It was the best summer of my life. At least it was until that final night. Even now I know I will never know a time like it. Weird, right? But I know. I know that I will never, ever, be that happy again. Not ever. My smile is different now. It is sadder, like it is broken and can’t be fixed.
I loved a boy that summer. I will call him P for this story. He was a year older than me and a junior counselor. His whole family was at the camp. His sister worked there and his father was the camp doctor. But I barely noticed them because the moment I met P, I felt my stomach clench.
I know what you’re thinking. It was just a dumb summer romance. But it wasn’t. And now I’m scared I will never love someone like I loved him. That sounds silly. That is what everyone thinks. Maybe they are right. I don’t know. I am still so young. But it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like I had one chance at happiness and I blew it.
A hole in Lucy’s heart started opening, expanding.
One night, we went into the woods. We weren’t supposed to. There were strict rules about it. Nobody knew those rules better than me. I had been spending summers here since I was nine. That was when my dad bought the camp. But P was on “night” duty. And because my dad owned the camp, I had full access. Smart, right? Two kids in love who were supposed to guard the other campers? Give me a break!
He didn’t want to go because he thought he should keep watch, but hey, I knew how to entice him. I regret that now, of course. But I did it. So we headed into the woods, just the two of us. Alone. The woods are huge. If you make a wrong turn, you can get lost in there forever. I had heard tales of children going out there and never coming back. Some say they still wander around, living like animals. Some say they died or worse. Well, you know how it is with campfire stories.
I used to laugh at stories like that. I never got scared of them. Now I shudder at the thought.
We kept walking. I knew the way. P was holding my hand. The woods were so dark. You can’t see more than ten feet in front of you. We heard a rustling noise and realized that someone was in the woods. I froze, but I remember P smiling in the dark and shaking his head in a funny way. You see, the only reason campers met up in the woods was, well, it was a coed camp. There was a boys’side and a girls’ side and this finger of the woods stood between them. You figure it out.
P sighed. “We better check it out,” he said. Or something like that. I don’t remember his exact words.
But I didn’t want to. I wanted to be alone with him.
My flashlight was out of batteries. I can still remember how fast my heart was beating as we stepped into the trees. There I was, in the dark, holding hands with the guy I loved. He would touch me and I would just melt. You know that feeling? When you can’t stand to be away from a guy for even five minutes. When you put everything in context of him. You do something, anything really, and you wonder, “What would he think about that?” It is a crazy feeling. It is wonderful but it also hurts. You are so vulnerable and raw that it’s scary.
“Shh,” he whispers. “Just stop.”
We do. We stop.
P pulls me behind a tree. He cups my face in both of his hands. He has big hands and I love the way that feels. He tilts my face up and then he kisses me. I feel it everywhere, a fluttering that begins in the center of my heart and then spreads. He takes his hand away from my face. He puts it on my rib cage, right next to my breast. I start to anticipate. I groan out loud.
We kept kissing. It was so passionate. We couldn’t get close enough to each other. Every part of me felt on fire. He moved his hand under my shirt. I won’t say more about that. I forgot about the rustling in the woods. But now I know. We should have contacted someone. We should have stopped them from going deeper in the woods. But we didn’t. We made love instead.
I was so lost in us, in what we were doing, that at first I didn’t even hear the screams. I don’t think P did either.
But the screams kept coming and you know how people describe near-death experiences? That was what it was like, but kinda in reverse. It was like we were both headed for some wonderful light and the screams were like a rope that was trying to pull us back, even though we didn’t want to go back.
He stopped kissing me. And here is the terrible thing.
He never kissed me again.
Lucy turned the page, but there were no more. She snapped her head up. “Where’s the rest?”
“That’s it. You said to send it in parts, remember? That’s all there is.”
She looked at the pages again.
“You okay, Luce?”
“You’re good with computers, aren’t you, Lonnie?”
He arched the eyebrow again. “I’m better with da ladies.”
“Do I look like I’m in the mood?”
“Okay, okay, yeah, I’m good with computers. Why?”
“I need to find out who wrote this.”
“But—”
“I need,” she repeated, “to find out who wrote this.”
He met her eye. He studied her face for a second. She knew what he wanted to say. It betrayed everything that they were about. They had read horrible stories in here, one this year about father-daughter incest even, and they had never tried to track the person down.
Lonnie said, “Do you want to tell me what this is about?”
“No.”
“But you want me to break all the confidences we’ve ever set up here?”
“Yes.”
“That bad?”
She just looked at him.
“Ah, what the hell,” Lonnie said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
CHAPTER 3
“I’M TELLING YOU,” I SAID YET AGAIN. “IT’S GIL PEREZ.”
“The guy who died with your sister twenty years ago.”
“Obviously,” I said, “he didn’t die.”
I don’t think they believed me.
“Maybe it’s his brother,” York tried.
“With my sister’s ring?”
Dillon added, “That ring isn’t unusual. Twenty years ago they were all the rage. I think my sister had the same one. Got it for her sweet sixteen, I think. Was your sister’s engraved?”
“No.”
“So we don’t know for sure.”
We talked for a while, but there was not much to add. I really didn’t know anything. They would be in touch, they said. They’d find Gil Perez’s family, see if they could make a positive ID. I didn’t know what to do. I felt lost and numb and confused.