The Last Animal, page 12
Yes, said the Ouija Board, right away. A few girls shivered.
“Good,” Sasha said firmly. “Now tell us, please. Is Danielle alive?”
No, said the Ouija Board.
Chaya Stein moaned. Rachael Schwartz rose awkwardly to her feet, and then, hovering over us all, glanced around and sat quickly down again.
“Did somebody murder Danielle?” Sasha asked.
The pointer of the Ouija Board began to move. It glided erratically over the board.
“I don’t think—” Naomi Cohen began, her voice higher than normal.
“We have to know,” Sasha said.
Yes, said the Ouija Board, finally.
At that moment, Itsy-Bitsy, evidently annoyed by the ruckus we were making, kicked the wall between her bedroom and ours. It had happened before—she had hollered at us to be quiet, knocked with her fist, even hurled a shoe. But this time we all screamed in a paroxysm of terror. We scattered away from the Ouija Board like leaves in a strong wind.
The media descended on Camp Reeds in a frenzy. They were not allowed on the grounds, of course, but it lent a certain strangeness to the proceedings when we glimpsed their vans parked in the far lot, their flashbulbs glittering as we hiked down the path to the beach. Sasha Rosen dolled herself up and let herself be interviewed, pointing to a photograph of Danielle and begging anyone who had information to please come forward. Elisheva Levy, too, appeared on TV, arm in arm with Naomi Cohen. We watched them on the flickering set in the lobby, one rainy evening. Sasha clasped her hands together, looking breathless and distressed. Elisheva was unusually eloquent, though we had not realized how often her speech was peppered with you know and like until we saw her looming larger than life on the screen. Noami, abashed by the perfectly groomed interviewer, said nothing at all. She just hovered there like a deer in the headlights, her eyes wide.
There is a way that, at the age of twelve, you can love an older girl, somewhere between the child’s worship of a fairytale princess and the adult’s idolization of a reigning beauty. A few of us were genuinely heartbroken by our loss. The camp was a sheltered sphere, and each day there felt like the equivalent of a few weeks in the normal world. The letters from our parents and postcards from our friends came in from another planet, a realm we had relinquished long ago. It seemed that we had always lived in the rickety cabin with the screen door that slammed. It seemed that we had always subsisted on beans, pizza, and scrambled eggs. We felt that we had known Danielle for a long time—we had trusted her, telling our secrets to her, taking her advice about clothes, letting her experiment by putting makeup on our faces. It hurt to think that she could have detached herself from us without a word, a note, a backward glance. Perhaps that was why we took it upon ourselves to find some more sinister agent that might have caused her disappearance.
Tal Klein, who had read a lot of detective novels, said that our first job was to find out as much about the victim as possible. There wasn’t a lot to go on, however. We knew that Danielle had a boyfriend at Camp Reeds. His name was Kyle, and he played the guitar around the bonfire each night with a rock star’s bravado, the lenses of his cosmopolitan glasses glinting in the light. We had spotted him holding hands with Danielle, and they often sang duets together—but of course, that was not enough evidence, since Danielle was a happy-go-lucky, amiable sort of girl, tangibly affectionate with all her friends. But then, Rachael Schwartz had once glimpsed what she thought was Danielle, backed up against the side of the nurse’s station with her arms around Kyle’s neck. Rachael had told us about it afterward: how she had hesitated, unsure whether she ought to dash off and summon the rest of us, and so had missed her chance to verify if they had been kissing with tongue.
In recent days, Kyle had been particularly vocal about wanting Danielle found, even shouting at Mr. Benson once, from inside the office, in tones that could be heard all over the grounds. Kyle was looking haggard, just as he should, just as Romeo might have done when exiled to Mantua. He no longer grinned mischievously in the mess hall, flicking strands of noodles at his friends. More than once, he had hefted his guitar into his lap, plucked haphazardly at the strings, and then set the instrument aside, as though he just couldn’t bear to play alone.
After a week or so the storm passed over. There was still no news of Danielle, and the media moved on to fresher stories. A few of the younger children were withdrawn from camp by parents who wanted to be on the safe side. Several of our mothers made similar noises, offering to drive up early too, but we quickly put a stop to that. Sasha Rosen told us proudly that she had wept for ten minutes at the very mention of it, until her mother actually apologized over the phone. Rachael Schwartz threatened to kill herself if forced to go home, but we all knew her parents wouldn’t take this too seriously. They, like us, would be able to detect the throbbing note of delighted histrionics in her voice. Hannah Breckenridge defeated her nervous parents through sheer cold logic: There was no proof of foul play, after all, and it would be misguided for them to act on rumor and speculation.
In truth, we could not bear to think of leaving. Next year we would be too old to come to summer camp. We would be scouting out early-enrollment classes for high school. We would have crossed the threshold into the next stage of our lives. We would be teenagers.
Besides, we were busy with camp life. Sasha Rosen won the archery prize a record seven times in a row, and Mr. Benson told us that he would make a plaque for her, to put on the wall of the lobby and keep there forever. Hannah Breckenridge found a bird’s nest, fallen to the ground, with all the tiny, sky-blue eggs smashed except for one. Having read about what to do in such a situation, she took to carrying this last intact egg around, tucked into her bra, even after Itsy-Bitsy had told her in a snotty sort of voice that the chick inside was certainly dead. Chaya Stein developed such a fierce crush on a boy in Cree Wesleyan that she swiped the headband he wore to play basketball and kept it doubled around her own wrist. We did not forget about Danielle—we often thought about her—but it was hard for us to sustain focus. We could not always whip up the panic necessary to continue our investigations.
Then, one balmy morning, something happened to bring the whole matter into sharper relief. We were wading into the lake for a swimming lesson, wincing as we stumbled on the rough stones. Itsy-Bitsy, clad as usual in a pinstriped bikini (“Flaunting it,” Sasha Rosen murmured disgustedly), blew her whistle and gestured for us to get ready for a race. In the middle of the water floated a kind of raft. We were supposed to swim there and back as fast as we could; the winner would be awarded a peace feather. Rachael Schwartz was already starting to hyperventilate. Even more than the water itself, she was afraid of the raft, which was anchored to the ground by an algae-coated chain that trailed away into shifting clouds of sand. Something about that chain made her flesh crawl. Itsy-Bitsy, as impervious as ever, gave another blast on her whistle and lifted one white hand in the air.
Her shout was interrupted by a commotion on the beach. Two of the male counselors were struggling in the shallows, splashing around as their charges fled in terror. For a moment we could not tell if it was a real fight or if they were just wrestling in play.
“It’s Danielle’s boyfriend,” Julia Goldblatt said suddenly. “It’s Kyle.”
We recognized the other counselor too: Joshua, from Chippewa Princeton, curly-haired and sunburned. Locked in a kind of painful embrace, both men staggered onto the beach, kicking up showers of sand. Then Kyle threw a punch. There was no mistaking it: He was out for blood. Joshua stepped back, his fingers to his mouth.
“Excellent,” said Hannah Breckenridge, who had a ghoulish streak.
Joshua lunged forward. Kyle anticipated the move and dodged, both arms in the air. They fell into another bear hug, grimacing in anger, each trying to knock the other to the ground. Kyle kicked out sharply, and Joshua fell with a roar.
“—touch her,” Kyle was screaming. We could hear him clearly from where we stood. “If you even laid a hand on her!”
Joshua, crouched with one knee in the sand, looked up and began to laugh. His impudent burble carried on the breeze.
“Dude,” he cried. “Get over it already.”
He climbed to his feet. Kyle aimed another punch, but his rage was getting the best of him. His movements were uncontrolled. He was almost growling. Joshua evaded the blow easily, leaned forward, and shoved Kyle away from him. Kyle stumbled and stood frozen for a moment. Then he darted toward the pier, reaching for his backpack, which lay in the sand.
A few of the smaller children had begun to sob in fright. Out in the lake, our group stood shoulder to shoulder. The water lapped quietly around our calves. Tal Klein, who was brainy, would say later that we had been the chorus in that little drama, witnessing the actions of the Greek gods on stage. Kyle knelt beside his backpack and began to fumble in the front pocket. Joshua wiped the blood from his split lip. The other counselors were already converging on the beach, appearing as though by magic from the woods. Soon the scene was obscured by a busy, chattering crowd. Joshua was led away to the nurse’s station, still dabbing at his bloody mouth. A few counselors hurried out into the waves, wearing big false smiles, to round us all up.
“Everybody back to land,” someone shouted. “Lunchtime!”
This triggered a general rush. Campers are always hungry, and our group was caught up helplessly in the pandemonium—squealing seven-year-olds, squabbles about towels, people falling over as they tried to get into their shorts. But Elisheva Levy kept her head. She stayed focused on Kyle’s melancholy form and told us afterward what she had seen: One of his hands slipped into the pocket of his backpack, brought out a shining object, and turned it over thoughtfully.
“I couldn’t swear it was a knife,” she said later. “There was so much going on, and then Chaya stepped on my foot. But I’m pretty sure.”
A week later, Naomi Cohen roused us from our bunks at four in the morning. She was the only one in our cabin who was ever brave enough—or motivated by enough urgency—to cope with the latrines at night. She had seen strange things in the darkness. Once she had told us about passing the picnic tables and observing several figures there in the gloom—counselors, AWOL from their cabins, handing around what looked like a cigarette. Naomi had watched the red tip glowing among the trees, the plume of rising smoke, and was convinced that what she had smelled was marijuana. “My parents are hippies,” she had told us calmly, shrugging.
Now she moved between the bunks, poking us and tickling our feet. She shook Sasha awake and pulled on Julia Goldblatt’s hair. Chaya Stein groaned and put her pillow over her head.
“Come on,” Naomi was murmuring. “Get up, guys. You have to come with me. I don’t want to turn on the light. I don’t want to wake up Itsy-Bitsy.”
Ten minutes later, shivering, we walked down the path together. The camp looked different in the dark—the pines were fizzy, unreal shapes, and between the trunks we could see the lake, as empty of light as a black hole. Tal Klein was trailing her entire sleeping bag over her shoulders, which led to a few catastrophes as the cloth snagged on branches and was stepped on by other girls. Above our heads, bats flickered and dived, the swoop of their wings just visible. Their cries echoed at the very edge of our hearing.
“This way,” Naomi whispered.
“What exactly were you doing out of bed, anyway?” Julia asked.
“I had to go number two. Come on, over here.”
“What the hell could be so important?” snarled Sasha, who was always rendered irascible by lack of sleep. Naomi refused to answer, merely pointing down the trail.
We heard Kyle’s voice before we got close enough to see him. He was in the lobby of the mess hall, and from the sound of it he was either sobbing or laughing. Hannah Breckenridge flung out a hand to stop the rest of us before we barged past the bushes and onto the front lawn, where he might have glimpsed us. We caromed into one another, sh-ing desperately.
“There,” Naomi breathed.
Kyle was seated on a bench, cell phone to his ear. He also held a bottle, from which he was drinking freely. One bulb glared above him, illuminating his cheekbones and the tufts of his dark hair.
“Are you still there?” he cried. “Hello?”
Rachael Schwartz jumped and squealed. Elisheva nudged her to be quiet as Kyle readjusted his grip on the phone.
“I’m trying to tell you what happened,” he said. “No, I won’t lower my voice. You’re the one who—What?”
“Oh wow,” Tal Klein said. “He’s intoxicated.”
“Drunk,” Chaya corrected her. “He’s drunk, Tal. Don’t always talk like the dictionary.”
“My father drinks,” Elisheva said sourly. Several of us turned to look at her in surprise. Normally we would have been thrilled with this kind of salacious detail, but just now we had bigger things on our minds.
“—loved that girl,” Kyle was saying. “I told you that, man. I was going to buy her a ring. Saving up. Listen, because I need you to understand—”
He gulped more of his beer. We could see the liquid dribble down his chin, staining his T-shirt.
“An accident,” he said at last. “You get that, right? An accident.”
“Oh God,” Rachael moaned.
“Zol zein shah!” Sasha said. “Seriously. Be quiet.”
Kyle shifted in the light, his glasses gleaming. He was listening urgently to the person on the other end of the phone. Suddenly he burst out laughing.
“Drunk dial?” he said. “I call you to pour my heart out, and you’re telling me—You—”
He hung up with a savage gesture. The movement made us all jump. Rachael had a hand pressed over her own mouth to stop herself from screaming. As we watched, Kyle drank the last of his beer. The empty bottle seemed to interest him, and he turned it around, watching the light play on the glass. After a moment he held it up to one eye as though it were a telescope.
“Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum,” he said.
With that, he clicked off the light. We waited in the shadows, hardly daring to breathe. The wind wafted down the hillside, carrying the vanilla smell of the pines. Kyle was still there—as our eyes adjusted to the darkness we could make out the turn of his shoulder, his head nestled against the screen. Perhaps he had fallen asleep.
“This is mishugenah,” Hannah Breckenridge said at last. And it was.
The incident broke us into factions. Half of us were convinced that Kyle had murdered Danielle. He had spoken of an accident, which meant that the guilt was tearing him apart. He even had a weapon in his possession. He had called a friend to confess but had chosen to do so when drunk, and thus had not been believed.
The other half of us were less sure. We kind of liked Kyle, the way he threw himself wholeheartedly into the silly skits the counselors put on, the bright, cinnamon tone of his voice when he sang. Perhaps the “accident” had been a fight with Danielle, or even his very public brawl with Joshua on the beach. There was no way to be sure.
“I know what I know,” Sasha Rosen said grimly.
“We don’t know anything,” Hannah Breckenridge argued testily.
Julia wanted to drop the whole thing. We were in our last week of camp; we should just try to have fun while we could. Elisheva wanted to ferret out the truth. We owed that much to Danielle. Naomi wasn’t certain either way. She dithered, changing her mind midconversation. And Chaya Stein was the worst of all. “Innocent until proven guilty,” she intoned, over and over, in a thoroughly self-righteous way—and so the argument went on, until Rachael Shwartz began to cry out of sheer frustration.
One muggy, sun-baked afternoon found us scattered around the tennis court, working halfheartedly to improve our serves. The courts were not shaded, and we were sweating profusely. Tal Klein kept stopping to check her shoulders for sunburn. We dragged ourselves across the grass to retrieve stray balls. Itsy-Bitsy, of course, was not walking among us as Danielle had always done, correcting our grips and cheering us on. Instead, she had settled herself on a boulder with two male counselors. They were ostentatiously sharing drags on a cigarette.
After a while, we glimpsed Sasha Rosen striding purposefully down the path toward us. She had absented herself earlier because her wrist was hurting and she wanted to stop by the nurse’s station. Now she was pushing a younger boy in front of her with the air of a prison guard marching a condemned man to the gallows. Her expression was triumphant.
Our play slowed down. Julia Goldblatt began to toss one of the balls to herself. Rachael Schwartz let her racket fall with a clatter.
Sasha, now steering the younger boy by the shoulder, approached Itsy-Bitsy and said politely, “Excuse me, Ilse. May I take the Apache Bryn Mawr girls over here for just a moment?”
Itsy-Bitsy, absorbed in tapping ash from her cigarette, waved her away without much interest.
“She’s such a tsatskele,” Hannah Breckenridge murmured. Naomi smothered a giggle behind her fingers.
We gathered under an elm tree, reveling in the shade. Most of us settled in a circle, cross-legged, though Chaya Stein flopped on her back on the grass. Sasha coaxed the small boy forward. We recognized him vaguely—a black-haired child who tended to flush crimson when spoken to. He had won the camp pudding-eating competition earlier in the summer.
“I met him in the nurse’s station,” Sasha said. “Go on. Tell them what you told me.”
The boy looked at her.
“It’s fine,” Sasha said gently. “They’re nice girls. I promise.”
“Okay,” the boy said. “Well, I’m in Navajo Harvard. Kyle is my counselor.”
The attention around the circle sharpened at once. Hannah leaned forward, her chin on her fist. The boy turned red and began to rub at one cheek as though seeking to wipe away his blush.
“So one night,” he went on, “I followed Kyle out of the cabin. I was scared of the ghost—it’s stupid, I know. But I saw Kyle go out, and I didn’t want to be there without him. I saw him meet up with that girl who disappeared.”
