Page 19 of Treasured By Them
I have a dress! I text Edmund and Troy, first. Then I text the same to Leah, along with a photo my mom took of me wearing the gown I chose. I feel a little guilty that Leah wasn’t there when I picked the dress, but when she calls me immediately, I explain.
Luckily, her feelings aren’t hurt. “We don’t have time for hurt feelings. Your wedding is in two freaking weeks!”
“I still can’t believe it.” I sit cross-legged on my bed next to Cackle. “I go between heck yes and hell to the fuck no. This is insane, isn’t it?”
“A little. But if you’re happy…are you happy?”
“I’ll be happy that the Vorsongs aren’t killing off the people I love.” I pause. “And Edmund isn’t so bad.”
“How about Troy?” she teases.
I sigh and pet Cackle, who tucks his head into my knee. “I like them both, if I’m honest.”
“Then you should have them.” She says the words in such an authoritative tone, I almost believe her.
She’s my best friend, my oldest friend. Which means…
“Hey, Leah?”
“Yeah?”
“Were we friends that summer I went to camp at Danish Lake?”
“I don’t know—we started hanging out in fourth grade, right? Or was it fifth?”
I try to think back. “Were we ever not friends?”
She laughs. “Probably not. But why do you ask?”
“Just thinking about all the Britney Gardner stuff. I think I knew her. I think…this is crazy. But I might know about her death. I just can’t remember anything.”
“Whoa.” Leah’s quiet for so long, I wonder if the call dropped. Then she adds, “I don’t remember much about her going missing, and I don’t think we were spending a lot of time together that summer. But if there’s anything I can do or help you with, let me know. Want me to ask Dmitri?”
“No—definitely not. He’ll just worry. I’ll go through my old scrapbook and see if it jogs any memories.”
“If you’re sure…”
“I am. Thanks, Leah.” I redirect the conversation to her maid of honor dress, which I let her pick out. She and my cousin Rachel, who will be a bridesmaid, decided to go with royal blue. Sounds fine to me. Maybe I’m one of those brides who doesn’t care about the details. Or maybe, if the wedding felt like something I was choosing to do, I’d care more.
In the end, it doesn’t matter too much whether I care, or why I care. It’s happening. I’ll get up at the front of the church next to Edmund and say I do.
Once Leah and I say goodbye, I grab my scrapbook from the bottom drawer of the dresser. It’s fairly small, only about nine inches square. Incredible how I can feel mildly panicky just holding it in my hands.
I stare intently at the torn-off remains of the cover photo. All that’s left are my pink and black tennis shoes and the bottoms of my legs. The lake in the background. Shade-dappled grass in the foreground. Am I standing with friends? Maybe I got mad at them and tore the photo because of that?
Who was I friends with at camp? It wasn’t Leah. Pretty sure I would remember her there, or she would have remembered when I asked about it.
Whatever. I open the scrapbook to the first page. I see photos of people I don’t recognize. Who’s that girl with the braces? She’s showing up in quite a few of my photos. I come across one where I’m in a row boat with her and a boy, the sun blinding us so our eyes are squinched up tight.
I flip through more pages, frustrated. Why did I think I’d find answers here? There’s nothing. I don’t remember these people.
I have to focus on my breathing. Slow. Deep. There’s nothing scary here, just a bunch of repressed memories.
And the lake. Page by page, the lake in the morning. The lake in the afternoon. The muddy beach with a campfire going next to it. The sun glinting off the surface, swimmers in the distance. All angles—up close, and far away. So many photos of the lake. I must have been obsessed with it. I keep going, stopping at some truly terrible selfies of me with the girl in braces. She has strawberry-blond hair and a quarter-sized birthmark on one side of her face.
It’s in one of the selfies that I notice people in the background.
There—Britney Gardner. Dark, curly hair. In the photo, she’s talking to someone out of the frame. The photo of her that was splashed all over the media showed a wide smile and twinkling brown eyes. Here, she looks serious, almost angry.
