"That. Was. Fucking. Awesome!" 

Jasper bounces down the path on the balls of his heels, bursting with excitement. "What a rush. Seriously, what a rush. I've never had this much adrenaline pumping through my body in my life. Is this what drugs feel like? Maybe I should start doing drugs."

"Don't do drugs," Ronan and I say at the same time.

Jasper grabs a pine tree by the trunk and swings his scrawny body around like he's Gene Kelly in Singing In The Rain. He's making such a commotion that I feel like I should intervene, but at the same time, he looks too happy to be stopped. 

Ronan raises an eyebrow at me and asks, "Do you think he's even broken a rule in his life?"

"Outlook not so good."

Jasper skips away from the tree, attempts a cart-wheel, lands awkwardly on his butt, and then gets up and shimmies away like he aced an Olympic routine. "I am the coolest man alive!" He throws his arms into the air like he's about to do a jumping-jack. "I am invincible!"

"Pretty confident words for someone who just fell on his ass in the mud," Ronan points out.

I cluck my tongue at him. "Enough. This could be a turning point for him-- maybe he's finally coming out of his shell."

"Or it could be the beginning of his life of crime."

"That's awful, Ronan."

"Why? Jasper was a lot more innocent before he met us. We've corrupted a perfectly good kid."

I watch as Jasper leaps into the air and executes a perfect heel-click jump. "He doesn't seem so corrupted to me," I say, fighting back a smile.

Ronan snaps his fingers in my face. "Hello. Helloooo."

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Checking if you can still see me through those rose-colored glasses."

I slap his hand away. "Piss off. You're ruining the moment."

"And you've ruined Jasper Sostenuto."

"How is that my fault? You're the one that dragged him into this mess."

"Glass houses, Fish."

"Oh, fuck off."

Our group parts ways at the fork in the path. Jasper pulls me into a quick, tight hug, and gives Ronan a fist-bump. "Thanks, guys. Tonight was the best." 

"Stay safe," I tell him. 

"Don't you fucking dare get caught," Ronan says pleasantly. 

Jasper gifts us with a toothy grin before limping away into the trees. His small form is swallowed almost instantly by the gloomy forest, but the cheerful sound of his humming lingers in the air long after he's gone. I make a silent prayer to whoever's listening that he doesn't run into any of the counselors on the way back. I doubt that Jasper would sell us out, but I don't think he could manage a believable lie, either. 

"Come on," Ronan says. "They'll be doing bed checks soon."

We hurry back to Beckarof Cabin, silence trailing after us like a stray dog. It feels like the entire forest is holding its breath-- and it seems that every tree has grown a pair of eyes to watch us.  

We barely make it back to the cabin in time. Thud. Thud. The noise tears violently through the quiet night, and the sheer wrongness of it makes my heart skip I beat. Blood rushes through my veins like a stampede of wild horses. I throw myself into bed and hold every muscle in my body perfectly still, foolishly hoping that the knock was just a tree branch hitting the door.

Thud. Thud. Definitely not a tree branch this time. Then comes another knock. It sounds more like a crash, but I know it's just the suffocating silence amplifying the noise. 

I don't budge an inch. I try to pretend that I'm a statue, made of stone instead of flesh. And then: "Campers, open up! This is an inspection."

The word inspection hollows out a pit in my stomach. I shoot Ronan a panicked look, but his eyes are fixed on the door. 

"Ronan," I hiss. He doesn't respond. 

I surreptitiously slip Becca's files under my pillow. If I'm going to be caught, I'd rather not be caught with a handful of incriminating evidence. Again. (That would be a little too on the nose.)

"If you do not open your door, I will take it upon myself to open it for you," says the voice. "You have five seconds."

I mouth, do you think it's her? towards Ronan, but he doesn't seem to notice. He's still staring at the door, his eyes squinted into pensive crescent moons. 

"Ronan," I dare to whisper. "What do we do?"

Ronan doesn't respond. Instead, he slips out of his bed, and tip-toes carefully towards the door.  

"What are--" I'm about to tell him to stop when he places his hand on the handle and the door swings open. "Ronan, no!"

The beam of a flashlight slashes through the dark interior of the cabin. I fling my hands up in front of my eyes to block the assault of light, but the aftershock imprints on my vision, leaving behind a splotch that reappears when I blink. Shadows dance across the walls. "Ronan--"

The light fades away to illuminate a narrow face and blindingly platinum blonde hair. It's Karen. I risk a glance in her direction. She's not wearing a camp tee, which is unnerving— she's practically a stranger in her grey sweatpants and hoodie advertising the name of a Midwestern college I've heard of once or twice in passing, and she looks way too normal to be bursting into our cabin at two in the morning. 

"Move," she says to Ronan. It's nothing short of an order. Somehow, even in her pajamas, she still commands an air of authority. "Now."

Ronan moves.

The counselor storms into the cabin, her eyes skimming across every inch of the room-- my rumpled sheets, the Metallica poster hanging lopsided on the wall, the jackets dangling like shadows on their hooks. She tears into minuscule details, immediately devouring the sight of anything out of the ordinary, while the flashlight follows her stare, its searching beam just as hungry as the gleam in her pale blue eyes.

The light winds its way across the cabin, starving for that damning piece of evidence that I'm sure Karen is here for. "Turn on the light," she commands.

I reach over and grab for the light switch. As I do, Ronan finally makes eye contact with me.

They don't know, he mouths.

A weight drops in my rib cage. How? Not how did the Director not figure it out? but instead, how can you tell?

Ronan's eyes dart meaningfully towards the counselor, She doesn't know what she's looking for, he says silently.

Light floods into the cabin as I flick the switch. Slowly, I pull myself out of bed (lying down while Karen grills us makes me feel way too vulnerable), my head thundering with my newfound realization: the Director must have called every counselor after she realized someone had deliberately thrown a rock through her window, and directed them to check that all the campers were in the proper places. She doesn't know that it was Jasper who threw the rock, or that it was us— all three of us— that broke into her cabin. If she did, Karen wouldn't feel the need to search our room so thoroughly— she'd just haul us to the main cabin for questioning.

The Director probably doesn't even realize that we broke into her cabin. How could she? We didn't leave any traces of our crime behind. She'll never know that I picked the lock and then rummaged through her private files; she'll never realize that Jasper hacked through her password-protected computer and opened all her documents. We really did pull off the perfect crime; perfect, in the sense that the Director will never find out.

Karen turns the flashlight on Ronan. It's a pointless gesture, as the room is bright enough with the lamp turned on, but it bears the weight of a silent accusation behind it. "You don't look tired," she snaps. Her tone is suspicious, but generically so— it's clear that she's employing the voice of a distrusting adult who's been suddenly confronted with two criminally-inclined teenagers. But it's not the voice of a person who already knows what you've done and is just waiting for you to trip up.

Ronan's face is a mask of expressionless skin. "I couldn't sleep."

There's no trace of deception to be found in his words. Probably because he's partially telling the truth— Ronan rarely ever sleeps. I've woken up many nights to see him either staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, or to an empty bed. It's easy to lie when you include a kernel of the truth.

"And why is that?"

"I have insomnia. It gets worse when I'm stressed."

Ronan gives Karen a look, as if to point out that she's only worsening his grave condition. She returns his look with an indifferent sense of I could care less.

I get the sense that this back-and-forth of snappy comebacks could continue all night, so I decide to interject before Ronan says something actually offensive and lands us in even hotter water. "What's going on?" I ask. It's a reasonable question, and one that I would probably ask if Karen came barging into our cabin under the pretenses of "inspection" any other night of the week. "Did we do something wrong?"

"Not that I know of," Karen replies. "Yet."

The last word sends a chill running down my spine. I know from past experiences that Karen is good at seeing through facades— let's not forget that she knew I was the one that punched Ronan off the boat, despite both of our denials. Her eyes are more searching than most. And right now, my faux innocence feels paper-thin under her prying gaze.

"I can assure you that neither of us has left this cabin since lights out," Ronan says. Once again, he sounds completely sure about what he's saying, but only because he's been trained for years in double-crossing and deceit. Abruptly, I find myself wondering if, on the other side of camp, Jasper is suffering the same interrogation— and if he's already crumbled beneath it. "You can trust me, Karen. When have I ever lied to you?"

One of her eyebrows arches upwards, speaking of numerous occasions of dishonesty.

But if her disbelief bothers Ronan, he doesn't let on. "I don't see what all the fuss is about," he continues, spreading his palms upwards in eager supplication. "We haven't broken any rules. Both of us have been lying in our beds for the past four hours. And sleeping sure makes it hard to break rules— unless we were sleepwalking, of course."

The shadow of a grin creeps across Ronan's face as he says this last phrase. (Of course he's starting to enjoy this. Only he could find amusement in lying to a camp counselor.)

"I never implied that you had broken any rules," Karen says huffily, even though it's quite clear that implying we've broken the rules has been her main intent since she first marched into the room. "This is only a mandatory cabin inspection. And, as far as I can tell, you've passed."

A distasteful look flutters across her face. I can imagine that forcing out the word passed caused her severe physical pain.

"Goodnight, then," Ronan says. He even offers her a polite wave.

Karen returns the wave with a studious frown. Then, she stomps out of the room, but this time with a significant lack of forcefulness. The door closes with a sense of finality behind her.

After waiting a few crucial seconds, I turn to Ronan and say, "Close call."

"Too close for comfort," he replies, crossing back over to his bed and collapsing into the pillows. His phantom smirk fades slowly from his face. "It was worth it, though. I found something on the Director's computer."

This gets me intrigued. Ronan didn't mention anything about new information on our way back to the cabin, so I assumed he hadn't found anything at all. "Really? What is it?"

"An incident report she uploaded this year. Most of it was blacked out, but I got a name— Michael Hatch. Ever heard of him?"

I shake my head.

"Exactly. There's nobody named Michael at Lightlake. This means that he must have been a camper from a previous summer— and I get the gut feeling that he's from the summer of '69."

"Okay, fine. Say that I'm considering your crazy theory. It still doesn't explain why the Director would upload a file from twenty years ago now."

A shadow passes over Ronan's face, and it occurs to me that he could play an excellent serial killer in a horror movie. There's something about his expression that's more unnerving than the wind whistling through the shingles on the roof. "Maybe we're not the only ones dredging up old secrets," he says softly. "Maybe someone else is trying to figure out what happened to Clancey, too."

"Maybe you're so eager to find a conspiracy that you'll willing to create one yourself," I point out. "I know you think Lightlake is boring. You've been waiting for something to go wrong since day one, and now you're blowing it all out of proportion."

Ronan rolls his eyes. "I've got better things to do than play make-believe, Fish. I know that there's something shady about this camp, and mark my words— I will find out what it is. Even if that means I have to force the truth out of Wolseley himself."

"Jesus, Ronan, this isn't a fucking episode of Scooby-Doo. We aren't going to pull the mask off the bad guy's face because there is no bad guy. Clancey was probably delusional when he told you there was a monster in the lake, and for all we know, Wolseley could have gotten fired as a lifeguard for being too depressing. So, for once in your life, could you admit that you're wrong and move on?"

Somehow, my harsh words manage to shut Ronan up, and I use his rare moment of silence as an opportunity to climb back into bed and heave the sheets over my bare, goose-bumped legs, shivering a little as the chill of the night settles in around me. I don't feel guilty for snapping at him. Playing Nancy Drew tends to lose its appeal after a while, especially when you get dragged into mysteries that threaten your life.

I glance over at Ronan. Unsurprisingly, my little speech about no-more-plans-and-I-mean-it has pissed him off, and he's narrowing his eyes at me in a way that means trouble.

"I saw you steal that file," he says.

I blink at him. "What?"

"Don't act coy. You've already got a history of stealing confidential files." Somehow, Ronan sounds perfectly calm, as if we're merely discussing the weather. "So, why'd you do it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Do you think I'm blind? I saw you steal the file when you thought I was busy arguing with Jasper, and then I saw you hide the file under your pillow before Karen came into the cabin. You're the most obvious thief I've ever met."

I glare at him. There's no use arguing, now that's he caught me red-handed. "Fine. You got me. I stole the file, okay? I stole Becca's file." These last few words fall out of my mouth in a disgruntled rush, and I feel an intense surge of dislike towards Ronan for getting me to reveal this information. "There. You win."

"Why?"

"I was curious. Becca never tells me anything about herself, so I figured it would be a good way to learn more about her."

"Those aren't your secrets to know."

"Yeah, well I bet Becca knows a lot of my secrets, so it's only fair!"

Ronan looks at me long and hard for a few seconds. His arching eyebrow tells me what I already know: that instead of coming across as defensive and reasonable, I really just sound like a whiny little kid.

"Turn off the light," he says.

"Excuse me?"

"I'm tired. I want to go to sleep. Turn off the light."

I get the feeling that Ronan is mad at me, but I don't know exactly why. I'm tired of twisting myself in knots trying to understand him. The exhilaration of the night has faded away; now I just feel irritable, and a little bit ashamed.

"I'm not going to read all of it," I tell him. "I just wanted to know something."

"It's not your something to know."

"So what?" My voice rises an octave. "So what?"

"You know what, Finn."

Furiously, I slam my hand into the light switch, plunging the cabin into darkness. I wonder if Ronan can hear my heart beating in the silence.

"Don't tell Becca that I stole it," I force out.

"I won't," he says. He sounds honest, although he could also be lying through his teeth and planning to reveal my theft to Becca tomorrow— it's impossible to tell which way the wind is blowing with him. "But she's going to figure it out eventually."

Ronan's tone strikes me as excessively scathing. And then, just to rub it in, he turns his back on my and rolls over to face the wall, the blankets rustling as he shifts, all very deliberately. "And when she does," he continues, "you'll regret it."