The Summer We Forgot, page 29
“Oh, sure.” Eliza clears her throat. “Hi, Detective Sutter. We accidentally killed a guy and forgot about it. Please don’t lock us up.”
“You asked Spooner and me to help you get rid of him,” Cyrus tells Dr. DiMarco, his expression riddled with memories. “You didn’t want to use Horowitz’s boat and risk leaving evidence, so we borrowed a canoe from the outpost, loaded Horowitz, and rowed him into the saltmarsh. We weighted his clothes with rocks, then tossed him overboard.”
Morgan curses.
“I picked the dump site,” Cyrus says with a sob. “It was high tide. Water was deep. I remembered the currents from my fishing trips and chose a place with the least flow.”
Spooner crouches and buries his face between his knees.
“You told all of us to wash our hands with bleach and hot water,” Kip adds. “You made us clean beneath our fingernails.”
“What happened after that?” Annabelle asks.
“I stayed at Camp Choctawhatchee for the remainder of your staff training.” Dr. DiMarco shuffles his flip-flops against gravel. “Each day I met with you individually for sessions. You see, memories cannot be erased, but they can be buried.” He pauses and releases a drawn-out breath. “Unfortunately, my process caused you to forget the whole summer.”
Spooner glances at me and mouths, “No duh.”
“How does your process work?” Morgan points his headlamp at Dr. DiMarco.
The man winces and blocks his eyes. “I use a drug from my repression study paired with a mild sedative to relieve stress symptoms and prep the brain for adjustment,” he says. “Bodies hold memories like the brain. Every muscle and nerve possesses remnants of past experiences. With my patients, I must first repress their memories on a physical level, beginning with the cellular stories. From that point, I work to change the context of memories, which often leads to substitution.”
Exchanging one thing for another. Like when Mom orders groceries for pickup and gets almond milk instead of oat. The same might’ve happened to me two summers ago, my memories replaced or subtracted or fabricated. How much of what I remember is fake? Am I fake?
“To bury memories, a person must shut down the part of their brain involved in the recall of those memories, almost like closing a door,” Dr. DiMarco continues. “Memories can be repressed or redirected, substituted, altered—”
“How can we trust what we remember then?” Morgan asks.
“Look, you allowed me to bury the memories you wished to be buried, nothing more.”
“But we forgot the whole summer,” I repeat.
“You must’ve wanted to forget.” He looks me dead in the eyes, his words tinged with another meaning. Perhaps that summer holds more secrets than a killing.
Cyrus lowers his flashlight to the road. “Okay, so where did the memories go?”
“During our sessions, each of you created your own holding cell for the memories, somewhere you could imagine storing them—”
“The library,” Morgan whispers.
“A dark room. A blank tape.” I fight back tears and return the knife to my pocket.
“In a vault without a keypad,” Kip says.
Dr. DiMarco nods. “You didn’t lose your memories. You just locked them up.”
Somewhere dim and desolate, where they couldn’t hurt me. But they managed to find a way. From shadows and bins, they whispered. In mirrors, they reflected the girl I tried to drown. She didn’t go down as easily as Horowitz. No, she lives within me still, waiting for me to finally confront her and make peace.
“My treatment does have delayed effects,” Dr. DiMarco says, maybe to explain how we also blotted the month following camp from our recollections. His narrative justifies Annabelle’s behavior, her possession of the wristwatch. It gives reason for Spooner’s paranoia, our memory loss, and my friendship bracelet discovered in Horowitz’s fist.
We killed him.
I suck the night air between my teeth, a single tear burning a line down my cheek. I can’t argue with what I feel in my gut, that Dr. DiMarco speaks truth. We forgot on purpose, and we’ll pay for the decision. If our secrets don’t place us behind bars, they’ll poison us, because what stays in the dark becomes toxic unless someone calls it into the light.
A breath catches in my throat.
“Do you own a gray sports car, Dr. DiMarco?” I ask, my heart racing.
“No.” His response seems to click on a lightbulb within my head. A stalker and Porsche and break-in at Kip’s house. The Comber burned to rubble. Morgan’s injured shoulder.
“Something else happened that summer,” I say to the counselors. “There’s more.”
Kip curses and paces the roadside.
“Who’s been following us?” Eliza asks. “If he’s Handyman and we’re the killers, who searched the camp and chased us through Watercolor?”
“Nikki may still be investigating,” Cyrus says.
“I wouldn’t put anything past her.” Morgan smirks. “Heck, she blackmailed us with notes and videos, messed with my Jeep.”
“What? No, she didn’t.” Kip freezes. “Nikki only sent the videos. She told me.”
Eliza smacks his arm. “You knew she was behind the blackmail?”
“I ran into Nikki at the Comber a couple days ago.” Kip rotates toward Morgan. “Dude, why would she go after you? Her beef was with Darby and Eliza.”
Morgan stiffens, his rosacea a darkening patch on his jawline. “There’s someone else,” he says with a huff. “Someone who says we stole something.”
A stack of notes in my bin, each scribbled with alternating statements. I know what you did two years ago. Give back what you stole from me or else everyone will know.
Another person must belong to the cast of our drama. If their messages hold weight, we counselors are more than killers.
We’re thieves too.
I stomp toward Dr. DiMarco, my belly full of rocks. “Help us get our memories back.”
“Too risky.” He shakes his head. “The amount of trauma—”
“Help us or I’ll send the video to everyone in my contacts.” I raise my cell phone and tap its screen, numbers reeling as the camera records. “We’re at nine minutes of footage.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Test me.” I hold his stare, and my fear seems to morph into an emotion with claws. I won’t let the blackmailer control how my crimes are exposed. I turn to walk away.
Dr. DiMarco grinds his teeth. “You asked for this, Darby!” he shouts. “Forgetting was your idea.”
Two years ago I was fifteen and bright-eyed and desperate to seem perfect. Dad called me a good girl, so a good girl I became. And until that horrible night, despite the viral photo, I maintained my charade. But the bad thing happened. I stood on the dock, wearing blood on my T-shirt and bruises on my arms. The world smelled of swamp and metal, and I felt only horror, the shattering realization my life as I knew it was on the verge of collapse. Then, Dr. DiMarco arrived at camp. I saw an opportunity to keep my life intact. I begged him to make the bad stuff go away because if I didn’t remember, I wouldn’t have to lie, and if I didn’t lie, I’d still be good.
Bury the memories. Sink them to the bottom of the marsh.
Stash my deepest and darkest in the back of my closet.
“No, I didn’t, it wasn’t.” I clutch my mouth, a sob rattling me, brutal with its certainty. Yes, I did, it was. The other counselors were too shocked to disagree. I used their fear to my advantage and asked to forget in the name of protection, convinced them to blot that night from our minds and move on with a clean slate.
We erased parts of ourselves by choice, my choice. I cut ties with memories that reminded me of pain and heartbreak, redacted all the embarrassing and flawed details. In the process, Annabelle vanished from recollections, a whole summer faded to black.
My perfectionism and people-pleasing got the better of me.
“I’m sorry,” I gasp. “I’m so sorry.”
“You didn’t do this to us.” Eliza throws her arms around me and hugs tight. She rocks side to side, her chin tucked in the crease of my neck. “You’re not to blame.”
But I am, at least for some mistakes. I should’ve called the police that night. I should’ve hated my regrets less and loved people more.
“Wallis, you were a kid,” Morgan whispers. “Dr. DiMarco knew better, so did Horowitz. They chose not to care for us as adults should. That’s on them.” He gazes at me with love in his eyes, our history, and I can’t help but weep because I forgot us.
I marked our relationship an unwanted memory and let it go.
Morgan takes me from Eliza and holds me against his chest. “We all decided to bury that summer. It happened. No takebacks. We hid stuff about ourselves, but we don’t have to hide anymore. We can make things right.”
“Horowitz tried to hurt me,” Annabelle wheezes. “You stopped him. That’s good. You did good.” She holds my gaze and nods. “We were kids. This isn’t our fault.”
Spooner waves his bug zapper at Dr. DiMarco. “Come on, Handyman. Fix this.”
The counselors swap glances, our next step decided by wide eyes and nods.
We must release what we locked away.
Morgan and Cyrus bind Dr. DiMarco’s hands with shoelaces, then guide him to the Jeep. Spooner drives the Mazda, Kip the Volvo, and together we proceed to camp in a motorcade.
Fog drifts from the lake when we arrive, mist creeping between cabins.
“I don’t want to remember,” Eliza whispers to me. She points her flashlight at the haze, shaking as we trek to the outpost. “What if Horowitz’s death wasn’t the worst of that summer?”
Acid stings my throat. I swallow, but the burn only magnifies, a vile taste lingering in my mouth. Brackish water and empty stomach. The fear of Eliza’s what if.
We enter the game room in silence. Spooner collapses onto a beanbag. Annabelle stares daggers at Dr. DiMarco, flanked by Kip and Cyrus. They stand near the ping-pong table.
I wipe condensation from my eyeglasses. “I’ll go first.”
“Let’s do it together.” Morgan places his hockey stick on the pool table and confronts Dr. DiMarco. “Alright, walk us through your process.”
The doctor raises his laced wrists. “I can’t guarantee results.”
“But you’ll try your best,” Cyrus says.
“You don’t understand. Rushing the process may cause harm—”
“Dad, stop!” Kip shouts. “You did this to us. We might’ve wanted to forget, sure, but we were kids. You chose to dump Horowitz into the lake. You chose to repress our memories.”
“I did it to protect you.”
“No, Dad, you did it to protect yourself.” Kip sniffles, his nose reddening. With a sigh, he motions to the life-jacket closet. “We’ll prob go to jail anyway. Might as well remember why.”
She waits for me. I can’t hide from her any longer. Until I reckon with her, I’ll see her from the corners of my eyes and lose sleep at night.
Goose bumps rising across my forearms, I meander to the closet and click on its lightbulb. I sink into a chair, the metal icy against my thighs, but despite the cold, I sweat.
Morgan drags a third chair into the space. He forces Dr. DiMarco to sit across from me, then fills the chair to my left, hinges creaking as he shuts the door.
Dust flits from the rafters and racks of canoes. My shoe hits a soda can. Familiar. All of it. The shadows and cobwebs and musk that clogs my airways. I lower my eyelids, then snap them up. Once I go into my head’s dark room, I could remember anything.
“There aren’t set ways to trigger memories,” Dr. DiMarco says, peppermint and aftershave wafting from his body. “We start in a familiar place.”
Morgan bounces his feet against the floorboards.
“Close your eyes. What do you smell? How do you feel?”
I grab Morgan’s hand and relax into the darkness behind my lids.
“Picture where you put your memories. Only you know how to access that place,” Dr. DiMarco says. “We created a maze, you see, to prevent the recall. We couldn’t blot our trail completely though. We buried the details, but we couldn’t erase the feelings.”
A room. I can see it now. Four walls painted Mom’s favorite shade of white. My bed and poetry books, the sea-green frame on my nightstand.
“Follow the feelings.”
She waits in the room’s closet with my bin of secret things. Her face peers from the door crack, one green eye, half of a nose and lips.
“Let’s talk about the night Horowitz died.”
Water blasts through my bedroom’s windows and sweeps across the carpet, blacker than pitch and reeking of blood. I can’t open my eyes, so into the surge I go, clawing upward with bone-white hands. Then, the flash flood drains into whimpering and dripping and an open closet. She huddles on its threshold and stares at me.
This time, I stare back.
I call her out of the shadows.
And I tell her I’m not afraid of who she was and what she did.
Not just during the Forgotten Summer, but across all time. The decisions she wished to white-out from her record. Comments spoken in anger that she regretted later. That day she bought lingerie without her parents knowing because it made her feel rebellious.
Face-to-face, I share with her what Morgan told me, that she’s enough, I am enough, we don’t have to hide anymore because we’re not what people have done to us or what we’ve done to ourselves. We’re not defined by our histories.
She inches into the light, and she takes my hand.
That summer began with a secret.
My heart skips a beat as images flash through my mind, blurring the bedroom into a night like tonight. I watch it all. Horowitz’s death. The panic that ensued.
A duffel bag left behind.
Chapter 23
Morgan
JULY 11
GRAYTON BEACH
My eyelids snap open. I jolt in the foldout chair, adrenaline reviving me like an energy drink. Follow the feelings. I did. They led me someplace helpless and confused.
To Spooner’s bunkbed in Cabin Four, slow pan to the air vent.
I release Darby’s hand and blink to refocus. The closet. Kayaks and canoes, paddles matching the one Spooner used to kill Horowitz.
That mental image sticks to my brain. Horowitz dead on the dock.
“Morgan?” Darby touches my shoulder and swivels toward me, her face red and puffy, dripping tears. She must’ve remembered stuff too.
“Cabin Four.” Hunger growls inside me. It craves gas station taquitos. A dumb want considering I’d puke if I ate right now.
“What about it?” Darby asks.
“I left something there.”
A bunkbed located at the far end of Cabin Four. I slept on the bottom, Spooner on top. We whispered at night like we had something to hide because we did. It sat in the air vent above Spooner’s headboard, tucked behind the grate.
We guarded the vent in case Horowitz realized the bag had been stolen.
Dr. DiMarco watches from his seat. He must sense that my head’s library shelf is no longer empty. The right side of his mouth twitches. His eyes widen.
Cabin Four. Spooner and I stashed the bag there. We planned to alert the police after staff training, but we forgot that secret along with the rest.
I lurch from the chair and fling open the closet door.
“That was quick,” Cyrus says when I stumble into the game room. He leans against the pool table, his brow furrowed. “Did you remember?”
Darby hurries from the closet and grips my arm. “Morgan, what’d you leave?”
“We need to revisit the bunkhouse.” I shut the closet door and wedge a chair against it.
“Hey!” Dr. DiMarco yells from inside. “Let me out!” He rams the panel.
Kip jumps. He curses and inches across the room with Annabelle and Eliza at his heels. “I’m, like, super grounded now.”
Spooner and I found a duffel bag in Horowitz’s boat. We heaved it out of the storage compartment onto the deck and fumbled with its zipper, its black vinyl smeared with cobwebs and rust. We peered into the bag and what we saw—I can’t picture it. The memory is still out of reach.
I bolt from the outpost and sprint across camp, counselors racing after me. Dew soaks my sneakers, and my stomach growls louder, a rumble like a boat motor.
Horowitz brought his boat to camp. He tethered it to the dock and used it to store his lab equipment. Once, after I gathered algae samples, he let me look at slides under a microscope.
Follow the feelings. A trail of shock and realization, followed by anger.
I barrel into Cabin Four, side B. The air vent is still there.
“Any idea what we’re looking for?” Eliza shines her flashlight on the graffitied dressers.
“Whoever’s been hanging around already searched this cabin.” Kip motions to the footprints Darby noticed earlier. I take a closer look. If I had to guess, a size twelve tennis shoe.
My feet match them.
I scale the bunkbed and heave myself onto its top mattress, dust plastering my knees. I press my fingertips against the grate’s corners and pry it from the wall.
“Someone could’ve found the bag. This may be a lost cause.” I adjust my headlamp, then plunge my arm into the duct. Spiderwebs melt around my skin. Pine straw brushes my palm.
My hand collides with vinyl.
“No flipping way,” Cyrus says when I yank a duffel bag from the hole. He and other counselors gawk at me, their focus trained on the giant sack now positioned in my lap.
It must weigh over sixty pounds.
My stomach churning, I drop the bag to the floor.
“We didn’t kill anyone else, right? I mean, could a body fit in there?” Eliza crouches beside the container and prods it with her index finger. “Feels hard.”
“And heavy,” Spooner says as he attempts to lift the bag.
I jump from the bunkbed and unzip the pack, exposing stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills.
Darby leans over the duffel bag. “Is that . . . ?”
“A few million dollars? I think so.” I rub my jaw.
