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Chapter Eighteen

JACK

P am and I ended up on dishwashing duty. It seemed her crush on me had ended, and she’d transferred her affections to Ian. I hadn’t gotten any real sense that Ian returned the affection, and that was for the best. This wasn’t the time or place for a budding romance. I definitely didn’t want to be policing secretive nighttime movement between the boys’ and girls’ camps .

Ian and Evan had started an impressive fire in the pit, and everyone had gathered around, sitting on the smooth logs that had been placed there as benches. Ava came into the mess tent. I got the sense that there’d been something she wanted to tell me since we got back from sample collection, but the group had gotten busy cataloging and categorizing specimens, so we never had a chance to talk. She bit her lip as she looked at Pam.

“Pam, I’ll finish drying. Why don’t you join the others at the campfire?” I said. Pam, who’d lamented the lack of a dishwasher in our crude surroundings was more than happy to toss me her dishtowel.

Pam walked out, and Ava picked up a towel to help.

“Well, Lo, what’s on your mind?” I had no idea when we’d crossed the enemy line to meet each other in neutral territory, but I was good with our new relationship. We were professional colleagues. I doubted we’d ever walk down to the union together for a coffee, but maybe there wouldn’t be fire spitting and flared nostrils every time we passed each other in the hallway. Good ole Brimley. I supposed there was a reason he was so beloved at the university.

Ava glanced out to make sure all the students were out of earshot.

“Uh-oh, we’re making sure little Johnny isn’t listening at the door. What’s going on?”

“It’s nothing, really. But when I got back to camp with Norm, Harold was trying to reach us on the two-way radio. He said they were keeping an eye on a tropical storm off to the east. He assured me those kinds of storms rarely reach Costa Rica as more than a weak rainstorm.”

I nodded. “Doesn’t sound too dire then. Except I’m not loving this expression.” I waved my hand around her face.

She reached up and slapped it away, then laughed. “Sometimes I get this inkling—my sisters and I have it whenever something happens to one of us. The others can sense there’s a problem even without talking to each other.”

“I see. So, your inkling is that we might be in trouble?” I hadn’t meant to sound sarcastic, but stupidly, it came out that way. Old habits and all that.

“Why do I bother?” Ava became immediately defensive. It seemed I was expert at pushing her into that mode. So much for that change in our relationship, and I withdrew my silent accolades to Brimley. “Hopefully the storm will stay offshore, so we won’t have to evacuate.” She balled up the towel. “The dishes were on your list tonight.” She threw the towel at me. “Finish them yourself.”

“Wait, what? Evacuation?” I asked as I watched her walk out. “You’re an idiot, Sinclair. No, idiot is too kind. You’re an imbecile.”

I finished the surprisingly therapeutic task of drying the dishes and joined the others at the firepit. It seemed I’d missed an earlier round of ghost stories, and now it was Robyn’s turn to come up with an activity. I’d found that young people, who were mostly entertained by whatever popped up on one of their many screens, had little imagination when it came time to enjoy primitive things. Things like sitting around a campfire on a sultry night in the middle of a rainforest that vibrated with a chorus of creatures the second the sun rose and then fell eerily quiet the second the sun set.

With the only light coming from the fire, everyone’s faces were bathed in fluttering shadows. I looked over at Ava, but she stared into the flames with a look of concern. She wasn’t paying too much attention to the conversation as she fingered the necklace her grandmother had given her as a good luck charm. Now I very much regretted being so flippant about her inkling. The woman had been around the world, and she probably had much better intuition about impending problems than most people. I wondered when I was going to shrink my own ego and admit that Ava Lovely was more experienced and worldly than me.

“You start, Professor Lovely,” Robyn chirped excitedly. It seemed neither of us had a clue what was going on at the circle. Ava looked up, puzzled, then glanced my direction for assistance, but I shrugged. I had no clue what to tell her.

“Uh, let someone else start, Robyn, while I give it a think,” Ava said. It was a brilliant save—one that could have served me well in seventh grade algebra when I spent most of the class daydreaming about skateboarding and Michelle Beckman.

Robyn looked around the circle. “Evan, how about you? Tell us about the strangest, most inexplicable thing to happen to you.”

Evan had the same deer in headlights look I’d just seen on Ava, only he didn’t have an excuse waiting. He also struck me as the type of person who was miserably uncomfortable in group situations like this. “Uh, I need to think,” he muttered and looked to his friend Ian for assistance.

Ian had far more confidence than his lab mate. He sat up straighter and did a dramatic throat clearing as if about to recite a long Shakespearean sonnet. “I’ve got a good one. So, it’s the middle of fall in Boston. Picture all the amazing colors, crisp air, people already ducked down in their coats and scarves trying to avoid the biting autumn wind. It’s two days before Halloween.”

“Let me guess”—Milo laughed— “A crazy kid named Michael Myers knifed his whole family to death?”

Robyn quickly shushed Milo. “You’ll have your turn.” Robyn would have made a great Sunday school teacher.

Ian lowered his voice for effect. “My buddy, Tim, and I rode up Kingsford Road. There was an old, abandoned house at the end of the street. Tim promised me his Swiss army knife if I walked up to the front door and knocked. The knife had all the bells and whistles, and I’d been envious of the darn thing since he got it for his birthday. He was sure I wouldn’t do it, but we reached the crumbling brick path leading up to the front door. There were boards on most of the windows.”

“How many murders had taken place in the house?” Norm asked.

Everyone looked at him. He shrugged. “It’s not a haunted house unless there’s been murders inside.”

We laughed but Norm seemed deadly serious about his theory.

Focus returned to Ian. “Tim’s chin dropped, and I could see a look of disappointment in his eyes as I climbed off my bike. He started trying to back out of the deal, but I told him ‘too late.’ I walked up to the house and knocked. I figured the most that could happen was some of the siding shingles might fall off.” Ian paused to make sure he had everyone’s attention. Satisfied that he did, he took a deep breath. “A light came on in the front room. I decided I’d already won the knife, so I ran back to my bike and climbed on. As we peeled away on our bikes, the light turned off.”

We all waited with bated breath for more story, but apparently, that was it.

“It was probably just a squatter,” Pam said annoyed. “I don’t think that qualifies as inexplicable.”

Ian crossed his arms and seemed extra insulted due to the sparks that had been flying between the two up until that point, when Pam effectively doused the sparks with her cynical, snippy comment. “Let’s hear you do better.”

“Wait,” Norm said. “Did you get the knife?”

“Sure did, and for a few glorious hours I was the owner of a Swiss army knife. Then my dad saw it, and he made me give it back.”

Ian’s story gave us all a good laugh. Robyn looked my direction, and I pretended to be very busy flicking imaginary particles off my shirt to avoid eye contact.

“Well, I’ve got a great one,” Robyn said. I assumed that was the case considering she came up with the idea.

“My dad and I were driving back from my grandmother’s house.” Robyn’s eyes sparkled in the firelight. “She’d made her homemade raspberry jam, so we drove out to pick some up. She had fresh baked bread ready for taste testing. Delicious.” Robyn gave a little shake to let her audience know she was finished with the nostalgic part of the story. “So, this weird fog had rolled in, and it was so thick the headlights of Dad’s car only gave us about ten feet of visibility. It was one of those deserted rural roads with a few farms but mostly pastures. I was feeling sleepy from all the fresh bread, and I rested my head back. Before I shut my eyes, we passed someone standing in the mist. It was a woman, and she had this dreadful look on her face.”

“Like a zombie?” Milo asked hopefully.

Robyn furrowed her brows at him. “No, this was real life, not a video game. She just looked, hmm, she looked horrified, with wide dark eyes and her mouth pulled in this weird way—you know—like Munch’s The Scream . In fact, the whole scene reminded me of that painting, with the swirling mist and the vast fields.”

“Maybe you’d already fallen asleep, and you were dreaming about the painting,” Evan offered. He got the same annoyed brow scrunch as Milo, only Evan took it much harder. He shrank down, apparently now resolved not to make further comments.

“No, I wasn’t dreaming,” Robyn said with uncharacteristic sharpness. Poor Evan shrank back even farther. “I know this because my dad saw the woman, too.” Robyn was so deep into her tale, she didn’t notice the damage she’d done to poor Evan.

Ava cleared her throat to interrupt. She’d seen Evan’s distress. “I just want to add a rule for when we’re at the firepit, since this bonfire in front of us has become a sort of symbol of our team building. Everyone’s opinions and questions and comments are considered and respected.”

Robyn got the message. She looked over at Milo and Evan. “Sorry, this story just always makes me kind of tense whenever I tell it.”

Pam yawned loudly. “I think I’m going to bed. The smoke from the fire is burning my eyes and giving me a headache.” No one tried to stop her.

Robyn did pout a little. “I haven’t even gotten to the good part.” She shrugged, which was exactly how all of us felt about Pam’s departure. “Well, naturally, my dad and I decided that we needed to turn around and check on the woman. He pulled over. I can still remember his headlights sweeping over the dark landscape as he turned the car around. He drove very slowly to avoid hitting her. He kept the headlights on so we could find her in the mist, but she was gone. No sign of the woman at all.”

“Let me guess—you heard that a woman died on that section of the road ten years to the day before you saw the mystery woman,” Ian said. He was using Ava’s new rule to its fullest extent of the law by adding his own ending.

Robyn blew out an exasperated breath. “That’s only in the movies. We never found out who the woman was, but we’re both sure we saw her.” Robyn crossed her arms to show she was finished and not all that pleased with how the story went after Ian added his own finale.

“Professor Lovely? How about you?” She gave Ava a pleading look hoping the whole thing could be saved with a new story.

Ava looked a little sad as she stared into the fire. If I was being honest, she’d looked less than herself since my stupid sarcasm in the mess tent. I was as surprised to see how much my comment had affected her as I was to realize how angry I was at myself for upsetting her. And just moments after theorizing that we were reaching a palatable level friendship. I was my own worst enemy.

“I do have a story,” Ava said quietly. “I was in class, in the elementary school my sisters and I attended. We’re all very close in age, so Ella was in the next grade level and Layla was in first grade, below me. Isla and Aria were in the next building with the upper grade classrooms.”

“How many sisters do you have?” Milo asked.

“Four. We’re the fabulous five, as my grandmother liked to call us.” That made Ava smile for a second, then a much more serious expression washed over her face. She was breathtaking in firelight, even with a somber expression. “My mom had been sick with a fever. As little girls, we didn’t understand much about what was happening, but we all knew it was bad because the worry was palpable from our dad and grandmother.”

The only sound was the crackling of the fire and the occasional cricket as everyone listened to her story.

Ava stared into the fire, and you got the sense she was back there, back in time, in that classroom. “It was one of those days where you remember every detail. I was working on an addition problem, a big one with four-digit numbers, and then it hit me. This profound sense of loss as if the world around me had just disappeared, and I was alone. I fought back tears as I went up to my teacher and asked if I could use the restroom. She asked if everything was all right, and I stoically nodded, even though I wanted to fall apart right there in the classroom. I remember walking out, and Jimmy Griffiths was smirking at me. He was always the meanest kid in school. My grandmother told us it was because his father was horrid. So, I walked past Jimmy’s smirk. It felt like I was walking through a dream, like nothing was real, like I was no longer connected to anything, floating like a balloon. I made my way to the restroom, and my sister, Ella, stepped around the corner. She stared at me wide-eyed for a second and then we fell into each other’s arms crying. We stood there like that for a long time until we heard our names over the loudspeaker. We were to report to the office. We held each other’s hands as we walked to the office. The first-grade aide was walking our little sister, Layla, up to the office. She was crying so hard her face was red. For a second, I was relieved. I was sure the terrible feeling that came over me had to do with Layla being upset about something. I even told myself it was probably something as silly as her crayons spilling on the floor. The aide looked at us, unsure what to do. ‘She just started crying, so the teacher asked me to take her up to the office.’ She handed her off to Ella and me. The three of us stood outside the office door until Ella finally got the courage to open it. We stepped inside and my dad was standing there. Principal Jensen had his arm around dad’s shoulder.” Ava stopped and took a breath. I was thankful because I needed to take my own breath. “My mom was gone.”

“Oh, wow,” Ian said. “That is some crazy sixth sense stuff between you and your sisters.”

Ava nodded and looked pointedly my direction. “Still get those inklings every once in a while, and they are always right.”

I dropped my gaze, descending even farther into shame.

It took a few minutes, and mostly by Ava’s lead, but the tone lightened again. Her heart-wrenching story was strictly for me. Once the yawns started making their way around the circle and the flames had petered out to mere embers, everyone got up and said their “goodnights.”

I picked up the bucket of water to douse the embers and noticed that Ava had stayed behind to gaze up at the night sky. I finished my task and walked over to join her.

I looked up at the sky as well. With no artificial light to dull them, the stars looked close enough to touch. “That was brutal.”

“Guess I was still on defense.”

“I apologize for my sarcasm. Unfortunately, it comes out before I can stop it.”

“Not the best excuse I’ve ever heard, but apology accepted.”

“So, it seems you really do have, as Ian so aptly put it, a sixth sense.”

Ava pulled her gaze from the stars and looked at me. We were so close that even in the dim light coming from the solar lights in the huts I could see the spray of freckles on her nose. She was an Irish beauty in every sense of the word. “That was only one of many episodes, and the connection only got stronger as we grew older and learned to look after each other.” She paused. “Our grandmother, Nonna, died when we were young adults, and once again, we were devastated, only then we had no one to rely on but each other. There was no motherly, magical grandmother waiting with open arms and round apple cheeks to take us in.”

“Your relationship with your sisters is enviable.” I glanced down at her necklace. She’d been rubbing it absently as we sat around the fire. “Your intuition is telling you that we might be in trouble, that the approaching storm might cause problems.”

Ava smiled and shrugged. “It’s probably nothing. Those inklings always work best when it has to do with my sisters. Harold seemed a little concerned, and when he blurted out his evacuation plans it worried me.”

“Yes, about that. Exactly how does he plan to evacuate us? I can’t see any reasonable place for air assistance.”

“Nope, that’s where my mind went, too. Apparently, Harold and Mia have dirt bikes, so they’d have to make a few trips back and forth to get us all back to the station.”

“Sounds slow. Let’s hope the storm fizzles like he suggested.” I covered a yawn. “I suppose it’s time to climb onto that miserable cot and try to get some shut-eye.”

Ava laughed. “Sweet dreams and don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

“Bedbugs? If only that was all I had to worry about biting me. Night, Lo.”

“Goodnight, Sinclair.”