“I haven’t told her shit,” Rhett barks.
There’s more movement from inside. It sounds like someone shoves someone else.They don’t even trust one another, I think. They’re starting to crack, lines being drawn. Secrets wedged among them. They can’t stop talking about it—the fear rooted inside them now.
“Stop!” Suzy shouts, and she must step between them because everything falls quiet.
“You guys are only making it worse,” another voice interjects. Lin, probably.
Someone lets out a deep exhale and then there’s the sound of someone sitting, the depression of springs—probably a bed.
“We just need to wait it out,” Rhett says, but his voice sounds tight, strangled in his throat. Like maybe he doesn’t believe his own words.
A lull falls over the room, and I press myself closer to the wall, straining, unsure what’s happening.
But then someone finally speaks—Lin, the timbre of his voice like strings on a violin stretched too tight. “They’re going to find him eventually.”
Another long pause, as though everyone is too afraid to break the silence.
Suzy clears her throat, but it still sounds cracked when she speaks. “You guys know where Max is?”
There is a low, desperate undertone of grumbles. One of the boys says something I can’t make out, a hush of words like he’s afraid the walls will hear.Or a girl hiding in the hall.
“It’s only a matter of time until the counselors find him,” Lin continues, maybe in response to what I couldn’t hear. “He’s not hidden that well.”
This is the thing they’re keeping secret. The thing they’ve avoided. But now Lin has said it out loud.
My heart begins beating like a drum,thwap thwap thwap, and I press my nails into the wall behind me.
“They’re not going to find Max,” Rhett answers, his footsteps crossing the room, like he’s moving away from the others, toward a far wall. Maybe he’s looking out a window.
Max.His body, his corpse, tucked away somewhere.
Hidden.
“I can’t get in trouble for this,” Jasper says, his tone an equal measure of fear and threat.
“None of us can,” Rhett answers.
Jasper makes a balking sound. “It’s different for me. My dad will kill me if he finds out. This was my last shot, coming here. I can’t…” His words break off.
“It’s the last shot for all of us,” Lin offers up. The boys who are sent here to the Jackjaw Camp for Wayward Boys aren’t away on a winter holiday. They aren’t here because it’s a reward or a brief escape from public school and curfews. They’re here because they’ve already screwed up. They’ve already made a mess of their other lives. This is supposed to be the place where they get righted, set back on course. Fixed. But not if a boy winds up dead. And not if they’re to blame.
“There’s nothing we can do about it now,” Rhett answers, his footsteps crossing the room again. Pacing maybe. “It already happened.”
Another voice mumbles something so low I can’t make it out. I wish they would talk louder, I wish I could just step into the room without being seen.
And then their tone changes.
“I still hear things at night,” Lin says softly, as if he were facing the floor when he says it.
“That’s what happens when someone drowns,” Jasper snaps, his voice so high it sounds like it might break, as if his mind were fraying along seams. “They fucking haunt you because they’re pissed.”
Drowned.
Drowned.
Drowned.
Haunt, haunt, haunt.
