“I hate camping,” Lauren grunted, tripping over the crumpled canvas.
“Yeah, well, it’s my birthday and I like it,” Cara said, reading over the instructions with her tongue tucked between her teeth.
It was the final Friday of summer, and the three of them were in a small clearing in a beech forest on the outskirts of Fairview. Cara’s choice for her early eighteenth birthday celebration: to sleep without a roof and squat-pee behind dark trees all night. It wouldn’t have been Pip’s choice, either, but she knew how to pretend well enough.
“It’s technically illegal to camp outside of a registered campsite,” Lauren said, kicking the canvas in retaliation.
“Well, let’s hope the camping police don’t check Instagram, because I’ve announced it to the world. Now hush,” Cara said, “I’m trying to read.”
“Um, Cara,” Pip said tentatively, “you know this isn’t a tent you brought, right? It’s a canopy with sides.”
“Same difference,” she said. “And we have to fit us and the three boys in.”
“But it comes with no floor.” Pip jabbed her finger at the picture on the instructions.
“You come with no floor.” Cara butt-shoved her away. “And my dad packed us a separate groundsheet.”
“When are the boys getting here?” Lauren asked.
“They texted about two minutes ago they were leaving. And no,” Cara snapped, “we’re not waiting for them to put it up for us, Lauren.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that.”
Cara cracked her knuckles. “Dismantling the patriarchy, one tent at a time.”
“Canopy,” Pip corrected her.
“Do you want me to hurt you?”
“Ca-nope-y.”
Ten minutes later, a full ten-by-twenty-foot white pop-up canopy stood on the forest floor, looking as out of place as anything could. Pip checked her phone. It was seven-thirty already; darkness would be upon them in another hour or so.
“This is going to be so fun.” Cara stood back to admire their handiwork, wiping her hands on her jeans. “I love camping. Time for vodka and peach rings until I puke.”
“Admirable goal,” Pip said. “Do you two want to grab the rest of the food from the car? I’ll lay out our sleeping bags and put up the sides.”
Cara’s car was in the tiny concrete parking lot about two hundred yards from their chosen spot. Lauren and Cara headed off that way through the trees, the woods lit with the final glow of sunset.
“Don’t forget the flashlights,” Pip called, just as she lost sight of them.
She attached the canvas sides to the canopy, swearing as the Velcro gave out and she had to start from scratch. Wrestling with the groundsheet, she was relieved to hear the tread of Cara and Lauren returning. But when she went to look outside for them, no one was there. Just a bird, mocking her from the darkening treetops with its scratchy laugh.
Pip got back to work, laying the three sleeping bags in a row, trying not to think about the fact that Andie Bell could very well be buried somewhere in these woods, maybe even beneath her right now.
As Pip made the final preparations, the sound of branches breaking underfoot grew louder, and she heard the guffawing that could only mean the boys had arrived. She waved them and the girls over. Ant Lowe, who—as his name suggested—hadn’t grown much since they were twelve, although he had bulked out after a summer of playing soccer, his light brown hair gelled away from his forehead. Zach Chen, who’d lived four doors down from the Amobis since Pip was in preschool, his glittering smile stretching across his face, and of course, wearing his favorite green hoodie. And Connor Reynolds, who Pip and Cara had met in middle school, gangly and ever eager to be the class clown. His shaggy blond hair had fallen into his eyes, and his hands were full, carrying a cooler with Zach, so he inadvertently walked into a low-hanging branch.
“You OK?” Lauren laughed.
“Fine,” he grunted. “My mom’s always telling me to branch out.”
“God, your puns get worse every time,” Cara said. “How are you ever going to get a girlfriend?”
“Well, how are you ever going to get a girlfriend?” he retorted.
“With my hot bod and twinkling personality, obv,” she said, donning a silly high voice and flicking her hair.
“Ah, Pip,” Ant chimed in, dropping two bags of snacks, “so kind of you to step away from your homework for one second to grace us with your presence.”
“Ha,” she said flatly. Shockingly, not the first time she’d heard that joke. “I’m already getting withdrawal.”
“Right.” Lauren clapped her hands. “Ant, can you help me unpack these bags?”
Of course he would; he jumped to it right away. Pip knew that Lauren and Ant had had a failed fling last year that amounted to just four kisses and some drunken fumbling. Lauren swore never again, and she said Ant felt the same way, but Pip could tell he was lying from the way he was always looking at her.
“Shall we open the beer?” asked Zach.
A silver-tinted darkness had taken over the woods, the enclosure glowing like a lantern among the sleeping trees. They were sitting in a circle around the snacks and drinks, the sides of the canopy rolled up for a cross breeze, two battery-powered lamps and three flashlights between them. Lucky they had moved to sit inside, Pip noted as it started to rain.
She didn’t like drinking, didn’t like experiencing that loss of control, though the others always said she was being too sensible. She was much more interested in the chips and sour cream dip, although she had allowed herself to get to the bottom of one beer, sitting with her navy star-patterned sleeping bag up to her waist.
Ant was halfway through his ghost story, the flashlight under his chin making the geography of his face distorted and grotesque. It just happened to be a story about six friends, three boys and three girls, who were camping in a canopy in the woods.
“And the birthday girl,” he said theatrically, “is finishing off a whole bag of peach rings and drinking some nasty red concoction that looks like blood.”
“Shut up,” Cara said, mouth full.
“She tells the handsome guy with the flashlight to shut up. And that’s when they hear it: a scraping sound against the side of the canopy. There’s something or someone outside. Slowly, fingernails start dragging through the side, ripping a hole in the canvas. ‘You guys having a party?’ a girl’s voice asks. And then she tears through the hole and, with one swipe of her hand, slits the throat of the guy in the green hoodie. ‘Miss me?’ she shrieks, and the surviving friends can finally see who it is: the rotting zombie corpse of Andie Bell, out for revenge—”
“Shut up, Ant.” Pip shoved him. “That isn’t funny.”
“Why’s everyone laughing, then?”
“A murdered girl isn’t fair game for your crappy jokes.”
“But she’s fair game for a school project?” Zach interjected.
“That’s different.”
“I was just about to get to the part about Andie’s secret older-lover-slash-killer,” Ant said.
Pip shot him a blistering look.
“Lauren told me,” he said quietly.
“Cara told me,” Lauren jumped in, slurring the edges of her words.
“Cara?” Pip turned to her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, tripping over the words because she was the wrong side of four measures of vodka. “I didn’t know it was supposed to be secret. I only told Naomi and Lauren. And I told them not to tell anyone.” She swayed, pointing accusatorily at Lauren.
It was true; Pip hadn’t specifically told her to keep it secret. She didn’t think she had to.
“My project isn’t to provide you with gossip.” She tried to flatten out her voice when it spiked with annoyance, looking from Cara to Lauren to Ant.
“Doesn’t matter,” Ant said. “Like, half of our grade knows you’re doing a project about Andie Bell. And why are we talking about homework on our last Friday night of freedom anyway? Zach, bring out the board.”
“What board?” Cara asked.
“I brought a Ouija board. Cool, huh?” Zach said, dragging his bag over. He pulled out a tacky plastic-looking rectangle and laid it out in the middle of the circle.
“Nope,” Lauren said, crossing her arms. “No way. That’s way over the scary boundary. Stories are fine, but no communicating with spirits.”
Pip snorted at the boys trying to convince Lauren so they could pull whatever prank it was they had planned. She reached over the Ouija board to grab another bag of chips, and that’s when she saw it.
A white light flashed from within the trees.
She sat up on her heels and squinted. It happened again. In the distance a small rectangular light turned into view and then disappeared. Like the glow of a phone screen.
She waited, but the light didn’t come back. There was only darkness. The sound of rain in the air. The silhouettes of sleeping trees.
Until one of the dark tree-figures shifted on two legs.
“Guys,” she said quietly. A small kick to Ant’s shin to shut him up. “No one look now, but I think there’s someone in the trees. Watching us.”