To her surprise, David answered right away.

“You’re awake?” she said.

“Long drive today,” he said. “We left at six. How’s camp treating my princess?”

“Could be better,” she said. “Someone wrote the word SURPRISE above my bed last night.”

“Is this . . . some kind of sex joke?”

“No. Someone painted a message on our wall. It’s the thing that was written at the crime scene in 1978.”

“Okay,” David said, sounding maybe not so okay. “First of all . . . are you all right?”

“It’s fine,” Stevie said, shielding her eyes from the bright morning sun. “Just a prank.”

“Some fucking prank. What happened? They went into your cabin when you were out, or . . . ?”

“It’s sort of more complicated than that,” she said. “We don’t really know when they did it, except it wasn’t while we were asleep. Somehow they did it before and we only saw it when we woke up.”

“What?”

She shook her head. It was complicated even if you were there, looking at it, and felt impossible to explain over the phone.

“Someone’s playing a game,” she continued. “Maybe someone knows about me, about how at Ellingham someone left a message on my wall.”

“I don’t want to keep bringing up what happened last time, but last time? That person was a murderer.”

“This feels different,” she said.

“Oh good.”

“We’re getting some security cameras. I don’t know what happened, but I’m going to find out.”

“Yeah, I hate this,” he said. “How does this keep happening to . . . Scratch that. I know exactly how this keeps happening to you.”

If Stevie was being completely honest with herself—and she preferred not to be—David’s concern felt very good. He was really worried about her, possibly more worried than she was about herself. He cared. It sent warm bubbles of pleasure through her system.

Then a voice broke through the haze of romantic bliss.

“Welcome, counselors!” Nicole said over the loudspeaker. “Please bring your things to the dining pavilion.”

“I have to get ready and get going,” she said.

“Okay, but text me. Call me. Both. Let me know what’s going on, okay?”

“I promise,” she said.

She couldn’t help but break into a smile as she said it.

When Janelle returned, dressed in a flowing blue sundress, Stevie grabbed her things. The bathroom area was only a few yards away. The toilets and sinks were in a concrete and wood building (with no doors, so the air and flies could get in without difficulty). The showers were wooden stalls outside of this main structure, with no ceilings. It was basically a fancy hose in an open box, raised slightly off the ground to allow for drainage. Stevie would have much preferred it if the shower had been flush with the ground, because it seemed like a low, dark space under a shower would be an ideal spot for a family of snakes. Something had to live under there.