Despite how my heartbeat has picked up, the comfort of stepping back into the watchtower settles over me like a sweater on a cold evening. The room now smells like pumpkin spice air freshener, a scent I remember Paisley used to love. Without the whip of the forest air, it’s downright warm in here. Beck’s body and her heat sit seeminglycloser than ever. I suddenly can’t believe I ran out of this watchtower and into the dangers of the outside at all. It’s like my instinct to survive has finally turned on. The part of me that followed Beck because I like following Beck has taken the wheel again.
When she finally turns to me, all I see are the tearstains across her face.
I open my mouth, ready to burst into an apology for what I said on Paisley’s phone, for all the lying I’ve done between then and now, for every horrible thing I’ve said about her sister.
But she speaks first. “I have to confess something too.”
Thirty
I shouldn’t feel good hearing something like an imminent confession, but it takes a load I wasn’t expecting to lose off my own back. Beck was keeping a secret too. We’re even. We can start over.
“Paisley…” Beck begins. “Paisley was taking this trip really seriously. Or, at least, that’s what she told me. It’s bad. I shouldn’t have not told you. I—”
As I think back to that night at the Mystic Museum, yes, it does make sense that the secret Beck seemed to be holding wasn’t just that Paisley and our friends hadn’t invited me. Especially knowing Beck now, something as small as that wouldn’t have fazed her, certainly not before she really got to know me.
So, whatwasshe thinking about that night? What still has a grip on her tonight?
“Beck, I don’t care,” I say, leaning into her. “You were just trying to spare my feelings. I’m not mad at you.”
Beck shakes her head. “No, no, that’s not why—I mean, Emma, thenight everyone died…wasn’t the first time Paisley came here. That’s what I’m trying to say.”
The feeling drains from my face.
Paisley came to the site early?
Paisley, who doesn’t camp? Who used me to get every detail of the campsite?
“What was she doing out here?” I ask.
“I caught her leaving late that Thursday,” Beck says. She stares off at the table near where we found Paisley’s phone, as if picturing her sister’s little adventure as she speaks. “I thought she was going to go sneak out with some boy she was seeing. She said she was going to be gone for a while that night. I made her tell me where she was going and she told me that you guys were all going on a camping trip so she was assigned to go check out the spot early and get things ready. She said she volunteered to do it because Mom would let us skip school whenever we wanted, and she wanted to be nice to you guys. It rubbed me weird especially since this happenedrightafter she threw that trophy at me, but it was also Paisley being nice to you guys, so I went along with it.”
A wave of dizziness hits me. “What’d she do up here alone?”
“I don’t know. She basically went to Kingston, came back at who knows what time in the morning, and slept through half her classes.”
Did all this have to do with what she was doing in the bathroom at Bob’s that night? Was she still scraping off dirt or hiding the fact that she hadn’t slept? Yet Opal and Harlow acted like it was all normal. Were they in on Paisley coming here early?
And what did she plan to do out here?
All this time I thought I had the narrative straight: I planned a trip out to a haunted location for spooky season. Paisley, Opal, and Harlowdecided they didn’t want me on the trip. They made up a story about the weekly sleepover being canceled so I wouldn’t notice them go on the trip without me. Paisley replied to my text. They all died. But no, it turns out I came into the story when it was well underway.
“Do you remember when I told you Paisley sent me a text before this all went down?” I say. “About how I should be happy I wasn’t on the trip because they were all going to die?” I massage my throat. “If she had more planned than we thought, is it possible she really did try to warn me?”
I’ve spent the past several weeks secretly relieved she was dead, when all along she might’ve saved my life on purpose.
Beck reaches over and cups my cheek.
“I don’t know. But I think it’s possible, for what it’s worth.” But whyme? “Paisley wasn’t all bad. No one is, are they?”
Her fingers slip away before I can catch them and keep them on my skin.
“How do you mourn human beings?” I mutter. “When you’ll never know how they really felt about you, but what they showed you was mostly awful?”
Beck’s eyes brim with tears. “I don’t know. But you should know I’m not mad about what you said about Paisley. You might be right. I have no idea if she’d have investigated my death if things had been reversed. Nothing that happened to any of them takes away from the pain they caused you. That doesn’t just stop, and it’s okay to be pissed at them. I’ve been as angry as you were on that voice note. I get it.”
She shows me Paisley’s call history.
She no longer has an incoming call on that night.
