Winterwood

Bursts of filtered moonlight cut across my vision, the memory of snow against my skin. I think of Nora, her hand pressed to mine last night, but I push the memory away. My mind plays tricks on me—always drifting back to her. I try to recall the cemetery, laughter rising from the others’ throats. But I wasn’t laughing with them. They were never my friends, my mind repeats. They were laughing at me.

Taunting me.

I sit up and scramble down the ladder, away from the bunk—from the place where I once slept. But it wasn’t always my bunk.

I arrived at camp late in the season, when the air had already turned sharp and the boys had already been assigned their cabins. I was the new kid. The outsider.

I never belonged.

Max had gotten in trouble before I arrived. I remember it in waves now, breaking against the shore of my mind. Salt and foam, crashing over me. He had been caught sneaking into the counselors’ cabins and rooting through their stuff, caught spiking his morning coffee with whiskey. Offenses that were worse than most of the boys’.

So the counselors moved him to a cabin beside the mess hall, a single room with no other boys. A cabin flanked by the counselors’ cabins, where he couldn’t easily sneak out without being heard. I remember it now, when I arrived at camp and the boys told me that I had been assigned to Max’s old bunk.

He hated me for it—like it was my fault.

I move back away from the bunks, my heels hitting the heavy wood door.

They made me go to the cemetery that night; they laughed and passed around a bottle of booze and I stood rigid, ready for a fight. Ready for them to attack me.

We were never friends.

And Max—he hated me the most.

NORA

Hello?” I call into my own home.

As if I were the stranger. The intruder picking locks and slinking through shimmied window frames.

Fin sniffs the air, quick inhales through his nostrils.

I tiptoe into the living room, trailing snow across the floor. Tink, tink, tink go the droplets of water.

And then someone appears at the bottom of the stairs. “Shit, you scared me,” Suzy says.

My shoulders drop. “I thought the house was empty.” But my tone betrays something—the uncertainty I feel, looking for cracks along her edges, for something she’s hiding.

“Just me.” She moves into the kitchen and leans against the white tile counter, as if she’s still a little unsteady on her feet, a little hungover after last night. Dark circles rim her eyes.

“Oliver’s gone?” I ask.

Her mouth puckers to one side. “Guess so. No one’s in your room.” She rubs at her temples, then lifts her bloodshot eyes to mine. “I only went up there to see if you were still asleep. I wasn’t snooping.”

“It’s fine,” I say. I walk to the stove, the fire burning brightly—she must have added more logs. My head has started to pulse, little pricks of light fanning across my vision.

“Where were you?” Suzy asks.

“Just needed to get out of the house,” I say. I don’t know why I lie, why I don’t tell her that I went to see Mr. Perkins. That I found a watch that belonged to Max in Oliver’s coat. That I think he did something he can’t take back.

But I do know why I don’t say any of this: because I’m not sure I can trust her.

I’m not sure she doesn’t know more about Max. About everything.

She blinks several times, like she needs more sleep. “What’s wrong?” she asks. She senses something is off.

But there are too many things wrong. A bone moth is following me, a dead boy’s watch was in Oliver’s pocket. Something bad is happening and I can’t tell who’s the villain and who’s just as scared as me.

Nervously, I twirl the moonstone ring around my finger. “Were you there with them that night?” I ask, the timbre of my voice cracking.

“When?” Her eyebrows crush together.

“The night Max died. And Oliver went missing.”

She frowns even deeper, little lines creasing the sides of her mouth, confused. “No,” she answers, straightening up from the kitchen counter. “I was asleep in Rhett’s bunk when they all left.”

“Did you know they were going to the cemetery?”

She crosses her bony arms, her sweatshirt twisted around her torso, a defensive posture. “No, what are you talking about?” A strand of hair slips free from the tanged bun atop her head.

“But when they came back,” I urge. “You must have known something happened? That Max and Oliver weren’t with them.”

She chews on the side of her cheek like she’s trying to remember, to sift through the drowsy fog of her mind. A little black smudge is just visible by her right eye, her mascara rubbed away while she slept—the only makeup she must have brought with her. “Why are you asking me this?” Her tone is suddenly acrid, flint scraping together. Sparks catching on her teeth.

Because a bone moth is following me, I want to say. Because the throb at my temples won’t go away.