CHAPTER ONE
“They probably don’t even have Wi-Fi there, Livy!” Mia Watson said in exasperation. The teenager tossed her long dark hair back over her shoulder as she gestured with her phone around her bedroom, as if to demonstrate that there was Wi-Fi here.
Photos and posters covered the walls, and books, game cartridges, and stuffed animals vied for space on the bookshelves. The closet’s louvered doors hung open and every drawer of every piece of furniture hung open. Clothing was spread out all over the bed and every other flat surface, and the flat-screen was frozen in the middle of a movie the two of them had been watching.
When people talk about “privileged” lives, this is what they mean, Olivia thought. The realization seemed to come from outside her, as if it were imposed upon her instead of part of her. But that was how everything was, and had been for the last year or more. When had everything gone so flat and lifeless? Had it been when she finally realized that all the things going on between her parents weren’t just “everybody fights” but “this is the end”? Or had it been earlier than that, when she figured out that she was always going to be on the outside of every single inner circle, that she was weird and freakish and the few friends she had were her friends out of pity?
Both, probably, she thought dully.
It was June. Everything was over: the Prom, the parties, the Senior Trip, Graduation itself. All the things parents said were “fun” and “the best times of your life” and “things you’ll always remember.”
Which just proves, Olivia thought bleakly, that the people saying those things have no memory themselves of what it’d been like. We have good clothes and better addresses. Most of the senior class is going off to college, even if it’s just a community college. We have cars, and computers, and the latest smartphone, and our own rooms full of stuff, stuff, and more stuff. And none of that makes us happy, and nobody will tell us why that is. So these are the best years of our lives? That’d make anybody slit their wrists.
She’d been looking forward to some downtime before getting ready to go off to CSULB in September, and these days “downtime” meant “far away from both parents.” They were going to get a divorce, and they rather naively thought they were hiding that fact from her. In fact, she’d known they were going to get a divorce since she’d been a freshman, but this senior year . . . it had just been somehow worse. There was an aching feeling in her that if she had just done something, maybe they’d have patched up their differences. But she hadn’t, because she hadn’t wanted to, and didn’t that make this her fault, somehow? She had all sorts of excuses for why she hadn’t wanted to, but they all boiled down to not wanting to be the rope in a tug-of-war, and wasn’t that just selfish?
Before she’d run over to Mia’s, she’d heard them going at it again. Dad had fired off “At least I didn’t base my entire life on a rainbow-unicorn fantasy!” just as she shut the door. It seemed to be his favorite comeback for anything Mom said. In fact, he’d said that a lot during their arguments. She wondered what it meant . . . because as far as she could tell her mom was as hard-headed a practical attorney as you could get. Was it because she was an entertainment attorney? But those checks that came in weren’t made of pixie-dust . . .
At least I can count on Mom to pay my tuition. I’m not sure I can count on Dad for . . . anything. Not when he says things like that to someone he supposedly loved.
She’d picked a school distant enough that she couldn’t possibly be expected to live at home, but September was months away. She wished she was there now. San Diego was supposed to be nice. It had to be better than here. Anything was better than here, when the ’rents were in the meltdown stage.
This impulse-vacation was the next best thing, she guessed. Really, it was hard to feel enthusiastic about it, but it would be with Blake, and anyway, the more Mia pushed at her to cancel it, the more stubborn she felt. When she felt anything at all.
“It’s the Adirondacks, not the Moon,” she replied dismissively, pushing her long brown hair out of her eyes.
Where Mia was dark, Olivia was fair, with grey eyes to Mia’s brown and hair that was neither vividly dark nor truly blonde. And where Mia was all big eyes and supermodel cheekbones, Olivia still looked like Squirrel Girl; not much different than she had back in eighth grade. Average. Forgettable. A nobody. And nobody’s friend, not really. Except for Blake. Blake was the one shining star in the endless night.
Some days she couldn’t imagine why Mia was still her friend.
But we’ve been together since kindergarten.
And kids make lousy decisions.
Then she thought of her parents. Grownups don’t make much better ones.
Reflexively, Olivia pushed the thought aside. She didn’t want to think about losing her family. Mom and Dad had been sniping at each other since she started high school, but in the last couple of years it had gotten really ugly.
So let Mom and Dad fight things out while I’m not around. In the last three months they’ve asked for my opinion and told me they “value my judgment” more than they have in the rest of the entire time I’ve been alive. Which basically means that now I’m the weapon they want to use against each other. I’ve seen this before. How many of the people at school have divorced parents, now? More than are still married, I bet. I am so tired of being their referee and playing piece!
That was one thing about being unnoticed—or unnoticed until this year, at least. When you were invisible, people talked around you. She’d overheard more lunch and gym-class conversations about peoples’ parents than she could count. She had been able to chart out the disintegration of her parents’ marriage by the benchmarks she’d overheard all of her school life.
It wasn’t as if they were being anything unique or special. Everybody divorced. Mia’s parents had divorced and remarried (other people) so many times that Mia was part of a large blended family, with so many half-siblings and step-siblings that Olivia lost count. Sometimes she envied Mia that—
It was really hard to be an only child, with your parents working on their first divorce—
They still thought she didn’t know about it, because they hadn’t said the big D word around her. And truth to tell, she wanted to avoid that moment for as long as possible.
Which was part of her reason for . . . all this.
And Mia knows that. And she still doesn’t want me to get away.
Even while she thought that, Olivia knew it was unfair—but it was also irresistible. The parental Cold War had ruined her junior year and all of last summer. If not for Blake, she didn’t think she could have gotten through this year at all. Having a boyfriend—a real, actual, public, not-just-a-bunch-of-guys-hanging-out, boyfriend—was as wonderful and terrible as Olivia had imagined it would be.
But.
The only thing more stressful than not having a boyfriend was having a really popular boyfriend—and Blake Weber was all that. Handsome, talented, athletic, captain of the swim team. Full-ride scholarship to Stanford already in the bag. He could have had anybody at Campbell High falling all over themselves to be with him, but when he’d dumped Maria Tedesco just before senior year, it had been Olivia Poole he’d gone after. And gotten, of course—her dad loved him, and her mom said he was “good for her.” Even her grades had come up, though because of Blake she’d had less time to study than ever before.
But what her parents didn’t understand (and what Olivia had no intention of explaining) was that just by being “Blake’s girl” Olivia had acquired a sudden collection of enemies. Girls who’d been friendly the year before cut her dead—only Mia had stuck with her—girls who’d used to think of her as too far beneath them to bother tormenting wanted her out of the way and made sure she knew it. And all the boys wanted to find out why Blake had picked her out, something Olivia herself didn’t know.
Some of their ways of “trying to find out” had left her very nervous about being alone with any guy but Blake. Which made parties a maze of hazards, because unless she picked a spot in the main party room and never left it until Blake left, there were lots of ways to get someone alone. Just going to the bathroom meant making sure no one saw you doing it. Depending on whose house the party was at, there had been a lot she’d skipped.
So from going unnoticed, which was hard, she’d gone to being a target, which was harder. A lot harder. And it was something that Blake didn’t even seem to notice, even when it was going on in front of him. The few times she’d tried to hint at something going on, he’d just laugh, and hug her, and tell her she had a really active imagination.
If she’d been smart—as Mia’d kept telling her at the time—she would’ve told him plainly she wasn’t interested when he’d first started making overtures. But the problem was—having Blake Weber want her was not just a nightmare, but her dream come true. And she couldn’t give up the dream part, not even to make the nightmare go away. Mia didn’t understand how special Blake made Olivia feel. When he was with her, the dismal, stifling gray haze that seemed to hang around her every waking minute lifted, and she could actually feel. She’d take anything over the numbness. Blake Weber made her feel alive.
And so, when he had asked her if she’d like to come along on his family’s summer vacation, of course she’d said yes. The Webers had been going to the lake every year since before Noah and Mason, Blake’s younger brothers, had been born; Olivia felt as if she’d been inducted into a secret club, or knighted, or something. Mom and Dad had approved (it was pretty much the only thing they’d agreed on during the last year).
Mia hadn’t. In fact, Mia had been furious with her when she’d first told her. Things had been awkward between them since then, and so, when Mia had proposed that the two of them spend the day hanging out at Mia’s, Olivia had been so grateful for the olive branch that she’d mentally glossed over how excruciating the day might get. Hanging out with Mia had seemed like a better option than going to the library (alone), the mall (alone!) or holing up in her room listening to her parents fight oh-so-politely. Maybe (she’d hoped) Mia would just let Topic A drop.
Fat chance, Olivia thought dourly, then: I wish it was September already. Except then Blake will be gone. She didn’t want to think about that. She just wanted to hang onto every single second when she was still “Blake’s girlfriend” and not think about anything else. So what if that was shallow? At least it was better than not caring about anything again. And it was better than contemplating the bleakness of not being Blake’s girl.
She’d quickly realized that even though the ostensible point of today was to hang out and maybe see if Mia had any clothes that would be useful for Olivia’s upcoming trip, the real purpose, at least as far as Mia was concerned, was a last-ditch attempt to get her to cancel it.
“What?” she said, aware that Mia had said something and she’d been zoning as usual. She hoped she hadn’t agreed to anything while she hadn’t been listening. She just didn’t have the energy for another fight. Really, she didn’t have the energy for anything.
“I said: ‘you wouldn’t notice if it was the Moon,’” Mia repeated. “Look, Livy, I know you want to get away from your fam for the summer—”
“Everybody’s parents get divorced,” Olivia said with faint irritation.
“But they don’t all turn their homes into Motel Hell,” Mia said dryly. “Your Dad get to the moving out stage yet?”
“In a week or two, probably. We finally had The Trial Separation Talk. He says it won’t change anything. They still haven’t said the D word.”
“They always say that,” Mia said cynically. “Nice of them to wait until you turned eighteen. At least there won’t be a big custody fight.” Mia’s dad had been married three times; her mom twice. She knew a thing or two about custody fights. And messy divorces.
“Yeah,” Olivia said tonelessly. I just got to listen to them tear each other apart when they thought I wasn’t around for what seems like an eternity.
“So they aren’t going to be fighting in your living room any more, and so there’s no reason to go off to Lake Woebegone just to get away from them,” Mia went on stubbornly. “You could just move in with me for the summer. My folks won’t mind, and—”
“Blake asked me, and I said yes, my parents said yes, his parents said yes. I have the plane ticket. What am I supposed to tell everyone? And I want to go,” Olivia pointed out, though Mia certainly knew that. Blake loved her—he’d said so. And wasn’t that what people in love did? Spend time together? They were going to two different schools—Livy had been accepted at California State University Long Beach—CSULB—and Blake at Stanford University. Stanford and Long Beach were six hours apart by car, and Olivia didn’t have a car. Blake did, of course, but this “family vacation” would be the last time she and Blake could spend more than a weekend together—at most—until next summer. Even then—swim meets were always on weekends, and that meant whenever there was a swim meet, Blake would be training with the team practically nonstop, getting to bed early, and certainly couldn’t be expected to run off to Long Beach and pick her up. And even if she could get a bus or a plane to the meet, she’d just be one more face in the crowd. He’d be concentrating on winning and have no time for her. He’d been wrapped up in training and competing so much during the last year—it would be worse at Stanford.
Everybody said that a high school romance never survived if people went away to separate colleges. This summer might be the last time she’d ever see Blake. And then she wouldn’t be Blake’s girl anymore. She’d be back to being nothing and nobody. She needed this; needed to have this to hang onto when she was in San Diego, alone.
No matter what Mia thought, Olivia couldn’t have “just said no” when Blake asked her to come with him to Lake Endor. And once she’d said “yes,” she couldn’t just change her mind at the last minute. He’d keep asking and asking and wanting to know why she hadn’t decided, and it was so much easier just to do what he wanted than to come up with reasons why she didn’t want to, especially when the only reason she had was “Mia doesn’t want me to” and that was just stupid. If he wanted me to do something really gross, or dangerous, that would be different, I guess. But he hasn’t.
So far, a small inner voice whispered. She ignored it. It sounded too much like Mia.
And if she’d said “no” he’d have smiled at her and asked “why not?” and what was she supposed to say? What could she say to anybody, and not be lying? Because she did want to. Who wouldn’t? Who wouldn’t want to go off to a romantic, rustic lake with moonlight walks away from all the things that took Blake away from her? They were in love, right?
Like your parents were in love?
It’s not like that!
“Oh, ‘Blake asked me,’” Mia parroted exasperatedly. “Livy, Blake Weber is a creep. All year he’s been running around behind your back—”
“He told me,” Olivia pointed out, cringing inwardly at the start of the too-familiar argument. “It’s not like he lied. And anyway . . . he kind of had to. He’s kind of a celebrity. If he’s going to keep that scholarship, he’s got to go to the right places and be nice to the right people.” Blake knew how shy she was. He knew she hated being the center of attention—or even noticed. And there were a lot of things he had to do. Places he had to go. People he had to be seen with and suck up to. He said it didn’t mean anything. He joked about the “CW” pressure everyone their age was under. Conform. Stand out. Excel. Be cautious. And most of all: fit in, no matter what.
“And I know you don’t talk to Maria Tedesco, and she doesn’t exactly run in our social circles—at least my social circles—but Jenny Chawleigh knows her, and I think you should—”
Olivia flopped backward onto the bed with an exasperated sigh. Gossip. Character assassination. Rumors. Lies. Once you got to be somebody, everybody wanted to tear you down. All anyone needed for proof of that was to look at the news.
“You aren’t listening,” Mia said, and now she just sounded sad. “You never listen to anything anyone says any more. When you aren’t ignoring what people say, you’re zoning out. Livy, we both know something’s wrong and you can’t just keep going on this way. You used to be different. Remember when we were kids?”
“That was a long time ago,” Olivia said flatly. “Things were different then. I’m still who I always was.”
“You aren’t,” Mia said quietly. “This isn’t just a bad mood. Everybody has those. This is more. It isn’t going away. It’s eating you up. You never look happy, even when you should be. You don’t do the things you used to love anymore. I think you ought to talk to someone. At least—”
Olivia sat up and thrust herself to her feet. “Oh sure!” she said, though . . . it sounded sad rather than angry, even to her. “And have Mom and Dad dragging each other through court about what the dollar value should be placed on my mental health and which one of them drove me crazy!” She scrabbled for her purse.
“It’s not about crazy,” Mia went on. “It’s about being sick. Depression can happen to anybody—it’s not like you did something to deserve it—”
“Yeah, well, I’m not going to sit around here and listen to your pity, or your jealousy, or your ‘Very Special Episode’ crap. There’s nothing wrong with me!”
I’m just tired, she added silently. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t tired. Or the last time something was fun. She slung her purse over her shoulder as she got to her feet and strode toward the door. Normally a fight would make her stomach hurt. Now she just felt a kind of relief at being given the energy to escape. Anger, grief, fear—at least they were things she could feel.
“Livy—wait!” Mia sounded panicky. “Don’t—”
Olivia wrenched open the door before she could hear anything more. Once she was through it, she slammed it as hard as she could. Everybody in the house probably heard it, but who cared?
It didn’t matter anyway.
Nothing did.
The rental minivan was huge, but it was also crammed, and the a/c didn’t reach all the way to the back, where Olivia was jammed into the jump-seat next to an enormous cooler and two duffle bags that threatened to fall on her every time the van swerved. And every time the van swerved, she was afraid they were going to lose something off the top, which was packed as full as the van was inside. Blake and his brothers were in the regular back seat, and of course his parents were in the front. Right now they were all playing some elaborate word-game—very loudly—but she didn’t know the rules and it moved too fast for her to follow anyway. She didn’t understand why none of the Webers were feeling as groggy as she was. She’d started her plane ride way too early in the morning, and now she really understood what jet-lag meant. She’d have napped if she could, but every time she nodded off something jerked her awake. Her mouth tasted like lint and her stomach felt knotted and sour.
They’d been on the road for about three hours, and in another two hours they should reach Lake Endor. The six of them (and enough luggage to go on a world cruise) had flown into Albany this morning, and if there hadn’t been huge problems with the rental place losing their reservation, they’d already be at Lake Endor. They would’ve been at the lake a fortnight ago if Blake hadn’t needed to finish up with his private swim coach. And while Mrs. Weber didn’t have a job, Mr. Weber did. That meant that Mr. Weber would be leaving in about two weeks and it would just be Mrs. Weber for July before they all piled back into the van to drive down to Albany and fly home again. She’d only have a week after that to be stuck in Sacto before she could escape to CSULB preregistration. Just one week with Mom alone . . . and for Mom to start whatever campaign she’d planned to get Livy on her side. She didn’t really want to take sides, but that was what had always happened to every other kid she knew. But . . . just one week.
Lucky for her.
But right now Olivia didn’t feel lucky. Right now her stomach hurt, and she had a headache, and she had the horrible feeling she’d made the worst mistake of her life by coming here. When Blake said “Lake Endor in the Adirondacks,” she’d kind of envisioned the Adirondacks to be something like Disneyland or Yosemite: a big park with lots of things to do and places to see and cities nearby. She’d meant to look the place up on the Internet before she left, but as usual lately, time had gotten away from her; she’d spent the whole night before the flight frantically packing and repacking her suitcases, afraid of bringing too much, too little, the wrong things. And after all, she’d been to New York before—as in New York City. How different could Upstate New York be?
A lot, apparently. Once they’d gotten out of the Schenectady-Albany-Troy area, there hadn’t been much of anything visible from the road. A few farms and orchards, and a few random houses, and eventually there wasn’t anything to see but trees. The Adirondacks, it appeared, was basically one huge wilderness park almost the size of a state, a mix of federal, state and even county parks, with the odd farm or house that had held onto their land since the year dot. Nothing to see. Literally, the sticks.
And nothing to listen to but Blake’s family.
Olivia didn’t really know the Webers all that well. She’d been to the house a couple of times for parties Blake threw, and once for dinner. Blake’s parents (their names were Harper and Aidan) had been, well, parents. And Noah and Mason had vanished as quickly as possible from the gatherings, so they’d seemed kind of . . . generic. So when Blake asked her to come to Lake Endor for a month, she’d thought she’d . . . fit in.
But Harper and Aidan had seemed to consider her more like sentient baggage than a person. And it turned out that Noah was thirteen and Mason was ten, they were like evil siblings in a comedy show, only not funny, and they hadn’t stopped bickering once since the van left Albany.
I’m just imagining things, she told herself hopefully. They don’t mean to ignore me. But she thought it would have been at least a little more pleasant if one of the rug-rats was back here and she could sit next to Blake.
She wished she’d made up the fight with Mia before she left, but she’d been too exhausted to. And anyway, Mia was just wrong. Olivia wasn’t sick. She was fine. She didn’t need a psychiatrist. Or a doctor. Or pills.
How could pills change her life? Why should she want to change her life? Life was what it was; it was never fair, and never happily ever after, and if you got a chance at being happy for a little while then you should count yourself lucky. That was what Dad always said.
And anyway, she should be—she was—happy right now. Dream vacation, right? Ask anybody.
She pulled out her phone. At least the van had Wi-Fi. But it was too bouncy to read. If she put in her earbuds Blake might say something to her and she’d miss it, she’d already told Mom she’d landed, and she couldn’t just text Mia out of the blue to chat when she’d deleted Mia’s last dozen texts without answering them. She sighed and looked out the window.
“First sign!” Noah shouted suddenly, and everybody else whooped in glee.
Blake turned around to look at her over the back of the seat. “First road sign for Lake Endor! The adventure begins!” He saw what she was doing and made a grab for her phone. Olivia snatched it away. Blake looked hurt. “Hey. Back to nature and all that. Cut the cord. Besides, you won’t be able to get a signal at the lake.”
“You didn’t tell me that,” Olivia said, feeling a little alarmed.
Blake looked hurt at her objection. “Sure I did,” he said instantly. “You just don’t remember. Anyway,” he added, smirking, “who would you text anyway?” He turned around again.
She knew it didn’t mean the words to hurt, but they still did. She’d never had a lot of friends, and without Mia she’d lost one more.
The turnoff for Lake Endor put them on a two-lane county road that looked long overdue for repairs. The interstate had been nearly deserted, but County Road 12W wasn’t. There were a lot of vehicles going in both directions; cars and trucks and vans filled with luggage, or with kayaks and bicycles strapped on, and one of them was even towing a sailboat. Clearly, everyone was heading for Lake Endor Campground. Or for some campground anyway: all along the road there were signs for places with names like Hidden and Parthenon, or advertising things like live nightcrawlers and funnel cake. Most of the signs looked handmade. But where are all the houses and stores and towns and people?
The van passed another sign for “Lake Endor Resort and Campground.” It was larger than most of the others and had depictions of water-skiers and fishermen and people playing volleyball, all dressed in antediluvian swimwear. Olivia felt as if she’d fallen through time.
It would make a great start for a book. Imagine if we were really driving into the past and we got to the Lake and it was, oh, I don’t know, 1890 or something. Or even 1950. Think of seeing Elvis at some little county fair or something! Poodle skirts and chinos. That would be fun.
But the stories she’d always narrated to herself had lost the power to charm and distract her as the grey fog had come rolling in. Where she would once have elaborated the details of the road trip through time, now she just let the idea drop. Trying to make all that stuff up was just too exhausting.
“Almost there!” Mr. Weber said encouragingly as they passed the sign. Since he’d been saying it since they’d gotten onto the Interstate, Olivia didn’t pay a lot of attention until the van actually took the next turnoff.
The new road seemed a lot narrower than the one they’d just left—and it was certainly in worse repair. Olivia set her teeth against the constant jarring and stuffed her phone into her backpack before she could drop and lose it. The trees on both sides of the road retreated from the verge, thinning out as they went, and Olivia saw a few isolated houses—and trailers—scattered across the landscape seemingly at random and far from the road. Then there was a gas station, and they were in a town—and out again almost before she realized it. It had looked like something out of an old movie, as if time had stopped here a long time ago. She couldn’t decide whether it was creepy or charming or just sad.
The road narrowed in earnest now, to a lane and a half, then to a lane, then to gravel instead of blacktop. Mr. Weber didn’t slow down at all, and the van bottomed out several times. Everyone else laughed, but all Olivia could do was wonder what would happen if it somehow got wrecked. Blake’s family seemed to consider everything around them somehow . . . disposable. Olivia wasn’t sure how she felt about that. God knew she wasn’t in a space where she could pass judgment on someone else’s lifestyle.
Then they were driving under a rusty old wrought-iron archway. She looked upward, and caught a quick glimpse of letters that spelled out “Lake Endor Campground.”
“The old swimming hole!” Mr. Weber said. “Think you’ll have enough room to keep in training, Blake?”
“If you don’t complain about how I’m scaring all the fish away,” Blake answered, laughter in his voice.
The late afternoon sun made all the colors more vivid, and in the distance, Olivia could finally see the lake. It sparkled in the sunlight, and it was huge. Really, really huge, and not what she had pictured in her head at all. On the far side of it she could see some kind of a castle-y building, all white walls and red roof, and leaned forward to get a better look.
I guess that’s not where we’re headed, she decided regretfully. That’s got to be the resort that’s supposed to be up here. Even Blake wouldn’t call that a cabin.
With the lake at last in sight, everyone started talking at once. Noah and Mason began demanding Mr. Weber stop the car immediately so they could get out. Mrs. Weber reminded them that everybody had to help unload the car before anything else. The boys protested loudly, and even Blake joined in. Olivia opened her mouth and then closed it again without speaking. What could she say, anyway? She didn’t—the sudden realization was unpleasant—know any of these people, after all. At least, none of them besides Blake.
By now the van was moving slowly along the narrow dirt road that edged the lake. The water was only a stone’s throw beyond the edge of the dirt road, and by now Olivia could even smell it—sort of a green, alive, watery smell, nothing at all like the ocean. While she knew Lake Endor wasn’t like one of the Great Lakes or something, it was still the biggest lake she’d ever seen up close. She wondered if it was safe to swim in. Out near the middle of the lake there was a big swimming dock anchored, and a couple of people lying out in the unobstructed sunlight, so she supposed it was. Or maybe they just don’t care what happens to them, her small inner voice said. Maybe it’s full of toxic chemicals and horrible things that bite. In the distance, Olivia could see a big jet of water from a Sea-Doo arcing into the air, and there were one or two other small boats on the lake as well. Mr. Weber talked about fishing, stupid, and if it were full of poison the lake wouldn’t be full of fish too. Honestly, Livy, what are you using for a brain? Olivia sighed. Her small inner voice not only didn’t know when to shut up, it sounded an awful lot like Mia. Suddenly, sharply, she wished Mia was here too. This would be fun, an adventure, if she had someone to share it with.
Isn’t that what Blake’s for? Olivia clenched her jaw, and looked out the other side window. Summer days were long—the equinox was next week—but the pine trees and the mountains (Olivia mentally put air-quotes around the word, because even if everyone called the Adirondacks “mountains,” they looked like foothills to anyone raised in the Far West) would cut off the sunlight fairly soon, and she wanted to see what the place she’d be spending the next six weeks was like.
The resort was on the far side of the lake—looking more like a castle or a palace than ever—and on the near side of it was a line of white-painted cabins. They looked like miniature houses, or like the kids’ playhouses some people bought that were just a mini-version of their house. Most of them were already occupied—there were cars parked beside them, and the tiny front yards were strewn with toys, sports equipment, and a variety of shapes and sizes of barbeque grills. Olivia could not imagine where everyone fit—the interior rooms must be tiny, if the inside wasn’t all just one big room. She stifled another sigh. The last thing she wanted was to make Blake regret asking her to come on his family’s vacation, and for the first time, she wondered if they really wanted her there. All Blake had said was that his parents had said it was “fine” if she came along, and Olivia hadn’t queried any further than that.
Maybe you should have. Maybe you ought to have been thinking further ahead than making Blake happy and getting away from your parents’ bickering.
Too late now.
Dogs ran alongside the Webers’ van, barking, and people looked up and waved. Everybody here clearly knew everybody else. It was like some kind of tiny sitcom town here, as if she’d somehow been transported to Mayberry or Pleasantville. (Or Silent Hill, she muttered under her breath.) The van bumped slowly down the line of cabins until it apparently reached their destination. There was a carport beside “their” cabin—some of the cabins had one, and some didn’t—and Mr. Weber pulled the rental van into the space and stopped.
“Honey, we’re home!” he announced, in a fake-pompous voice. If Mrs. Weber had anything to say to that, Olivia didn’t hear it.
Noah and Mason were out of the car before Mr. Weber turned off the ignition, racing toward the lake and shrieking. Mrs. Weber opened the passenger door and shouted at them to “come back here right now,” but it didn’t do any good (aside from making Blake laugh), since the boys were already out of sight. Mrs. Weber seemed to have expected that response, because she slammed the door shut again in a kind of commentary and started rummaging in her purse.
Blake was still laughing as he came around the van to open the door on Olivia’s side.
“You’re going to love it here,” he said, holding out his hand.
The moon was halfway between full and dark tonight, but it still turned the sky a dark dusty blue. Even though it was summer, the air felt sharp, as if it was just biding its time before dumping winter on them, and the smell of pine trees was incredibly intense, but because it was real and not some kind of fake air-freshener, it just smelled like outdoors, instead of being a horrible intrusion. When the wind blew, the hushing rustle in the trees sounded almost like ocean waves. Crickets shrilled loudly against an irregular chorus of frogs, and behind both there was a high, almost mechanical whining sound. Probably cicadas, or something like that, but it wasn’t as if she’d expected there to be a Bio quiz on her summer vacation, so for all Olivia knew, all the sounds she was hearing right now could be the result of the local squirrels forming a techno-metal band.
Breaking News: It was really dark out here in the middle of nowhere. And it was a lot colder than she had thought.
Olivia shifted uncomfortably on the hard cot. At least she was warm enough, even if the wool blankets were heavy and scratchy and even the sheets smelled a little bit like mothballs. Apparently a lot of stuff was either provided by the campground—like bedding and towels and dishes—or people just left it in the cabins year-around.
Oh come on, Livy—can you see Harper Weber allowing these blankets within a hundred miles of her carefully curated lifestyle? Yeah, didn’t think so.
She reached for her phone and clicked it on just to see its reassuring light, but as Blake had said, there was no Wi-Fi. The cabins had been put up in the 1920s—a few decades after the lodge on the other side of the lake had been built—and hadn’t been modernized much over the succeeding decades. Oh, they’d been kept in good repair—walls and floors and roofs and windows—but the rooms were dim once the sun set, and there weren’t a lot of electrical outlets. Noah and Mason were monopolizing most of the free ones with their laptops. She’d be lucky to be able to find a spare hour or two for plugging her phone in to recharge it—and she’d have to keep an eye on it while she did, or else one of them was likely to throw it into the lake. Not that keeping her phone charged was a vital necessity, even if Mom said to “keep in touch”—just as Blake had said, there was no signal at Lake Endor. The nearest cell towers were blocked by the surrounding hills. On the other hand, her phone also had a lot of her music on it, as well as all the books on her TBR list, and she didn’t want to be completely cut off from entertainment, so getting regular recharges was necessary. Besides, she needed something to do with her days, because the afternoon and evening had been enough to show her that she was totally going to have to make her own entertainment up here.
Olivia had thought she was braced for the worst after the drive from Albany to Lake Endor. Even if the Webers didn’t know her (not that she wanted to get to know Noah and Mason), she’d assumed (before today, anyway) that Blake’s parents would treat her with the same vague politeness that adults always showed to teenagers, and that she would be spending most of her time with Blake.
And that he’d run interference for you and speak up for you. You know, Livy: just as if he’d invited you to come with him and his family on vacation . . .
Olivia gingerly rolled over on her cot, biting back frustrated tears. If the car ride had been uncomfortable, the afternoon and evening after they’d gotten here had been really agonizing.
First she’d spent a couple of hours unpacking the van, trying to fit in and make herself useful. Blake had wandered off, saying he wanted to see if some people were here yet. As for the so-called adults, Mr. Weber’s contribution to the unpacking began and ended with his fishing gear, and Mrs. Weber seemed to be a lot more interested in “cocktail hour” than in organizing the kitchen and emptying the suitcases and duffle bags. Olivia had alternated between wondering if she was being too pushy by getting everything unpacked and organized, and wondering if she was being hazed.
Aside from there being a cabin with actual walls and a ceiling and floor, it was a lot like tent-camping. By the first half hour Olivia had seen the whole thing: a tiny kitchen, a tiny living room, an antique bathroom, and two bedrooms, all arranged shotgun-style; the kitchen at the back, then the bathroom, then the bedrooms, and finally the living room in the front. There was an old-looking fridge and small box freezer, but they ran on propane, something she didn’t even know was possible, and which explained the giant gas canisters Mr. Weber had insisted on bringing, and had taken hours to chill down after Mr. Weber managed to light them. Then he had found and checked the main breaker and turned the electricity on.
Evidently there was a well with a pump somewhere that supplied the water for the cabins. Another worry. What if the pump failed? What would they drink? Was the well water all right? Horror stories about contaminated wells kept prodding at her memory.
But once the van was unpacked and its contents put away in the cabin, Mrs. Weber had acted as if Olivia had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and fussed about what to do with her, by which, of course, she meant Where would Olivia sleep?
One of the bedrooms had two sets of bunks—a detail Blake hadn’t gotten around to sharing with her while he was saying how awesome Lake Endor was and how much she’d like it—but Olivia couldn’t imagine sharing a bedroom with the Terror Tots even if Blake would be there, and clearly Blake’s parents couldn’t either. Nor was there any question of her sleeping in the same room as Blake, even if it was in a bunk bed. And it was painfully obvious no one even considered for a moment the option of her sleeping in the living room. Nor, really, did she want to try, not really. The Terror Twins would probably take every possible opportunity to harass her or step on her or sit on her. There’d been an excruciating two hours of trying to solve her as if she were a math problem. Olivia, who loathed being the center of attention, thought almost longingly of asking to be driven to the nearest bus station just so all of the yammering bickering cross-talk would stop, and she might even have gone looking for it on foot if it hadn’t finally been decided that Olivia could sleep on the back porch.
This wasn’t as awful as it seemed on first look, because the porch was completely screened in and even had its own door to the outside, as well as the door into the kitchen. It had clearly been set up as living space before. It had a cement slab floor, and there were a number of odds and ends of furniture stored in the space—a chest of drawers, a couple of picnic benches, a blanket chest (filled with actual blankets, now that was a surprise), and some Adirondack chairs—and Blake had dragged the chairs and benches out and into the front yard while Mr. Weber unearthed the cot from what seemed to be a communal storage shed and declared the problem solved.
But the back porch wasn’t particularly private—the screened walls had no shades—and she’d had to get into her pajamas in the bathroom and parade through the kitchen in her robe and slippers. It all made Olivia feel like an afterthought. She hadn’t even been able to unpack.
If you’d wanted to spend the whole summer being ignored and left out of things, you could’ve stayed home, you know. Olivia rubbed her burning eyes. Was she really trying to think of nonhumiliating ways of ducking out on the Webers already?
Because that’s what you do, of course. Pretend people can count on you, then you bail. Look at what you did to Mia. She’s probably already deleted you from her phone with a great cry of liberation. No wonder you don’t have any friends, Olivia. You break every promise you make and your word is worthless.
Hot painful tears burned their way out from beneath her closed eyelids. She wanted to deny that inner voice, but she couldn’t. She believed it. Everything it said was true. It was what she’d done for years—run away from everything. And somehow she’d been the last one to realize it.
And now you do. And what comes next?
Olivia had no idea.
The trouble was, nothing was enough of a thing for long enough to let her decide what to do about it and to be sure it was going to stay the same. Dinnertime had actually been almost kind of fun. Olivia had made sandwiches and iced tea and dug out paper plates and dished up the deli counter salads (they’d be going into Endor tomorrow to shop, but they’d stocked up on supplies on the way here), and everybody was gathered around the table, and there’d been laughter, and stories about other summers, and they’d all talked about how much fun Olivia was going to have while she was here, and Blake had looked at her with that soft look in his eyes that made her feel cherished and special and worthy.
And after dinner, Olivia did the dishes and bundled up the trash while Mr. Weber dug out some old board games from a closet and got everyone but Mrs. Weber to play and Olivia and Blake had beaten everyone at Trivial Pursuit. For a while it felt as if she’d fallen into a TV show from the fifties, and was in the middle of some impossibly cheerful, impossibly normal family. And that she fit in.
But she knew by now—in a way she’d always known—that feelings of happiness and normalcy and fitting in were only a lie.
After the game, she and Blake had taken a walk down by the lake. It was only about eight o’clock (her body thought it was three hours earlier), but most of the cabins were dark, and there were only a few streetlights (or whatever you called them in a campground) to give light. The lake itself was a sheet of black glass, reflecting the lights of the resort on the far side as clearly as if the water was a magic mirror.
This was the first chance she’d had to get a real good look at “The Resort” (it apparently didn’t have an actual name). It was an enormous old building that looked a lot more like what she’d imagined for a vacation destination, and Olivia wondered what kind of people stayed there and what they did for fun. But she didn’t wonder very hard, because Blake had his arm around her, and they were alone here together, and they’d walked down to the end of the row of cabins, and he’d kissed her.
“I’m glad you came, Ollie. I’m going to have a lot of fun this summer,” he said, holding her close and breathing the words into her hair. And she’d thought—at last. He was going to get romantic. That small voice at the back of her mind nattered about other things he was going to get, but this was Blake, and he wouldn’t hurt her, they’d just go sit by the lake and hold each other and kiss and she’d be like a normal teenager with a normal boyfriend. Finally.
And then he took a step back, and smiled ruefully, and said he was going to have to get up pretty early to be able to get in his morning swim workout before the lake got crowded, and they went back to the cabin. And Blake said goodnight (for a wonder, Noah and Mason were apparently already in bed), and Olivia had taken her things off to the bathroom.
At first she thought it was really a half bath, just a sink and a toilet without either a tub or shower: did everybody bathe in the lake? Or were there some kind of public showers around here somewhere? And then she’d spotted the pipe going up the wall and across the ceiling to the bare little nozzle with a pull-chain on the bare side of the bathroom, and realized that the other half of the bathroom was . . . kind of . . . the shower. The tile all sloped slightly down to the drain in the middle of the floor. Either the water only came out in a bare trickle, or you’d soak everything every time you took a shower. And there didn’t seem to be any way to set the temperature or the amount. You just pulled the chain and got water. What temperature? She had no guess. There was something called an “instant on hot water heater” in the kitchen, because there’d been hot water for dishes, and she guessed it led here too, but . . . maybe not. It might just be cold showers all the time.
Probably was.
Gross, she’d thought, and gone off to her . . . porch.
After such a long exhausting day—emotionally if not physically—Olivia should have found it easy to sleep. She didn’t, of course. She had the distinct impression she’d misjudged Blake’s parents somehow. Maybe she’d assumed he’d told them more about her, or that it had been their idea to have him invite her, or . . . something. But now she realized that she really didn’t know what Blake’s parents thought about her, or about having her here, and . . . well . . . Lake Endor wasn’t really what she’d expected.
If you don’t like it here, it’s all your own fault. The time to ask questions is before you jump off the cliff.
When Blake had talked about Lake Endor, Olivia hadn’t wanted to sound too eager—as if she was begging him to invite her—and so she hadn’t asked a lot of questions. She’d just filled in the background details she’d expected to be true.
She realized she’d made a few assumptions. Okay, a lot of assumptions.
When Blake said “cabin by the lake,” she’d thought of something like a regular house, only made out of logs, maybe, but with lights and connectivity, and, okay, actual full bedrooms and someplace for any guests they invited to actually sleep like a human being and not practically out in the open.
Instead, she was at Lake Endor Campground, and Lake Endor Campground wasn’t all that modern. In fact, it wasn’t modern at all—except maybe for the inside of the Resort on the other side of the lake, and at dinner Blake had mentioned that they didn’t like the “cabin people” going over there, so no chance of using their tennis courts, or pools, or even meeting any of the guests who might be her own age. As if that would make any difference, since you turn into a section of the wallpaper the moment anybody you don’t know even says “hi.” Of course, it was different when Blake was beside her, because Blake could charm anyone and was happy to do all the talking. And it was true that Blake said there were several kids their age who came up to stay at the cabins—but she wasn’t as certain as she’d been this morning that Blake would take the time to introduce her around. So—if she stayed—she’d probably be by herself a lot, unless she wanted to keep to Blake’s schedule and get up at four a.m. every day to watch him go swimming.
Olivia shuddered delicately. No thanks. She was a night owl by nature, and couldn’t see the allure of turning her entire body clock around on her vacation.
On the other hand (third hand? Fourth hand? She was running out of hands), Lake Endor, even on brief acquaintance, was one of the most beautiful places Olivia had ever seen. She liked hiking, and if there weren’t hiking trails here (unlikely) she could certainly make her own. There was the lake, too. While she wasn’t a really strong swimmer—certainly nowhere near Blake’s level!—there was the diving dock, and apparently there were boats to rent. And hadn’t she just been thinking that she wanted a real break from everything?
Well, she had what she wanted. Always be careful what you wish for—you may get it.
There was a flurry of motion and rustling through the brush. It made Olivia jump, but at least she didn’t scream (thank god). She stared out through the screen and saw a pair of burning green eyes looking back from the edge of the trees. A fox, maybe. Or a coyote. She took a shaky breath of relief: animals never hurt you. (Not like people did.) She’d look for its tracks in the morning, and then maybe she’d be able to know what it was. Maybe it would come back tomorrow night. Maybe she’d be able to get some pictures with her phone. And she’d brought her sketchbook, so she could at least draw a picture of where it had been.
The fox (or whatever) blinked and vanished, and Olivia heard the sound of an unfamiliar night bird, followed by a particularly loud bloop! that had to have come from the lake.
I wonder what’s in the lake making a sound like that? she thought, finally drifting off to sleep.