The Third Lie's the Charm (12 page)

Horns erupted, fireworks exploded. I saw Seth fall flat to his stomach and shimmy to the nearest copse of trees for cover.

“Wait? What? They fight to the death? Oh, no. That's not what I intended. Not at all. Well, shoot…” The voice was still on the loudspeaker but sounded decidedly less grandiose. All of the students stood looking at each other, trying to figure out if this was some kind of joke.

There was a strange shuffling noise over the speakers and then finally, “I mean welcome to the seventh annual Pemberlympics!” More fireworks exploded. Classical music blared from the speakers.

A tall, gangly man in a full suit and bow tie burst from the trees with a small microphone in his hand.

“I'm your host! Siegfried Manchester!”

The man only spoke in exclamation points. There was a smattering of applause as he took a bow, revealing his sweat-soaked back to his small audience of students and chaperones.

“Welcome to Camp Brown! You have been carefully selected to compete in a series of mental and physical challenges over the next few days! The winner will receive an internship with my company this summer!”

“Whoa, watch out. I'm going to kick your ass for that internship.” Bradley's voice was laced with sarcasm. Poor Siegfried gave away an internship every year as the grand prize for his weird competition, having absolutely no idea that students actively tried
not
to win it. No one wanted to work over the summer, and most of the kids were forced into this trip by their parents. So the competition actually involved performing the worst without getting caught actively losing.

So, yeah, I was pretty much born to win this game. Er…lose this game? Whatever. There was no way in hell I was getting stuck with that internship.

“As tradition dictates, you will be living in cabins! One with nature! And our first competition will decide your roommates and partners for the remainder of your stay!”

I caught Liam's eye. But he just looked away and threw his arm over Naomi's shoulders.

“There are backpacks hidden in the woods behind me. You will be grouped in rooms by color with one chaperone per cabin. The person who finds the golden pack will stay with me in the executive cabin and wins the first challenge!”

Right. So it was basically a game of hot potato in the middle of a forest. Whoever got stuck with the golden pack was totally screwed.

Seth started sprinting toward the woods, fierce determination written across his features. Siegfried pulled a small starting pistol from his pocket and shot a blank into the air.

“Freeze, Ginger! The games have yet to begin!”

I busted out laughing. I couldn't help it. This whole thing was just too awesomely ridiculous for words. To my surprise, Bradley started laughing too. Then Taylor and Bethany. And Maddie. And Liam. And finally, even Seth and Naomi. It was the kind of laughter where you knew it was going to get you in trouble, but that just made the whole thing even funnier. Even my dad and my Econ teacher were doing some suspicious coughing that made me pretty sure they were choking back giggles.

“Now! Now! Order! I mean…” Siegfried shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot like he had to pee. “Let the games begin!” He fired more blanks into the air, and this time everyone took off.

Naomi and Liam darted to the left and I followed them, keeping a slower pace. I had to see Naomi's color bag so we could be in the same cabin, but I quickly lost sight of them in the dense woods. Crap, crap, crap. There was no way I'd be able to keep an eye on her if we were separated. I saw a bag in the trees and made a grab for it. I could always hold on to it until I found Naomi again and then ditch it somewhere if she had a different color.

I pulled the straps over my shoulders and kept running.

“Naomi, take this
red
one!” Liam's voice rang out in the woods.

I sent him a mental thanks and started on faster, desperate to find another red bag. All around me I heard shouts of joy and a few curses. Slowly but surely, all of the packs were being taken, and I still hadn't found a red one. I was running out of time. Shit, shit, shit.

And then the gunshots rang out again. More music followed by Siegfried's voice. “All of the packs have been located. Report to camp for your assignments and for the winner announcement.”

I made my way out of the shade of the trees and onto the beach next to the lake where the rest of the students had already gathered. I scoured my fellow campers, searching for red. I found Naomi first, triumphant and cradling her red bag like a baby. Bethany and Taylor were wearing matching blue packs. Maddie and Seth had blue too. Now that was going to be an interesting room. Yikes. Another shot of red, this time Porter Reynolds. Oh God, please let Liam have the last red, please, please, please.

I felt a tap on my shoulder and I turned around to find Liam, eyebrow cocked, red backpack at his feet.

“I'm impressed.” I was actually more grateful than impressed, but he didn't need to know that.

“No, I'm the one who's impressed.”

“What do you mean?” Was he trying to be a dick? Yeah, I hadn't gotten a red, but at least I had yellow. It was better than getting stuck with our weird-ass host.

“I mean, you got the gold! Congratulations!” Liam slapped me on the back.

“Very funny. It's yellow, you…”

But I didn't have time to finish my sentence because Siegfried was already moving toward me like a bow-tie-rocking missile.

“Our winner! Our winner! Congratulations, young lady! You are now in first place!”

“Yellow.” It was the only word that came to my lips, and as soon as I said it, I knew my mistake.

“Oh no, it's gold! You got the gold!” Siegfried took my arm and swung me into what could only be described as a victory jig.

Apparently, I wasn't very good at losing.

I tried to imagine a scenario where a Pemberly Brown student would actually try to win the first challenge because the way I saw it, I had just landed in my own personal version of hell. The cabin was spacious and had absolutely no characteristics of an actual cabin (thank God). The marble bidet was only trumped by the constant questions from my dad about how I was feeling and the awkward staring from Siegfried. It was like being under house arrest, only instead of a DUI and an ankle bracelet, I had a slightly suspect mental history and a yellow backpack.

“Young lady,” Siegfried said for the millionth time. I'm not sure if he really couldn't remember my name or if he was trying to make me uncomfortable. If I was a betting woman, I'd probably say both. “You are in a very good position. Very good. Throughout your stay in this cabin, I will give you tips and advice to secure your standing as number one.”

My dad raised his eyebrows at me and smirked. I scratched my eye using my middle finger and shot him a meaningful look, a move that probably would have gotten me grounded at home, but my dad just laughed. Turns out Camp Dad had a decent sense of humor.

“You also have the opportunity to spend your daily free time with me as your mentor.”

“Oh…um…wow. Neat.” “Neat” was about two steps removed from “groovy” when it came to outdated jargon. What the hell was happening to me? I had to get out of there. “It's just that, Ms. D., our headmistress, she made it a point to remind me to spend time with my classmates. Especially during free time. You know, to build relationships?”

I backed toward the door, clutching my bathing suit and towel as though I was inching away from a pack of wild animals. Every chaperone appeared amused except for Siegfried. He looked hurt, but not hurt enough to guilt me into hanging around. My butt hit the swinging door and I pulled a Seth, sprinting as fast as I could across the grounds to the red team's cabin.

The thump of bass pumped through every crack in the cabin, out cracked windows, and beneath the door. The red team's chaperone, some bored-looking housewife, sat outside on a step texting on her phone. It was worlds away from Casa Siegfried across the way, the full-fat caramel macchiato to my stale police-station coffee.

Housewife shifted on her butt to make room for me to walk up the steps and offered a sympathetic smile at my sorry state of affairs over in the golden cabin. Before I could even open the door, Naomi came spilling out laughing and grabbed my arm to yank me in.

“Kate!” she screamed, her golden skin shimmering beneath a gauzy cover-up. The entire space smelled like coconuts and fun. “We were just going to come and find you. We're going in the lake!”

I wanted to love her for thinking of me, for her bubbly personality and the magnetism that radiated off her in waves. You couldn't
not
like Naomi Farrow. It was an impossibility. But then I caught sight of Liam, his eyes locked on Porter who was splayed out on his bunk, face turned toward the wall. Alistair had been caught in the crossfire just like Grace. Porter had lost a brother, Bradley a friend, and all for nothing. Alistair's death didn't stop anything. It wasn't a call to arms, didn't spur a new set of rules. It was a domino effect. Clayton Dorian was still in the hospital.

Anyone could be next. And Naomi Farrow was the problem, not the solution. We were like two poles on the same magnet, pushing against each other without even knowing it. Or maybe I was wrong. Maybe she knew exactly what she was doing.

“The dressing room's open. Go change!” she said, her white teeth flashing in the sun that streamed through the open windows. I held on to her eyes a bit longer than normal, wishing I would see something there, some glimmer of truth, but she flushed and looked down before anything became clear.

“Right. I'll just be a second.” As I adjusted my bikini behind the closed door, I gazed at the lake sparkling under the late-afternoon sun. Even though it was unseasonably warm for April, the water would still be frigid. But no Ohio girl would ever pass up an opportunity to get some sun on an actual beach. This should have been fun. My biggest concern should have been figuring out how to convincingly lose Siegfried's lame challenges. But the beach, the forest, the charming cabins were all laced with a bitterness that burned my throat and left my stomach raw.

A sense of foreboding gurgled and twisted inside, and even the sight of the pebbled sand and the surprisingly blue lake water couldn't calm me. Laughter erupted behind the closed door, and I realized my time was up. I'd just have to shadow Naomi as we'd planned, and maybe everything would be okay.

All of us trekked to the beach, even Porter and Bradley. I couldn't help but notice the circles that ringed Bradley's eyes. Having Porter around was hard on him, a constant reminder, but his smile shook less than it had in days, and he was laughing his real laugh, so maybe things were getting easier. Maybe this trip really was helping him work through some of his grief.

Maybe it was helping all of us.

“We're lucky, you know?” Naomi cradled her head in her hand and turned on her towel toward me. “Pemberly Brown can be totally messed up sometimes and I hate that my brother is hurting and that you…” she hesitated. “Well…you know, but we're still lucky. I mean, we're
here.
”

Maddie squealed as Seth splashed her with the cold water, and Liam played Frisbee with a bunch of the guys. Bradley had passed out a few towels down, and the beach was dotted with students and chaperones. Bethany and Taylor gossiped quietly on a beach blanket. Even Siegfried had come to play. (He'd left his bow tie at the hut.)

I wanted to believe that Naomi was right. That it was luck that we'd been selected for this trip. Luck that we were here while our friends were dead and buried. Luck that I had been the one to lose a best friend, the one whose life was divided forever by death.

But there was nothing lucky about it.

I re-tied my straps and propped myself up on bent arms. “Sometimes I think we make our own luck. Or someone makes it for us.”

I waited to see if Naomi would bite, but her eyes remained trained on the water. We sat there in silence, watching the birds swoop overhead. Later, we shrugged back into our cover-ups and began preparations for the nightly bonfire.

Siegfried and the chaperones spoke vaguely about the morning challenge and our responsibilities to set goals. Because of my golden pack status, I led the three parts of Reflectere
—Venimus
, “We have come;”
Lusimus
, “We have played;” and
Vicimus
, “We have won.”

The fire died down to a sputter and someone yawned, setting off a yawn chain around the circle. If we wanted to perform well tomorrow, Siegfried suggested we sleep. In that case, I wondered if I should pull an all-nighter.

“Are we cool?” Liam asked, elbowing me lightly.

I had no idea how to respond to that question. He'd barely said two words to me over the past few days. I'd seen actual photographic evidence of him making out with Bethany, and he was currently spending all of his free time with another girl in hopes of catching her doing something shady. There was absolutely nothing cool about any of it. And yet, what could I really say? I was the one who told him we were over. I was the one who kissed Bradley. I was the reason he was spending all of this time with Naomi. This was all my fault.

“Yeah. We're cool.” I glanced behind me and lowered my voice. “You'll watch her, right?”

“I'm on it,” he replied, rolling up his towel.

Liam. He had resisted and fought me and pushed any involvement away, and now, as he walked back to the cabin only a beat behind Naomi, I wondered what had changed his mind. It couldn't have had anything to do with me. But that didn't stop a flicker of hope from melting just a little of the ice that surrounded my heart like a cage.

What could only be described as a mind-numbingly loud siren ripped across the rolling hills of Camp Brown, and as it yanked me from sleep, I knew instantly that someone had died, a tornado was coming, or the zombie apocalypse had begun. Possibly all three at the same time.

I slapped my hands over my ears, my eyes still blurry with sleep. But instead of crying, hunkering, or defending one's self against flesh-eating non-humans, all the chaperones in my cabin were laughing. At me.

“Good morning, sunshine,” my dad quipped. I fell back onto my pillow with a groan.

“Up, up, up, number one! We have a challenge to win!” Siegfried fluttered around the room like a butterfly on speed. I seriously considered suffocating myself under the pillow.

By the time every camper had dragged their body from the cabins dotting the lawn, eyes still bloodshot from the most unnatural wakeup call of our lives, I was afraid we all might start turning on each other like savages. Even Naomi, perpetually supermodel chic, appeared tired, mussed, disgruntled.

“Coffee,” we mumbled in unison. No matter how many times we were told coffee would stunt our growth, at Pemberly Brown, we were accustomed to our daily Starbucks runs and the caffeine jolt that followed. Starting the day with anything less was torture. Especially when we were ripped from sleep by a freaking siren. And like a mirage waving in the distance in the Sahara Desert, large canisters of coffee came into view, situated along the perimeter of Centrum, the centermost point of camp. We stampeded to claim our cup, and after each of us warmed our hands around the liquid gold, all was right in the world.

Camp Brown spread out from Centrum, a center point designed by Siegfried himself. He'd placed the first brick, rumored to be borrowed from one of Brown's old school buildings. The rest of the smooth rocks swirled out from that point creating a rustic, circular mosaic and the perfect meeting spot. Siegfried stood on that first brick, megaphone in hand despite the fact that we could have heard him whisper.

“Girls and boys!” Siegfried spoke into the megaphone, and we slapped our hands over our ears again. Taking the hint, he lowered the contraption. “Welcome to the second challenge,
Merge aut Nata
,” Siegfried explained. He wore a gold T-shirt and winked at me. A few kids laughed and my cheeks caught fire.
Sink or swim
, I thought, translating the Latin. Kind of summed up my life right about now. He lifted up a pile of gold T-shirts.

“The winners of today's challenge will receive these.” “Victor” was printed across the chest of five T-shirts. “They will also have the opportunity to join me in Chicago this summer at my company's headquarters. Unlike years past, this summer's internship will employ a group of Pemberly Brown students.” A few kids raised their eyebrows. Sure, no one wanted to work over the summer, but Chicago changed things a bit. Cute apartments came to mind, the lake, boutiques. An internship at Bye Bye Diaper suddenly wasn't sounding so bad.

Chaperones began circulating, handing each of us a small ticket. We all opened our tickets, and whispers increased in volume as kids began comparing and even trading. My Econ teacher raised one arm in the air.

“All right, all right. Listen up. Your ticket designates your team for this challenge. We'll organize ourselves by color, and uniforms will be distributed.” He indicated positions for team members to gather, and in seconds, we'd arranged ourselves into teams.

Sure enough, Naomi sidled to my side and elbowed me playfully. “I'm gonna keep my distance, number one,” she joked. “I'm staying local this summer.”

I laughed awkwardly with my stomach clenched. How could Naomi do that? How could she go from suspect to friend in seconds? Why did she have to make everything so confusing?

My Econ teacher handed me a bright green wetsuit I was to wear during the challenge. Taylor was handed green as well. She raised her eyebrows at me in understanding or solidarity or judgment. I couldn't be sure which. As I unfolded the material, I noticed white lettering positioned across the front.
Conventus
. “To come together. To join. To unite.”

The word took my breath away like some sort of epiphany. Naomi carefully unfolded her suit and ran her slender fingers over the letters. Her eyes flashed to her brother's a few groups over. Naomi and Bradley stood for a union of the Sisterhood and the Brotherhood. Their dream, their parents' dream, was for the societies to merge so power would be distributed evenly. If I hadn't been completely manipulated by Taylor and Bethany, they might have actually succeeded. And yet, I couldn't help but wonder what our school might look like if they had. Would Alistair be alive? What about Clayton? Would the Factum Virtus have even been resurrected?

I couldn't be sure about anything anymore. My eyes flashed back to Naomi, who raised her eyebrows at her brother. In that moment, I wondered just how far two people might go to accomplish a family dream. Would they set the Brotherhood up against themselves to prove a union was necessary? Would they trick? Would they kill?

I touched each letter of the word the way Naomi had just seconds before. “Conventus,” I whispered, loud enough for Naomi to hear. She turned from her brother to me.

“Conventus,” she replied.