed, early to rise!”
There’s an uneasy silence as Kate watches us collect our toothbrushes and bathroom gear. How much did she overhear?
When I come back out of the bathroom the lanterns are all off, and while I’m burning to discuss Dog Mask with everyone, I can see the firefly glow of Kate’s cigarette through the screen door.
There’s a long silence, and then a very high fart.
“TROY!!!” Kurt yells, “Shut up your BUTT!”
“Who was that?!” Troy cries indignantly. “No, seriously, guys. Who would do such a thing?! Let’s get to the bottom of this. Who’s got a bubbly tummy in the house tonight?”
“Troy,” Erik growls, “one more noise out of either of your ends and I will climb over there and permanently connect your rectum to your esophagus.”
I hear Dennis start laughing overhead, a string of hushed, uncontrollable giggles, and that does it, I crack up and now we’re all laughing, so hard Kate calls “Go to sleep!” from the porch and we settle into cozy silence.
As I curl up on my side and slide my hand under my pillow, I feel a crisp sheet of folded paper. I carefully pull the note out and tilt it to catch a dim beam from the porch light.
It’s a drawing of a dandelion, captured in one flowing, elegant line. And underneath in block letters is written:
“FLOWER FOR SURE.”
“Rise and shine!” Dave claps his hands right in my face.
Pain rips through me when I try to sit up, muscles seizing in my arms and legs. I have to grip the ladder at the end of the bunk just to stand.
“Little sore there, huh?” Dave laughs.
“Everything hurts.”
Kate, by his side, frowns at me.
“Then you can take the morning to rest.”
“Really?!”
“Yup. But you’ll need a buddy.”
My first thought is Nobody, but she seems to actually enjoy the obstacle course. The only person who dreads it as much as I do is, obviously …
“Hey, Dennis?”
Dennis, halfway down the ladder, has his glasses off. He looks too young without them.
“You want to be my buddy this morning? Skip obstacle course?”
“Yes, yup, okay.” He nods quickly. For monotone Dennis, this is the equivalent of a “HELL YEAH, GIRL.”
“That works for me.” Kate smiles. “Dennis can get in some computer practice and your muscles can heal.”
“Great! Now I just have to see if I can get my clothes on,” I joke, and Erik, walking by, rolls his eyes at me.
“Weakling.”
As everyone else departs for the field, Dennis and I follow Kate to the main cabin, to a small nurse’s office down the hall from the dining room.
There’s a sun-bleached CPR chart peeling off the wall next to a metal first aid kit hanging open, empty. What would Dave have done if I’d fallen and actually broken my leg? I don’t want to know.
Kate unlocks the drawer of a dented metal desk and pulls out a stout chrome briefcase with a military laptop inside. She plugs it into a generator under the desk, then pulls out a blinking cordless Wi-Fi hot spot from her pocket. Once the laptop powers up, she types in several lines of code and only then is Dennis allowed to take his place at the keyboard.
“And this is for you.” She hands me a door lock cut in half with a panel of clear Lucite so I can see the tumblers inside. She points to a pile of paperclips by an ancient office chair.
“You get this open while he works on the pacemaker.” She pats a small lump in her pocket absently. “I’ll be in the kitchen. Holler if you need anything!”
Dennis gives me a look as we take our respective seats across the room.
“Thanks for getting me out of obstacle course this morning,” he says haltingly, his hands fluttering over the keys.
“No prob, bob,” I say, straightening a paper clip. “I honestly don’t know how I’m going to do that course every day. I almost passed away trying yesterday and I’m already dreading the thought of doing it tomorrow.”
“The obstacle course is a waste of time.” Dennis shakes his head. “They know I’m going to be taking all my targets down with a computer, yet they still insist on making me crawl up buildings like Spiderman. It’s ridiculous.”
“How do you kill someone with a computer?”
“I can hack the brake systems in most modern cars. Ditto navigational devices and landing gear on private and small commercial planes,” he says with a sniff. “I’m almost there with hacking pacemakers, except I can barely get Kate to give me two hours in a row with the camp laptop, and she’s built like a million stupid firewalls to keep me in the training program, which cause more bugs than I’d ever actually need to deal with.” His tone is almost comically monotone when he adds, “It’s truly infuriating.”
Dennis, with his button nose and sprinkling of whiteheads across his chin, can make planes fall out of the skies. Okay.
“The reason I bring it up is, you helped Jada last night, and now you’re helping me this morning.” His large eyes fasten on my face. “Why?”
Because Nobody had made me think about what Jada might have been through. But I don’t want to start spreading rumors, so I’m not sure how to answer this.
“Class As are deficient in empathy,” Dennis goes on, his lenses opaque from the blue glow of the laptop screen. “Some can pretend to be empathetic. But it’s always to shield a larger, self-serving agenda.”
I blink at him. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I’m not fooled by your nice-girl act.” He drops his chin, peering over his glasses. “And I want to know what this favor is going to cost me.”
“It’s not an act!” But it is, just not the one he thinks; I’m trying to act like one of them and failing miserably. “You of all people should know being a Class A doesn’t mean being a heartless psychopath. Didn’t you turn yourself in before you could hurt someone? That’s like, a noble thing to do.”
“Turning myself in was ultimately self-serving,” Dennis says. “I didn’t want to be punished when I inevitably caved to my impulses.”
“So you sent yourself to jail? Sorry, that doesn’t seem self-serving to me. That seems kind and good.”
Dennis’s face tightens, but his voice doesn’t change. “I know what I want, Signal. I want to cause someone pain.”
“But you don’t,” I push, waving a straightened paper clip at him. “You don’t cause anyone pain. Because something in you is stronger than that urge. Call it self-preservation or kindness, it amounts to the same thing. Strength of character.”
He stares at the screen without answering, but his keyboard is silent.
“You’re an awfully positive person,” he says at last, in the same icy monotone.
“You’re the first person who’s ever gotten that impression of me.”
“And you’re the first person who’s told me I was strong.” He pauses. “But like I said, you don’t fool me.” And his keys clatter momentously.
You don’t fool me.
Exactly what Janeane had said at my trial.
Rose’s mom had loomed large in my childhood: long-limbed and beautiful like Rose, with an irreverent sense of humor and ever-present American Spirit cigarette. But when she started dating Tom, he made her drop the smoking, and my mom as a friend. After they married she became someone who frowned instead of laughed at off-color remarks; she kept her hair in an angled bob and diligently jogged. Still, you can’t admire someone that much when you’re that young, and then stop caring about them.
That’s why I broke down when she took the stand as the last witness for the prosecution and testified against me. When she told the court I had always been a little off. And that I had been obsessed with Rose.
“The defense keeps saying, she’s just a girl, whatever she did, she’s just a girl. That’s what I kept telling myself. What can she do? She’s just a girl,” Janeane told the court in a broken voice. And then she turned to me, and I made the mistake of looking in her eyes.
Janeane’s face was not one I knew. The pain, the rage as raw as if her skin had been flayed off and every bloody nerve laid bare to the staid municipal courtroom.
“Well, you don’t fool me anymore, Signal. You don’t fool me.”
I curled up then, hands covering my face, and heard myself plead, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
“I saw those photos! I saw what you did to my baby!” she wept. “You’re sorry! You’re just a girl, right? Just the girl from hell!”
Quick footsteps and Kate runs in beaming and holding up the pacemaker, which blinks red.
“I’d be dead on the floor if this was attached! Great job!” She throws her arms around Dennis. He looks embarrassed but pats her shoulder.
“Our goal for next time will be turning it off entirely.” She shifts him out of the chair and Dennis sighs with exasperation.
“If you let me back on I could—”
“That’s enough for today, Dennis. How’s the lock coming, Signal?”
“Almost there,” I lie, looking down at the lock in my lap with two straightened paperclips jammed into it.
“Well. You can finish up later, everybody’s in the kitchen,” she says. “Dennis, you go on ahead, and Signal if you could stop at the pantry on your way and grab a box of the latex gloves? It’s right next to the lost-and-found closet. They’re on the top of the right-hand shelf.”
I make my way down the hall to the pantry, throw open the door, and pull the cord swinging from a bare lightbulb. The pantry is the size of large coatroom and crammed with aluminum shelves from floor to ceiling. Most of the food appears to be from the same era as the lost-and-found clothes: dusty vats of cling peaches, a laundry detergent-sized bottle of something called “Gravymaster.” I suspect if I turned the light off again I’d hear the discreet chewing of mice.
I spot the latex gloves on the top shelf, but when I yank a step stool from behind the rack it dislodges something. There’s a flutter of paper and I see a printed, black-and-white face for just an instant before the paper lands under the shelf.
Rose’s face.
It’s Rose’s face or I’m losing my mind.
I crouch down and slide my hand under the bottom shelf, pushing past my repulsion at the grime, reaching until I touch smooth newsprint. I carefully slide the newspaper out and smooth the creased front page of the Washington Times.
The hideous bulk of the shed, with its one little window like a gouged-out eye, stares back at me in black and white. I lay my cheek against the gritty floor and look under the shelf to see a curve of folded newsprint. I reach again and pull out a stack of clippings: several from when the trial started, another with my own yearbook photo and the all-caps headline: “THE GIRL FROM HELL.”
But what about Rose’s face? I slide my hand behind the shelf, forcing it between the tightly packed broth boxes and rough unvarnished wall, the wood scraping my knuckles, and grab it just as the door creaks open.
“Signal? Signal, are you still in the pantry?”