Before Wings Read online

  Voices and laughter were coming from the cabin that was called Prairie Sky. Adrien stopped. These cabins were supposed to be empty until Sunday when the campers arrived, but as she listened, another peal of laughter floated out of a window. Prairie Sky was closest to the lake, the only cabin in this section that she had never stayed in. Still, she knew what it would look like. Each cabin held five bunk beds and several dressers. She had always grabbed a top bunk and spent her week sleeping mid-air, drifting on the ebb and flow of the other girls’ breathing.

  The windows were open, airing the place out. Standing on tiptoe, she could just see in. At first there was nothing, just the quiet green light filtering through the trees. Then she glimpsed something in a corner—someone turning, part of her visible, but transparent. It was the girl from the photograph, the one with the beaked nose and the wide laughing mouth. She was laughing now, her voice clear, and then she spoke.

  “What would Erin do if she knew we were spying on the guys’ cabins?”

  “She’d probably want to come along.” A second girl came into view, also transparent but recognizable with her long red ponytail, tube top and shorts—another of the five girls grouped close to Aunt Erin. “Especially if we picked Spruce Hollow. Sure wish we had Peter Pecker for our counselor. Think he could wear tighter swim trunks?”

  “Not and still get into them.” This voice belonged to a girl sitting on a top bunk. All Adrien could see of her were vague swinging legs.

  “You think Erin will get into them?” asked the first girl.

  There was another peal of laughter.

  “She’s sure been watching him,” said a fourth voice, out of Adrien’s line of sight. “I was almost drowning at swim class yesterday, and she didn’t even notice.”

  “We should set them up.” Arms outstretched, the first girl spun a thoughtful pirouette. “Then spy on them. I’d give them twenty minutes to complete the dirty deed.”

  “You only need three.” Another girl walked into view. The last of the photograph’s laughing group of five, she had short blond-brown hair with obvious highlights, and was pulling on a swimsuit, careless of who watched.

  “You only need three, Nat,” said the first girl, stopping her pirouette. “Most people do more than grunt and jump each other, you know. Erin would want time to ... ease into it.”

  Giggles erupted. The girl with the swinging legs fell backwards, kicking her legs with glee.

  “How would you know?” asked Nat, now fully dressed and fluffing her hair. “I’m the only one here who’s done it.”

  “Yeah, you did it,” said the first girl. “But did you enjoy it? That’s what I’d like to know.”

  Nat ignored her.

  The legs resumed their swinging. “D’you think he’d kiss her first, or would she kiss him?”

  “He’d kiss her.” Nat’s reply was automatic.

  “D’you think he’d touch her boobs?” asked the legs.

  “If they were going to get anywhere.”

  Adrien was getting hot and bothered. She hadn’t had girlfriends since she was thirteen, when French kissing had been the hot topic. There had been jokes about groping, but no one had gotten this graphic about what came after.

  “D’you think she’d touch his—”

  The voices and outlines of the girls vanished, and Adrien whimpered in disappointment. Just when it had been getting interesting. They had been talking about Aunt Erin.

  “Watching the dead?”

  Adrien whirled. Paul stood in the clearing at the front of the cabin, holding a dark brown bottle. She sagged against the cabin wall.

  “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

  “Sorry. That cabin’s haunted. See any ghosts?”

  “No,” she said immediately. “I stayed in this cabin once. Nostalgia, you know.”

  “Door’s open,” said Paul. “Just walk in and get fully nostalgic.”

  “In a haunted cabin? No thanks.” She wasn’t sure why she was lying. For the past three years, everything in her life had been private, separate. She had grown used to holding experiences to herself, the way she had clutched the till in Aunt Erin’s office. Who would she be if she let go?

  “The nurse is off until Sunday, so Erin sent me to doctor you.” He produced a package of cotton batting and unscrewed the bottle cap.

  “It’s just a scrape,” Adrien said, stepping back.

  Paul shrugged. “Erin’s hyper about this kind of stuff. Lose a hangnail, she’ll send you to Emerg. C’mon, I just have to clean it, make sure you aren’t about to croak.”

  “What makes you an expert?”

  He made a few harsh croaking noises. “On the verge.”

  Adrien grinned reluctantly, then slowly extended her arm. The whole thing felt awkward, the air stiff and uncomfortable, full of echoes: It’s going to happen, one way or another. That’s an attitude. It’s my attitude that keeps killing me a hundred different ways?

  “How’d you know where I was?” She winced as the hydrogen peroxide settled into the broken skin.

  “Sniffed you out.” He leaned close, wiping away a trickle of dry blood. “I can do that sometimes.”

  “Creepy,” said Adrien. “Aunt Erin says you have a sixth sense.”

  “Maybe.” He swabbed the sore area, examining every stinging millimeter. She wanted to pull away from the pain, but his dark hair was tickling her cheek, and her brain was going soft and fuzzy. She wanted to smell his hair, she wanted to brush her lips across it, she wanted ... He looked up, his eyes on her slightly open mouth.

  “Whose arrow was it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Take a guess.”

  “A lot of people were shooting.”

  “Adrien, you get shot by an arrow and you’re seeing ghosts. Something’s going on here.”

  Her chin went up and she stepped back. “You don’t talk to me for days, and now you think you can just tell me what’s going on in my life? I told you, I didn’t see any ghosts. And the arrow was an accident.”

  “I doubt it.” He stepped forward; she took another step back. “There’s a strange light around you,” he said quietly. “You glow. Like you’re standing in the light from some other place.”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it. The silence around them was tremendous.

  “That first day,” said Paul, “down by the lake, I saw past you. You were sitting in the lifeguard’s chair and just beyond you, in the sky, was a huge opening. There was another world there, full of others. Others who’ve passed through. They were watching you.”

  Adrien’s head was full of tiny falling things. She turned from his dark staring eyes and ran into the whisper of the knowing trees.

  She woke suddenly to someone leaning over her in the dark. From the perfume she knew it was Darcie, but still Adrien feigned sleep, listening to the other girl’s soft uneven breathing. It was the middle of the night; Darcie was either heading out to the campfire or coming back in. What could she possibly want now—to drag Adrien with her a second time? To deliver a nasty message from Connor? After her conversation in the office with Aunt Erin, Darcie had spent the evening campfire watching Adrien, her face twisted in thought that was obviously new territory, but the two girls hadn’t spoken since Adrien had run into the cabin that afternoon and pulled Darcie’s duffel bag out of her hands, panting so hard she could barely get the words out: “You’re not fired. Aunt Erin says she made a mistake. Go talk to her. Now.” When Darcie had hesitated, a proud grimace on her face, Adrien had burst out with a raw “Please!”

  Why had it mattered so much? For that second while Darcie wavered, Adrien had thought her heart would split wide open with panic, but finally Darcie had turned, tightlipped, and left the cabin. Adrien had sunk down onto the bed, next to the pile of makeup and clothing her roommate had been about to shove into the stinky duffel bag, and the next few minutes had been complete exhaustion. When the air had begun to move again, she had put everything away where it belong
ed—the perfume and nail polish on the dresser, the duffel bag under the bed, the frilly lacy underwear in the dresser drawers.

  Now, in the dark, Darcie’s hand brushed her shoulder. Adrien kept her eyes closed.

  “You surprised me, Grouch.” Darcie’s voice whispered within itself, so quiet it was almost thought. “Your aunt told me what you said. I never would’ve thought you’d stick up for me. I thought you hated all of us, maybe me the most, but I guess you don’t. I guess you really think the campfire’s stupid. Well, I’m going to tell you something. I think it’s stupid too, but I don’t have your guts. Or maybe I like people more, I don’t know. But from now on, I’m your friend. I’ll stick up for you, I promise.” There was a quiet pause, filled with Darcie’s soft puffy breathing. Then she straightened and moved to the door. “One last thing, Grouch. I know you’re awake. I know you heard what I just said. When I promise something, I mean it. We’re friends, whatever that takes.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Darcie slipped out the door. Adrien listened to the sounds of the other girls following her. Then they were gone, fading into the night, heading off to do whatever it was they did around the campfire when Aunt Erin wasn’t watching. She lay a while longer, then sat up. The night air felt full of huge places, shifting and rearranging. That afternoon, talking to Paul, she had been afraid, but now she was restless, stirred by dark currents and far from sleep. Slipping on a pair of jeans and her father’s lumber jacket, she left the cabin and headed through the woods toward the lake, then cut across the lawn to the older girls’ cabins, just inside the trees.

  Prairie Sky loomed dark and silent, no transparent girls giggling in their beds. Had they actually been ghosts like Paul said, or had she imagined them because she had stared so long at the photograph? And why had there only been five? Where were the other three girls Aunt Erin had counseled that week?

  She saw them as she came through the trees onto the ridge above the beach, their gray smoky glow floating on the water’s surface—the spirits of five girls splayed as if in sleep. She felt the certainty of it then, like cold water swamping her face. The girls she had seen that afternoon in Prairie Sky were the five girls in her aunt’s photograph, and they had all died somehow, while they were young. For some reason their spirits had returned to haunt the lake. But why? Were their deaths the reason her aunt prowled the campground in the dark, the reason Adrien had caught her on the beach that first night, staring out at the water? Something connected Aunt Erin to those spirits, and it was more than the fact that she had been their counselor while they were alive. Why else would she keep a photograph of them under the mat on her desk, where she could slip it out and look at it several times a day? Don’t get second chances when someone’s dead. Some deep tragedy had hold of her, a mystery that linked her to the five girls’ deaths, something no one ever talked about, including Adrien’s parents. If any staff at Camp Lakeshore knew, they were keeping quiet out of respect for Aunt Erin. The secret had been completely buried, just like the girls’ bodies must have been.

  But the girls weren’t keeping themselves buried. Adrien had seen them again at supper, lined up in front of the dining hall, their five faces pretending to be quiet and well-behaved so they could get in for food. There had been just a glimpse of them, and then they had disappeared. Staff had walked through the place the girls had been standing without a flicker of awareness, and when Adrien had stepped into it there had been nothing, not even the whisper of a girl’s voice, her far-off laughter.

  She sat on the ridge and watched the spirits. They seemed to be sleeping, drifting on invisible currents but always together, as if they were a single unit. That afternoon, she had heard their voices and learned one of their names—Nat. Short for Natalie? What were the rest of their names? What were their stories? And why were the girls appearing to her both before and after, alive and dead? They seemed trapped between worlds, unsure where they belonged, just like she was.

  The lake lapped at the shore, quiet but uneasy. The ground was covered with dead wings. Adrien realized she was probably staining the seat of her jeans and was about to get up when someone sat down beside her, bumping her knee. Turning, she saw Connor, his hair phosphorescent in the moonlight. A coldness crept through her, and she went very still. A ways down the beach, a frog called slow and steady. The moon shone lonely and empty, the silent campground stretched behind them. The rest of the staff would be at the campfire now, but Aunt Erin, Guy and Gwen were nearby, sleeping in their beds like normal people. If she needed to, she would scream. She would pull the dead out of the ground with her screaming.

  “So this is where you hang out at night.” Connor scanned the water, his voice conversational. She wondered if he could see the spirits, if the spirits could see the two humans sitting on the night edge of the lake. If she spoke, maybe she would feel less fear.

  “Why aren’t you doing your campfire thing?”

  He was several inches taller, and so close she could smell his shampoo. He plucked a stalk of grass and began shredding it. “Just looking for my lost arrows,” he said softly.

  “Yeah, well, I found mine.” She started to get up, but he grabbed her wrist.

  “C’mon.” His face was suddenly full of smiles. “I saw you sitting here, so I came over to check out your arm. How’s your arm, Adrien?”

  “It’d be fine,” she said, “if you let go of it.”

  He started rubbing her shoulder. “Let’s make pax, eh? I don’t want to spend my summer fighting with the boss’s niece. Erin’ll fire me if you don’t like me.”

  “Stop touching me.”

  “Pax?” He slid an arm around her, and she pushed at him.

  “Pax or kiss my ass?” she hissed.

  He let go of her then. “Either.”

  The lake lapped at their ears; the beach was a calm splash of moonlight. For an odd moment, his eyes lingered on her mouth. Her heart pounded.

  “Neither,” she said harshly.

  He jumped off the ridge, taking the steep drop to the sand and landing on his feet. “This is neither. I’ll take you midnight canoeing.”

  “Isn’t that against the rules?”

  “They’re my rules. I’m in charge of waterfront. I won’t tell, you won’t tell. It’ll be our secret.”

  She hesitated, and he stepped closer. “Listen.” His voice was suddenly hoarse, his face almost frightened. “It was a joke, okay? I didn’t mean to hit you with that arrow, I swear.”

  “Well, you did.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Look, I apologize. It was a dumb, stupid, dork-brain thing to do.”

  He stood in front of her, one hand outstretched—tall, broad-shouldered, probably twenty-one. It was a moment to take hold of, a moment that could change things. Any one of the five girls from Prairie Sky would have jumped at the chance. Adrien wavered. Maybe she was overreacting. Like he said, it was nothing more than a joke gone wrong. She hadn’t died, after all. Everyone made mistakes, didn’t they? Here was an opportunity to make pax, go night canoeing and come back different, laughing and carefree like a popular girl. She would be popular if Connor liked her, she would have friends ...

  Out on the water the spirits were rising, their arms reaching toward her, their mouths opening in a low wail. Their sound twisted through her; every fiber in her body vibrated with the long thin moans of the dead girls on the lake.

  “Maybe not tonight,” she said uncertainly, watching them. “I’m tired.”

  “You’re not scared of a little water, are you?” He stepped closer, looking up at her. “Is it your aunt you’re worried about? I can handle her.”

  She remembered the stomp-grunt combo. Her head cleared and she couldn’t believe she had been about to get in a canoe with this jerk. “You’re lucky she doesn’t know about your campfire shit.”

  “Oh, she knows,” he said. “The sweet boss knows, all right.”

  In spite of what Paul had told her, Adrien couldn’t believe her aunt would ever have snuck
out to any middle-of-the-night campfires, even twenty years ago. She gave a scornful laugh. “She’d fire you so fast.”

  Connor raised his hands, still smiling. “It’s a tradition. Hey, it’s been around longer than she has. Goes back as long as Camp Lakeshore.” He took a step forward. “What d’you think your precious auntie did at night when she first started working here?”

  “Not that.” Wild fury rose in her. “She was a counselor, not skills or maintenance. She had kids to take care of, she would’ve been responsible.”

  Connor started to laugh.

  “Stop laughing,” she demanded. “And stop talking about her like that.”

  He passed a hand over his face, wiping the laughter clean. For a moment he stood motionless and gorgeous in the moonlight, then took a sudden run up the path and jogged across the lawn toward the trees. “Beer calls,” he waved. “Ta-ta ...”

  She turned back to the spirits. They had stopped wailing and were floating on the quiet water, their bodies intertwined as if they were extensions of one another. She wasn’t certain, but she thought they were watching her. Closer than a mother, closer than a father. Closer than any aunt. The spirits watched her the way she watched them.

  “I love you,” she whispered to the five dead girls. Then she turned, heading across the lawn to her empty cabin, the loneliness that would not leave her, the deep dreaming sleep.

  seven

  Saturday morning, Adrien sat on the office steps and watched joking groups of staff climb into cars and drive away. Dressed in shorts and swimsuits, they carried hats and sunscreen, and were headed for a nearby public beach. Usually, she received at least a few calls of “Hey Grouch, how’s the swamp?” but today no one waved or spoke to her. After last night’s chat on the beach, Connor must have told everyone at the campfire to give her the cold shoulder for refusing pax. She felt invisible, part of another dimension. When she saw Darcie approaching, arm-in-arm with Connor, laughing and bumping hips, Adrien retreated into the office and watched from a window as they climbed into Connor’s Toyota. Several others joined them, but her stomach still felt like the bottom of a lake. So much for her roommate’s promise of eternal friendship.