Bones & All Read Free Page B

couldn’t think about the game. I just kept smelling the chili powder and the rotten eggs and the cotton lint. His eagerness, his spirit, his thirst for the outdoors: all that had a smell too, like wet leaves, and salty skin, and hot cocoa in a tin cup that knew the shape of his hands.
    â€œI don’t want to play anymore,” I whispered. He won’t grow up. He’ll never be a forest ranger. He’ll never ride another horse. He won’t fight forest fires. He’ll never live in a tree house.
    Luke dropped his cards and took both my hands. “Don’t go, Maren. I want you to stay.”
    I didn’t want to. I really, really wanted to. I leaned in and sniffed him. Chili powder—rotten eggs—cotton lint. I pressed my lips to his throat and felt him stiffen with anticipation. He put a hand to my ponytail and stroked it, like he was petting a horse. He breathed on me, I smelled the chili, and just like that there was no going back.
    *   *   *
    I stumbled out of the red tent toward the lake, out to the edge of the dock, and flung the grocery bag into the water. Then I pulled off my pajamas and threw them out as far as I could. I watched my Little Mermaid T-shirt sink below the surface of the lake, heard the plastic bag gurgling as it filled.
    I fell onto the dock, rocking back and forth with my hands clamped over my mouth to keep the scream in, but it pounded against my face until I felt like my eyeballs were going to pop out. Finally I couldn’t hold it in anymore, so I lay down on the boards, dunked my head, and let it out until the water came up and burned my nose.
    It was only as I walked back up the path through the pine trees—wet, cold, and shivering on the outside, horribly warm and full underneath—that I thought of my mother. Oh, Mama. You won’t love me anymore once you hear what I’ve done .
    I crept back into my cabin as quietly as I could and put my spare pajamas on over my bathing suit. If anyone asked I’d say I’d only gone to the bathroom. I lay in bed shivering, curled up tight as if I could keep the world out. I wanted to be a cicada. I wanted to pull my skin off and leave it in the bushes and nobody would recognize me, not even my own mother. I would be a completely different person and I wouldn’t remember a thing.
    *   *   *
    In the morning it was raining, and my fingernails were rimmed in red. I put on my poncho, hid my hands, and ran to the bathroom. I scrubbed and scrubbed under the faucet, and even then I could still see it. Somebody came out of the stalls to wash her hands and gave me a funny look. My nails were as clean as they were going to get.
    I followed the other girls to the mess hall, so numb I couldn’t feel the ground beneath my feet. I stood in line at the buffet counter. I took a waffle, but I couldn’t taste it. The camp director stood up in front of us and switched on his microphone. “We are very sorry to have to tell you that one of your campmates is missing. For your safety we have notified your parents, and all of you will be picked up this afternoon. In the meantime you will finish breakfast and return to your cabins. No one will be allowed anywhere else on the campsite until their parents arrive.”
    We filed out of the mess hall and found vans from the local news stations in the parking lot. The camp director wouldn’t speak to the reporters.
    The girls in my cabin huddled around the picnic table at the center of the room. “I heard the director talking outside the bathroom,” somebody whispered. “They think Luke was murdered.”
    The others gasped. “Why would they think that? Who did it?”
    â€œGirls,” our counselor cut in from across the room. She was standing with her arms folded at the screen door, watching the rain turn to mud in the walkway between the trees. “I don’t want to hear any more of that talk.