I drop the clippings back under the shelf just as Kate looks in, an edge to her voice: “Find those gloves alright?”
“Yeah, but I was looking for the step ladder and I knocked something down behind the shelf,” I say, my tone bored. I don’t know whether to be reassured or frightened at how well I’ve learned to compartmentalize.
“No worries,” Kate says, the aluminum ladder shrieking in protest as she opens it up for me. I hop up, grab the box, and hand it down to her with a tight-lipped smile, my mind still reeling.
Kate nods for me to walk ahead of her into the kitchen for the next class, or lesson, or activity, or whatever you want to call these life hacks for assassins.
“Okay, campers.” Kate claps for everyone’s attention. The rest of the campers, cleaned up after the obstacle course, are ranged about the long wood laminate counter that runs along three walls of the narrow, homey kitchen. On a worn butcher’s block, in the middle of everyone, is a pile of rotten meat.
“We’re cleaning out the fridge today!” Kate announces cheerily. “By learning how to dissolve organic material in an acid bath! We’ll be using a proprietary blend of commonly available chemicals we call ‘Zap Sauce’!” She points out the four trays set out at intervals along the counter, each with a neat row of household cleansers and a graduated cylinder. “Who can tell me in what circumstances an acid bath is the best way to dispose of a target?”
I squeeze my eyes shut and swallow the rising bile in the back of my throat.
“When you can’t move the body from a building without being seen?” Kurt offers.
“Exactly. Remember: if there’s no body, there’s no crime, and that equals more lead time to make your getaway. Some of your targets are going to be in urban environments with CCTV on the street, and you won’t be able to just wrap them up and throw them in the back of a car. But as long as you have a plastic tub, some housekeeping supplies and a toilet, you can use this method. Because what did we come here to learn, guys?”
Kate raises her eyebrows and looks around the room.
“How to not get caught,” we say in unison, and she smiles, her cheeks dimpling.
“Exactly. Now, safety first: put on your gloves and goggles,” she says, and pairs us off, giving each pair a plastic tub filled with rotten meat. Dennis and I get three roast chicken carcasses. Kate explains how to combine the acids we’ll be using, how to neutralize and dispose of them. Then she has us weigh our leftovers on the kitchen scale, measure our containers’ volume and, using what she’s taught us about the Zap Sauce, determine the amount needed to dissolve everything in two hours. I barely make it to the kitchen scale and back without heaving; if raw meat is gross after five years of being a vegetarian, rotted meat is positively harrowing.
Kate also hands out packets of worksheets with various word problems: given X amount of weight, Y amount of time, and Z being the volume of the container, how much Zap Sauce is needed to dissolve the target?
The smell of the Zap Sauce meeting the leftovers sends us all flying outside to the covered porch so we can breathe while finishing our packets, and gives me virtually no chance of surreptitiously sneaking back over to the pantry.
I look over my shoulder at Erik and Javier’s table. Erik has gone over to talk with Troy, and Javier is staring at me. When our eyes connect he smiles, the flash of it sending the tiniest bolt of lightning through me. He left the note; now it’s my turn to be brave.
“Hey,” I say, walking over to him like I go up to guys all the time, no big deal. “Thanks for your drawing. It’s incredible. I like, want it tattooed on me.”
One of his eyebrows tilts upward in mild disbelief. “Do you have any tattoos?”
“No! I mean, I used to have big plans for getting one on my eighteenth birthday, but I’m not exactly sure if that’s going to pan out.”
“What were you going to get?” he motions for me to sit. I slide onto the bench across from him feeling like I’m at the edge of a high dive.
“I wanted a skull with roses in its eye sockets.” I roll my eyes in embarrassment.
“That could be cool.”
“Eh. It seems kind of cringe-y now. Or maybe it’s just that everything death related has lost its appeal to me.”
“Whereas before …?”
“Don’t laugh, but I used to be sort of a goth.” Ooooh, why am I saying this? How did we get here? “Not like, super goth. As goth as you can be when you’re broke.” Better and better!
“So like, you went around in a trench coat and tiny sunglasses?” Javier’s brow creases in something like concern, and I frantically shake my head.
“Noooo, just like, a lot of horror movie T-shirts. All black every day. Shared lots of Instagram quotes about wanting to hurry up and die.”
“That’s really hard to picture.” He closes one eye, a slow smile spreading across his face. “But I bet you made it work.”
“No, I did not,” I laugh. Why am I sitting here laughing at myself?! What is wrong with me?
But Javier laughs too: “Yeah, right. I bet you were breaking all the goth guys’ hearts.” And I really do laugh at the idea of goth guys in Ledmonton, and it’s okay. Maybe I’m not that weird—he doesn’t think so. He goes on: “Back before, death was just something in movies. It was more of like, an aesthetic than reality? Whereas now …”
“It’s waiting at the bottom of the obstacle course?”
“Not while I’m around.” He lifts his chin slightly at me. “So now that you’ve ditched the tiny sunglasses, how would the Signal of today represent herself?”
“Your dandelion.”
His eyebrows go slightly up, his smile huge. “Seriously?”
“It’s such a cool drawing. And dandelions are the best. They’re sunny, they’re strong—”
“And mislabeled?” he says, catching me off guard.
Can he tell I’m innocent?
I’m not sure how to react. If I smile back like I understand, am I telling him he’s right? Or is this all just in my head?
“Well,” Javier continues, smoothing over the hiccup of silence. “If you want I could give you a temporary version.”
“Oh yeah? Do it.”
He reaches for my wrist, then pushes up my sleeve and cradles my bare arm in his hand. With a ballpoint pen he slowly and deliberately draws a line up the inside of my wrist. The brush of the side of his hand as he works makes goosebumps rise along the back of my arm, and I can feel the warmth of his breath against the thin skin. Then he pulls away so I can admire it: a dandelion, on a strong stem, its face turned to the sky.
“That’s perfect.” My voice wobbles, his hand still holding my wrist.
Kate marches out onto the porch, holding up a beeping kitchen timer.
“Okay, campers! Time’s up! Go check on your victims!”
Javier’s fingers slide away from me, and when I stand I’m dizzy.
Dennis and I find our chickens are now a tapioca-colored slush.
Kate beams down at the beige goo. “This is by far the most successful application of Zap Sauce I’ve seen today! Well done, you two!” Dennis and I high-five. It’s disgusting, but I’m finally not failing at something.
I’d been counting on the group being sent off to the field or lake to give me an opportunity to sneak back to the pantry. However, Kate and Dave keep us close to the main cabin because of Dog Mask, whose presence hangs over the day like the promise of bad weather.
I’m feeling pretty hopeless until I learn Erik has kitchen duty tonight. He can easily get the clippings. I just have to get him alone and ask. Which, when you share a single cabin with seven people, is almost impossible.
I get so desperate as it gets closer to dinner I actually follow him into the bathroom; and of course Troy is already in there, and feeling chatty. I stare desperately at Erik in the long, speckled bathroom mirror, half willing Troy to leave us alone and half terrified he will.
“These water bugs are getting bold, man!” Troy brays at Erik, who is wrapping tape around the thumb he sprained on the obstacle course. “The other night I came in with my lantern when it was all dark, and one comes striding right up to me right when I’m peeing. And this thing is huge, I seriously thought it was like a turd, but then it walked. So I’m all, BAM!” he stamps, then sighs and shakes his head, “Dude … He just looks at me like ‘You strike at the King, you better make sure he’s dead!’ and then rushes my freaking foot!!” Erik smiles, not looking up from his hand.
Can he tell I’m waiting to talk to him? Or does he think I just really need to wring every last bit of moisturizer into my hands?
“I booked it, I was flying,” Troy laughs, oblivious. “Anyway, see you out there, man.”
The second the door swings closed Erik and I turn to each other.
“I need your help,” I blurt awkwardly. “I saw some newspaper clippings on Rose’s trial.” And for some reason I’m blushing, and I know it, the worst combination of two things you can be. “I hid them all under the bottom shelf of the pantry and if you get them then we could, like, read them later?”
There’s a long pause during which we can hear the others exiting the cabin, Jada calling:
“Errrik, come on!!! Those onions won’t peel themselves!!”
“You hate onions. You always pick them out …” Troy’s voice fades out the door. And then there’s a beat of silence that feels like the first dip of a roller-coaster before Erik says,
“Okay.” And then, as he turns to walk away, “After lights out.”
I have no idea what that means. When after lights out? Where are we going to read them? The bathroom has a back door that opens out onto the woods—should I meet him there? I lay in my bunk, duck boots laced up under my blankets, twitching every time I hear Troy and Kurt snore, waiting for the sound of Erik climbing down from his bunk. But I don’t hear anything. Did he forget? Is he asleep?
And then a figure looms over me, darker and denser than the night filling the cabin.
“Erik?” I whisper, terrified it’s not him.
“Shhh.” I can just make out Erik’s outline before he pivots and heads for the front door, so I crawl out of my bunk and follow him.
I have to practically jog to keep up with his long strides across the overgrown meadow behind our cabin, the grass gone purple in the starlight, and into the black shapes of the trees.
“You got them?” I whisper.
“Oh yes.” He has his lantern but he doesn’t turn it on, it just swings from his hand. “Right under the shelf, like you said.”
“I kept wanting to get them during the Zap Sauce lesson, but I never got the chance.”
“No? Too busy holding hands with Javier?”
“Wow.” My jaw drops. “I didn’t realize you were monitoring my motions in class, creeper.”
“Creeper?!” Erik stops short, his stricken expression rendered in indistinct blues by the starlight. “In what world am I a creeper?”
“Maybe in the world where you creeped, crept, whatever, into my cabin the first night I was here?” I point out. “Nobody even said you ‘marked’ me.”
“I marked you? And what’s this?”
He reaches out and pulls up my sleeve, exposing the dark line of Javier’s dandelion.
“So Javier draws on your arm, even though he knows you’re in a relationship.” Erik’s words get faster, along with his pace, as we wind uphill through the trees. “and I’m the creep?! Okay, Signal.”
“Come on. Javier is a nice guy.”
“Javier is a sociopath.”
“Aren’t we all!”
“You’re not,” he says, then flicks on a lantern, his green eyes iridescent discs like a cat’s. The shallow light reveals a few rows of benches in front of a small raised platform and firepit, now filled with pine saplings. Erik sits on the first bench and pulls a roll of curled-up paper from inside his hoodie.
“Anyway. I am willing to look past your vicious name-calling,” Erik says, “so we can discuss why a stack of year-old clippings on your case is hidden in the pantry. Someone’s been hoarding them away, and they might be—pay attention here, because I’m about to use this word in its appropriate context—” His eyes flash. “They might be a creeper. Should we search Javier’s bunk for scrapbooking supplies?”
“Seriously though.” I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. “Who do you think collected these?”
“Kate and Dave, obviously. But don’t worry about it too much, it’s not like they hold life and death power over you or anything.” He reaches for the “Remembering Rose” clipping, which is two whole sheets of recent newsprint, the paper still bluish and slippery. “Ready, Watson?”
“Okay, Sherlock,” I say, and sit beside him on the cold bench. He spreads the paper across our laps and we both lean in and examine the smeary type through clouds of our breath:
LEDMONTON, OR — It’s been a year since the small town of Ledmonton was rocked by the brutal murder of 16-year-old Rose Rowan, the Ledmonton High junior found decapitated in a woodland shed last October.
The popular teen’s life was cut short by her obsessive classmate, Signal Deere, who clung to a grade school friendship despite the growing estrangement between the girls: Rose was outgoing, dedicated to her boyfriend and church community; Signal was a callous loner seemingly obsessed with the macabre. When Rose tried to distance herself, Deere snapped.
The lurid details of the “Girl From Hell” case dominated Oregon headlines last year, but less examined was the devastation Deere’s crime wreaked on her once-idyllic community.
“He just up and left,” Mrs. Lambe says, clutching a framed photo of her son, Michael Lambe, the Senior Class President and Rose’s boyfriend when tragedy struck. “Right after the trial, he packed his car and drove off. Didn’t graduate. Lost all his scholarships. He calls once in a while but won’t tell us where he is.” Mrs. Lambe’s blue eyes, so much like her son’s, fill with tears. “Mike, if you’re reading this, we love you and we miss you.”
Pastor Lambe and Rose’s youth group hosted a service where parents, Tom and Janeane Rowan, and the trustees of the Windward estate announced they would be establishing a scholarship in Rose’s name …
The low hoot of an owl makes me look up, straight into Erik’s staring face, like he’s reading me instead of the article.
“Did you get to the part about Mike yet?” I ask.
“I already finished.”
“I’ll save you a seat at the library,” I joke, but feeling distorts my voice and I can’t hold back. “Mike just ‘up and left’? Why would he do that, unless …”
“Unless what?”
“Unless he felt guilty?”
Erik squints at me for a moment. “You really are, like … like a five-foot-tall piece of cotton candy or something.”
“First of all, I’m five four and three quarters—”
“Signal, I’m sorry to tell you this, but whoever killed Rose feels no guilt.” Erik is not smiling, “Because he is a psychopath. And they don’t feel guilt, or fear, or love. They just act like they do. Nice Guys especially, they get a high from lying, it makes them feel superior. If Mike were our Nice Guy, there’s no way he’d leave. Playing the grieving boyfriend would be too much fun. In fact, he’d probably do some big tearful speech at graduation about ‘the one we lost,’ then do the same speech again, howling with laughter, on the drive home.”
I try not to picture it, focusing instead on the saplings and thin brush around us, thrown into sharp relief by the lantern light. Beyond them is just blackness.
“… Are you a psychopath?” I ask him.
“You think I’d tell you if I were?” Erik smiles, the stark light of the halogen lamp dividing his face into light and dark, its symmetry undeniable. “At least you know I’m not a Nice Guy. Did you know only forty percent of serial killers are psychopaths? Not even a majority. And the percentage of Class As with psychopathy is even lower. Twenty-five percent.” He tilts his head. “But then, what bearing does group average have on an individual? None whatsoever. I’m a Class A. So are you. But we couldn’t be more different.”
“We’re not that different.”
“We’re a photo and the negative,” he says quickly, then: “You don’t remember seeing anything inside the shed at all. Not even like, looking over Rose’s shoulder when you followed her inside—”
“Just blackness.” I don’t want to think about being inside the shed.
“I could try to hypnotize you?” Erik offers.
Absolutely not. “I tried that. With professionals.”
“And nothing came back?”
“Nothing that made sense,” I say, crossing my arms against my chest. “Pieces. I don’t even know if they’re real or forced memories or what.”
“Okay. Tell me the pieces.” His eyes are intent on mine.
“Are you trying to hypnotize me right now?!”
“No! I just have dreamy eyes.”
I chuckle, but then Rose’s face in black dots stops me. The page has slipped from our laps. I pick it up and smooth it as the wind rushes over us like a sheet pulled over our heads.
She was always so beautiful. Even at her worst, and I had seen her worst: I remembered Rose’s face half-buried in her pillow, sickly pale under a net of dark hair, the morning after the very last time I slept over. She had come back a blurry, underwater version of herself at three AM, eyes glazed, so high she could barely form words.
“Rose, I have to go …,” I’d whispered.
“… Okay.” She ground the heels of her hands into her face. “Can you come back Friday? I can pick you up.”
“I can’t cover for you anymore. You need to tell someone about Mr. Moody, Rose. This secrecy is … it’s just toxic, okay?”
“Um, I don’t need relationship advice from a girl who’s never been kissed, thanks.”
I’d planned a speech the whole time she’d been gone that night, but I knew then it was pointless. No matter what I said, she would only hear a shrill loser who refused to grow up, demanding she become a kid again.
So I just walked out instead.
I was halfway down the street before I remembered my math book was still on her desk.
Hoping she’d gone back to sleep, I crept in the side door, through the kitchen, and tiptoed to the foot of the stairs, when Janeane’s voice floated down from Rose’s room:
“… She’s over here all the time now, she never says hello or goodbye, and your father and I are a little concerned—”
“You’ve known her longer than Tom,” Rose snapped. “Who is not my ‘father’ and you know I hate when you call him that—”
“Well, Tom said you put a lock on the inside of your door.”
“It’s my door!”
“It’s his house. It’s our home. We don’t need locks in our home. Whatever you and Signal are doing should not require locking out the rest of the family!”
“We’re not doing anything. I’m just sick of you snooping through my room!”
“I don’t snoop,” Janeane said. “I would never snoop. I would only go into your room if I thought you had gotten hold of something that would put you in danger.”
Rose laughed bitterly. “Let me guess. Tom’s pills are ‘missing’ again?”
“Tom has chronic pain. He has a doctor’s prescription—”
“Shame he can’t make it last the whole month.”
“Someone is taking those pills, Rose!”
I turned and padded back down the hall, back to the kitchen door, when a massive hand landed on my shoulder.
“Signal.” Tom stood by the sink with a cup of coffee. He had a bull-dog jaw, a red nose with the coarse pores of an orange peel, and powerful shoulders from college football, hunched from the years he’d spent behind a desk at the car dealership.
He held up a pack of American Spirits.
“I found these in the planter out back.” He tossed them on the counter between us. “You have any idea where they came from?”
Rose’s mom was supposed to have quit years ago.
“They’re mine,” I lied.
“It’s a filthy habit. And I won’t have it around my Rose. I know your mom lets you run wild, but in this house …” In my peripheral vision, I saw Janeane’s willowy shape hover at the kitchen door.
Sensing Tom was winding down, I nodded dumbly, crushed the cigarettes into my pocket and stumbled outside.
“Signal!” Janeane ran after me down the driveway in her bathrobe, the tip of her nose pink. “Signal, I’m so sorry.” She grimaced. “You didn’t have to cover for me.”
“I didn’t take Tom’s pills,” I said, handing the cigarettes back to her.
“Well, thank you for telling me that.” She had the grace to look ashamed. “You know, it’s hard to believe, but I was sixteen once.” It wasn’t that hard. She was still beautiful. Just sadder. “I can remember how much I hated my mom. And now I find myself doing everything she did. And I get it.” She looked back at the house, squinting in the morning light. “She was just trying to protect me.”
She turned back to me, pleading.
“Signal, you would tell me if Rose was doing drugs, wouldn’t you?”
I should’ve told her the truth. I should’ve confessed everything about Mr. Moody. But I didn’t. And now Rose’s smile is just a cloud of black dots.
That’s why I said I was sorry in court. And that’s why I owe them both the truth.
“I remember music.” My voice warbles. “Not what song, or the lyrics … this is so pointless.” I press my hands over my eyes so all I can see is darkness swimming with washes of staticky color.
“Tell me anyway,” Erik says. “What else was there?”
“I remember a thermos.”
“What kind?”
“The kind like you’d get in an old plastic lunchbox. It had the Transformers on it?”
“Really! Was there anything in it?”
“I don’t know, this is stupid—” I’m about to sit up and take my hands from over my eyes, but his hands press gently over them, like he’s leading me into a surprise party.
“Wait, wait, don’t open your eyes yet. Just wait a minute. See if it comes.” The heat of his fingers on the back of mine is searing in the cold night, but it anchors me in the safety of the moment. When his hands slide away, the thermos rises in my mind so clearly, like there’s a spotlight on it. It tilts toward me, and the smell stings the back of my throat.
“It smelled alcoholic, but I don’t remember any taste.”
“Okay.” His voice is so gentle. “What else?”
“Lightning.” The word sticks in my throat. “A huge beam of light that blanked everything out. But there wasn’t a storm that night, so that doesn’t make sense.”
“Don’t try to get it to make sense. Just let it come up, and—” Suddenly he darts forward and snaps off the light, his voice dropping low:
“We have to go.”
And directly below us, winding up the gravel path fast, are the searching beams of Kate and Dave’s flashlights.