* * *

—

I spent the rest of the morning separated from the others in Dogwood, thanks to another advanced archery lesson. I was relegated to the arts and crafts building, where the camp’s other thirteen-year-olds and I used leather presses to decorate rawhide bracelets. I would have preferred to shoot arrows.

After that it was lunch. That time, Natalie and Allison also didn’t bother to show. Rather than eat alone, I declined the ham-and-Swiss sandwich on the menu and headed to Dogwood to look for them. To my surprise, I found them before I even reached the cabin. The roar of voices inside told me all three of them were there.

“Don’t lecture us about secrets!” I heard Natalie yell. “Especially when you refuse to tell us where you were this morning.”

“It doesn’t matter where I went!” Vivian shouted back. “What matters is that you lied.”

“We’re sorry,” Allison said with all the drama she could muster. “We told you a hundred times.”

“That’s not fucking good enough!”

I opened the door to see Natalie sitting shoulder to shoulder with Allison on the edge of her bunk. Vivian stood before them, her face flushed, hair stringy and unwashed. Natalie had her chest thrust forward, as if in the process of blocking a field hockey rival. Allison shrank into herself, her hair over her face, trying to hide what looked like tears. All three of them swiveled my way when I entered. The cabin plunged into silence.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Allison replied.

“Just bullshitting,” Natalie said.

Only Vivian admitted the obvious truth. “Emma, we’re in the middle of something. Shit needs to be sorted out. Come back later, okay?”

I backed out of the cabin, closing the door behind me and shutting out the raging storm taking place inside. Vivian was apparently having one of those moods Natalie and Allison had warned me about.

This time, they couldn’t stay out of its path.

Not sure where else to go, I turned to head back to the center of camp. There was Lottie, standing right behind me. She wore a plaid shirt over a white tee. Her long hair was pulled back in a braid that ran down her back. Like me, she was close enough to hear the commotion coming from Dogwood, and her expression was one of curious surprise.

“Locked out?” she said.

“Sort of.”

“They’ll let you back in soon enough.” Her gaze flicked from me to the cabin door and back again. “First time living with a group of girls?”

I nodded.

“It takes some getting used to. I was an only child, too, so coming here was a rude awakening.”

“You were a camper here?”

“Yes, in my own special way,” Lottie said. “But what I learned is that each summer there’s always a fight or two in these cabins. It comes from being shoved together in such close quarters.”

“This one sounds pretty bad,” I said, surprised by how shaken seeing them fighting had left me. I couldn’t stop picturing Vivian’s cheeks flaring red or the tears glistening behind Allison’s hair.

“Well, I know of a friendlier place we can go.”

Lottie put a hand on my shoulder, steering me away from the cabin and into the heart of camp. To my surprise, we headed to the Lodge, skirting the side of the building to the steps that led to the back deck. At the top stood Franny, leaning against the railing, her eyes aimed at the lake.

“Emma,” she said. “What a pleasant surprise.”

“There’s some drama in Dogwood,” Lottie explained.

Franny shook her head. “I’m not surprised.”

“Do you want me to defuse it?”

“No,” Franny said. “It’ll pass. It always does.”

She waved me to her side, and the two of us stared at the water, Lake Midnight spread before us in all its sun-dappled glory.

“Gorgeous view,” she said. “Makes you feel a little bit better, doesn’t it? This place makes everything better. That’s what my father used to say. And he learned it from his father, so it must be true.”

I looked across the lake, finding it hard to believe the entire body of water hadn’t existed a hundred years earlier. Everything surrounding it—trees, rocks, the opposite shore shimmering in the distance—felt like it had always been there.

“Did your grandfather really make the lake?”

“He did indeed. He saw this land and knew what it needed—a lake. Because God had failed to put one here, he made it himself. One of the first people to do that, I might add.” Franny inhaled deeply, as if trying to consume every scent, sight, and sensation the lake provided. “And now it’s yours to enjoy any way you’d like. You do enjoy it here, don’t you, Emma?”

I thought I did. I loved it here two days ago, before Vivian took me out in the canoe to her secret spot. Since then, my impression of the place had been chipped away by things I didn’t quite understand. Vivian and her moods. Natalie and Allison’s blind acceptance. Why the thought of Theo continued to make my knees weak even after I humiliated myself in front of him.

Unable to let Franny know any of this, I simply nodded.

“Wonderful,” Franny said, beaming at my answer. “Now try to forget about the unpleasantness in your cabin. Don’t let anything spoil this place for you. I certainly don’t. I won’t let it.”