The Dead Enders Read online

  “Sorry, George,” I say, moving toward her and tapping her on her head with my palm—one, two—before letting my hand rest for a moment on her hair. Our little thing. “Couldn’t quite deal with it, you know? All that bullshit noise.” And I think, but don’t say, that it’s better to skip over the part about another year gone and any summer plans? and get right to the good stuff: summer and freedom and Weekenders and their clean, perfect lives.

  “We got our finals back in math,” says Georgie under her breath as I pull a chair closer to her. Ana and Davis are sitting on one side of her. All of our chairs face the water, and the sun reflects off of it like the blade of a knife.

  “Bet you aced it,” I say, and elbow her gently. “You know numbers.”

  “Yeah,” she says, “I did. I—” She reaches down and pulls something out of her backpack. “Mr. Carlson said I could bring you yours.” Then she looks away.

  It’s folded in half, once. I don’t need to look to know what it says. I force myself to laugh. “Thanks, George,” I say. “Chalk it up to more bullshit noise.” And I stand and walk to the edge of the deck, which rises above a slope down to the water. I wad the paper up in a ball and hurl it toward the lake. Then I clap my hands. “That’s better.”

  “Erik,” Georgie starts to say, but then she shrugs and laughs. “Sure is.”

  “Tell him,” says Ana. She has her knees pulled up to her chest—I guess it is a little chilly, though I haven’t noticed much, lately—and she nods at Davis. “About the fire.”

  “What?” I ask.

  Davis points across the lake to Washer’s Landing. “Nelson cabin burned down last night. Arson, they’re thinking.”

  “What?” I ask again, like I can’t hear him. I squint across the water. Sure enough, there’s no glare of expensive windows, no glint off the solar panels that they had installed. No nothing, because there’s no house there. “Damn,” I say.

  “First the chapel, now this,” Davis goes on. “If it’s a coincidence—if the problem was electrical or something—it’s the freakiest coincidence I’ve heard of.”

  “Arson for sure,” says Georgie. “Someone saw what we did and wanted to give it a try.”

  “Who would do that?” asks Ana, and I look away, but not before I see the scar on her arm.

  Don’t remember don’t remember don’t remember don’t remember

  The chapel goes up fast. One flame becomes five. And the four of us, watching at first, speechless.

  Then Ana goes in.

  I didn’t think she’d go in.

  And it’s hazy—everything is muffled—but I can hear other people, too—Davis’s mom and a few kids from the youth group. People are starting to wake up, climb out of their tents, as the chapel burns on.

  And then it’s really burning—burning in the way of colossal mistakes, of no-take-backs. It’s a wall of fire. And Ana’s in there.

  I can’t even hear myself over the roar of the fire, but I’m yelling, screaming, my words lost in the flames. Davis is right next to me. Georgie—where’s Georgie? Leaning over, hands on knees, coughing. I start to take a step toward her when Ana comes out of the chapel, her arms bleeding and empty. “I couldn’t,” she’s gasping. “I couldn’t save them.”

  Davis looks at me like he heard me say something, and maybe he did, but there’s not time to think about it because I look up and watch as one of the shingles from the chapel roof flies off in a kind of slow-motion flutter, almost pretty, really, and lands on the tent where Chrissy Nolls is still sleeping.

  JUNE

  WHERE THE WEEKENDERS ARE ALWAYS JEALOUS

  When you grow up in a resort town like Gold Fork, the Weekenders are always jealous. Those few that we meet at Grainey’s or the public beach (we know they’re slumming it, so far from their private docks, and we watch them carefully out of the corners of our eyes until they approach us with smokes or a hilarious story about that guy over there) want nothing more, they say, than to stay. “I can’t believe you get to liiiiive here,” they whine as their parents pack up the Tahoe and make sure all forty windows are locked tight in their summer place, that the cupboards underneath the sinks in each of the five bathrooms are open to deter mice or freezing pipes, take your pick. “I’d live here foreeeeever if I could.” Then we watch from their driveways, hands in our pockets, as they wave from their cars, already settling down for the three-hour drive back to the city. Their parents’ cautious eyes in the rearview mirror, watching to see if we’re going to turn around and try the door to the cabin. We can almost read their lips as they say, “You sure about them?” And then, catching themselves, they cover. “They seem nice.” Turning up NPR and whispering under their breath to each other: “Did you lock the sliding door to the deck?”

  They always do. Lock it, that is.

  But what the Weekenders don’t get is that Gold Fork shrivels when they’re gone. Like a child’s bath toy that expands, plump and colorful, as soon as you add water, Gold Fork is a dry, hard thing when the Weekenders go home. We wave good-bye and walk back through town, wondering how someone would ever want to live here. Most of the stores are closed. The window of the real estate office is dark, so we have to squint to read the fine print on the ads that they’ve taped up for homes that none of our parents can afford. Through the glass front of Grainey’s, Maria waves, holding up an empty coffee cup in question, but we shake our heads and keep moving. The sun is just as bright, the lake—on the other side of the street, practically lapping up against Chin’s Chinese and Italian Specialties—just as blindingly blue. But the town has shrunk back to its former self. It’s barely breathing.

  We’re a four-season town with only two that count. Once Labor Day weekend is over, we don’t see the Weekenders until Coolidge Mountain opens for ski season. Then they come back, but we don’t see them like we do in the summer; they’re bundled up, too cold to talk, on their way to or from the hill or to and from the steakhouse downtown. They’ll order their potatoes mashed, not baked, and return to their cabins for long nights of board games by the fire. If they run into us at Grainey’s, we’ll all pretend not to recognize one another, and they’ll get their lattes to go. Once ski season is over, they won’t be back until Memorial Day. They’ll recognize us then. We’ll welcome them with open arms, our faces contorted with something like pleasure. Because we need them.

  What are the other two seasons like? Fall is loneliness and chill. Spring is mud.

  So here’s the ironic thing about Gold Fork. Even though we’ve lived here our whole lives, know back roads and hidden hot springs like they’re our own, Gold Fork belongs to the Weekenders, not us. Because they’ll keep coming back, weekend after weekend, summer after summer, for their whole lives. And we won’t. Once we get out—if we get out—we’re never coming back.

  DAVIS

  Erik’s throwing rocks.

  We’ve been hanging at the Den more often in the week since school let out. I mean, we were already the only ones to come here (“What’s the point of a place like that if no one’s going to use it?” asked Georgie the first time she suggested we all meet there after the chapel fire), but now, with the Nelson place on top of it all, it just feels more urgent.

  “Burn, baby, burn.” Erik stretches his legs out in front of him on the deck, leaning back. He lofts a rock in the direction of the lake. This one goes so far that I don’t even hear it hit the water. “Good thing the Nelsons were in the city.” He exhales, and a cloud of gray smoke dances out of his mouth and then stalls for one long second before disappearing. Erik passes the joint to Georgie. “Else they’d be toast points by now.”

  He laughs, and I shrug when Ana catches my eye. It is funny, in a way: We all know about the time Mrs. Nelson tried to order “toast points” at the Pancake Parlor. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. So Erik’s joke is good, I guess. But that’s the thing about Erik: All his jokes have a tiny chicken bone hidden in the middle, just waiting to get stuck in your throat.

  What I mean is,
he’s nice, but he’s not always kind.

  Who cares about kindness? That’s what Jane would say.

  Jane.

  “What are the odds that the same place would burn twice?” asks Georgie. Her voice comes low from the back of her throat while she holds in the smoke.

  Ana pulls a sweater over her long-sleeved shirt, and I see the wink of the silver scar on her left arm as she raises it over her head to tug it on. “Can we not talk about it?” she asks. “It’s not exactly my favorite memory.”

  “Apologies in advance, Ana,” says Georgie, exhaling, “but I think we’re going to have to talk about it sometime. Davis has to write a fucking article about it for the newspaper. Isn’t that what you told me, Davis?” She jiggles her leg and looks around. She’s been nervous since we got here. Jittery. Really, she’s been in a bad mood since I told her about the Nelson cabin burning down.

  I’m sitting on the ground between her and Erik. Georgie passes the joint to me and I inhale. Please don’t cough. Please don’t cough. I nod. Exhale. Swallow. “Dan says it’s too good to pass, and believe me, I tried. Two fires on the same site. Two years apart to the day.” I try to shrug, but it looks like a tremor. “Too good to be true, if you’re an editor.”

  “Great,” says Ana, frowning. She catches my eye, and for a moment I’m back there, staring into the flames and calling her name. Ana! Ana!

  I blink, and the memory’s gone.

  “What bullshit. It’s not like anyone died,” says Erik. But I see him glance at Ana quickly and look away again. “And besides,” he adds, “there’s no connection between the two. The Nelson fire was probably just wiring. All that money, and they screwed up the electric.”

  “Let’s hope so,” says Georgie, and she squints her eyes and shakes her head like she knows something. And why not? She knows people. If anyone’s going to hear something about the cabin fire, it’s Georgie.

  We all look again across the lake. At its base, Washer’s Landing is gravel, sand, boulders, some nice ten-foot platforms perfect for a dramatic leap into the water. The cliffs get higher as you climb, though—there are places to jump from fifteen and twenty feet up. Above those, the thirty-five and forty-foot cliffs that no one would ever leap off of. And way above those, the skeletal, charred remains of the Nelson cabin. It’s still midafternoon, and the cabin site above Washer’s Landing seems lit up, its emptiness glaring. It was empty like that before, too, when the Nelsons bought the land from the town. Scarred and haunted by the ghost of what we did. But the Nelsons didn’t care. They just wanted a good view of the lake. And a recently torched plot of land gave them that. Now it seems the ghost has spoken.

  I look at each of them: Erik, staring across at Washer’s Landing; Ana, hugging her knees; Georgie, pinching the joint between her fingers like she’s trying to crush the memory of it all. “I have to interview Chrissy,” I say. “For the article.”

  “Shit,” says Georgie. Ana looks away.

  “Why put her through that?” says Erik, turning toward me. “There’s no connection. We’re all just trying to create a story here that doesn’t exist.” His eyes are dark. I watch as he curls one hand into a fist, his whole arm tensing.

  I blink.

  A second passes, and then he blinks back at me, expression flat as plywood.

  “I heard she’s going to State,” says Ana. “She graduated this year, right?”

  “Right,” I say.

  “It’s always a surprise, isn’t it?” says Georgie. “Realizing who’s getting out. Chrissy Nolls—going to college. She must have flown under the radar all year, you know? Plotting her escape.”

  I nod. I don’t have to say it. We’re all thinking the same thing. From what we’ve heard, Chrissy Nolls never spoke in class. She never raised her hand. For all anyone knew, she could have been failing every subject. But here she was this whole time, getting ready to go.

  “Well, good for her, anyway,” says Georgie. “It’s not like graduation changes anything for most people.” Inhale. Long pause. Exhale. She holds the joint out to Ana, who shakes her head. “For, like, two-thirds of our class, graduation is basically just the end of one boring routine and the start of another.” A dainty cough. I can see that her eyeliner, usually so meticulously applied, is a little smudged below her right eye.

  “Hey,” I say. “You kind of look like Rocky.” And then—oh shit—I start laughing, which of course means I start coughing, which naturally means I look like a first-timer. Again.

  Leave it to me to break a moment.

  Georgie closes her eyes. She’s probably reciting some catechism. Not that my mom’s church prides itself on forcing its youth to recite Bible verses or anything—it may be a dog and pony show, but it’s not that kind of dog and pony show—but we do have a few tried and true platitudes under our belts from our years of halfway paying attention in youth group. Like I said, it never hurts to cover your bases. So that’s probably what Georgie’s doing, reminding herself to love her neighbor, or that he who doeth something getteth something else. Verily, verily. Life is but a dream.

  Whenever I get high, you see, holy wisdom starts to sound a lot like nursery rhymes. And that, too, maketh me laugh. And that, too, maketh me cough.

  “You’re such a virgin,” Georgie says, rolling her eyes, and she’s right on more counts than I’d like. “No more for you.” And she takes one last drag and crushes the joint against the sole of her sneaker before dropping it in an empty Coke can that she pulls out of her backpack.

  We don’t ask her where she gets it, and she’ll never tell. But even a dealer’s got a dealer, and sometimes I wonder whether it’s worth it—if this is really the job she wants. I’d never say that to her, though. You just don’t ask Georgie those kinds of things.

  “Shit.” Erik looks at his watch. “Gotta go. It’s almost six.”

  “Date with one of your adoring fans, All-State?” asks Georgie. She leans, elbowing him in the ribs. He leans toward her, too, and grabs her arm.

  “No,” he says, “just the Beast.” Then he lets go of her and adds, “Can we quit it with the ‘All-State’ crap?”

  “All-State,” says Georgie. “All-State, All-State, All-State.” Another elbow in his side, this jab a bit sharper than the first. “You have to let us be proud of you, son.”

  It’s kind of amazing, actually. I’ve never seen the guy crack open a book, and yet here he is, college paid for in another year, and all he has to do is move his feet.

  “I’ve told you,” Erik says, voice suddenly tense, “it’s not some big-deal state award. It’s just some rando throwing money around, wanting to look good. Can we drop it?”

  Even when he’s annoyed, Erik looks like he belongs on a promotional poster for this town. Adventure Awaits! Something like that. We’ve all been hanging out for a couple of years, and I have yet to see him fail. At anything.

  Cue the tiny violins.

  “Okay,” says Georgie, raising her hands. “Okay.” Then she looks at each of us. “But what about you guys? Are you prepared for the onslaught? ‘Double-shot skinny latte, no whip, extra caramel, hold the straw, spin it into gold, please.’ ”

  I have to admit, she does a pretty good impression of a Weekender ordering at Grainey’s.

  “By this weekend, they’ll all be here,” Georgie continues. “So just remember: That”—she points directly at Washer’s Landing across the lake—“is what we take to the fucking grave.” She narrows her eyes at each of us, pausing on Erik. “Got it?”

  Erik salutes her, but his eyes are serious. “Yes, Captain.”

  Georgie exhales. She turns and glares once more at Washer’s Landing. Like she blames the land itself for what we did to it. Then she takes her aviators off her forehead and places them squarely on her face. “Okay, team. Disperse.” She nods at me. “You first, Davis.”

  I make my way around the deck to the front of the cabin. From here, the driveway winds up and over a little incline before dropping back down to the lake road
. Per tradition, I get all the way to the top of the incline, where there’s a huge wrought-iron gate, before Ana starts following. Our bikes are hidden in the bushes on the other side of the gate. All four of us can climb over it and be on our bikes and cruising along the road in two minutes flat. We’ve timed ourselves.

  Before hoisting myself over the gate, I turn and look back at the Den. It never fails to amaze me. The cabin is bigger than a grocery store, almost as big as the Walmart that just popped up along the highway into town. (Walmart. Otherwise known as the first sign of the apocalypse.) There’s a tennis court at one end. It’s all perfectly notched logs, huge windows, rustic touches everywhere. And three stories high. At least. Because it’s built on a slope, the lower level isn’t visible from where I’m standing, but giant pines appear to be holding up the deck on the lakeside. It’s old, nothing like the newer cabins that look like their log siding and stone chimneys have been painted on. Ana calls the Den an “exquisite relic.” Erik calls it a throwback. Georgie calls us, and then we meet her here.

  The Den, aka, the Michaelson estate. More than sixty acres of private land, much of it waterfront. Some outbuildings, some broken-down docks. And everything totally, utterly abandoned. Though of course that’s ridiculous. There are always rumors of it being sold—of some big deal in the works—so someone has to own it. Right? Someone named . . . let me think . . . Michaelson?

  Fact is, there’s not another house on the lake that even comes close. And nothing else is as old. There was only one other building that came close to it in terms of historical significance—Gold Fork’s prized possession—but we took care of that when we burned it down.

  I grab the gate, swinging myself up and over. I’m on my bike in seconds, pulling out onto the lake road and waiting for Ana and the others to catch up. I grab my water bottle from its holster on the frame and take a slow swig. Anyone who drives by will think it’s just a routine water break.