The Summer We Forgot, page 18
“What the heck, Cy?”
“Look, I’m sorry. Guess I snapped. That summer, you wouldn’t shut up about Darby. You bailed on me whenever she wanted to hang. Remember that fishing trip to Key Largo? You backed out the second Darby invited you to some family event.” Cyrus leans forward, his nose reddening beneath a patch of sunscreen. “I made a mistake.”
“You swore you didn’t leak it,” I say, careful not to let my voice reach a yell. “I blamed Kip and called him a liar.”
“I haven’t lied about anything else.”
“How can I be sure of that?” I spit the knotted cherry stem into a napkin and climb from the booth. “Brent wants me to stop by the marina, so I better go—”
“Morgan.” Cyrus slings his legs from beneath the table. He shakes, his eyes glassy and bloodshot. “I’m sorry, okay? You can trust me.”
The picture wasn’t his fault. I screwed up my relationship with Darby when I completed the dare. But he lied to me, not once or twice. He sat in my passenger seat for years and listened to me bash Kip. He took the wedge I created and hammered it deeper between Darby and me.
I’m not mad at what he did. I’m furious he kept his mouth shut about it.
Because if he lied to me once, how can I trust anything he says?
“Please—” Cyrus rises to his feet. “I swear I’m not lying about other stuff.”
Like his relationship with Annabelle, the bloody shovel in his garage, and why he didn’t tell me about Spooner’s backpack.
Cops pivot on their stools and size us up.
My whole body seems to vibrate with adrenaline. I rub my wrist, the bracelet faded around it, and a realization catches fire within me.
A sparked match held to propane.
We, the counselors from Camp Choctawhatchee, have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Bad people roam this highway. Our names might join their roster, or maybe we’re the prey. Regardless, lies aside, our best option for allies is each other.
I grip Cyrus’s shoulder and lower my voice to a whisper. “If we don’t have trust, we have nothing. You get that, right? We either get out of this mess together, or we’re all screwed.”
The following interview was conducted at Walton County Sheriff’s Office on August 18, 2020, at 1:21 p.m. Present at the interview were Detective Naomi Sutter (SUTTER) and Spooner Hudson (HUDSON) regarding case number 16–001345, which involved the disappearance of 30A Community School science teacher Dr. Richard Horowitz.
SUTTER: Let’s get started. What’s your full name and address?
HUDSON: Spooner Maddox Hudson. 114 Eastern Lake Road, Seagrove, Florida.
SUTTER: You’re not in trouble, Mr. Hudson. I just want to talk about your science teacher.
HUDSON: Is Annabelle okay? What happened to her?
SUTTER: She fainted, but the paramedics said she’ll be alright.
HUDSON: Doctors keep saying that, but I don’t believe them.
SUTTER: What doctors?
HUDSON: I’m not adjusting well. At least, that’s what my parents say.
SUTTER: Do you visit a lot of therapists?
HUDSON: Not really. I hate questions . . . and needles.
SUTTER: Tell me about Dr. Horowitz. Did you have a good relationship with him?
HUDSON: He had a lot of secrets. Most people do. I mean, we all stretch the truth, pick our noses but swear we don’t. We’re all liars, and so was Dr. Horowitz. His secrets were bad though. Not like magazines shoved under a mattress or cigarettes smoked in private. Really bad.
SUTTER: I need you to be honest with me. What happened at Camp Choctawhatchee?
HUDSON: His secrets caught up with him. That’s all I have to say.
Chapter 14
Darby
JULY 8
SEASIDE
My mundane tasks at the Comber can’t keep me out of my own head. I shouldn’t think so much about the blackmail video. I shouldn’t have watched it forty-three times. But I do. I did. It’s engraved into my thoughts, each tilt of the head, each brush of Morgan’s lips, all playing on the walls of my mental room like a four-way theater.
Another secret. This ache within me to feel what I felt then. No one can know, not the number of times I watched the video or how I think about a boy more than a murder.
A milkshake glass smacks the bar’s resin countertop.
I spin toward the sound, dots floating across my vision like a swarm of gnats at golden hour. The Comber sharpens into focus, a Norman Rockwell diner overlooking the Gulf. Vinyl stools and checkered tables, patrons sinking their teeth into sandwiches and banana splits, mister fans whirling the sultry air into a damp breeze.
Chocolate malt slithers toward the bar’s edge in dark veins.
“Happens all the time,” I tell a little boy, who gawks at the mess while his parents rush to create a napkin barricade. I grab a dishrag from the counter and sop up the brown sap. “Don’t worry. I’ll make another one for you. No charge.”
The parents mutter thank-yous as I hurry to remake the milkshake. I scoop chocolate ice cream from a cooler into a silver cup. I add milk before whipping the concoction together in a spinner. Then I pour the drink into a frosted glass, top it with cream, and deliver it to the little boy. Already condensation slides down the cup and creates a rim on the bar’s countertop.
Perhaps I wouldn’t think so much if Morgan didn’t haunt my dreams. Each night I imagine him standing on my front porch as cicadas wail our song. He leaves without a word, and I chase him down the road in the bronzy glow of streetlamps, my hair still wet from the shower and scented with rosemary shampoo. I yell at him to come back, to please love me again. He freezes. He looks at me with tears in his eyes. He cups my face in his large, callused hands and breathes against my lips, “I never stopped.”
But the dream vaporizes by daybreak, nothing more than an ephemeral hope replaced with fear and dread and the realization my problems now transcend a boy.
Maybe that’s why I dream about Morgan, to ease my mind with a pain I understand.
Maybe the past I mourn isn’t this glittering recap of Sharpie hearts on kneecaps and sand between my toes, a world of sunshine and hindsight and friends who swore forever and always.
I wipe my forehead with the back of my hand. I will myself into motion as a cook yells from the kitchen, as other servers carry plates to booths. This job is one of the few normal things in my life, so I can’t afford to lose it.
Too much has already been lost.
Mrs. Aldrich emerges from the back office and grabs two baskets from the kitchen window. She offers them to me. “Table eleven. Hustle, Darby.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I deliver the baskets and focus on the restaurant’s white noise. Grease sizzling. Soda fountain whooshing carbonation onto ice. Dishes clattering in a wash bin.
Everyone chooses the bad that bothers them. In my case, I prefer to snatch my phone off its charger late at night. I sink into my fort made from bedsheets stretched over bent knees, and I watch a girl who looks like me rub faces with the boy I can’t get out of my head. A lighter bad. Easy to accept. Bad that makes me feel good. Like the cropped, taut, secret clothes buried in my bin. Like when I exposed Christian’s stash as revenge.
A hot, public kiss doesn’t bother me as much as the video that arrived during my visit to Spooner’s house.
It showed a younger Darby Wallis outside Tatum’s home, dressed in a black minidress, hair disheveled and frizzed by humidity. She must’ve been intoxicated from the party because she tottered forward with high heels swinging from one hand, yelling at whoever recorded the video. Then, with a swing of her shoes, the girl I forgot busted a car’s side mirror.
Darby Wallis. Vicious and violent. Dangerous and damaging.
Whoever sent the video silenced the audio, perhaps to keep themselves anonymous. They must want to prove they could wreck my life with a click. Why? What’s the point of blackmailing someone who doesn’t remember?
Unless they don’t know I forgot.
Unless they’re not the person who erased my memories two years ago.
The video was recorded during or after Tatum’s rager, which means the blackmailer must either be close to my age or associated with the Aldriches. Why was I furious that night? Why didn’t someone report the vandalism? I watched the video once.
I Googled its sender’s number for the umpteenth time with no result.
My blackmailer must text via a website or fake number.
Tatum whistles at me from across the Comber. He and Nikki lean against the bar, dressed only in swimsuits, their hair blowing sideways under a fan. “Hey, waitress, do your job.”
Nikki doesn’t look up from her phone. She types a text, her acrylic nails clicking against the screen. Years ago, before the parties and lip injections, Nikki seemed normal and, dare I say it, even nice. Then, growing up happened.
And growing up doesn’t always leave nice kids nice.
I remove a notepad from my apron pocket and saunter toward them. My heart pounds, maybe because of my previous interaction with Tatum. He said his parents do business with the O’Neil family, which explains the video of Mrs. Aldrich dining with Mrs. O’Neil. Still, I can’t rid myself of the suspicion they’re somehow involved in what happened two summers ago.
“We want to order takeout, a lot of it,” Tatum says without looking at me. He watches a football game rerun on the restaurant’s television. “We’re meeting people at the Sandpiper Beach Club, and the food there grosses me out.”
“Same.” Nikki sends a text, then scrolls through her social media feeds.
“What would you like?” I force a smile and tap my pen against the notepad, a chill scrambling up my spine when Tatum gives me a side glance, his face resting in the same expression Christian makes, as if he knows my secrets better than I do.
You’re not a good girl, Darby Wallis.
“Mom!” Tatum waves at Mrs. Aldrich when she emerges from the kitchen. He asks her to send food to the Sandpiper Beach Club and demands two salted-caramel milkshakes for the road. Mrs. Aldrich agrees. Neither she nor her husband seem to mind Tatum’s behavior. If anything, they appear to want him out of their hair.
I glance at my wristwatch, and a jolt ripples through me. I’m supposed to meet Morgan and Cyrus at the Coleman Beach Pavilion in three minutes.
With Mrs. Aldrich taking care of Tatum’s order, I untie my apron and hang it on a rack, fetch my backpack from the storage closet, then clock out. I leave the Comber and follow a sandy path behind Bud & Alley’s. To my left, beyond the slope of sea oats and scrub, glistens a turquoise ocean. Its placid swells ebb from the shore and return in gentle surges.
A painter works on the Coleman Beach Pavilion. He perches on scaffolding, coating the pavilion tower with fresh white. His strokes conceal the vandalism, Vengeance for Horowitz R.I.P. sprayed above the entryway in blood-red script.
Whoever defaced the tower must’ve wanted to scare the counselors, or perhaps they assumed the damage would make an eerie prank. Tatum is likely to blame. He graffitied Eliza’s phone number on the walls of Seaside’s public bathrooms last summer.
Eliza. I haven’t talked to her since Christian revealed their fling or romance, whatever describes my best friend and brother hooking up for years. He must’ve told her about telling me. She texted, called, messaged on social media, even had Lulu deliver a letter.
I couldn’t look at Eliza knowing what I know, so I asked Mom not to schedule me for shifts at Paloma. I picked up extra work at the Comber to surveil the Aldrich family and because working in a public area gives me the illusion of safety. Dad or Mom drive me home each day. Morgan and Cyrus walk past the restaurant after their shifts to check on me. And yet, despite my precautions, I have this sense I’m being monitored.
Researching the Forgotten Summer practically begs Spooner’s kidnapper to take me too.
I join the flow of beachgoers as they drift between shops and eateries, my nostrils tingling with aromas of pizza and rosé. I float into the pavilion’s shade.
Morgan waves at me from the beach. He and Cyrus ascend the shiplap staircase, both wearing bucket hats and matching T-shirts. They rinse their feet at a shower.
The cascade of water floods the heat with a petrichor scent.
“Hey, Wallis.” Morgan leans in for a hug, and my torso becomes a butterfly cage. I embrace him with tentative arms. I draw back and smile, my lips mum, every muscle in my body a tangle of awkward tension. I don’t know how to act around him, especially after watching that video of us forty-three times.
“Did you bring your research?” Cyrus asks me.
“It’s in my backpack.”
We leave the pavilion and head toward 30A Community School. Morgan’s idea. He thinks we might jog our memories if we go over case notes in a familiar place.
A place where all this mess supposedly began.
Everyone on 30A keeps their secrets. For days, I pestered the county’s school superintendent, hoping to gather information about Dr. Horowitz. He refused to talk, and I got the impression he wanted to forget Dr. Horowitz’s murder, as if something occurred that would cause scandal within the community. I also emailed teachers, Dr. Horowitz’s former neighbors, even park rangers at Grayton Beach. No one responded.
The events at Camp Choctawhatchee involved a teacher, seven students, and a murderer.
At least.
I walk beside Morgan as we cross 30A. I try not to sneak glances at him, but my eyes gravitate in his direction. He’s changed a lot over the past two years. I hadn’t noticed. Then again, I haven’t allowed myself to really look at him until recently. He’s nearing six feet, his body more chiseled than it used to be. Muscles form Vs on his arms where his deltoids greet his biceps. A shadow of stubble contours his jawline.
This ache in my chest begs me to do something, make up for lost time, become that girl pressed against a bookcase. I wish I didn’t love how Morgan looks at me. I wish I didn’t find him attractive. Our history should keep my heart from swan-diving for the dusting of freckles across his nose that only appears in summertime. For his thin lips and stark white grin, the best smile in the world. For the way he calls me Wallis.
He texted double-chin selfies for a year straight. He got the stomach flu and puked on my lap at a movie theater. He left the toilet seat up, sometimes made a mess in the bathroom, and I swore all boys were icky and gross. I shouldn’t like-like him.
After years apart, I shouldn’t care the way I care.
Morgan locks eyes with me. He smiles, and I look away. What do we expect will happen? We’ll resume high school this fall as a happy couple, go to Seahawks games, pretend our lives aren’t in shambles? No, no. I can dream all I want, but dreams won’t wipe the slate clean.
We move across Central Square, past food trucks and Paloma, then cut through an alley to 30A Community School. The charter school, a collection of white buildings situated around a lawn and connected by a two-story breezeway, resides on Smolian Circle.
I follow Cyrus to the school’s herb garden, where we grew tomatoes for a class assignment. Fifth grade. Spooner and Eliza snuck okra seeds into their pots as a prank. They laughed hysterically when Dr. Horowitz discovered the vegetables and called them a miracle.
A shiver pricks my spine. Without students, the school resembles a ghost town. I almost expect Dr. Horowitz to emerge from his classroom and call us indoors.
Cyrus leaves the garden and enters the breezeway, glancing over his shoulder every few steps to confirm Morgan and I are behind him. None of us speaks. Talking seems inappropriate, like singing in a library or joking at a funeral.
We spent four years on this campus, doing projects in the robotics lab, chatting between classes, performing skits for the school’s fiesta event.
Nostalgia makes hallowed ground from mundane places.
Morgan stops in front of the building that housed Dr. Horowitz’s classroom. He studies its colonial architecture, his rosacea flushing. “What a throwback.” He sighs, then leaves the breezeway and jogs onto the lawn. “Hey, Wallis, who am I?”
“Please don’t!” Cyrus yells at him.
He rocks side to side and snaps his fingers. Then he belts the blues hit Spooner performed for our seventh-grade talent show.
Spooner hummed the song for months.
I laugh and relax against a column. “A goofball, that’s who.”
Cyrus jumps off the breezeway’s steps. He charges across the lawn and leapfrogs onto Morgan’s back, almost knocking him to the ground. “Like old times, eh?”
“Except you’re a hundred pounds heavier,” Morgan groans.
A new kind of sadness blossoms within me as I watch Cyrus and Morgan wrestle. The emotion grows jagged edges, a serrated knife shoved into my side.
Morgan tosses Cyrus to the grass. He stumbles toward me, rubbing his shoulder, laughing with a reel of old times in his smile. I want to believe we’re still friends, but maybe we’re just strangers who hold each other’s secrets.
“We should bring Spooner back here, you know, after we find him.” Morgan sits next to me on the steps. He removes his bucket hat and places it upon my head, grinning.
“He’d injure himself,” I say with a smile.
After school one day, Spooner climbed onto the breezeway’s railing and did a handstand.
You’ll break your neck! Morgan yelled at him. Dude, that’s a crappy idea.
Spooner laughed as he balanced on the handrail. No such thing as bad ideas. Only poorly executed ones. He dropped to the lawn and bowed, all of us applauding his stunt.
I pull a laptop from my backpack.
Cyrus sits to my left, sandwiching me between him and Morgan. He bounces his gray sneakers against the steps.
“Took me a while, but I searched public records and compiled information about Horowitz and Camp Choctawhatchee.” I click a file, triggering a rush of data. News reports wash across my laptop’s screen, each word clinical and indifferent, typed in plain, black font.
Details of the Camp Choctawhatchee crime scene.
