The Ghost of Danny McGee, page 29
Sam looks into his kind face. She wonders how much he knows. “Anything else?”
“We’ll be in touch. Things are going to have to be quiet, for a little while, but—” A frisbee sails over their heads, and Campbell ducks. They both laugh. He pats her arm, smiling, and Sam is struck with sadness for the first time today. “We’ll be in touch.”
Night falls and Campbell quietly disappears. They sit around the campfire, telling stories, drinking, laughing. In the early hours of the morning the fire burns low, and the group breaks apart, stumbling back to empty cabins. Sam finds herself alone with Rosie, Elias, and a bottle of bad tequila. They sit at the shore with their toes in the mud, watching the stars ripple on the surface of the lake.
She tells them about the investigation. She is sick of keeping secrets, sick of trying to obey her better judgment. Neither of them seems surprised to hear it.
“You could help, you know,” says Rosie. “After everything with Poppy. Everything with Max. You could actually get the place shut down.”
Sam doesn’t answer. She is thinking about Poppy, and about Max. She takes a deep swig from their bottle and comes up gagging.
Elias laughs at her. “I’ll see you, won’t I? Thanksgiving? You’ll be a big hit at Nana’s house, you know.”
It takes Sam a moment to understand. For half a second, she lets herself imagine it: sweaters, nervous laughter, a grand family home. Hands on thighs beneath the dining table. She shakes her head. “I’m not coming to Thanksgiving, El. I’m going back to Paris.”
Elias kicks at the starlit water. “That’s a shame. You’d be good for him.”
Sam takes another long drink and smacks her lips. Looking out at the ripples across the water, she giggles and decides she would like to go for one last swim.
Her hair is still damp when she wakes up at dawn. Rows of empty bunks stretch in front of her, the mattresses crinkled and stained. It’s a sad, spooky sight. Sam sits upright and rubs her eyes. Nick mumbles behind her. She laughs at him, large and utterly out of place on her little bunk. After a dizzy moment, she rises, throws a sweatshirt over her head, and pads barefoot across the cabin floor. She crosses the outdoor bathroom and nudges open the Chickadees’ door on the other side. Peering down the row of bare beds, she finds them tangled together and fast asleep in the bunk beside the front door. Sam smiles to herself.
Rosie blinks and looks blearily up when Sam touches her. She is wearing—to Sam’s delight—the old blue T-shirt Elias had on last night. GOD IS A LESBIAN.
“Looks better on you than me.”
Rosie glances down at the arm wrapped around her chest. “Ugh.” She grimaces. “What time is it?”
“Early.” Sam crouches next to her bunk. “Listen. I’m taking off. I don’t want to wait for everyone to wake up.” In truth, she can’t stand the idea of the drawn-out goodbyes, the promises of staying in touch.
“I get it.” Rosie nods.
Sam suddenly cannot think of what to say next. She smirks at the two of them. “Is this going to be something?”
Rosie laughs breathily, a rush of air through her nose. “God, no.” Even as she says it, Elias twitches and flops over beside her.
“Sam?” His voice is groggy with sleep, eyes squeezed shut as if in pain.
“Yeah?”
“Get the hell out of here.”
“Okay.” Sam laughs. She should tell them she loves them. Instead, she tousles his hair, leans forward and kisses Rosie on the cheek. It’s better, she thinks, to hold onto a little regret and hope for a chance to see them again.
She packs fast and poorly. Nick walks her to her car. The little black sedan is alien to her, now, something from a stranger’s life. They linger stiffly in the parking lot, tired. He kisses her in a hollow, routine way.
“Will you be back? Next summer?”
Sam looks at him. It’s impossible as ever to read behind his eyes. “There isn’t going to be a next summer.”
“You know what I mean. The next summer there is.”
“I don’t know.” Sam adjusts the weight of the bag on her shoulder. She tips backward, away from him. “I can’t think about it now.”
“Okay.”
She wants to tell him to come see her in Paris. She wants to ask him to find her—he doesn’t even have her phone number. She wants to tell him that if she leaves this place to find herself in another life, if the whole summer has been a dream she paid for, after all, she will be glad to have spent it with him. She says none of it. She kisses him again and sits in her car before she can watch him walk away.
•••
Sam is on her way back to Paris when she hears the news. It’s after sunrise, the tail end of a dreary red-eye flight. She has just touched down for a three-hour layover and is waiting, half asleep, for the fasten seat belt light to switch off. The woman in the next seat—red lips, tidy bun—scrolls through her phone, eagerly consuming everything she missed while they were in the air.
“Oh, my God.” She turns to Sam, wide-eyed.
Sam is in no mood for small talk but knows she can’t ignore her. They still have another twenty minutes at least to be stuck next to each other. “Hmm?”
“Poppy Warbler died!” the woman gasps. One hand flutters to her heart, the other scrolls frantically across her screen. “Oh, no. I can’t believe it. I used to love her.”
Sam gazes out her window. “Me too. How did she die?”
“In her sleep, I guess. She was at that camp . . . You know, the one where they turn you into a kid? Gosh, that place just creeps me out. Anyway, I guess it was a heart attack or something.”
“Wow.” Sam nods. She offers her a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry to hear it.”
Back in Paris, she falls into a normal life. She has a new apartment, and new classes, and a new group of friends to run around with, getting into the same old trouble. She is young, and very much awake. On the day Hugo Baker is convicted for murder, she tries to call Elias. He doesn’t pick up. She forgets to try again. At Camp, her life in Paris felt impossibly far away. Now, the opposite is true—the summer is like a worn-out memory of an old dream.
Sam watches from afar as the investigation against Richard Byron and Phoenix Genetics plays out on the public stage. It becomes the newest trending scandal. For weeks, even in France, it is all anybody talks about. Then, like anything else, it goes stagnant. Months pass and Sam doesn’t know what has happened to her old job. She doesn’t bother to check.
One gray December morning, on her hurried walk to class, a shout from behind makes her freeze in the center of the sidewalk.
“Poppy!” The voice is clear and flat, distinctly American. “Poppy!”
Sam looks around until she sees them: a family of tourists, hustling across the street in their raincoats and hats. A woman shouts from the back of the group. “Poppy, wait! Slow down!”
For a silly moment, she nearly expects to see her. Unstrapped sandals, wild blond hair. Scabby knees and missing teeth. Running too fast through the streets of Paris, of all places, with a sloppy craft project in her fist. Of course, it isn’t her. As Sam watches, the woman catches up with a dark-haired girl in a pink beret. She is tall and awkward-looking, probably about fourteen. The girl rolls her eyes and waits for her family to hurry up. Sam fights the urge to shout out to her.
“Poppy,” she mumbles once the family has moved on up the street. She shudders, like she has seen a ghost. Sam shakes her head, and the feeling passes. She pulls her coat tighter around her neck, turns on her heel, and picks up her pace. She is going to be late for class.
Logan
Dr. Camilla Meyer, the plaque outside the building reads. English Literature. Room 23.
It’s a nice building, red brick and ivy, at the heart of the university campus. The hushed patter of students’ voices echoes in the halls. Logan climbs to the fifth floor to find room twenty-three. She forgoes the elevator, telling herself she is working in her cardio for the day. The truth is she is nervous.
The old Black woman who opens the door might be Milly—she also might be anyone. Her face is beautiful, gracefully succumbing to age, her eyes kind but distinctly sharp. She wears her gray braids swept back into a regal bun. The woman looks Logan up and down. Then, with a flash of a smile, she pulls her into a rough hug.
“My God, look at you.” Milly holds her at an arm’s length. She is still shorter than Logan. Her voice has a little gravel in it. “You’re old.”
Logan laughs. She follows Milly into her office. They sit on soft armchairs, facing one another, and trade a few strange pleasantries. Dr. Meyer teaches a lecture or two each semester and advises students in her spare time. The office feels homey and well lived-in, and she has a sunny view of the campus out her window.
“I guess I should be retired. God knows I’d rather be doing something than just sitting around, waiting to die.” Milly chuckles. “I’m an author, really, by profession.”
“Of course you are. I know your name.” Logan smiles at her, shaking her head. She can hardly believe who she is looking at, the words she is speaking out loud. “I didn’t realize until I woke up, but I knew you all along.”
At that, the old woman laughs. Logan knows that laugh—scrappy, raspy, and lively. “We didn’t realize a lot of things until we woke up, did we?”
From her purse, Logan pulls an envelope of photographs. Milly takes hers from the drawer of a side table, and they exchange them. The photos came to the house about a month ago. In the same envelope was a long and wordy letter about Phoenix Genetics’ integrity and their value of the Gills as clients, a promise that their services will be available to them again as soon as possible. A heap of corporate backpedaling in the face of their fresh public scandal.
“Oh, look at this one.” Milly sighs, squinting at one of Logan’s photos. Logan rises from her seat to identify it: a snapshot of the Ravens, standing on their cabin porch with their counselor. The image quality is poor and grainy, not unlike her memories of the summer. More likely than not, that is intentional. All a part of the experience. “Look at Sadie. Jesus, she’s just a kid.”
“Yeah.” Logan shakes her head, still smiling. “We were awful to her, weren’t we?”
“Downright little bitches,” Milly chortles. She flips the picture to the bottom of the stack in her hands and examines the next. It’s of herself, on their shared bunk. Sticking out her tongue. The next is of their table in the mess hall, Donna and Joy posed like models on either side. Another of the lake, clear and flat. The next of a boy and girl on the mess hall steps. He is hugging her from behind. Their faces are blurred, moving in a bout of sudden laughter. “Oh.” Milly raises her eyebrows. She wears a familiar, know-it-all smirk when she hands the photo back to Logan.
Logan nods slowly. She studies the photo, as she has many times already. Still, she struggles to wrap her head around the fact that the girl in the picture is her—let alone who the boy is.
“He went down for it, didn’t he?”
Again, Logan nods. She has been following the case passively. “More or less. They said there was ‘no intent’ in the end. Still, six years is significant, for someone like him.”
“You think he did it?” Milly always has been blunt. She stares through her, and Logan feels her cheeks flush like a child’s.
“I . . .” She hesitates, tiptoeing around the right words. “I don’t know. I heard he was charged with sexual assault, years ago. At the very least, I think that could be true. And that’s enough.” This is difficult to force out, sticky in her throat. “Max kept talking about trying to get involved in the trial. He thought he could give a character testimony or something. It was all over before he could get ahold of anyone, though.”
“Oh, Maxie!” Milly bursts with scratchy laughter. The mood between them brightens. “God, that should’ve been the first thing I asked you. You’re really married?”
“Fifteen years.” Logan brandishes the ring on her finger. “Our kid turns five next week.” She fumbles through her purse for her phone to show Milly pictures of her family. The old woman’s face lights up with glee. She hovers her fingers over the screen, zooming in on Emma’s face, then Max’s.
“I cannot believe it,” she repeats.
“Do you have a family, Milly?”
She nods. “Three boys. All grown now, of course. I was married for a little while there.” She shrugs. “She was too good for me. And she knew it.” There is a light pause as Logan puts her phone away again. They both turn back to the photos in their hands. “Are you two going to be all right, then?” Milly asks eventually. “You and Max?”
Logan hovers on the edge of her answer. Before she left the house this morning, she caught Max watching an old clip of Hugo Baker’s sentencing. He had the screen paused on his mugshot and was sitting still on the couch, one arm propped behind his head. Just staring at it. “We will be,” she says. “It’s going to take time.”
Max was standing in the entrance to her room when she woke up. He was the first thing she saw, cross-armed, in normal clothes, leaning on the doorframe. Her head was still spinning. Max. He had been awake for a week already. The fall from the dam killed his boy self on impact, of course. When he talks about that night—though he rarely does—he says it was a simple matter of closing his eyes and opening them again on the other side. Logan knows there is something he isn’t telling her. That’s fine. There is plenty she isn’t telling him, too.
The two women sit talking for a long time. They talk about their lives and their shared, surreal summer. They talk about Poppy Warbler and the investigation over human cloning. They talk about waking up and the headache of reality. Everything they saw or did or overheard in the past summer takes on a much darker tone, in retrospect. At the same time, though, it all has the fond glow of childhood memories.
“We really thought we were going to kill a ghost,” Milly cackles, tears in her eyes. “With BB guns. How stupid could we be?”
“Oh, give yourself a little credit.” Logan shrugs. She is slightly embarrassed; talking to Milly about the summer is a lot like her college years, like talking about a drunken night the morning after, recounting all the ways she made a fool of herself. “We weren’t really there.”
“What do you mean? Of course we were.”
Logan fidgets with her wedding band. She has found it difficult, lately, took look down at her lap, at her pale, aging hands. Though it has been years since her vision surgery, she occasionally reaches up to adjust the glasses on the bridge of her nose. “That wasn’t really us,” she says, trying to keep her tone light. “I mean, we came away with the memories, but those kids . . . they were their own people. We’re not them.”
Dr. Camilla Meyer frowns at her. “Is that how you justify it all?”
“What?”
“Logan.” Milly sighs, shaking her head. She takes the photo back from Logan’s hand and holds it up to her. She points at the girl’s blurred face. “If you really think that girl was her own human, with her own soul . . . well, then, the boy she forced over the dam that night was, too.”
“Yes,” Logan answers steadily. She has been through this debate in her own head a thousand times. “So was the boy who gave her her first kiss.”
“You’d rather be guilty of murder than of being chummy with a murderer? That’s what you’re saying?”
“I’m saying none of us are guilty of anything.” Logan draws her lips tight across her teeth. She has held strong to this belief with Max; she will hold strong to it with Milly, too. “They might have had some part of our heads in them, but those kids weren’t us. We don’t have to answer for anything they did.”
“Convenient.” Her smile is wry, knowing. “But I can see where you’re coming from.”
Another hour passes, and eventually Logan has to leave. There will be traffic along the drive back home, and Max will be waiting up when she gets there. She gives Milly a long hug. As a final thought, almost impulsively, she apologizes for the way she treated her that summer, driving her away for the sake of popularity.
“Don’t worry about it,” Milly laughs. “It wasn’t you anyway, right?” On their way out the door, she lingers, then asks her one last thing. “Do you think you’ll ever see him?”
“Who? Danny McGee?”
Milly scoffs. “Hugo. Will you go see him?”
“Hugo’s in prison.”
“Exactly. I bet he’d appreciate a visitor.” She nods toward Logan’s purse, where she buried her envelope of photos. “I bet he’d like to see that picture.”
Slowly, Logan allows herself to smile. She is coming to a curious realization: Milly is an author. She and Max both work in publishing, and Hugo, of course, was once a legendary filmmaker. They made their livings with stories, all four of them. Maybe that was what got them into so much trouble that summer. Maybe that was what brought them together and drove them out looking for adventure. Maybe that was why they were all so convinced the ghost was real. “Not now.” Logan shakes her head. “I couldn’t do that to Max, after everything. I have to focus on our life—our real life—for a while.”
“The place is going to open up again, you know.” The old woman leans in the doorway, looking up at her, a spark of mischief in her eyes. “We’ll have another chance to go back. You think you’d do it?”
Logan knows for a fact that there is nothing she would not give to go back to Camp Phoenix. To be that girl again. She would go this very second if given the chance. “Maybe.” She shrugs. “Like I said. I need to focus on my real life, for now.”
“For now.” Milly nods. Logan knows she can read right through her. She wishes she didn’t have to leave. “So, see you later, then?”
Logan smiles. “Yeah. See you later.”
