The Box in the Woods

AS STEVIE LEFT TOWN AND HEADED BACK TO THE CAMP, SHE HAD A thought. She swerved and looped down one of the side streets.

It maybe was tempting fate to visit the spot where someone had been struck down on a bicycle on a bicycle—especially when you were uncertain about your skills on said bicycle. But Stevie had never been one to take the prudent course. She looked up directions to the site on her phone. It was a nondescript corner—a four-way stop lined with low suburban houses. There were no sidewalks here, just lawn all the way up to the street. It was placid and tree-lined, and there was nothing to mark the spot where Michael Penhale had fallen on that December night. But it was easy to see how such an accident could have happened. At night, it would be dark here. There were no streetlights now that she could see, which meant there were probably none then either. A car barreling along, not stopping, or clipping the edge . . .

She leaned on the handlebars, looking carefully at the traffic around her.

As she rode back, she came up on the sharp curve that turned down the road toward the local high school. This was where Patty said Greg Dempsey had crashed his motorcycle in the week after the accident. It was easy to see how he had done it. The turn was sharp, heavily bordered by a wall of trees and rock. If you didn’t make it, you’d go right into it, as he had done. It was a death turn. It certainly seemed like others had made the same mistake, because there were remnants of old memorials—a decrepit cross, half-buried by tall grass, and a teddy bear coming apart from age and exposure.

Stevie looked down the length of the road and saw the comically large Liberty High sign. There was something eerie about being out here alone, even though it was just a roadside on a bright summer’s day. A lot of bad things happened in this town in a short time between December 1977 and July 1978. Seven months or so of tragedy. It was grim.

She stuck very close to the grass edge of the road as she cycled back toward the town center, more than once getting off the bike and wheeling it by her side out of nervousness of someone coming along the road and striking her from behind. By the time she got back, Camp Sunny Pines had changed. The children had arrived. They came in cars and buses, in ones and twos. They came with their shiny backpacks and their scooter helmets. They came, screaming their high-pitched screams over the peace of the lake.

Obviously, this was no surprise, but still, the landscape was so totally altered by their presence that Stevie was confused. She had started to know this place, its long stretches of field that always smelled of fresh-cut grass, the little brown buildings, the outdoor pipes, the signs. It had been hers first, then shared with a few people her age, but now? The children were everywhere.

It suddenly occurred to her what she had actually signed up for.

She wandered past as parents slowly detached crying children from their legs, or watched as happy children ran off, unaware that their parents were still there.

Janelle and Nate were two of the last counselors left in the dining area. Breakfast was largely closed up and over, but Stevie managed to convince the woman behind the counter to peel back the plastic wrap and let her have some cold pancakes. She didn’t even need silverware or a plate. She put them in a napkin and ate them by hand, dry. She snagged a cup of the substance that passed as orange juice and sat down with her friends. As soon as she did so, she felt a presence at her back. Nicole sat down on the bench next to her.

“You in town this morning?”

Stevie sipped some acidic orange juice–like drink and hmmed.

“I know you have special permission from Carson, but the kids are here now.”

“I know,” Stevie said. Because she did know. She could see the children, who were being rounded up by some of the counselors and led off to their bunks in the distance.

“So that means you have a job to do.”

“I am,” Stevie said. “It took longer to get back from town . . .”

“I’m just saying,” Nicole said, then said no more and got up and walked away.

“She likes you,” Nate said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Janelle added. “I have it all covered.”

She produced a binder, inside of which were a series of color-coded spreadsheets, each tagged with sticky notes.

“I’ve got all the crafts set up by age,” she said. “Now, let’s see . . .”

And that morning and afternoon, Stevie did see. They made samples of everything on Janelle’s chart while attending multiple assemblies, where names were learned and rules were read and everyone was welcomed. The kids were, Stevie had to admit, fairly cute. At least, most of them were. The oldest ones were eleven, and they clearly viewed the counselors not quite as equals, but certainly as peers of a sort. Stevie kept glancing at her phone, checking for updates, and the one she was waiting for finally came around four.

I’m here, David wrote.

“See you later,” Janelle said, smiling.

Even though Stevie had just been told not to leave, nothing was going to keep her away. She slipped away from one of the sessions, ducking between the cabins and hurrying across the fields, right on to the camp entrance, running over the road that split the camp from the park. She hustled down the paths until she reached the place where she could see the parking lot. There, standing by an old gray Nissan, was David.

David and Stevie had last been together at school every day in December. Fate (and a bunch of murders, and a senator) had separated them. There had been lots of video and endless pics, so they were constantly in each other’s lives. But she had not seen him in the flesh since that cold, snowy morning up on the mountain in Vermont when they had come to take him away. She knew every element of his face from every angle a camera screen and her memory had captured, but seeing him here, fully assembled, scrambled her brain for a second. Had he always been that tall, that wiry, with tight coils of muscle? Was the shirt big, or was he thinner? Had those always been his legs? And his hair—dark, loose curls that had grown ragged and free at Ellingham were clipped a bit shorter now. She had known that, had seen the images, but now nothing quite fit.

But her body knew what to do. She ran up to him, jumping, and he caught her clumsily. They fell back against the car door, and she kissed him through his smile.

Yes. It all made sense again. The picture reassembled itself. The feel of her face in the hollow of his neck. The way his arms wrapped around her back and they curved into one another. His breath. His heartbeat. David.

Also, she was on her toes and they were both sliding sideways down the side of the car, and they stumbled apart, laughing.

“Have we met?” he said.

She squeezed him around the middle.

“Want to help me set up?” he said. “It would be good to have a place to sleep before the sun goes down.”

Stevie and David removed a bunch of equipment from the back of the car—a tent, a cooler, a camp stove, two folding chairs, and a small folding table. They walked this to an empty area close to the lake edge.

“The sleeping bag is mine,” he said. “I use that in some of the shadier places we stay in on the road. The rest of the stuff I rented from a place in town. I even rented a kayak from their boathouse. Now, how does one tent . . .”

The tent proved to be more challenging than it first appeared. There was a lot of staking things into the ground, and rolling in the right way, and inserting tubes in pockets and attaching. But somewhere around the two-hour mark, Stevie and David entered the tent, found it to be stable, and immediately tried out the floor.

This was so private. It was unlike anything Stevie had ever experienced, even in their rooms at Ellingham. This was wild, and separate. And they had come together here for a reason. David had come a long way to be with her. Her. That was the only reason he was here.

“I need to go soon,” she said.

“Do you have to go back?”

She considered for a long minute. The temptation to stay exactly where she was, on this sleeping bag in this tent, was tremendous. On the other hand, Nicole had been unambiguous when it came to things like skipping out for the night.

“I have to go,” she said.

“I’ll walk you over,” he said. “These are murder woods, right?”

“But then you’ll be walking back alone. These are murder woods.”

“Good point. Stay.”

“Stop,” she said, pushing him and not wanting him to stop at all. There immediately followed a round of making out, which ended only when Janelle called Stevie and told her that Nicole had been around, and curfew was falling fast.

“Really have to go,” Stevie said. “Quick, quick go.”

“Then I’ll drive you,” he said.

It was convenient to have a car here now. Stevie scrambled to make herself presentable again, still pulling on her socks and shoes as they left the tent. David drove her out of the park’s parking lot and down the short stretch of road to the opening of the camp. He drove her almost the full way down the driveway, stopping before the entrance sign and the lights. Stevie hopped out into the warm night, waving and watching all the way, and ran to the cabin. When Nicole checked again, Stevie was on her bed, looking at her tablet like she had never been gone.