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I nod, even though it’s not entirely the truth.
“I volunteered,” Becca says. “I mean, I already knew Franny wasgoing to ask. She somehow managed to track me down during one of my rare returns to New York and invited me to lunch. As soon as she started talking about Camp Nightingale, I knew what she had planned. So I jumped at the chance.”
“I took a little more convincing.”
“Not me. For the past three years, I’ve been living out of a suitcase. Staying in one place for six weeks definitely had its appeal.” Becca stretches out on the grass, as if to prove how relaxed she truly is. “I don’t even mind that I’m bunking with three teenagers. It’s worth it if I can get a camera into their hands and possibly inspire them. Plus, this feels like a vacation after some of the horrible shit I’ve seen.”
She lifts her chin to the sunrise and closes her eyes. In that light clenching of her eyelids, I can see that she, too, is haunted by the unknown. The only difference between us is that she’s returned to Camp Nightingale to forget. I’m here to remember.
“Yesterday, when I saw you in the mess hall, I wanted to ask you something.”
“Let me guess,” Becca says. “It’s about that summer.”
I give a curt nod. “Do you remember much?”
“About the summer or the...?”
She doesn’t finish her sentence. It’s almost like she’s afraid to utter that final word. I’m not.
“The disappearance,” I say. “Did you notice anything strange the night before it happened? Or maybe the morning I realized they were gone?”
A memory arrives. A bad one. Me at the lake, telling Franny that the girls were missing as other campers gathered around. Becca stood in the crowd, watching it all unfold through her camera, the shutter clicking away.
“I remember you,” she says. “How frantic and scared you were.”
“Other than that, you don’t recall anything out of the ordinary?”
“Nope.” The word comes out too fast and pitched too high. Like a chirp. “Nothing.”
“And how well did you know the girls in my cabin?”
“Allison, Natalie, and Vivian?”
“Yeah,” I say. “You had all spent the previous summer here. I thought you might have known them.”
“I didn’t. Not really.”
“Not even Vivian?” I think of Becca’s warning my first morning at camp.Don’t be fooled. She’ll turn on you eventually.“I thought the two of you might have been friends.”
“I mean, I knew her,” Becca says. “Everyone here knew Vivian. And everyone had an opinion.”
“What was the general consensus?”
“Honestly? That she was kind of a bitch.”
I flinch at her tone. It’s so surprisingly harsh that no other reaction is appropriate. Becca sees it happen and says, “I’m sorry. That was cruel.”
“It was,” I say, my voice quiet.
I expect Becca to backtrack a bit or maybe offer a better apology. Instead, she doubles down. Squaring her shoulders, she flashes me a hard look and says, “Come on, Emma. You don’t need to pretend around me. Vivian doesn’t automatically become a good person just because of what happened to her. I mean, you of all people should know that.”
She stands and brushes dirt from her shorts. Then she walks away, slowly, silently, not looking back. I remain where I am, contemplating the two truths Becca just revealed to me.
The first is that she’s right. Vivian wasn’t a good person. Vanishing into thin air doesn’t change that.
The second is that Becca remembers much more than she’d like to admit.
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO