The Box in the Woods

“GOOD MORNING, SUNNY PINES!”

Stevie blinked into her pillow and turned her head to look at Janelle. Janelle was not there. When Stevie gathered up her things and stepped outside to take her shower, she found a long line of children waiting to get into the bathroom. Janelle stood somewhere in the middle.

“This is bad,” she said out loud.

The line was so long that Stevie ended up skipping the shower entirely and heading to breakfast with Janelle. Nate was already there, waiting for them. He picked up a tray and stepped into line between them, then followed them to a table.

“How was the first night?” Janelle asked.

“Do you see the kid with the red hair?” he replied. “Blue shirt? His name is Lucas. He is my nemesis.”

“You can’t have an eight-year-old nemesis,” Janelle said, picking the grapes out of her fruit cup.

“Don’t tell me how to live my life. He’s . . . oh god. He’s coming over here.”

Lucas, the nemesis, had noticed Nate and was indeed walking toward them, eating a sausage link with his fingers as he did so. He sat down at the table with them without asking permission and looked at Janelle and Stevie.

“Are you his friends?” he asked.

Lucas was direct.

“Yes,” Janelle said sweetly. “We go to school together.”

“I’ve read his book seven times,” he said.

“Wow,” Janelle replied. “That’s a lot!”

Because it was a lot, and this kid was eight years old.

“Yeah,” Lucas replied. “I’m still waiting for the next one. He says he’s not done.”

Nate’s head shrank a bit into his shoulders, like a slowly descending elevator.

“Can you get him to finish it?” Lucas asked.

“I don’t think so,” Janelle replied. “But he will.”

“I have ideas,” Lucas went on.

“I wrote it,” Nate said as Lucas wandered back to his bunk’s table. “I don’t need ideas.”

“You kind of do,” Janelle said under her breath.

“I’m in hell.”

“He’s eight,” Janelle pointed out again. “And he read your book. That’s nice.”

Nate physically recoiled.

“You’ll have more time soon,” Janelle went on. “It’s just another day or so until the other counselor gets here.”

If Stevie thought that the morning had been an abrupt swing into action, she had no idea what the day had in store. The minute that the trays were cleared from the picnic tables, the entire camp moved over to the green, where they assembled in a ring around the flagpole, said the Pledge of Allegiance, and listened to some announcements. Then all the groups split off and activities began.

It was a good thing that Janelle was the way she was. The art pavilion was ready. In fact, it was likely that in the entire history of the camp, the art pavilion had never been as ready as it was on that morning. Janelle had waited her whole life for this moment, and now it was upon her. These children had no idea what they were in for. They would craft like they had never crafted in their lives.

For a few hours, there was no case, there was no David. There were pipe cleaners and markers and rounded scissors. Stevie had glue stuck on her fingertips and paint on her arms and had helped make half a dozen flapping owls out of paper plates, several beaded necklaces, some kind of thing with paint and feet. During the short periods that the pavilion was free of kids, Janelle was sweeping around, an ecstatic glow on her face, as she was combining her loves of crafting, organizing, and cleaning into one geode of pleasure. Lunch came and went, then the entire afternoon. Soon there was dinner, during which Nate hid behind one of the dining pavilion pillars before vanishing entirely, and then the first day was over.

“I’m going to get set up for tomorrow and talk to Vi,” Janelle said. “Meet you back in the cabin.”

Stevie called David on the way back.

“Finally,” he said. “I wondered where you were.”

“There are so many . . .” She looked around nervously. “. . . little kids.”

“At a summer camp? Holy shit, we need to tell someone about this.”

“Also,” Stevie said, “I have to make sure the head of camp doesn’t notice I’m gone. It may be harder now that kids are here. Kids see things, right?”

“How about I come there? I can kayak over. I was out paddling around on that side of the lake earlier, and there’s a stream deep enough to ride over on. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

This was a good plan. It took a long time to go around the lake, but going over the lake was quick and easy, and there were plenty of places to dock the kayak or whatever it was you did with them. Stevie had a vague sense that maybe this was not allowed, but a vague sense is not a clear, definite sense.

A purple twilight fell over the lake as Stevie sat alone, on the far side of the lake house. She could hear kids singing in the distance, and fireflies floated and twinkled all around her. There was a magical quality to the night already, when David came gliding along the dark waters in a yellow plastic kayak, beaching it (maybe that was the verb) next to her on the rocky sand.

“Pretty good entrance,” he said. “Right?”

Stevie could see at once that he had make an extra effort that night. His hair was tousled, but in a very artful way. He wore a fitted black T-shirt that she had never seen before, and she was immediately certain that he’d bought it just because it fit him in exactly the right ways. He was wearing long swim trunks and flip-flops, but even these seemed to be part of an ensemble. He bent down and whispered low in her ear, “Do you live around here?”

Stevie actually shivered. Her body went loose, like the screws all fell out at once. She grabbed his hand and took him around behind the bunks, weaving out of the way of any lights or people, until they reached her cabin. For one extremely fleeting second, she thought about Sabrina and the others slipping into the woods way back when, the thrill of getting away with something at this dark, warm place alongside the lake. She felt herself understand something about them, and the understanding was deep and profound, and also gone a few seconds later. They had reached the cabin and shut the door. In the next minute, they were on the camp bed. The next thing she knew, there was a firm pounding on the door, and her eyes ached from the light when she opened them. She sprang up, straightening out her clothes. There was nowhere to hide David; the cabin had no closets. So she had no choice but to open the door and take whatever was coming.

Nicole stood on the step, looking grim. She glanced inside and sighed deeply.

“Who are you?” she asked David, who was sitting on the edge of the bed and maybe looking a little too amused.

“I’m . . .” He looked at Stevie, as if she held the secret to his true identity, the one he had never been able to share with the world. “. . . David?”

“David who? How did you get here?”

“Kayak?”

“You need to go, now.”

Nicole waited for him to get up and straighten his shirt.

“I’ll walk you back to your kayak,” she said. “You shouldn’t be out on the lake after dark. Do you have a flashlight?”

“I, um . . .”

“Stevie, give him a flashlight.”

Stevie did so, and David took it with a nervous smile. The two of them were about to leave, when Nicole drew her head back and looked above the door.

“Is that a camera?”

“I’m recording birds,” Stevie said.

She had no idea why she said that. It’s just what came out.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes. We need to talk.”

She was back a short time later, alone. Stevie had tidied the cabin in her absence, as if the situation might improve if her shower caddy was in better order.

“I want to be very clear about something,” Nicole said. “I know you are here as Carson’s guest, but if I catch you bringing people into the camp at any time unauthorized, you will be gone, Carson or no Carson. This is a camp. For children. Which means we have a duty of care. I’m responsible for every single person on these grounds. No strangers around the kids. No people kayaking at night on the lake. That lake can be dangerous. This is the one and only time I am going to say this.”

This was all delivered in such a tone of serious, grinding finality that Stevie was humiliated to her bone marrow.

“Yep,” she said. “Got it. Yep.”

As Nicole left, Janelle came in. Stevie could tell that Janelle had heard everything that had gone down, and she looked at Stevie wide-eyed as she shut the door.

“Fun night?” she asked.

“Kind of got busted with David.”

“I know,” she said, sounding maybe a little irritated. “I came back before. You didn’t even hear me. I shut the door and backed out. I saw Nicole coming, but she was ahead of me and I couldn’t get to the door in time. I texted you, but . . .”

Stevie looked over and saw that there were seven texts from Janelle waiting to be read. “Sorry.”

“Can you . . . ask next time? Or tell me? Except, I don’t think there will be a next time, because she just handed you your ass. But you know what I mean. If it were me and Vi, I’d tell you.”

“Sorry,” Stevie said again, and she was.

“It’s okay.” Janelle went to her bureau and started going through her various creams and washes to get ready for the night. Her tone indicated that it wasn’t entirely okay yet, but it would be. After a few minutes, she turned to Stevie.

“Vietnam is far,” Janelle said. “We don’t all have people to sneak into our cabins at night.”

Stevie nodded sympathetically.

“Any chance you have two thousand dollars I can borrow for a plane ticket?” Janelle asked.

“I’ve got a punch card for a free coffee that’s almost full.”

Janelle let out a long sigh.

“Only a little while until we’re back at school,” Stevie said.

“Now I know how Nate feels,” Janelle replied. “Nothing is longer than a little while.”

The next morning at breakfast, Stevie averted her eyes as they passed Nicole on the way in. Nate was already there when they arrived, avoiding his bunk’s table and skulking in the corner with a tray of pancakes and bacon.

“I thought you’d never get here,” he said, sitting down with them.

“Don’t you have to be over there?” Janelle asked.

Lucas peered up when he saw Nate. Nate slouched over his tray.

“All night,” he said. “All. Night. He talked about my book. Mostly, what he thought was wrong with it. And where is the second one? He knows more about that book than I do. He is a sentient internet comment.”

“He is eight years old,” Janelle pointed out again.

“You don’t understand,” Nate said, shaking his head. “Where is this other counselor? Why isn’t he better? It was supposed to be, like, one day.”

“Nicole said a few days,” Janelle said, belying her understanding of the night before.

“I did not sign up for this.”

Stevie ate bacon and watched her friends squabble. She had missed them so much when they were all apart.

“Your friend is here,” Nate said. “Captain Big Box. Box Bag. Bag Boss.”

Stevie turned to look in the direction Nate was facing. Sure enough, Carson was speed-walking through the patch of grass bordering the dining pavilion, weaving his way through the clumps of children, heading toward their table. He looked like he was on a mission, his brow furrowed.

“Oh god,” Stevie said. “What does he want? Nicole’s going to yell at me again for bringing weirdos to the camp, even if that one does own it.”

Nate looked like he wanted an explanation about that, immediately, but Carson was upon them. He squatted down at the end of their table.

“I need to talk to you,” he said to Stevie in a low, breathless voice.

Stevie looked at her rapidly cooling pancakes. “Could I finish . . .”

He shook his head. “No time.”

“Podcasts sleep for no one,” Nate said.

Stevie sawed into the pancake stack in a desperate attempt to get them into her mouth.

“Listen,” he said, “Allison Abbott is dead.”