Everyone was staring at me, trying to take me seriously, but I could see the little seedlings of impatience sprouting in their minds.
Galen scratched his wrist, the spiderweb tattoo. I looked and saw the same one on Mia and Liam too. Going away for this weekend had been my idea—a way for the four of us to bond because I’d been feeling left out. Now here I was deliberately separating myself from them.
I was an idiot.
“You okay?” Mia asked me, and she sounded sincere.
“Yeah,” I said, but I wasn’t really. I was embarrassed. “I guess I sort of freaked myself out.” Even now, I was expecting Mia to laugh at me, or make me feel stupid, but she didn’t. Galen didn’t either, which I appreciated.
“If someone really was out to get us, they wouldn’t have just taken our phone,” Galen said.
“What?” I said.
“Well, I mean, what about our car?”
I still didn’t understand.
“He’s right,” Mia said. “What good would it do to take our means of communication unless they also cut off our means of escape?”
I thought about this for a second. Then I said, “You guys are just saying this now?”
Everyone laughed at my joke, and that made me feel good.
“So if you’re still worried,” Galen said, “let’s go see if everything’s okay with the car.”
“No, it’s fine. Really.” The truth is I did want to check the car, but I was tired of feeling like a baby.
So I was really glad when Galen said, “Oh, come on. Now you’ve got me curious.”
• • •
When we were out at the car, I held my breath as Galen slid the key into the ignition. I was ninety-eight percent sure that everything was going to be okay. But there was still that two percent.
He turned the key.
And the car started up just fine, no problem at all.
The car purred. No one said anything for a second.
And then we all busted up laughing—Galen in the driver’s seat, and Mia, Liam, and me standing around outside. I guess I hadn’t been the only one holding my breath, the only one worried about exactly what was going to happen.
It was kind of funny. Did we really think that someone was terrorizing us? That night was going to fall and we were slowly going to be picked off one by one? We’d obviously seen too many slasher movies.
We all stood there laughing together. The sound of it echoed off the lake, and that’s when I finally felt a real connection with Liam’s friends. Ten minutes earlier, I’d been feeling the exact opposite, but something had changed. Now I knew they cared about me, that they saw me as part of their group. I didn’t have a wrist tattoo, but maybe that didn’t matter.
That’s the point about surprising things, I guess. They really do happen when you least expect them.
10
The four of us spent the afternoon doing different things. Galen and Mia went off to try to rebuild the outhouse, their hammering echoing out across the stillness of the lake. Meanwhile, Liam and I found Mia’s family’s old rowboat and decided to take it out on the water.
“That was funny,” Liam said as we paddled lazily around. “That thing with the car.”
“Yeah,” I said. I was still a little embarrassed by everything that had happened. I wanted to tell him that it had all been for the best, that I was actually starting to feel comfortable around Mia and Galen, but I wasn’t sure how to put it into words.
“So you’re finally starting to see why I’m friends with Mia.”
I should’ve figured Liam would know what I was thinking.
Still, I said, “Why do you keep saying that? I like Mia.”
“Oh Rob, stop. Terrible liar, remember?”
We both laughed and the boat rocked a little, just from our laughter. The air smelled like water again. Out on the lake, it was clean and fresh, not like the stink of that bog.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Maybe I didn’t get her before. But I had my reasons. Like you and Galen.”
“What about me and Galen?”
“Well, you don’t like him either.”
“What? That’s not true.”
“Seriously?” I said. “You might be a better liar than me, but you’re not that much better.”
Now only I laughed, and this time the boat didn’t rock.
“Besides,” I said, “you and Mia don’t really have that much in common either.”
“Sure we do. We both like pancakes. And Game of Thrones. And toasted marshmallows.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean about the way you take on the world. She jumps in headfirst.”
“And I don’t?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “But maybe that’s what I like about her. She’s different from me. She makes me do things I wouldn’t necessarily do by myself.” He hesitated. “Things like asking you out.”
“You’re kidding!” This was a surprise.
“No, I’m not. She totally pressured me into it. She was tired of me moaning about the fact that I didn’t have a boyfriend. I mentioned I thought you were cute, and she wouldn’t stop until I did something about it. She was the one who found out you were gay. She quizzed you one day in the hallway.”
Was this true? I did have a vague memory of a conversation with a weird girl at school, someone I didn’t even know suddenly all up in my face. That was Mia?
“But she never asked me if I was gay,” I said. And I wouldn’t have told her if she had.
“Yeah, but she knows how to read people.”
So I had Mia to thank for the fact that Liam and I were even together?
“How did you meet her,” I said, “back when you first became friends?”
Liam had to think about it. “I was sort of her tutor. She was always goofing off in class and had terrible grades, so a teacher asked me to help her with her math. As soon as we met together alone, I saw how smart she was. She knew the stuff, she just didn’t like school. So she hid what she knew. She didn’t want people to know who she really was. I liked that about her. Everyone had an idea of the kind of kid I was, and they were right. Even my coming out didn’t surprise people. I didn’t have any mystery at all. I was exactly the person you thought.” He shrugged. “Maybe I still am. But maybe I’m not completely, because my best friend isn’t the person you’d think it would be, is it?”
He had a point.
“I see what you got out of being friends with her,” I said. “But what did she get out of being friends with you?”
“Thanks a lot!” He used the oar to splash me.
“You know what I mean,” I said. “You said she didn’t want people knowing she was smart. She wasn’t worried about hanging out with you?”
“We had the perfect cover, being tutor and tutor-ee. No one knew we were actually friends. Not until a lot later.”
“That doesn’t really answer the question.”
“Well, like I said, Mia’s smart. She doesn’t like being around stupid people. That’s the problem with being a smart slacker—you get paired with all the idiots. But Mia wasn’t an idiot. She was just bored.”
“And it helped that you were gay,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there wasn’t ever anything romantic between you. You were ‘safe.’”
He thought about this. “Yeah. I mean, we had sex once. But still.”
I did an actual double take. “What?”
“I told you that,” he said. “Didn’t I?”
“No! When did this happen?” When Liam had told me months ago that he’d had sex with one other person, I’d assumed he meant a guy.
“Oh jeez, forever ago,” Liam said. “Maybe two years?”
Two years wasn’t exactly forever. They would have been sixteen.
“How did it happen?” I said. “Whose idea was it?”
He laughed. “Who do you think?”
“And it was a disaster?” I sai
d. “And afterwards you realized you were gay?”
“Oh, I’d already told her I was gay. And it wasn’t a disaster. I mean, we did it, and it was fine.”
“Wait. You already knew you were gay? And you liked it?”
Liam grinned. “I love that you’re jealous.”
Was I jealous? If I was, it was stupid.
“A little,” I admitted. “Not that you guys had sex. That you had a secret I didn’t know about.”
He shrugged. “It’s only a secret because I forgot to tell you.”
• • •
By the time we got back to shore, Liam desperately needed to pee, so he hopped out of the boat and ran for the trees. I pulled the rowboat up alone.
“Hey, I’ll help you,” Mia said, trotting my way.
“Thanks,” I said, and we pulled the boat back up where we’d found it, then covered it with a crusty plastic tarp.
“So what’d you think?” Mia said.
“Huh?” I said.
“Of the lake. Did you see Crow Island?”
“Crow Island?”
“Out on the lake.”
“There’s no island on the lake,” I said.
“Sure there is.” She pointed.
I looked to where she was pointing, but not that closely. If there was an island, wouldn’t I have noticed it?
“Just look,” she said.
I still didn’t see anything. I was seventy percent sure she was trying to bullshit me. Maybe she hadn’t accepted me into her circle after all.
“Close to shore,” she said. She stepped closer to me and actually positioned my head so I was looking in the right direction. She was wearing some kind of fruity perfume—or maybe it was her shampoo—and I couldn’t help but be reminded that she and Liam had once had sex. “It’s hard to see up against the trees.”
Then I saw it. It was on the far side of the lake and small—probably no more than ten feet across—but it was definitely there, lush and spilling over with trees and plants. That’s how it blended so well into the background of the rain forest. But I hadn’t noticed it from up on the hillside either. Sometimes we really do see only the things we expect to see.
“Wow,” I said. “It’s really there.”
Mia laughed. “You thought I was lying?”
“No, I . . .” I didn’t know how to answer. Not without lying myself.
“Even I can’t invent an island out of thin air,” she said. She was suddenly very serious. “That’s the number one rule of lies. If you’re going to tell one, make damn sure it’s believable.”
• • •
Later, when we were all back inside the cabin and getting ready for dinner, we realized there were no clean dishes left. Everything still needed to be washed from breakfast and dinner the night before, along with all the pots and pans.
I hadn’t done any of the cooking, so I said, “I’ll do it. At the well, right?”
Mia nodded, so I stacked as much as I could and carried it out to the pump.
There was a dingy white basin under the spout of the pump, sort of a mini-bathtub. It was already full of water. Not just because we’d used the pump that weekend—the basin had been full of rainwater when we’d arrived.
The food had dried on the plates and pots, so I decided to soak them for a bit.
As I slipped the dishes into the water, I noticed something dark on the bottom of the basin—black and rectangular. The light was fading, but whatever it was stood out against the white porcelain. Like I said, I’d been using the pump all weekend, but I’d never noticed anything in the basin before.
I reached down to grab it. The water was icy against my skin, somehow much colder than the lake.
The second my fingers touched it, I realized what it was.
Our satellite phone.
• • •
The phone was worthless after being soaked in the water.
I brought it into the cabin and explained to the others where I’d found it.
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Mia said. “How . . . ?”
It took everyone a second to sort of piece it together in their minds. Someone had stolen our phone the night before while we were skinny-dipping, then somehow slipped it back in the cabin when we weren’t looking, then stolen it again that afternoon and thrown it in the basin. Or maybe we really had misplaced it the night before, and then someone had stolen it that afternoon and thrown it in the water.
I wasn’t sure which scenario was more unlikely.
“It’s the Brummits,” I said.
“No,” Mia said. “That still doesn’t make any sense.”
“Who else could it be?”
“Anyone. Kids out mountain biking. People who live in the backcountry. My parents leave the cabin unlocked, so maybe someone’s been up here using it, and they got upset when we showed up.”
“I don’t think so,” Liam said. “Remember the rat poop on the floor? It was untouched.”
“But the car . . . ,” Galen said. “It was fine.”
We all fell silent again. Earlier that afternoon, it had been fine, but was it still?
Galen grabbed the keys and turned for the door. Once again, it seemed a lot darker outside than it had been only a few minutes earlier. Night had fallen like an ax.
Out at the car, Galen turned the ignition.
The car turned over.
And I was just about to start laughing like before, say to the others, “How paranoid are we?”
But it kept turning over. It never actually fired.
And no matter how many times Galen turned the ignition and pressed the gas, it never did.
The car wouldn’t start.
11
Galen went back inside to get a flashlight. With it, he was able to tell that someone had punctured the gas tank. All the gasoline had soaked right into the ground. I don’t know why we hadn’t smelled it right away. Now that we knew it was there, the smell was overpowering. We’d all been so focused we hadn’t even noticed.
“Those fuckers!” Mia said. “Those fuckers!”
“How’d they do it?” Liam said. “Wouldn’t they have had to open the trunk or something?” We’d been dumb enough to leave the car unlocked, but even so, if someone had opened the trunk, wouldn’t we have heard it? We hadn’t left the area all afternoon, so wouldn’t one of us have seen them?
“They could’ve reached underneath,” Galen said. “With, like, a small screwdriver or a nail. They’d have to know what they’re doing, but it’s possible.” It was unsettling to hear Galen sound so serious, to not have him cutting corny jokes.
“What about footprints?” I said. But when we looked around with the flashlight, the only footprints we saw in the mud and moss were our own. I guess we’d walked over any other evidence that might’ve been there.
“Can it be fixed?” Liam asked.
“Do you smell that?” Galen said. “It’s gasoline. Gasoline that should be in the tank that’s now soaked into the ground. There’s no way to get that gas back into the tank. And without it, we’re screwed.”
So we were stuck. Someone had cut off both our means of escape and our contact with the outside world. Were they still nearby? They could have been watching us even then.
“So what do we do?” Liam asked.
Mia was already staring at her cell phone, punching in numbers and listening even though there was no signal.
The rest of us went in to get our phones and tried them too, moving to different places around the clearing. Galen even climbed up onto the roof of the car. But no matter what we did, there was no signal to be had.
“We should leave,” Liam said. “Walk to the road.”
“That’s a long walk,” Mia said. “Ten or fifteen miles.”
“What else can we do? We can’t stay here. Not with someone doing this.”
But even as Liam said this, we all seemed to notice how dark it was—how it was already basically night.
“We could trip and fall,”
Mia said. “Or get lost. I only know this place in the light. I’m not sure I’d know the way out at night.”
This was Mia talking, the person who always took stupid risks, leaping before she looked.
“So we just stay here?” I asked. Was that really our only option?
“Only until tomorrow morning,” Galen said. “We’ll lock the door. And stay together. And take turns keeping watch. Besides, we’ll be safer here in this cabin than we would be out on the dirt road.”
I looked at Liam in the glow of Galen’s flashlight, at the clench of his jaw, and I knew exactly what he was thinking: when had we voted to make Galen the leader?
But Galen was right and we both knew it. What else could we do?
• • •
No one felt much like playing Three Truths and a Lie that night. We didn’t feel much like playing anything. But we had to do something after dinner, so we played cards. We started with hearts, then gin, then poker. But all those games require concentration, which none of us had much of, so we ended up playing game after game of War.
At some point, it started raining. We could hear the drops hitting the roof. Even through all that moss, it sounded like the patter of little mice. Then the rain came down faster, harder, so it sounded like squirrels, then deer. What kind of rainfall came after deer? Bears? Bigfoot? At what point did the roof collapse?
But as quickly as the rain had picked up, it lessened again. Back down to squirrels anyway.
“We should try to get some sleep,” Galen said. “We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”
Liam bristled, and I knew he was still annoyed by Galen taking charge.
“We should sleep in shifts,” Liam said. “Keep watch.”
“Good idea,” Galen said.
“I’ll stay up first,” I said. “I’m not tired anyway.”
To my surprise, Mia said, “I’ll stay up with you.”
I may have hesitated a little bit, but then I said, “Sure.”
A few minutes later, Galen headed off to the bedroom, and Liam climbed up into the sleeping loft. I could hear him snoring almost right away. Then it was just Mia and me together, sitting on opposite chairs in front of the fire.