Page 3

CHAPTER 3

The trapdoor in the arts-and-crafts lodge is still sticking,” I say as I check my notes the following day at our morning meeting. “Anybody have any suggestions on how to fix it?”

“Have we tried WD-40?” Porter offers.

Javier closes the curtains in the main lodge, trying to keep the light from the rising sun from accosting us. “What’s WD-40?” he asks.

“It’s, like, some kind of grease or oil for hinges,” Porter says. “Keeps them from sticking. My dad uses it on stuff around the house all the time.”

“I’ll check the supply shed, but I don’t think I’ve seen anything like that,” I say as I sink into the ratty old couch in the Western Lodge. The seat is so low, I’m almost touching the floor. It used to have a trundle underneath that kept the middle from sinking in, but during a game a few weeks ago, some of the guests thought it’d be funny to use it as a raft on the lake. Now there’s just a big open space under the couch that comes in handy if we need a quick place to hide during the game but sucks when you forget about the empty space, dive into the couch after a long day, and almost break your tailbone in half on the floor. I check my to-do list, which is growing longer by the minute. I have a headache just thinking about how difficult that’s going to be when we’re so short-staffed.

“Where the hell is everybody?” Javier asks. “They just dipped? Real professional.”

“Oh, right,” Kyle says, turning to me. “That reminds me. I went over to the big cabin and knocked. Nobody answered. I looked inside. It’s a mess in there, bunch of trash and stuff lying around, but they’re not in there.”

I’m irritated that Jordan, Heather, and Felix left a mess behind for the rest of us to clean up. “Yeah, they’re no-shows,” I say, rubbing my temple. “That means it’s just the five of us for tonight’s game and the big show tomorrow night and . . .” I hesitate. Nobody is going to want to hear the next part. “And listen, after the final game, I need everybody to stick around and help close down the camp.”

“Huh?” Porter asks. “Wait, wait, wait. Nobody said anything about staying past closing night.”

“I know,” I say. “Heather and Jordan volunteered, but since they’re MIA, somebody has to do it. I’m staying, too, of course. If we all pitch in, it’ll take maybe two days max.”

Javier shakes his head. “Nope. I got plans.”

Tasha scoots closer to Javier and nudges him with her shoulder. “You sure you gotta go?”

Javier smiles, and his eyebrows shoot up his forehead. “Uh. I mean, no. I guess not.”

“What plans do you have anyway, Javier?” Kyle asks. “Hanging out with your grandma?”

The smile is gone from Javier’s face immediately. “Yeah. So?” Javier tilts his head to the side. “She’s good company. And she can cook.” He puts his hand on Tasha’s leg, and Porter rolls his eyes. “I can stay,” Javier says. “But I think there’s some squirrels living in the wall of my cabin. Can we do something about that?”

I add the issue to my laundry list of other things I need to tell Mr. Lamont about once I can actually get ahold of him. He leaves way too many of the responsibilities to me, and I hate it sometimes. I bite the end of my pen and try to think in a straight line. “It’s too late to get any new people hired on, and I can’t do this by myself. I’m inviting some of my friends up to help out.”

I take my phone out and send a group text to my girlfriend, Bezi, and my friend Paige.

ME: Do yall want to come up to the camp for a few days? Bezi, I know you were gonna pick me up anyway but can you come up a few days early? I can comp you a cabin and maybe yall can help me fill in a few of the “victim” roles? I’m short staffed.

PAIGE: I’m in.

Three little dots pop up and then disappear, as if Bezi is typing and erasing a response.

Bezi is big on outdoor stuff. She loves the camp setting, but she hates that Mr. Lamont is running the Camp Mirror Lake game out here. She thinks it’s weird, and if I’m being honest, she’s not wrong. Mr. Lamont’s motivations for running the camp are clear—he loves money and the attention that the camp gets even when it’s not always positive.

Bezi’s response pops up a moment later.

BEZI: Sure, babe. Hey Paige . . . be ready when I pull up because I am not waiting around. I know you like to take your sweet time.

PAIGE: Whatever Bezi. Don’t rush me!

ME: If yall get here soon enough you can play tonight’s game.

PAIGE: I’m about to be so dramatic. Like, over the top dramatic Just FYI

BEZI: ok

ME: See yall soon then

I attempt to send another message to Bezi to let her know I’m not gonna make her do anything she doesn’t want to do, but all my bars disappear. I wait, and after a few moments, there’s still no signal, so I slip my phone back in my pocket. “Two of my friends are coming up to help out. Do any of you have someone you can call?”

Javier, Kyle, and Porter all shake their heads.

“I’d call you or Paige or Bezi,” Tasha says. “But I’m guessing you already asked them.”

I nod. Bezi, Tasha, Paige, and I have been like family since the sixth grade, and Tasha is just as close to them as I am.

“I’ll figure it out,” I say.

“Shouldn’t Mr. Lamont be the one figuring this stuff out?” Porter asks. “He’s the owner. He should be worrying about this, not you, Charity.”

I sigh and sink deeper into the couch. Mr. Lamont loves to micromanage, but he doesn’t want to actually do any work. He almost never comes into camp, but he loves to leave lists and ideas about how to make the camp scarier. One area that he’s knee-deep in is bringing on new people. He insists on approving all new hires, but he’s bad at answering his phone or replying to messages. Sometimes, even when I find a good candidate, he takes forever to get back to me and the person just moves on.

I check my phone, and the signal is still trash. My call to Mr. Lamont fails immediately. “I’m gonna go call him from the office,” I say, standing up. “Let’s just keep this rickety shit together for tonight and tomorrow; then we’ll shut it down and get out of here, okay?”

Kyle gives a slight nod. He’ll probably stick around and so will Tasha, but both Javier and Porter avoid looking me directly in the eye.

I leave them and make my way to the main office. It’s locked up tight, just the way I’d left it the previous night, which means Felix is definitely done for the season. I remember looking at his employment application and calling his references for Mr. Lamont. “Punctual” was one of the words his previous employers had used to describe him. I roll my eyes and just shake my head.

I scan the parking lot from the small deck outside the office. No vehicles except for the Camp Mirror Lake pickup truck that we use to drive the forty minutes to the little town of Groton for groceries and other supplies. It’s as unreliable as Heather, Jordan, and Felix. Last time I drove it, it turned off right in the middle of the narrow two-lane road that leads up to the camp. I had to steer it onto the nonexistent shoulder and walk the rest of the way. Mr. Lamont had it towed back to camp, but I don’t think he actually got it fixed.

I unlock the office, flip the sign to open, and go in to call Mr. Lamont on the landline. The phone looks like something out of some bad nineties movie, and even though I’m used to it, a lot of people my age have never had the opportunity to hear a dial tone before making a call. I dial Mr. Lamont’s number. It rings and rings until his voice mail picks up.

“Leave a message,” Mr. Lamont’s voice grumbles on the recording just before a screeching tone sounds in my ear.

“Uh, hi, Mr. Lamont. It’s Charity. Listen, we’ve had a bunch of no-shows, and I’m running on a skeleton crew. I think we can handle the game tonight and tomorrow, but we need to talk about who we’re bringing on next season. Turnover is always high, and there’s always one person who just up and quits mid-season, but Felix, Heather, and Jordan are all no-shows. I don’t know, maybe you could come up for a while? Maybe having an adult around would be a good idea?” I sigh. “Call me here on my cell phone when you get a minute. You know how bad the signal is out here so just leave me a message if you can’t get through. Thanks.”

I sit the receiver back in the cradle and check the reservation book. One group of six people is paid up, and a little spark of excitement courses through me. A big group is always more fun. I pencil their names into the game roster alongside the remaining staff and my friends. Paige is a horror-movie stan, so I jot down her name under Staff Victim #1. She’ll love that. I’ll stick Bezi on audio-visual duty, since she loves to watch people be scared but doesn’t actually want to be scared herself.

I’d penciled myself in for blood duty in addition to my role as Final Girl. Blood duty is just as important as being the final girl. The game begins when a staff member busts into the lodge drenched in fake blood. It has to look authentic enough to pull the guests into the game.

I spend the morning making four batches of blood. I’m constantly adjusting the recipe, but so far the best combination has been Karo corn syrup as the base, then a few drops of red food coloring. On its own, it’s nothing special, but the secret is adding a drop of yellow to the mix and one or two drops of green. Red food coloring alone makes the corn syrup too translucent. Bright red fake blood sounds nice, but in person it just looks cheap. It has to be a much darker red in order to look believable as it’s dripping from the top of my head and down the side of my face at the end of the night.

I mix up a small batch and test the color by dipping a small brush into the bowl and dragging it across the back of my hand. The coloring is perfect, but it starts to bead up on my skin and that’s a no-go. I search around under the counter until I find a bottle of clear dish soap. A few drops added to the blood mix keeps it from beading up, and after another test swatch, our fake blood is good to go for the night’s game with enough to cover tomorrow’s final game too. I haul two of the gallon-size containers into the walk-in fridge and leave the others out for later.

I check the prop room, which is less of a room and more like a narrow closet, that contains game-night props. The ax rig—a rubber knife hot glued to a harness—is nestled in among the imitation severed limbs. It’s my favorite special effect because it can be positioned to look like a serial killer has embedded the weapon in your chest or in your back. It was my idea, and it looks great, especially in the dark. Alongside it are a few other rubber knives. Kyle likes to switch it up sometimes. We also have an assortment of latex body parts we grabbed from a thrift shop in town. We didn’t ask why there was a bucket of fake body parts at the Salvation Army; we just bought them and worked them into the game. Nothing quite like tripping over a severed leg as Kyle bears down on you with a butcher knife.

Everything is in order and ready to go. I lock up the prop closet, but as I do, a noise drifts in on the warm breeze gusting through the cracked window at the front of the lodge. The crunching of gravel and the bass blowing out somebody’s car speakers. I race to the parking lot as a car careens down the last part of the two-mile-long driveway that snakes up from the main road. Tasha emerges from the boathouse and is straightening out her shirt as Javier stumbles out behind her. He heads off toward the staff cabins as Tasha joins me in the parking lot.

“You good?” I ask, noticing her smudged lipstick and mussed hair.

Tasha grins and pulls her head full of tight coils up into a high pouf and secures it with a bright pink hair tie. “Yup.”

I roll my eyes but can’t keep from laughing a little. “You and Javier are a mess.”

“I know,” she says, still smiling. “I’m good with that.”

Dust and gravel trail the car like a storm cloud as Bezi swings into a parking spot directly across from the office.

Paige hops out first. She squeals as she jogs up to me and grabs me in a bear hug. “I can’t wait to scare the shit outta people, Charity. What role you got me playing?” She claps her hands together. “Tell me! I’m so excited!”

“You’re Staff Victim Number One,” I say, laughing. “You get to be stabbed.”

She jumps up and down and gives me another squeeze. “I can’t wait to write about this. I’m chronicling the whole thing for the school paper. When we start school in the fall, I’m leading with an exposé on this place. It’s gonna be great! You’re gonna get so much business!”

Paige and Tasha hug it out, and I turn to see Bezi crawling over the center console and stumbling out of the passenger side door.

I rush over and grab her hand. “What is goin’ on here?”

Bezi shuts the door and laughs. “The driver side door won’t open from the inside.”

“It’s a death trap,” Paige says. “And you don’t deserve to have a driver’s license, Bezi.”

“But did you die?” Bezi asks, a wicked little grin spreading across her face.

“No,” Paige says. “I get to die later. I’m Staff Victim Number One! Imagine the headline.” She holds her hands up in front of her like she’s envisioning the words. “I Survived Camp Mirror Lake and All I Got Was This Crappy T-Shirt.” She’s got her camera dangling from her neck, and she lifts it, snapping a few shots of the entrance and the main office.

I shake my head. “Actually, no T-shirt for you, boo. Those are only for actual guests.”

Paige pokes out her bottom lip and sighs. “Fine. As long as I get to have my picture taken with the fake ax and all the fake blood and stuff.”

“Deal,” I say.

Tasha comes over and slings her arm around my shoulders. “We gotta keep an eye on her,” she whispers. “She be taking things a little too far sometimes.”

Paige points her camera at Tasha, who immediately starts posing like she’s some kind of supermodel.

Bezi wraps her arms around me. “Please tell me I don’t have to get fake sliced up.”

I pull her close to me. “You’re gonna be on audio-visual duty because I know you’re a big ol’ scaredy-cat.”

She laughs. She looks amazing—her broad smile, her waist-length braids trailing down her back—I can’t help but stare at her. She’s the only thing I really miss when I’m out here.

“Look at Paige’s feet,” she whispers against my ear.

I glance at Paige, who I just now realize is wearing Timbs, and I can’t help but laugh.

“Did you for real wear Timbs to camp?”

Paige looks down at her feet. “They’re work boots, Charity. They work in the snow at home; they can handle these little sticks and leaves y’all got out here.”

“I’m just glad you’re here,” I say. “Really. Y’all are the real MVPs.”

“We got you, babe,” Bezi says, slipping her arm around my waist. “But in between slicing campers up and all that, I want to take some pictures.”

“I got pictures covered,” Paige says, giving her camera a little shake.

“I know you’re gonna take pictures for your story, but I want to take some for myself. I love it out here; I just hate—” She stops short. Bezi leans against my shoulder. “You know what people say about this place.”

I pretend to be shocked. “What do you mean, Bezi? What could people possibly be saying about this magical place?”

Bezi rolls her eyes, but she’s still smiling. “Okay, okay. You don’t have to be so sarcastic.”

I pull her in and kiss her cheek.

“They say the lake’s haunted,” Bezi says as her gaze drifts toward the water.

“Who is they?” I ask.

Bezi shrugs. “You know, people. People in town.”

I know what people say. Beyond the rumors about the terror simulation itself, there are other things. I can’t deny that the entire camp can feel a little heavy sometimes. Like something’s hanging over it, but I mostly feel like that’s because we pretend to murder people out here on a nightly basis. Unease is kind of the goal. Strange occurrences at the lake are fodder for all kinds of wildly overexaggerated stories. There are old stories about a creature in the lake. Something like the Loch Ness Monster but on a smaller scale. All the lakes in upstate New York are supposedly full of monstrous beasts, but they only show up in blurry cell phone footage or pictures that look like they were taken with the first camera ever made.

There are all kinds of stories about people drowning in the lake, which—it’s a lake. Accidents happen. It’s tragic, of course, but that doesn’t mean it’s haunted. And the drownings have been documented, but so has the fact that lots of those people were way too drunk to have been swimming in the first place. There were other stories too. Things that don’t fit nicely with the narrative that most of the deaths at the lake were because of bad luck or poor choices. Sometimes backpackers coming through the camp in the off season claim to have seen shadowy figures on the shore or sometimes in the water. I shake my head and push those thoughts away. Still, I had seen . . . ? something.

“All of that is just stuff people say, scary stories people tell around campfires,” I reassure Bezi. “You know that, right?”

Bezi shrugs. “Do I?”

“They are,” I say.

Bezi looks skeptical, and I don’t know who I’m really trying to convince—her or me. Tasha and Paige trail us to the main office, and I grasp Bezi’s hand in mine. “I’m the final girl. I’ll keep you safe.”

She grins. “If you’re the final girl, what does that mean for the rest of us?”

“It means we’re all dead,” Tasha says, grinning.

The guests check in at five. It’s a group of college-age guys, one of whom is clearly scared out of his mind before the game even starts. I overhear him say he’s scared of the dark, the woods, water, bugs, and basically all wildlife. How his friends convinced him to come up here is beyond me, but I feel bad, so I decide to let him be one of the survivors. He can get a T-shirt and earn some bragging rights.

I go over the roles I’ve assigned to Paige and Bezi and double-check that everyone else knows what they need to do for the night. Then Bezi and I walk over to the Camp Mirror Lake control center.

The security building is the nicest one at camp because it houses the only equipment worth anything in this entire place. There are speakers and cameras camouflaged throughout the camp, and whoever is on audio-visual duty for the night can cue up all kinds of effects: screams, footsteps, groans, even the sound of heavy breathing. The projectors that cast hulking shadows through the trees are some of the creepier effects.

We use the cameras to keep tabs on all the guests and make sure they’re not veering too far off the beaten path. I don’t have time to chase drunken frat boys through the woods in the middle of a game.

I open the padlock on the front door to the control room and pull it open. It’s hot inside, so I flip on the little box fan in the corner as Bezi stations herself at the control panel.

“Here’s the schedule,” I say, handing her a binder that has all the timing for the special effects. “Staff watches are synced to that clock.” I gesture to a digital clock mounted above the series of monitors and keyboards. “Everything is labeled, and the mic is connected directly to the headsets we wear during the game. Just press the buttons next to our names to talk to us individually or press the big red button to talk to all of us at once. Think you can handle it?”

She waves me away. “I got this. I get a front-row seat to all the scares without actually having to be involved? Yeah. Not a problem.” She stands up and throws her arms around my neck and kisses me. “Is there a camera in here?” A little grin spreads across her lips.

“No,” I say.

I run my hands up her back and breathe her in. She kisses me, and I let my fingers trail over her arms and up the sides of her neck. I’ve missed her. A lot.

I’m at the camp for weeks during the summer with no breaks, but she understands. Bezi knows I’d rather be anywhere other than at home, where my mom and Rob are busy forgetting, or maybe regretting, that I exist. When I go home at the end of the season, Rob always acts surprised to see me. Like he’s hoping one day I just won’t come home at all.

It wasn’t always like that, but now it’s all there is. Sometimes I wish the camp would run year-round just so I never have to go home. Most of the time when I’m up here, my mom doesn’t even call to check on me. Not that she’d be guaranteed to get through with the signal being as bad as it is, but sometimes when I go into town, all the missed calls and voice mails from Bezi and Paige pop up at once. It’s almost never my mom’s number or voice on the other end.

I kiss Bezi, drowning out the ache of missing who my mom was before she decided she wasn’t really into being a mom. Bezi playfully pushes me back, and I lose my footing, stumbling into a locked door that leads to a small room at the back of the cabin.

“Shit. Sorry, Charity.” Bezi grabs my arm to steady me. “I got a little carried away. I miss you. Can you tell?”

“A little,” I say, laughing.

Bezi tries to peer through the glass, but it’s covered with yellowing newspaper that’s been plastered on from the inside. “What’s back there?” she asks.

“Nothing much. It’s locked anyway.”

“What if I need another way out?” Bezi asks.

“Oh, it’s not an exit,” I say. “It’s a storage room that Mr. Lamont keeps locked up. It’s just extra audio and visual equipment. He doesn’t trust anybody around that stuff because of how expensive it is. I don’t even have a key.”

Bezi’s brows push up. “I mean, a bunch of teenagers running a terror-simulation camp for weeks on end with no supervision? What’s not to trust?”

That’s the thing. Mr. Lamont knows that, legally, at least one adult is supposed to be here anytime there are minors working the camp, and while I’m just shy of my eighteenth birthday, that doesn’t count. He always says it’s fine and that nobody is going to ask too many questions, but just in case, he had me prepare a whole speech about how Mr. Lamont checks in once a day in person and is always a phone call away if I need him. It’s a lie, of course, but Mr. Lamont pays me on time every week and in cash, so I don’t mind covering for him.

“I gotta go get ready,” I say, kissing Bezi again. “What look should I go for tonight? Braids or my Kim Kardashian wig?”

“Braids?” Bezi asks. “You have time to do that?”

“It’s a wig. It’s already braided up and everything.”

Bezi presses her lips together. “Please tell me it’s not one of them Tyler Perry wigs. I can’t let you walk around like that.”

“I mean, Madea’s lace is always melted to the gods.”

“And everybody else’s wigs look like hot garbage.”

“It’s not that bad.”

Bezi looks skeptical.

I laugh so hard, little tears roll out of my eyes. “I promise! It’s not that bad, and even if it was, it’ll be dark. Nobody will be able to tell it’s not real.”

Bezi points to the camera. “If I see you running through the woods lookin’ like Omarion, I’m breaking up with you.”

“Damn, really?” I say, laughing. I pull her close and kiss her again.

She presses her forehead against mine, and I can feel her heart pounding as she presses her body close to mine. “Okay. Maybe I won’t break up with you, but I’ll never forgive you for it.”

“We can’t just throw away two years together because of a bad wig,” I say.

Bezi puckers her lips and raises her eyebrows. “You sure about that?”

I laugh, kiss her one more time, and then turn and head out the door to get ready.

“Hey, Charity,” Bezi calls after me.

I glance back at her, and she narrows her eyes.

“Be careful,” she says. “You know what happens to Black folks in slasher movies.”

“I’m the final girl,” I say. “Guaranteed to survive the night.”

“You better,” she says before closing the door.