Page 7 of Hide And Seek

I scanned the area and found her. Small and dark-haired with a somber expression. She had a duffel bag that she was carrying herself despite the fact that the man who'd opened the car door was clearly offering to take it.

“That’s Willa Bamford. Carly Martin's best friend,” Jasmine said, dropping her voice to a murmur. “Carly’s the one who drowned last year.”

“Oh.”

“I honestly didn't think Willa would come back after…” Jasmine stopped abruptly. “God, look at her face. She doesnotwant to be here. I guess her parents made her come.”

She was right. Even from a distance, the girl’s demeanor and expression made it clear she was present at Camp Blackpine against her will.

She moved toward the check-in table mechanically, eyes cast downward, and I noticed the way the space around her seemed to adjust itself. Other kids looked over at her, parents leaned in to murmur something to whoever stood beside them, and several counselors stopped their conversations to glance over too.

Every single person within twenty yards was looking at Willa Bamford.

I felt a sharp pang of sympathy for her. Only thirteen years old and already carrying the awful weight of being a person that everyone associated with a terrible tragedy. Poor kid.

I was about to say something to that effect to Jasmine when I noticed that not everyone was looking at Willa after all. Even though every other pair of eyes in the vicinity had drifted toward her…. Rhys Usher’s eyes were fixed somewhere else entirely.

He was staring straight at me.

2

The restof the first day passed in a blur of names, routines I was handed on laminated sheets and expected to absorb instantly, and the type of mental exhaustion that came from beingonfor hours without a break. Smiling. Orienting. Answering questions.

By the time all the kids were fed, settled, and asleep in their cabins, I’d learned a number of specific things.

For example, the kayak equipment shed had a door that stuck unless you lifted the handle at a certain angle while pushing with your left shoulder. The camp's head cook took the no-sugar policy as a personal moral crusade and would look at you with serious disappointment if you asked about sugary condiments. And the walk from the eastern cabins to the assembly hall took five minutes if you took the main path but only four if you took the narrow path by the rappelling equipment shed.

I’d also learned that despite the director’s plea for constant vigilance, the counselors fully intended to follow an age-old first-night tradition: getting drunk around a campfire deep in the eastern woods.

Alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs were strictly prohibited at Camp Blackpine, for obvious reasons, but the counselors had found a loophole years ago. The eastern woods were considered part of the neighboring nature reserve rather than camp property, which meant drinking there while off-duty was apparently fair game.

Jasmine had explained the tradition to me earlier this afternoon. “We take turns checking the cabins,” she’d said. “Two people go back to camp every twenty minutes to walk the rounds and make sure nobody's sneaking out or causing problems. Other than that, the night is ours.”

The illicit bonfire site was hidden around ten minutes west of the main grounds, along a narrow trail worn smooth by years of use. The trees eventually opened into a small clearing where past counselors had arranged flat rocks and salvaged log sections into rough seating around a permanent firepit.

The fire was already roaring by the time I found my way down the path with Jasmine and three of her fellow Dirtbag counselors—Tamsin, Jesse, and Wren. I settled onto one of the logs with them and let the heat of the fire work on the tension the day had packed into my shoulders.

There were a little over thirty counselors out here, and the class divide was so clean it almost looked choreographed. There was ‘our’ side, holding all seventeen of the Dirtbags arranged in little groups, and on the other side of the fire, the sixteen Legacies had arranged themselves with the unconscious ease of people who always wound up at the better end of any given situation.

I could make out Sutton, laughing at something with her head thrown back, along with a few other faces I recognizedfrom earlier. Rhys was there too, forearms resting on his knees, a beer dangling loosely from one hand.

“S'more?” Jasmine held a stick out toward me, the pink marshmallow on the end now a perfect toasted gold.

I pulled my attention back to her and the others. “Sure. Thanks.”

She sandwiched it between two crackers and a square of chocolate and handed it over before reaching down to grab another marshmallow.

Beside us, Tamsin, Jesse, and Wren were on the subject of their types.

“I know this isn’t a popular opinion, but I absolutely love guys with blond hair,” Tamsin was saying. “They’re just sooo sexy to me.”

Jasmine wrinkled her nose as she leaned forward and put her stick back in the fire. “I can’t stand blond guys,” she said. “Something about them gives me the creeps.”

“Um, says the girl who told us she’d fold for the Woodsman,” Wren said, giving her a massive side-eye complete with a dramatic head-tilt.

With that, all four erupted into raucous laughter. I wanted to join in, but I had no idea what they were talking about.

“Sorry, who’s the Woodsman?” I asked, forehead wrinkling.