Chapter One

Before

The media called it the College Heights Case. Those of us who stuck around the next few days dubbed the summer sleepaway retreat for little girls Camp Murder. Bella Estes’s death changed our lives. Mine, most of all.

“It was her hair, the way it lay tangled in the cap and floating in the water,” I sobbed over and over that early August morning to anyone who’d listen. My fellow counselors. Paramedics. Kayakers and kitesurfers who heard the commotion and rushed in off the lake. A middle-aged woman from the medical examiner’s office who officially pronounced my bunkmate deceased.

“It’s not your fault. You tried to save her,” everyone assured me. Alaska state troopers, however, took a different view when Bella’s drowning was ruled a homicide the following day.

“One more time, please. Who noticed her first?” (They’d requested my presence at their post for what they claimed would be a “brief” interview.)

“One of my campers. We were all there, getting ready to take the paddleboats out. Does it matter, though? I directed them to run get help.”

I was still in shock, my mind numb and my muscles aching from trying to pump air through Bella’s lungs. Every time I shut my eyes, I saw her. Her hair, her clothes, the way her shoe had hooked itself on a dirty piling at the end of the dock and prevented her body from being swept out into the lake.

“Why don’t you let us ask the questions, Miss Reed. If that’s all right with you.”

“Sure. No problem.” I glanced up in surprise. “Ask me anything you want.”

“Good. We appreciate your cooperation. Now, is it true you didn’t like the deceased?” The female investigator’s tone was unerringly polite, throwing me off guard.

“I’m not sure what you mean. I didn’t dislike her…I didn’t know her all that well.”

“And yet you shared a cabin with her?”

“Well, yes. But—” I paused, then merely nodded. Of course, it didn’t make much sense. We’d roomed together for more than half the summer.

“Do you deny you had a vicious argument with Miss Estes minutes before she left your little drinking party the night before?”

“I’d hardly call it vicious. I asked her to take the cubs swimming in the morning.” The back of my neck began to itch.

“And when she refused?”

“I wasn’t happy about it because I’d taken her turn the day before.”

“Meaning you admit you were upset?”

“Not enough to kill her if that’s what you’re implying.” I felt my throat go dry. Hold on now, was I a suspect?

“We’re not implying anything. It’s our job to look for motives, anyone with reason to hurt her. Who do you think was the last person to see her alive?”

“How would I know?”

“That’s what we’re trying to determine. She wasn’t in your cabin when you got back at, what was it, dawn?”

“Shortly after,” I repeated for what felt like the hundredth time. I’d been in the witness interview room for several hours without a break, and hadn’t we been through this before?

“Like I said, I don’t know if she was there because I didn’t look. Her bunk’s at the rear of the cabin. Mine’s at the front. Our rack of clothes was in between. I was in a hurry, so I slipped on my swimming suit, grabbed a towel and sunscreen, and headed right back out.”

“To paddleboat?”

“Yes. Well, to swim originally. The cubs had decided it was too cold for swimming. They voted to go paddleboating and I agreed. It’s ridiculous to put swimming on the schedule when the sun’s barely up.” As counselors we often argued about morning swims because what was the point when we all hated it?

“Mm.” A bit of paper shuffling came next. My hands felt hot and clammy. I wiped my palms on my jeans. “By all accounts, Miss Reed, you left the party around midnight. Where were you between twelve a.m. and sunrise?”

This was a particularly tough question because I knew Celeste, the girl I’d spent the night with, hadn’t yet come out. Not to her family. Not to any of the other counselors. Not to her friends back home. Still, I didn’t want anyone thinking I had anything to do with Bella’s death.

“I was with Celeste Dennis in Birch.”

“Can anyone verify that?”

“Um, yeah. Celeste can. Her bunkmate had gone home to visit her parents for the night.”

“So, it was just the two of you? What were you doing all that time?”

Is that relevant? Is it any of your business? Exactly how does that impact your investigation?

These were all the things I wish I’d said, but didn’t. I was nineteen, naïve, and thinking I had to be straightforward with my answers.

In other words, I outed Celeste. Twelve hours later, I was released to my parents.

My life changed forever that summer, just not the way I’d hoped.