Deep Betrayal

them. Usually they came to me in the middle of the night, allowing me to only wish I’d said them.
    “I guess I don’t,” he said, and we dove, his mouth on mine as we serpentined the rocks and sandbars. I accepted the air I didn’t really need and kept my eyes closed so I wouldn’t betray my secret.
    It was too dark to see anyway, and Calder seemed to navigate more by sound than sight. I imagined I could almost hear the vibrations and tinny nuances of the varying topographies of the lake. The pictures played on my mind like a sonar image, but I didn’t open my eyes to verify whether there was any truth to my imagination. I would have been too disappointed to find out I was wrong. Pretending was so much better.
    An hour or two later, Calder brought us back to a small strip of sand not far from the campsite. I let go of him and swam up to the shore, walking the last few feet, my clothes saturated and plastered to my body.
    “Hurry back,” I whisper-yelled as Calder swam away, and he must have heard me, because a silver tail breached the surface and hit the water with a gentle thwap. Someday , I thought. Someday that will be me .
    Minutes later, Calder returned and led me to a small, moss-lined cave cut into the side of the hill. It was warm there, maybe even more comfortable than the tent. I was so tired I could have slept standing up, and I took no time curling into Calder’s arms. My wet clothes clung to me, and I shivered in the night air. He pulled a quilt from deeper in the cave. When I looked at him questioningly, he shrugged. “I borrowed it from Gabby’s tent. I doubt she’ll miss it.”
    “I don’t know. It’s her lucky blanket.”
    He ran his thumb over my fingertips. “We swam for a long time. Shouldn’t your skin be pruney?”
    “Hmm?” I mumbled, already half asleep. I thought he said something more, but I wasn’t sure what.
    When the first pink and orange strains of Saturday morning laced across the horizon, I couldn’t help feeling sad that the night was coming to an end. The morning was already turning humid and the air in the cave was suffocating. I peeled myself out of Calder’s arms and wandered the beach, pocketing a few pieces of beach glass that caught my eye: two whites and a brown.
    A buzzing noise broke my concentration, and within seconds it was all around me. It was all I could hear. Out of nowhere, Calder’s hand came down on my shoulder, but I brushed it off. He couldn’t startle me anymore. I turned to silently ask him if he heard it, too. His face was tense with concentration, and his nostrils flared as flies buzzed past our heads.
    I took one cautious step toward the swarm of insects. My feet sank into the soft sand, slipping under me as I tried to climb the bank to investigate.
    “Lily, no,” Calder said. “Stay back.” But my feet kept moving. There was something half buried in the sand. Something big. Not a log or a rock. Goose bumps rose on my arms.
    As I got closer, I saw toes. Then bare legs. Blood pooled inside the still body. Milky eyes stared up at the sky. Flies crawled in and out of slack jaws. A scream ripped through my chest, but Calder slapped his hand over my mouth before I made a sound. He pulled me back as I gasped for breath through his fingers, forgetting to exhale in between.
    “Maris,” I finally whispered as bile rose in my throat. Blood rushed away from my head, and I swayed. For a moment I thought I was in a slow-motion fall and I wondered, as the sand came up to meet me, how I could avoid falling on top of the body. Calder supported me as my legs gave way.
    I knelt in the sand, Calder’s breath hot on my neck. I couldn’t look away from the gruesome scene. I’d never seen a dead body before. It repelled as much as it compelled me to draw closer.
    Connor, the laughing boy from the night before, lay in the sand, staring blankly up at me. Red stripes lashed across his bare chest. His shorts, once wet, were caked with drying sand.
    Would Maris have dragged him from his tent? I couldn’t picture that. Had she lured him out into the water? That seemed more likely.
    “I’m sorry,” said Calder. “I am. Be glad it’s only one.”
    “Glad?” I pulled away from him. How he could he minimize this?
    He leaned forward and carefully closed Connor’s eyelids. “Clearly, Maris is in bad shape. It could have been much worse.”
    I couldn’t see how.
    “Letting targets escape is a bad sign, but this ? They’ve lost complete control