Page 36

That night, 3:14 a.m.

The campers crowd around Charles, bloody and dazed, spotlit by all the flashlights and petrified by what he’s seen on the beach.

“What do you mean, a body?”

“You saw someone on the beach?”

“You’re sure it was a person?”

“And they were dead?”

“Did you check their pulse?”

“Did you touch them?”

“You’re sure it wasn’t a rock or something?”

“It all happened so quickly,” Charles stammers, his son clutching his leg even tighter. “I saw something on the rocks, so I walked toward it. Then a hand . . . I heard something, and I tripped—” He touches his forehead, wincing.

The questions resume, from the campers at the lower loop who never made it back to their tents as well as more parents, who have materialized from the upper loop. It’s difficult to tell in the darkness who’s who, where the questions are coming from.

“What do you mean, you heard something?”

“Like the person is still alive?”

“I don’t know. It was so dark, and with the water, I couldn’t get to them.”

“Do you know who it was?”

“Are they alive?”

“We have to help them.”

“My head really hurts. Has anyone seen Ray?”

“Were they calling for help?”

“Are you sure it was a person?”

The questions come rapid-fire, one on top of another, creating a wall of sound, with Charles repeating again and again that he doesn’t know, holding his head to stanch the blood flow.

“If I could get everyone to be quiet,” Emmy says over the commotion. No one is listening to her. She tries a few more times to silence them, and when it doesn’t work, she blows her whistle, loud and piercing. It has the desired effect. They all fall silent immediately.

“Let me examine your head.” Sofía emerges from the circle of parents. Everyone watches as she uses her flashlight to inspect the cut on his forehead.

“Does anyone have a towel?” Sofía asks.

“I’ve got a bandanna?” one of the campers calls.

“That’ll work. I need to clean up some of this blood to see the extent of the laceration. Head wounds often look worse than they are,” she says to reassure Charles, who doesn’t entirely register the cut nor the fact that his son has been found. He continues to stand there, dazed. Haunted.

“I want you to walk me through exactly what happened,” Emmy says.

As Sofía holds pressure to his wound, Charles repeats the same thin story: He was searching for his son, and each time he didn’t find him in a cove, he kept going. He has no idea how far he went—on and on until he saw a mass on the rocks. Even before he could tell what it was, he knew it wasn’t one of the boys. It was too big. Because of the tide, he couldn’t walk all the way over to inspect. He got close enough to make out the outline of a person. When he saw a hand dangling, he jumped back and fell onto the rocks.

Emmy breathes, calculating her next move. Lots of things along the coastline look like bodies. Rocks, for starters. Kelp. Shadows. Sleeping sea lions. But the hand. It’s a detail specific enough to make Emmy uneasy.

She tells everyone to stay where they are as she walks off to radio Sam.