This was a time when high schools had smoking lounges, and Diane spent a lot of time in the one at Liberty High. Some of the only photos of her in the 1978 yearbook show her leaning out the window, cigarette in hand.
Diane began dating Todd Cooper early in their
junior year, and by the end of senior year, they were considered one of the leading couples of Liberty High. But they were not king-and-queen-of-the-prom material.
“Diane was too much of a badass for that,” said another friend. “When I think of what happened that night, one thing that I always think is . . . Diane must have put up one hell of a fight. Whatever happened, she went down swinging.”
Stevie stared at the ceiling for a moment. Had Diane gone down swinging? Had any of them? She paged through the file that detailed the injuries. （Carson might have had some unfortunate quirks, but he put together a solid set of case files.） She got to the diagrams of the bodies, with the detailed notes. Todd, Diane, and Eric had head wounds. Todd was stabbed sixteen times. Diane nine. Only Sabrina had no head wound, and Sabrina was the only one noted for having defensive marks on her hands.
What this seemed to mean to Stevie was that Diane, Todd, and Eric were all struck, possibly to incapacitate them. In Eric’s case, he wasn’t struck hard enough, and he managed to run. Sabrina, again, was the odd one out. Maybe this was because she was the least threatening and didn’t need to be hit on the head.
Whatever the case, one of these things was always not like the other. Sabrina Abbott, again, the perfect girl, the special one—reaching up, fighting back the knife. . . .
Stevie jumped as the cabin door opened.
“Look who I found,” Janelle said, coming in with Nate, whose shirt was soaked through with sweat. She passed Stevie a hot dog and a Coke.
“I’m not going to be popular,” Stevie said. “Don’t ask questions.”
Neither of her friends seemed surprised.
14
THE REST OF THAT AFTERNOON WAS A FREE ONE, AND ACCORDING TO Nate, most of the counselors were going over to the public side of the park to go swimming and cook out. Nate and Stevie attempted to dodge this, but Janelle managed to convince them that some kind of effort had to be made to ingratiate themselves with the people they would be spending the summer with.
The counselors of Camp Sunny Pines set out in a formless parade, people walking in random groups toward the road that separated the camp from the public park. Once you crossed, there was a thick wall of trees and a great deal more shade. The ground was gnarled with roots, so in places the path was raised up on slatted wooden walkways and tiny bridges, before twisting and splitting into dirt and wood-chip paths, staked with trail markers. Janelle, Nate, and Stevie followed along as the group meandered down the path marked in red, which led down and around the water’s edge. Stevie found that she was getting a bit winded from the walk and realized they had been going up a slow and steady incline,
which then dipped down sharply to get to the water’s edge. The trees opened up, and there was a big parking lot in the distance, fairly full of cars. Some RVs and tents dotted the area. The journey ended at a small sand and dirt beach, bordered by rocks and reeds.
On the Sunny Pines side, the ground had been cleared for the camp. Here, all was still wild, and the trees and reeds clustered around the lake like a halo. The lake was wide here, and Stevie finally saw the falls that gave it its name. It wasn’t quite a wonder, but it was impressive enough. This side of the lake was the real deal; their little lake below was the spillover, the children’s pool. On this side, the green-and-blue dragonflies ruled the waves, or the ripples. They buzzed the water’s surface like drones. Stevie wasn’t sure if dragonflies bit, so she shirked away when they landed nearby, twitching their many wings.
This was definitely where the snakes hung out.
Across the lake, a rock jutted up like a big, angry tooth, high above the water. It looked like something Jurassic, or like one of those views from exotic vacations where people would dive into crystal waters below. Except, in this case, any jumpers would have gone into the brackish water of Lake Wonder Falls, or perhaps into one of the smaller rocks tucked in below it.