Her parents had a constant war on dandelions in their yard. Who knew? Now that she was focused firmly on dandelions, the lack-of-oxygen feeling had retreated to just a tightness in her ribs. She very much wished her body wouldn’t do that. She wondered if fiddleheads and dandelions would be enough to keep them alive. She doubted it.
“Cool, then let’s get that tennis net, catch a fish, and make some dandelion-and-fish stew,” Mariana said. “Wow, this is a weird summer. Imagine the postcards home we could send... if we had stamps.”
“Lack of stamps is not the only reason we aren’t sending postcards,” Reyva said.
Claire picked up the blueberries that they’d dropped. She placed one on her tongue. It felt like a stab of bitter sweetness. Not quite ripe, as Jack had said. She bit, and the juice filled her mouth—she thought it might be the most violently flavorful berry she’d ever tasted. She ate a second one as they headed back to the trail.
Jack fell into step beside her. “Sorry again. I wasn’t thinking about what you guys went through. Have you really not eatenanything since I dropped you off?”
“Not much,” Claire said. “A few snacks.”
Reyva jumped in. “You don’t have to worry. We haven’t yet resorted to cannibalism, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Jack looked appalled. “That was not at all what I was asking.”
Before he could say anything more, they reached the Lake House. He slowed as soon as it came into view but was swept forward by Claire, Reyva, and Mariana. Claire supposed they were becoming used to the sight, which was terrible in and of itself. You shouldn’t get used to the sight of tragedy, but this time, they had a particular goal.
They beelined for the tennis court. Claire hadn’t paid much attention to it before, except to notice it was cracked. Up close, it was in even worse shape than she’d thought. It was riddled with fissures, moss, and weeds. Unplayable.
A few dandelions had sprouted in the cracks. Claire yanked them out of the ground, shook the excess dirt off the roots, and shoved them into her pocket. She smiled as she imagined telling her parents that she was saved by eating their lawn’s enemy, and her smile faded—she hoped she got the chance to tell them. She was getting much too carried away with all this hope.Focus on one thing at a time, she thought.First, the net.
Half torn from its posts, the net sagged. The ropes were coated in moss, with rips in certain places. But some of it was intact, and Claire guessed it was an okay size for catching fish. At least it seemed appropriately netlike.
Jack pulled a knife out of his backpack. It was about five inches long, with a handle that looked like it was made of bone.He took off the sheath and sawed the remaining rope that connected the net to the post.
They stared at him.
“You just, like, carry that around?” Mariana asked.
“It’s Maine,” Reyva said. “He probably has a lobster trap in his backpack.”
“That would be useful,” Claire said. “You said you didn’t have anything useful in there.” She eyed his backpack, trying to gauge its weight from the pull on the strap. She wondered what else he carried, as well as what else he knew, that could be helpful. Was he holding out on them? Maybe he had a useful item that he didn’t realize could help them....
“I don’t have anything edible.” He held the knife up so they could see. “Dad gave it to me when I was eight. It was his father’s. The handle is made of carved elk antler.”
“An heirloom knife,” Mariana said. “Cool. For my quinceañera, I got an heirloom tiara. Almost the same thing. Except not.” Starting at one side, she began rolling up the net. “You know, you’d think they would have fixed up the tennis court before reopening. What if we’d wanted to play tennis instead of the much-more-cardio-oriented running for our lives in terror?”
“Why did the camp get shut down in the first place?” Claire asked. She’d asked her parents that question, and they hadn’t known. Just waxed on about what a formative summer it had been, and then they’d stared adoringly into each other’s eyes. They’d begun dating at the Lake House, which hadn’t been a detail that Claire had known—she knew they were high schoolsweethearts, but not that it had begun at summer camp. In fact, they’d never mentioned the Lake House until they got it into their heads that she should go. After that, it was pretty much every other sentence out of their mouths, as if a light switch had been flipped. She’d never seen them so focused on anything. It was as if they’d expected this place to be the salvation for all her—and therefore alltheir—problems. But not once in their extended soliloquies about the glories of the Lake House had they ever explained why it had closed.
“Because it’s in a national forest,” Jack said. “They lost their permit; at least I think that was it. Also there was the kid who died.”
Mariana halted with the net halfway rolled. “What kid?”
“It’s one of the local legends. He haunts the lake. Every so often you get a lone hiker showing up and claiming they saw him, and it fuels a whole lot more ghost stories.”
“So this place is burned downandhaunted,” Mariana said. “Yay.”
Warming to the subject, Jack said, “His name was Arthur Benedict, and he was sixteen when he died. Snuck out with friends one night. The friends came back. He didn’t.”
Reyva rolled her eyes. “Nope, this place is definitely not haunted by a ghost named ‘Arthur.’ No place is haunted by a ghost named Arthur. Bloody Mary, yes. Arthur Benedict, no.”
Claire laughed.
“Obviously the friends murdered him,” Mariana said.
“Well, yeah, obviously,” Reyva agreed.
They carried the rolled-up net off the tennis court, thendumped it next to the charred maple tree in the middle of the lawn, near the wheelbarrow with various equipment that Claire had salvaged from the sheds. She peeked through it, looking for anything that resembled wire or fishhooks. She found a hammer. “Anyone want to pry out nails for fishhooks?”
