Serial Killer Summer (A 3-Day Novel)

Chapter Four

I had planned to pretend to be asleep by the time Courtney, Marcy and Camille came back to the cabin. It turns out, I didn't have to bother. I was fast asleep and heard nothing of their return.

The bell rang promptly at seven the next morning. I sprang from bed and changed into my swimsuit and flip flops, grabbed my kit and towel, and walked down to Back Bay for the morning swim. On my way, I encountered Jay heading in the opposite direction, similarly prepared for his morning swim in Big Bay. We nodded at each other but said nothing.

I also saw in the distance the boys from the Beach House stumbling in that same direction. They looked rough. But that was nothing compared to Courtney and Marcy. They came along with all the other girls—except Lindsey, I noticed—a few minutes after I arrived. I was used to Courtney's morning face. She would not be alright until she had her first coffee.

But Marcy.

I knew I was a bad person for this, but it gave me true pleasure to realize that she could look unattractive, that her eyes did not always twinkle cornflower blue, but they sometimes disappeared into her face like craters, or that her nose, normally a pleasant sun-kissed pink, could be bright red. Sure, by the time she made it to breakfast, she'd look like a swimsuit model again. But right now I could be nasty about it, in my head at least.

If anyone wondered what had become of me the night before, they didn't ask.

After breakfast, we got our assignments for the day. I'd been hoping to do something with Jay, but also kind of dreading it. I worried that maybe he'd been reading my mind the night before. Anyway, it was me, Courtney, Sam and Devon on arts and crafts cabin clean up. This was one of those days just you just had to deal with. No one likes being the first people into a space since the previous summer and having to clean up from whatever critters might have made their way inside. Floors, tables, chairs, shelving: all of it had to be washed down thoroughly.

The worst part though, was it was like being on some kind of demented double date that I hadn't agreed to. Courtney and Sam had progressed in their relationship from not-so-secret crush to open affection, so I had to watch them all day flirting and sharing looks, and and also had to fend off similar nonsense from Devon. He had either not taken the hint last night when I walked away from him and never returned, or he was just doing it to bug me.

In any case, it wasn't going to last forever, so I put up with it as well as I could.

Just after lunch, Devon and I were outside the cabin, using long brooms to brush the thick spider webs from the eaves. He was doing that thing that people often find charming of pretending to be afraid and grossed out every time he managed to bring down a big one, hopping and shaking out his arms and legs and checking down the front of his shirt for spiders. I really couldn't help but laugh at this. Actors know what they're doing, and you know they know, but what can you do?

After one particularly energetic dance to shake off the baby spiders that he imagined he'd just brought down on himself, he made a terrible face and howled in outrage.

"What?" I asked.

"Shit," he said.

"'Shit' what?"

"Like, shit. Dog shit. Look."

He lifted up one long leg and stuck it in my general direction.

"Gross. Get that thing out of my face! That can't be dog shit. Out here? So far off the island's trail system?"

"Well," he said, "it'll be impossible to identify it now. But it sure is fresh."

That it was. Fresh and smelly. "Go clean up," I told him. "Please."