You Will Pay

  Sosi hesitated, as if she were going to say something, then held her tongue and walked to the cavern to peer outside. “Where are they? You don’t think this was all part of some big prank, do you? Jo-Beth’s big on pranks.”

  “I don’t think so,” Annette said, but understood. Jo-Beth was a vicious, angry girl. She’d heard somewhere that Monica was seeing Tyler and had wanted one of them, most likely Sosi, who was small and petite like Elle, to dress up as the missing girl and act like her ghost, carry a bloody knife or something, and come after Monica. But Sosi had put the kibosh on the prank, and the rest of them had agreed not to go along with it. Jo-Beth had calmed down a bit, and had instead come up with this alternative plan to meet down here, in the middle of the night, when they could all get together without the eyes and ears of the campers upon them.

  Jo-Beth had insisted they had to meet and get their story straight about the night before and stupidly, Annette now thought, they’d all capitulated. The only stipulation had been that one of the counselors stay back at camp for the girls. Nell, being the youngest and out of the loop, had been elected, even if she didn’t know it.

  Sosi had agreed to bring Nell up to speed tomorrow.

  Jayla rubbed her arms, glanced nervously overhead, where, because of the watery beams of the flashlights, the reflection of the tide pool shimmered eerily on the rocky ceiling. “Let’s . . . Let’s go back. I don’t like it here. This is nuts. And . . . Jo-Beth and Reva? Maybe they’re not coming.”

  “No one’s going anywhere!” Reva said breathlessly, slipping suddenly into the cave. “Not until we sort this all out.”

  “About time,” Jayla remarked, still edgy.

  “Sort what out?” Bernadette stared pointedly at Reva. “What’s to ‘sort out’?”

  “We just need to be on the same page.” Reva motioned to all of the girls.

  Sosi asked, “Where’s Jo-Beth?”

  Reva waved off the question. “She’s . . . She’s got cramps.”

  “She’s not coming?” Annette demanded as the surf pounded ever louder. “This was all her idea!”

  “That’s it. I’m outta here.” Jayla’s eyes were wide. “This place gives me a serious case of the C-R-E-E-P-S!”

  Sosi agreed, “Let’s just leave.”

  “No, no! Wait!” Reva practically shouted, and Annette had the feeling she was stalling. But that was crazy—well, everything about tonight, and last night, was off, creepy, even. She felt her skin crawl. “We need to figure out what we’re going to say to the police,” Reva insisted.

  “The truth!” Annette threw up her hands, her shadow dancing eerily on the rocky walls behind her. “I don’t care what we’ve all done. We have to do what’s right. If we lie, we’ll all get in worse trouble.”

  They started arguing, Annette getting hot and adamant that they tell the truth, and Bernadette trying to calm everyone down. “Let’s not argue,” she said. “Come on . . . think this through. What are the guys going to say? Are they all going to be a part of this lie, too?” Obviously Bernadette, always the peacemaker, felt at a loss. She was finding no one here, including Annette, who wanted to calm down. Everyone was edgy, everyone was worried about what had happened to Elle and getting antsy about leaving the campers alone so long.

  “We can’t stay here all night!” Jayla said, her eyes darting around in her head. “And what about that murderer on the loose, huh? Do you all think he had something to do with Elle? Oh, sweet Jesus, I can’t think about that.”

  To Annette’s surprise, Reva nodded. “Me neither,” she said, and made a deft sign of the cross over her breasts.

  “Lying’s not going to help.” Annette was firm. “We have to help the police find her.”

  “Let’s figure this out quickly,” Bernadette said. “The campers are bound to wake up. Therese will have to go to the bathroom soon again, I just know it. And Arielle, she’s always having nightmares about monsters.”

  “Amen, Sister,” Jayla said, holding up a hand. “I hear you on that one.”

  Bernadette said, “Any one of the other kids could wake up from a really bad dream and come screaming in search of a counselor. And not find one. How would that look? And then Mrs. Dalton will wake up and go through the roof.”

  “We’ll all be screwed,” Annette agreed, noticing that the rivulet was growing steadily, the trickle of water quickly becoming a larger stream as the tide had apparently turned, the waves moving closer to the shore. “I think we should leave.”

  “Not yet!” At that moment, Jo-Beth hurried into the cave. “Sorry. I was . . . sick.”

  “I told them about your cramps,” Reva cut in quickly.

  “Right. Miserable.”

  But she didn’t look sick. If anything, she seemed out of breath and jazzed, nervous. Maybe from running to get here? Annette wasn’t sure, but she’d decided to mention it in her journal when she got back to the cabin. One thing was certain, Jo-Beth, as always, was determined and ready to be in charge, which she obviously thought was her rightful place, here and probably anywhere else she set foot. “So now,” she said, looking at each of the other counselors in turn. “We have to come up with our story and we have to stick to it.”

  “I’m not going to lie,” Sosi stated firmly, short reddish hair poking from beneath the hood of her sweatshirt. Her little chin was angled up determinedly and though nearly half a foot shorter than Jo-Beth, Sosi seemed ready to take on the taller girl. No surprise there. Annette remembered Sosi had four older brothers whom she claimed tried to bully her from the time she’d been able to walk, and she tried to resist taking guff from anyone, including know-it-all Jo-Beth Chancellor.

  “Of course you are.” Jo-Beth advanced on the shorter girl. “We all are. For the greater good. And we’re going to say that we were all together to . . . to commune with nature and to feel closer to God and to, you know, bond with our ‘sisters.’”

  “While we just left the girls? Nuh-uh.” Jayla was shaking her head.

  Jo-Beth reminded, “For a few minutes.”

  “Everyone but Elle,” Jayla pointed out. “No one’s going to buy that.”

  “Sure they will. The Reverend Dalton will want to believe we were trying to connect with God. With Jesus. What better place than here, in God’s backyard, isn’t that what Reverend Dalton calls this place?”

  Sosi glowered up at Jo-Beth, her voice barely audible over the rush of the ocean. “I don’t think we should use Jesus as an excuse. It’s just not right.”

  “Amen,” Jayla agreed, springy dark curls bouncing around her face. “We don’t use Jesus.”

  “It’s not Jesus per se,” Jo-Beth argued. “We’ll just say we all wanted to experience a connection with God, through nature. Reverend Dalton’s faith has inspired us. All of us.”

  Jayla arched a disbelieving brow. “At midnight?”

  “Yes, we couldn’t sleep.” As if anticipating the next obvious question, she added, “Okay, so maybe a couple of us couldn’t sleep and woke the others.” Nodding to herself, she added, “Yeah, that makes it more plausible.”

  Sosi frowned. “So the story is that two of us—let’s say Bernadette and Annette, since they’re sisters—they had a lot on their minds and couldn’t sleep.”

  Bernadette cut in, “Just because we’re sisters doesn’t mean—”

  “Let her finish!” Jo-Beth snapped. “We don’t have a lot of time.” That was the first honest thing she’d said, as it was obvious from the ever-growing stream of water they needed to leave and soon or be trapped. “We can work on the details later.” Then, seeing Bernadette was about to argue, said, “Fine, we’ll say Monica couldn’t sleep. She’s not here to say differently.”

  “And that’s weird, don’t you think?” Annette said. “Where is she?”

  “Oh, for the love of—Who knows? We all know how she is.” Jo-Beth let out a huff of disgust. “She’s probably just late.”

  “Maybe she didn’t wake up. Shouldn’t someone go back and get her?” A
nnette suggested nervously. “Since we’re all in this together. And you’re going to say that she’s the one who woke everyone up?”

  Jo-Beth waved away Annette’s argument as if it were as insignificant as a fly. “Forget it! We don’t have the time to go find her and get back here just to start the discussion all over again.”

  “You got that right.” Jayla was nervously eyeing the rising stream.

  “So then,” Jo Beth said, “fine. Use me. I’m the one who couldn’t sleep.”

  “So you woke the rest of us and we all decided to find Elle and not worry anyone,” Jayla said.

  “You mean, we’d just leave our girls—” Sosi started to put in.

  “Yes! Yes! Of course!”

  “And we were doing it to find God.” In the weird glow of the flashlights, Jayla rolled her big eyes. “Oh, sure, that’s believable.”

  “It is!” Jo-Beth looked at each girl in turn. “We didn’t go far, just . . . say to that clearing near the flagpole, okay? So . . . So we could hear any of the girls if they called or needed us. And we . . . we weren’t just communing with God—no, you’re right—but we were worried about Elle, okay?” Jo-Beth was finding her footing now, the tale—the lie—unfolding in this cavern far below the cliffs. “She’d said some things to us that concerned us, so we got together to discuss what to do about it, how . . . how to help her.” Jo-Beth snapped her fingers as if the idea had just struck. “That’s it. We didn’t know she was missing.”

  “We didn’t,” Bernadette said.

  “What did she say to us?” Jayla asked, not convinced, one eye on the rising water.

  “Boyfriend problems,” Jo-Beth said. “Lucas. She was worried about Lucas. I mean really upset. Everyone knew she was involved with him.”

  Annette saw Bernadette pale as if her heart had stilled. For her, Annette suspected, this was too close to the truth. “I don’t think we should lie about that.”

  “It’s not a lie,” Reva said. “She admitted it to me that Lucas had broken up with her and she was ‘devastated,’ that’s the word she used, ‘devastated.’ She was really upset. I was afraid she would do something.”

  “Like what?” Annette prodded.

  “Like, I don’t know . . .” Reva said. “Like maybe kill herself or kill Lucas. Maybe kill him, then herself.”

  Bernadette blurted, “That’s crazy. And besides, Reverend Dalton will wonder why we didn’t alert him or his wife.”

  “Because we were scared. Didn’t want to get her into trouble.” Jo-Beth was really going now. “Like we thought we could help her, just the way he’s always preaching about. We were . . . you know, taking control of the situation.”

  “Instead of covering our asses,” Annette said dryly.

  “We all know Elle’s a little crazy,” Reva put in to silence any opposition. “That’s the point.”

  “When?” Bernadette demanded. “When did she say that they—she and Lucas—had broken up?”

  Reva lifted a dismissive shoulder. “I don’t know. A couple of days ago. Like on the day she disappeared.”

  “Yesterday then?” Bernadette said, her voice a little higher than usual.

  Annette had to wonder, was it possible? Had Elle gone missing because of her sister? Is that why she’d just taken off? Or had she really killed herself? Oh. Dear. God. Her gaze met Bernadette’s and she knew her thoughts were mirroring her sister’s.

  Reva nodded, catching Jo-Beth’s eye. “We were coming out of the cafeteria and she saw Lucas. He was helping fix the stairs on the front porch of the rec center.”

  Annette witnessed Bernadette swallowing hard. She knew why. She, too, remembered spying Lucas hammering the new step into place, and Reva had been talking to Elle after lunch.

  Oh, God, was it true?

  Bernadette looked stricken.

  Sosi, though, wasn’t convinced. “This is a dumb idea,” she said, and Annette nodded her agreement as a particularly loud wave crashed against the rocks and the little stream widened. “Jayla’s right. Nobody’s going to buy it.”

  “I don’t see you coming up with a better idea,” Jo-Beth said crossly. She glared at Sosi. “You want to tell the truth, about what you were really doing?”

  Sosi opened her mouth, then shut it. “I’m telling you,” Jo-Beth insisted, “we need to stick together on this.”

  “Why? What did you do that makes you so sure we should lie?” Jayla asked.

  “Like everyone here, I wasn’t where I was supposed to be last night, and I don’t want to admit it and mess up my future.” For the first time Jo-Beth seemed sincere. “That’s what this is really about. What happened to Elle? We don’t know, right? But we’ll all look compromised, guilty, if we start blabbing about what we’ve really been doing.”

  Annette didn’t like it. None of it.

  Nor did Bernadette. “I think we should just tell the truth,” she said. “I mean, what are we going to say if they break us up and interview us one by one? Won’t they ask each of us what the other was saying?”

  Nobody answered Bernadette, so Jo-Beth went on. “Just stick to the story. We were all worried about Elle. And you all can say that I mentioned she’d been desperate, even suicidal, and that I was worried. I’ll say she confided in me. So if you get asked anything, dump it on me. I can handle it. Both of my parents are lawyers; I know how the system works.”

  “This is never going to work,” Annette said.

  “Not if we don’t all stick together. Look, this is the best plan I’ve got. Do you have something better?”

  “We could tell the truth,” Sosi said.

  “Hey, you all. The water?” Jayla said. The stream was rushing more wildly now, the tidal pool taking up more and more space in the cavern. Jayla edged closer to the entrance to the cavern, but no one, aside from Annette, was paying any attention.

  “Okay. Fine. Let’s explore ‘the truth,’” Jo-Beth suggested, using finger quotes for emphasis. “If we’re going to go with ‘the truth,’ then it’s going to be all of it. Think about it. What it means if everything we’ve ever done here comes out. Everything.” Her eyes narrowed a bit as the surf echoed through the chamber. “How do you think your parents would like to know that you’ve been smoking weed?” she asked Sosi. “Isn’t your dad like a mucky-muck in that church you belong to?”

  “An elder,” Sosi admitted, head bowed.

  “Right. So what would he say if he knew the truth? And what about your girlfriend? Don’t deny it. We all know. Everyone in the camp knows it except for Reverend and Mrs. Dalton. Can you imagine what he’d say? What he’d do? What would happen to you? To Nell?”

  “Dear God,” Sosi whispered.

  “And what about making the gymnastic team at Oregon? That would be over. Right?”

  Sosi’s eyes rounded. She tried to argue but couldn’t.

  “And you.” Jo-Beth turned to Jayla. “Don’t act so innocent. I’ve seen you pick up stuff that doesn’t belong to you.”

  “What?” Jayla looked stricken.

  “Wasn’t one of your campers missing a necklace? Something her grandmother gave her before the old lady died?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t—”

  “And another one couldn’t find some of her money, right?”

  “I didn’t take anything!”

  “Save it, Jayla. We all know you have a problem.”

  “I don’t!” Jayla insisted, hoisting her chin up a notch, but she quit arguing when she noticed that none of the girls standing in the ring came to her defense. Not one. Because they all knew. And there was more, Annette thought to herself. She’d seen Jayla with Dusty on more than one occasion, sharing cigarettes and kisses behind the stables. Annette had been on horse duty one day and had come across Dusty and Jayla on the side of the stables near a watering trough. At the sight of her they’d broken off their embrace.

  It was true, Annette thought. Every one of them had something to hide, something that could change the course of their lives. It had all start
ed out so innocently, nine girls thrust together in this small camp on the Oregon Coast, all being dropped off by their parents and entrusted with the lives of younger girls. Annette remembered Bernadette stepping out of the front passenger seat of her mother’s battered old Volvo while Annette bounced out of the back seat.

  And then she’d observed Bernadette catch her first glimpse of Lucas in the office. He’d just walked in the back door and, after a hesitant introduction, had offered to carry the Alsace sisters’ bags to their assigned cabin. In faded jeans and an equally scruffy black T-shirt, he’d lifted the two duffels as if they weighed nothing, tossed each onto a shoulder, and walked away. Bernadette hadn’t been able to drag her gaze from his retreating form, his wide shoulders, straight back, and slim buttocks moving easily beneath the pale jeans hanging oh-so-low on his narrow hips.

  Witnessing her sister’s transformation, Annette had realized that Bernadette had felt a thrill then, a little tingle of awareness that surprised her and caught her off guard, the same awareness Annette, too, had felt. She’d been so entranced herself that she hadn’t realized her mother was introducing her to Reverend Dalton and his wife, Naomi. So much so that she’d barely noticed Leah, Naomi’s eleven-year-old daughter, who was holding a gray cat desperate to scramble out of her arms.

  Now, Annette blushed. Of course Lucas had never even noticed her. She pushed all those memories aside for the moment and decided to divulge one of her own secrets. Since the group seemed deadlocked, it was time to admit the truth no matter what the consequences. “What about if we’ve seen Elle?” she asked, and felt the weight of everyone’s gaze land on her.

  Jo-Beth demanded, “What do you mean? Like, since she disappeared?”

  “Yeah.” Annette was nodding, hating to have to tell them all.

  “But we haven’t. No one has.” Jo-Beth paused. “Wait a sec. You? You think you saw her?”

  Now that everyone was staring at her, Annette wished she’d never told them. “Look, I mean I saw something or someone. Last night.”