《Arcadis Park》


 Chapter One - Truck Nuts

    Jonah stared at the hole in the fence for a moment, running first down the list of who to blame for it, and then deciding that fixing the problem was slightly more important than finding the culprit, at least at this moment. The hole was about the perfect size for a person to fit through on their hands and knees, and it had been cut neatly with wire snips, the sharp edges bent back and away. She made a mental note that the wires were bent to allow easier access in than out.

    Amanda leaned against the undamaged part of the fence, causing it to sag backwards. The chain links stretched up about six feet off the ground, in some places brushing the bottom edges of the tree branches that surround them. Amanda was the friend of Jonah''s younger sister, about seventeen, and she had gotten the job at Arcadis upon Jonah''s recommendation, which she was now wishing she could take back.

    "Don''t just stand there looking pretty," Jonah said. "Do something useful."

    "Like what?" Amanda asked, blowing a bubble with her gum.

    Jonah didn''t respond for a second, because she spied, on the other side of the fence, the missing piece, half buried underneath a fallen tree branch. The branch''s leaves were still the new green of summer, and the raw wound that had snapped it from its parent tree was clearly due to the storm of several days prior. Jonah dropped to the ground and crawled through the hole, grimacing as the soggy ground soaked through her jeans almost instantly. She retrieved the missing piece of fence and held it up to the hole, considering how easy it would be to patch.

    "Go back to the park, you know where the landscaping maintenance shed is, right?" Jonah asked.

    Amanda narrowed her eyes slightly as she said, "No."

    "Liar."

    "I don''t want to walk all the way back," Amanda whined.

    Jonah delivered her instructions as though Amanda''s whining had no impact on her. "In the maintenance shed, there''s a big pair of pliers, should be hung up on the wall right as you come in, past the rakes. Bring that. Oh, and that bush wire stuff, if we have any more of it."

    "You can go yourself," Amanda said. "Or I''ll just tell Rebecca that you''re off property during your shift."

    Jonah stared at her flatly. "You''re the one who called me out to fix this problem," she said. "If you would prefer that I go get the pliers myself, you can walk back to work with me, and you can take a turn guarding the wave pool."

    "Ugh," Amanda said. "Fine."

    "I''m going to check if there are any more holes while you''re gone," Jonah said. "Call me if you can''t find the pliers."

    Amanda left, making a terrible racket as she crashed back through the woods towards the main part of Arcadis Park.

    Jonah did not immediately make good on her promise to investigate the remainder of the fence for holes. She spent a solid few minutes leaning back against the fence, feeling it sag behind her, staring up at the dappled sunlight that passed through the heavy leaves above her. The cicadas whined on, almost too loud to tune out. They didn''t make this momentary pause in the workday peaceful, exactly, but it was better than the omnipresent screams and shouts and hubbub of people and voices that the park itself provided. Any excuse to escape was a good one.

    But she did eventually walk down a segment of the fence, towards the lake, checking for any other holes. There weren''t any, just the usual places where the fence had been dented out of shape by park employees hoisting themselves up and over to take the shortcut to and from town.

    Amanda crashed back through the trees, summoning Jonah to the hole.

    "You didn''t answer the snap I sent you," Amanda complained.

    "I told you to call me."

    "Do phone calls send pictures? No." Amanda held up two bundles of gardening twine, one thick and one skinnier. "You didn''t tell me which one you wanted."

    "Either one is fine," Jonah said. She sat back in front of the fence hole. "Give me that. And the pliers."

    The pliers were not the ones that Jonah had been imagining when she had made the request, but they would do. Instead of passing the twine and tool through the fence hole, Amanda lobbed them over the top of the fence, forcing Jonah to lean, dodge, and grab.

    "You hold this up," Jonah instructed, positioning the fence piece. "I''ll tie it back together."

    Amanda made a face as she was forced to sit on the ground, but since she was just as eager to avoid returning to actual lifeguarding work as Jonah was, she obediently held the fence segment in place as Jonah bent and tied the fence back into position. By the end of it, even with the pliers, Jonah''s hands were bruised and scraped, and she wished that she had told Amanda to bring her a pair of gloves as well, but it was too late. They had both managed to kill a half hour with this little excursion, though, and that was better than nothing.

    "How are you going to get back in here?" Amanda asked.

    "You should learn how to jump the fence," Jonah said, backing up a few steps so that she could get a running start. "I might not be able to drive you in every day."

    "If you call out, I just won''t come in."

    "That''s a good way to get fired." Jonah ran for the fence, jumped, and rattled her way up and over, scraping her stomach a little as she flipped over the top and dropped heavily down to the other side. It had been a good few summers since the last time she had done that on a regular basis, and she was simultaneously glad that she hadn''t lost the skill completely (in order to not embarrass herself by being trapped on the other side) and glad that she had a car to drive to work now, which saved her the time and effort of hiking through the woods shortcut.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    The pair walked back to the chaotic slice of civilization that was the park, the sound of it growing ever louder, surpassing the drone of the cicadas as they approached. At the edge of the trees, just before they passed into full view of the Thunderdome waterslide line, they paused.

    "I''ll put that stuff away," Jonah said, taking the twine and pliers from Amanda. "You go find something useful to do."

    "Like what?"

    "Either you decide for yourself, or I''ll get Rebecca to decide for you. I''m gonna go tell her that she needs to make an announcement to stop people from cutting holes in the fence."

    "You think it was one of the staff?" Amanda asked.

    "Of course it was one of the staff."

    "Who do you think it was?" Amanda leaned forward, apparently hungry for Jonah''s salacious gossip about which employee was ready to destroy company property.

    "Ma-" she stopped herself. "On second thought, none of your business."

    "Come on," Amanda whined. "Tell me."

    "We''re not gonna do a trial by assumption here."

    "You were going to say Markus, weren''t you?" Amanda said. "Just because he''s fat."

    "No, I wasn''t," Jonah protested lamely, and began to walk away. She had been about to say Mario, who last summer had sprained an ankle while traversing the fence. Markus carpooled to work, which Amanda didn''t realize.

    Amanda tagged after her for a few seconds, but deflated when Jonah said nothing else and headed resolutely in the direction of the maintenance shed. The pair of them in their bright orange staff shirts, emblazoned with the word ''LIFEGUARD'' on the back, made them stick out from the crowd, and another employee flagged them down. It was actually Mario, and Jonah gave him a suspicious glance.

    "Sorry," Jonah said, neatly evading whatever task it was by holding up the pliers and twine. "I have to go talk to Rebecca."

    "Good luck with that," Mario said, shaking his head and causing drops of water to fly out from his curly hair. "She''s in a mood."

    "When is she not?"

    "That''s the question of the century," Mario said. "Anyway, can you take the chair?" He pointed to the top of the stairs of the Thunderdome waterslide line, which was closed but full of guests. "I have to fill out an incident report."

    "Amanda will do it," Jonah said, and prodded the girl forward.

    "But I''ve never guarded this slide before," Amanda whined.

    "You''ll figure it out. Like I said, gotta go." Jonah darted away, pressing through the crowd before there could be any further incident. She went first to the maintenance shed, where she returned the pliers and twine, stacking them both haphazardly among the random mess of tools and supplies that seemed to grow organically in the space, and then she went to find her boss, Rebecca.

    Rebecca was the aquatics staff head, and had been working at Arcadis for far longer than Jonah had, and Jonah had been working there every summer since she had been old enough to get work papers. How many years was it now? Six? Shitty, dead end summer job. But it paid money, and it hired her back every year, and now she got to boss the younger lifeguards around more than anybody else. That made it at least better than doing nothing. Maybe.

    Rebecca wasn''t in her usual place (her "office", a glorified closet attached to the guest information desk building), and she wasn''t reaming any of the staff out at any of the attractions that Jonah passed along the way. She stopped by the desk to ask where she could find Rebecca, and was told to try Mr. Calvin''s office.

    Mr. Calvin was the owner of Arcadis, and Jonah disliked him much more than she disliked Rebecca. Rebecca was a known quantity. Mr. Calvin, on the other hand, could be anything. He was usually fine, she supposed, but...

    Mr. Calvin''s office was its own building, on the far side of the park, down a path that attempted to hide itself from guests.It abutted the parking lot, and right outside it was a spot painted reserved, in which was parked Mr. Calvin''s huge truck. It was one of those pickups where the back two wheels had been turned into four, making it ultrawide. A pair of gold painted truck nuts dangled from the back. Jonah had noticed them the first time she had walked past his car, and couldn''t stop noticing them every subsequent time.

    Even from a good distance, the yelling was plain.

    "I don''t know how you expect me to staff this place when you refuse to hire new guards!" That was Rebecca. Her voice was shrill. "It''s not like this place isn''t already a deathtrap!"

    Mr. Calvin''s voice was low enough that it didn''t quite carry to where Jonah stopped. She definitely didn''t want to walk into this altercation, but she did want to talk to Rebecca (even if she was in a mood), so she was forced to wait around awkwardly outside, hands in her pockets.

    "There are rats in my changing rooms! Rats!"

    Something banged inside.

    "I don''t care if it costs money! My staff have to--" Rebecca''s voice was cut off suddenly, and Jonah could hear Mr. Calvin roar clearly now.

    "They''re not your staff! It''s not YOUR changing room! This is not your park! It''s mine. You need to remember who you work for."

    "Oh? Oh!" Rebecca''s voice teetered on the edge of maniacal. "You want to play that game? I quit."

    Mr. Calvin''s booming laughter was clear, and clearer still when a red faced Rebecca slammed open the office door and emerged into the sunlight. She saw Jonah, and smiled perhaps the first genuine and apologetic smile that Jonah had ever seen her give.

    "Sorry, kid, this place has gone to shit."

    "Get out of my park!" Mr. Calvin yelled.

    Rebecca complied, unlocking the fence gate with the pinpad. "Remember to change the code when I leave, asshole," she yelled as she headed into the parking lot, disappearing into the rows and rows of parked cars. The fence clanged shut behind her. "Better change all the locks, too. I''m not giving back my keys!"

    Mr. Calvin emerged from his office, his dark brown hair slicked back from his face in a greasy looking wave. He wasn''t a young man, but he wasn''t an old one, either. He could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty-five, and Jonah wouldn''t have been able to tell. He stared out over the rows of parked cars, watching Rebecca depart. Then his gaze turned, and he seized upon Jonah, who was frozen in place, having watched the scene unfold.

    "Jonah," he said with a smile, and Jonah did not like the sickly tone that he delivered her name with. "You''ve worked here for a while, right?"

    "Uh, six years," Jonah said, shoving her hands into her pockets, desperately wishing to not have witnessed the past couple moments.

    "Would you say you''re a senior lifeguard?"

    "I guess," Jonah said.

    "So you take responsibility for the newer staff, right?"

    "Yeah."

    "How about you come into my office," Mr. Calvin said, holding the door open for her. "Let''s see if we can''t make that responsibility a little bit more official. As you may have heard, I''m in need of a new aquatics staff head."

 Chapter Two - Seems Kinda Dangerous

    She was getting a raise. That was at least something. Three whole dollars more an hour, bringing her all the way up to eighteen. That wasn''t much, but it was more money than Jonah made at her work study at school, and it was three whole dollars more than she had been getting paid before, so that was... worth it?

    Jonah looked at the park with fresh eyes as she left Mr. Calvin''s office in a kind of daze. The weight of responsibility dropped on her felt comically large: the whole aquatics staff, which was (functionally speaking) most of the staff of the park. She was kind of a ruler of this new kingdom, and she didn''t know whether to laugh or cry about it.

    She said new, but really, Arcadis was anything but. She could see the cracks in it as she walked around, pushing through the crowds and taking a long lap of the place, seeing who was guarding where, what the status of all the rides were. Arcadis was one of those amusement parks that clung to profitability by the skin of its teeth, and remained open by the slimmest margin every year. Jonah''s dad had told her about how he had worked as a lifeguard when he was a kid. The cycle of the place was predictable. Arcadis was a kind of dump, but a charming one, and the owner decides to sell it for whatever reason. It sells, because it makes money. It''s reliable. The new owner comes in and decides that they want to increase revenue, and the best way to do that is to improve the attractions. They build a few new rides, then realize exactly how much that costs, and how little it improves park attendance. The owner hangs on for a decade or two, scraping blood from stones and trying to get as much money back as possible, and then decides that the money just isn''t coming, so they sell it to the next poor sap who comes along to try their hand at running an amusement park. In this way, Arcadis was shaped rather like an onion, with the oldest rides in the center, near the lakefront, and the newest ones pushing ever outwards into the wooded area, expanding in haphazard ways with no regard to planning or sightlines or anything of that nature. Disneyland, Arcadis was emphatically not.

    But, Jonah knew, it didn''t have to be. All it had to be was entertaining enough for kids in a, say, hundred mile radius to beg their parents to take them a couple times a summer. They had a steady stream of guests, and plenty of regulars.

    She made it back to Rebecca''s office, which she supposed was her office now. Mr. Calvin had not given her any actual, well, instructions, so Jonah''s first thought was to get into the office and try to figure out what it was that Rebecca was responsible for doing all day.

    That plan was foiled immediately when she tried the office door and found it locked. She went around to the front desk, asked about the key. Genesis, who manned the desk, gave her a bored look.

    "I don''t know why you need the key," she said.

    Jonah was confronted by the fact that she was going to have to tell everyone about this new change in status. "Rebecca quit."

    Genesis laughed. "Hooooly shit."

    "Yeah. I know. Anyway, Mr. Calvin promoted me. I need the key."

    "I don''t have one," Genesis said. "Try maintenance?"

    "Can you call them for me? I don''t want to walk all the way down there."

    Genesis rolled her eyes but obligingly dialed and asked maintenance if they had a spare key. They didn''t. Apparently, Rebecca kept sole control of her office.

    "Great," Jonah said. "Love that."

    "I can call a locksmith," Genesis offered, "but I don''t know if we can get one in tonight."

    "Whatever," Jonah said. "I really just want to be able to use her computer to call a staff meeting."

    "You think if she kept the one key to her office, she didn''t keep her computer password locked down tight?" Genesis asked. "You''re out of your mind."

    "Can you call a staff meeting then?"

    "Hah. No. I don''t have staff records. I''m a glorified lost and found station."

    "Okay... Who does keep staff records?"

    "I think the heads of each department do."

    "Genesis. How does payroll work if everyone is keeping their own stupid records?" Jonah asked, getting frustrated now.

    Genesis leaned forward over the marred surface of the welcome desk and whispered in a conspiratorial voice, "Don''t let Mr. Calvin hear you asking that question."

    "Jesus fucking--"

    The bell over the door rang as a guest walked in to the office. Genesis immediately sat back in her chair and smiled broadly, her best customer service face on. Jonah took that moment to leave.

    Outside, the wind had picked up a little, and the sun was beginning its meandering journey down towards the treeline. It was a bit past six, and the crowds were beginning to thin out as most of the park''s guests began to contemplate leaving to get dinner. Jonah passed by a food stand, handed over her employee swipe card, and received her complimentary shitty park hot dog. Since most of the staff worked nine to eight, four days a week, they were compensated at least in part with a limited amount of free food. If Jonah thought too hard about how bad the food actually was, she wouldn''t have eaten it, but hunger got the best of her on a daily basis.

    She ate as she walked, headed first towards the attraction that always had the largest number of guards at it: the wave pool. It had the largest number of guards because, in general, people had to be rescued from it on a more than daily basis. Was the thing a menace? Oh, absolutely. Was it a major draw for guests? Well, it sure was popular. Maybe that was due to the fact that people enjoyed the danger. There certainly wasn''t anything else enjoyable about the wave pool. Jonah would know: she guarded it for several years, and was pleased to report that no one ever died on her watch. She was glad to escape that responsibility though, because the water was always ice cold and rather slimy, being pumped in from the lake, unheated and barely treated. Now that she was more senior, Jonah had more of a choice of where she guarded, and she picked the cushier areas for herself. She was a little lazy, in that respect.

    As she approached the wave pool, she didn''t hear its characteristic set of screams and ''wooshes'' of water being sucked in and out of its inscrutable machinery. She came closer and saw all the guards who were supposed to be guarding the wave pool (Amanda among them), standing around and drinking sodas as they shooed away guests who attempted to stop by.

    Jonah stared them down.

    "What''s going on?" she asked.

    "It broke," Amanda said.

    "For the four millionth time," Kyle said, looking rather smug about it.

    "Did you call maintenance?"

    "They''re busy," Amanda said, then blew a bubble with her gum.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    "Did you pester them about it?"

    "They said they''ll be here in, like, an hour."

    "Do you know what''s actually broken?"

    "Probably the intake again," Kyle said.

    "The lake intake?"

    "Yeah. Well. I mean," Amanda said, stuttered, and gestured at the wave pool. "Look at the level."

    The pool was still, and from the shallow end where it slopped up onto the paved surface where they were standing, everything looked relatively normal, but down towards the other end of the pool, where the waves originated, the depth was abnormally low. Jonah knew that if she stood along the top edge of the pool, she would be able to see through the still water to the massive crack through which the pool water slowly leaked. Last year, she had hoped that Mr. Calvin would fix the hole over the winter, before it got worse. That hadn''t happened. Of course, she had also hoped last year that she would be able to get a different job, and not be stuck working here for another summer. That hadn''t happened either.

    "You know that''s an easy fix, right? You could do it yourself," Jonah said, though the concept of "easy fix" was perhaps a bit of an obfuscation. It might have been technically easy, but cleaning out the stuck lake intake was often beyond filthy.

    "Here, show Bay how to fix it," Kyle said, pushing forward the third member of the little crew. Bay, her full name was Bayleigh or something, was a short girl, no taller than five feet, with black hair that fell about her face in an artsy bob. This was Bay''s first year at Arcadis, and Jonah had only spoken to her briefly during the mandatory lifeguard training that all the aquatics staff took at the beginning of the season.

    Bay looked anything but pleased about being dragged into fixing the problem, but she didn''t say anything. Jonah felt herself get distracted from her original task of telling everyone that she was their new boss now, but as boss, it was probably her job to deal with this issue. "Fine," Jonah said. "Like I said, not that difficult."

    Bay followed Jonah silently, headed behind the pool and out to the squat concrete building that held the actual wave pool mechanisms.

    "You been in here before?" Jonah asked as she keyed the pin to unlock the door.

    "No," Bay said.

    "Ok, well the code is 5555. Not that hard to remember."

    Bay made a face, a half smile.

    "Yeah, I know  it''s not secure, but I don''t know how to change it. I don''t think anybody else does either. Anyway, there''s two main things in here..." The lights in the filter house barely worked, but she flicked them on anyway, revealing a set of stairs leading down into the ground, along with piles of old equipment-- lane lines, broken chairs, the pool vacuum, all scattered around on the concrete floor.

    "Down the stairs are the pumps that make the waves. You don''t usually have to touch them." She pointed out the massive hydraulic paddles, long and orange, visible from the top of the stairs. "I don''t like to go near them. Seems kinda dangerous. Anyway, the intake is up here, because of, you know, gravity."

    Then she showed Bay the water intake, a long pipe that snuck out of the building.

    "So, unfortunately, this is kinda gross if it gets really stuck," she said. "There''s a filter further up the line, but sometimes that lets enough garbage through that the intake here gets messed up. Anyway, first thing you gotta do is stop the flow, just in case. It should stop automatically, but I don''t like to take chances, because it gets shit in here if you flood it. Turn that valve over there." Jonah pointed at a large metal wheel on a thick, green painted pipe.

    Bay obligingly turned the wheel.

    "Now here, we have to open the filter box." The lid of the box lifted off easily, and the problem was immediately visible: the whole thing was filled with dark mud, clogging up the filters and preventing water from coming through.

    "Not as bad as it could be," Jonah said. "So really, all you gotta do is pull out what''s blocking it, and it should be good to go. Any questions?"

    Bay had been silent the whole time, which Jonah didn''t mind, but she did think it would be good to get some sort of acknowledgement before she left.

    "Is it actually sanitary to be feeding the pool with lake water?"

    Jonah shrugged. "If it wasn''t safe, it wouldn''t be legal, and if it wasn''t legal, Mr. Calvin couldn''t do it."

    "Uh. Okay," Bay said, and left it at that. The skepticism in her voice was clear.

    "Look, it''s above my pay grade to worry about, and it''s definitely above yours. Anyway, I don''t think it''s ever caused a problem before. We just have to clean this out. Gimme one of those buckets."

    Bay dragged the bucket over and positioned it below the filter box. Jonah steeled herself and reached down into the filthy water, feeling tiny bits of debris swirl about her hand in the shockingly cold soup. She scooped out as much as she could and slopped it into the bucket. She stared at Bay until Bay got the hint and came over, helping to pull out gunk with a grimace. It took a good few minutes of work, silent except for the sick slopping and splashing sounds, and eventually the filter box was clean enough that water could get through once more. Jonah opened the valve, and water came pushing through, still muddy and disgusting, but through nonetheless.

    "Perfect," Jonah said. They left the filter house, dumping the bucket out on the ground behind it, and Jonah rinsed off her arms in the pool water. Was that any better? Probably not, but it got some of the gunk off, anyway. Near where water entered the pool, a brown-ish stain was spreading out, the remnants of the mud.

    "Gross," Amanda said, looking at it.

    "It is what it is," Jonah said. "It''ll clear out in a bit, as soon as the lake water clears up."

    "And when will that be?" Amanda asked.

    "Eh, by tomorrow, probably, as long as it doesn''t rain again. Rain makes everything get gross."

    "Hey, Jonah, you coming to the party tonight?" Kyle asked, finishing the last of his soda.

    Two thoughts flashed through Jonah''s head, and unfortunately the less professional one fell out of her mouth first. "It''s Friday already?"

    "You bet it is," Kyle said.

    It was tradition that every Friday, at least when the weather was good, a good number of Arcadis employees, at least all the ones who were friends with each other, would get together in the park at night and use it as their own personal playground. This was, of course, definitely not allowed by upper management, but what upper management didn''t know didn''t typically hurt them.

    Unfortunately, about an hour prior to this moment, Jonah had joined the elite ranks of upper management, and she was faced with the first personal problem which that entailed.

    "Kyle," Jonah began, and placed her slimy hand on his shoulder with mock seriousness. "I will not be attending the party, and neither will you."

    "You asking me on a date instead?"

    "What?" Jonah asked.

    "I''d say yes if you were," he said, and made a mock kissing noise. "But really, what?"

    "Rebecca quit."

    Kyle laughed loudly, causing some guests hustling past to look at him. "Ding dong, the witch is dead."

    "I got promoted," Jonah said.

    "Seriously?"

    "Yeah."

    "But I thought that Zack was going to take the job."

    "I happened to be standing in front of Mr. Calvin at the time. Directly in the line of fire."

    "That''s a dumb reason to get promoted."

    "It''s the only reason there had to be. Anyway. That means I''m in charge now."

    Kyle shrugged. "Okay?"

    "And that means no more parties."

    "No more parties. Right." His tone indicated that there was unspoken mutual agreement between them, that the parties could and would continue, as long as Jonah didn''t "know" about them.

    "I''m serious," Jonah said. "No more parties."

    "Gotcha." If he had winked at her, she would have maybe yelled at him, but he didn''t. She didn''t know what exactly the professional thing to do was, but this was the best she was going to get right this second.

    "Anyway," Jonah said. "I need to call a staff meeting for all the aquatics people to make this announcement, but I don''t have access to everyone''s phone numbers and stuff."

    "Why not?"

    "Long and dumb story," Jonah said. "I''m sure it will be a problem that we''ll be figuring out for a while."

    "I bet. Anyway, what do you want me to do about it."

    "You know everybody here. I don''t know, can you maybe send like a group text or something?"

    "You gonna pay me for use of my phone for work?" Kyle asked, raising an eyebrow.

    "Kyle."

    "Jonah."

    "Just do it, please? I really don''t want to start off my tenure on the wrong foot."

    "You know I''m just joking with you, right?"

    "It''s been a long and crazy day. I don''t think I could bear much more weird stuff happening."

 Chapter Three - Down by the Bay

    As soon as Jonah walked away, Kyle turned to Bay and Amanda.

    "So, are you guys coming to the party?"

    "I have no idea what you''re talking about," Bay said.

    "Ah, I remember my first year working here, when I had no idea what the fuck was going on," Kyle opined. "Basically we get together and get drunk so that we''re all hungover as fuck for the saturday rush."

    "I''m underage," Amanda said, blowing a bubble. "My dad''d kill me if I got caught."

    "Literally no one has ever gotten caught before," Kyle said. "Also, who cares about your dad."

    "Of course I''ll come, stupid," Amanda said.

    "What about you, other newbie?" Kyle asked.

    "Uh. I guess," Bay said. "Do I need to bring anything?"

    "It''s BYOB." Kyle shrugged. "Got too expensive to keep passing that responsibility around the group."

    "But I''m underage," Amanda whined again.

    "Then make some friends who will buy you some," Kyle said. "This is not the most complicated mental arithmetic in the world."

    "Okay," Bay said. "When and where do these parties happen?"

    "Right here, baby!" Kyle swung his arms around, indicating the whole of the park.

    Bay now immediately understood why Jonah had said no parties. She was feeling less enthusiastic about it by the second, but she wanted to be in the park tonight anyway, so she supposed she couldn''t complain. And she was trying to make friends here. That was important.

    "And what time?"

    "Usually we stumble in somewhere around eleven."

    "Late."

    "Well, people''s shifts don''t end until eight, and we want to make sure that everyone has a chance to do whatever they need to do, and all the rest of the staff actually clear out of here..."

    "There isn''t any security?" Bay asked, nodding to the camera that hung on the side of the wave pool''s back wall.

    "Oh, you sweet summer child," Kyle said. "Do you think that Mr. Calvin pays for real security?"

    "I had been operating under the assumption that he did."

    "Like, four years ago I think was the last time that there was any to speak of. This place is..." Kyle shrugged. "A premier destination for people who know how to have fun. Let me just say it like that."

    "What if someone gets like, hurt?"

    "At the party?"

    "No, I mean in general. Like if someone drowns. Shouldn''t there be video footage?"

    "If you ask too many questions about the dumb way this place is run, you''ll give yourself a headache that doesn''t go away."

    "Jonah said basically the same thing."

    Kyle clapped Bay on the back, sending her stumbling forward a few steps. "Jonah is on the right wavelength. You have to be to survive here as long as she has."

    "How long has she been working here?"

    "Oh, I don''t know. I''ve been here five years, and she wasn''t new when I was, so, a while, I guess."

    "What''s her deal?" Bay asked.

    "Why do you care?"

    "Curious about my new boss, I guess. Is she going to be good?"

    "She could hardly be worse than Rebecca, so I''m fine with her."

    "Jonah''s nice," Amanda said. "Don''t tell her I said that."

    Bay laughed. "Okay."

    "I''m serious." Amanda popped her gum bubble. "Here''s her secret: she pretends to be lazy, but you can get her to do almost anything if you ask her in the right way. Just put up with her grumbling for like five minutes and she''ll give you whatever."

    "That doesn''t seem like an ideal quality for a manager to have?"

    "It''ll be ideal for us," Kyle said. "Damn, I should ask her to rearrange my schedule. I want Fridays off."

    "Are you going to text everyone about that meeting like she asked?" Bay reminded him.

    "Oh, yeah."

    <hr>

    The meeting in question was held in the largest building in the park, the pavilion. it had a concrete floor, and, despite being fully closed in, was filled with outdoor picnic tables. The whole aquatics staff could easily fit, as usually this building was rented out for corporate summer events and thus seated many people. Bay sat with Amanda and Kyle at one table, and she picked at splinters in it as she idly watched everyone else file in.

    The whole assembly was pissed off and sweaty, and Bay noticed that several of the lifeguards that she had talked to were not in attendance. Perhaps they hadn''t gotten the memo, or perhaps they had decided that they were not going to stay an extra half hour on the end of their already eleven hour shift. Bay definitely couldn''t blame them for that,but she didn''t have anything thrilling going on at her house, so she was here. Gotta get that extra $7.50 for staying. Hashtag on the grind or whatever.

    She was clearly exhausted after her shift, if those were the thoughts that were going through her head. She contemplated skipping the party that she had been invited to, but reminded herself that she wanted to make friends.

    Jonah came in, and walked up to the front of the room, where there was a small raised podium and lectern, in front of a projector screen. No one was paying attention to Jonah. In the group text summoning everyone to the meeting, Kyle had not provided the rationale for it, and had certainly not mentioned that Jonah was the new aquatics head.

    Jonah was a fairly plain looking woman, around Bay''s age, with short brown hair that probably had been spiky at the beginning of the day, but had now deflated with sweat and heat to lay sullenly against her forehead. She looked around with an expression that read as desperation, even from the distance that Bay was sitting at, and then clapped her hands.

    Clap-clap-clap-clap-clap. Then waited for the answering Clap. Clap.

    A few people seemed to hear it, she repeated the exercise, more people following along each time. It reminded Bay strongly of being back in middle school, but it was a technique that Jonah had copped from the mandatory lifeguard training the whole staff went through. The instructor there, an overenthusiastic burly man, had made them play clapping games for every conceivable situation. By the end of the training, Bay never wanted to be summoned by clapping again.

    But what other choice did Jonah have? At least this was better than more screaming, or more lifeguard whistles. Both of those things were the chorus that sounded the entire long work day.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

    The staff fell into silence, looking up at the podium where Jonah stood. She fumbled with the microphone for a a second, couldn''t get it to work, then just decided to talk very loudly.

    "Hey everybody," Jonah said. "Sorry for keeping you all here late today."

    "It''s okay," someone yelled out.

    "Thanks, Markus," Jonah said. "I''ll try to keep this pretty quick. I have some news, and some announcements. So, I guess first of all, I''m sure you''re wondering why I''m here, and not Rebecca. Well, Rebecca quit. Mr. Calvin--"

    Jonah had been about to charge on with her little speech, but she was forced to pause and look around with a rather exasperated expression as the staff broke out into noise of all types. Some people seemed to be enthusiastic about this change, others were confused, some were merely taking advantage of this new chaos to yell out any thought that popped into their head. Next to Bay, Kyle whooped and Amanda looked bored as she texted someone. Bay couldn''t assuage her curiosity, and peered over at Amanda''s phone screen.

    > lol you''re sister got promoted

    > it''s a mess

    No reply seemed forthcoming, so Bay made her snooping less obvious as Amanda dropped her phone down on the picnic table with a thunk.

    Jonah did the clapping thing again, and Bay politely clapped along. A reluctant quiet once again descended.

    "So, yeah, Mr. Calvin promoted me and I''m the new aquatics head." This line could not have been delivered more apologetically unless Jonah had accompanied it with bowing and scraping. "I don''t know how long that''s going to be fore, and I''m sure we''re going to have some hiccoughs along the way, but I''m going to do my best to make sure that the whole aquatics section is run in your best interests."

    "And what about the interests of the guests, hunh?" one of the lifeguards yelled.

    "Fuck the guests!" Kyle shouted.

    Jonah put her hand over her face, either out of embarrassment or to stifle a laugh, Bay couldn''t be quite sure.

    "I will also make sure that things are in the best interests of the guests, too," Jonah said. "It''s going to be a process. Also please don''t say things like that around me, because I''m pretty sure I now have hiring and firing power?"

    Kyle laughed, but Bay wasn''t quite sure that this was a laughing matter.

    "Anyway, to that end, I have a couple announcements, and then I''ll let you go. First of all, whoever cut the hole in the fence, I am going to need you to not do that. We''re not out here to destroy Arcadis property. I don''t care if you hop the fence, but if you can''t clear it, don''t break out the wire snips, okay?"

    There was mild laughter. Bay looked down at the picnic table, hoping that no one would see her flushed red face. She had thought that no one would notice the hole, as she had been the one to cut it, a few days prior. Whoops.

    "Second, a reminder that during shifts, you need to be on park property, and off shift, you need to not be on park property. Reminder that if you''re caught here off hours, you will be fired, and Mr. Calvin might criminally charge you for trespassing. So please obey this rule. Just reminding you that it exists. Thanks."

    Everyone was silent, but Kyle leaned towards Amanda and gave a theatrical wink. She let out a breath that could have been a half giggle.

    "My last announcement again and unfortunately has to do with the loss of our dearly departed Rebecca. I don''t have access to her computer systems, at least not at the moment, so staff records are all over the place. For now, consider that you''re working the same shifts that you have been-- that schedule shouldn''t change-- and I''m going to do my absolute best to make sure that all timecards are processed correctly and on time, but be aware that there might be hiccoughs, and if you fill your time card out wrong, I might not be able to fix it. If you think you have a problem, see me before the problem gets worse, okay?"

    She waited for a general mumble of okay from the assembled staff.

    "Does anyone have any questions?" One guy raised his hand. "Zach?"

    "Where''s Mr. Calvin?"

    "At home, I''d assume," Jonah said.

    "He couldn''t make this announcement himself?"

    "I think he prefers to take a more laid back attitude towards staff," Jonah said. From what Bay could tell, the park''s owner took a laid back attitude towards almost everything. Not that she had ever met the man. She was just basing that on some of his more strange policies that she had seen enacted.

    "Are you qualified to do this job?" Zach pressed.

    "I''m going to try my best, and that''s what matters," Jonah said with a strained smile.

    "Can I switch my shift from Fridays to Tuesdays?" Kyle yelled, without raising his hand.

    Jonah turned towards him, the relief on her face plain as she escaped Zach''s harsher questioning. "I will have to figure things like that out. If you have a serious problem, I might be able to help you, but we need more staff on Fridays than we need on Tuesdays, so that might not be possible. Talk to me afterwards."

    Kyle made a face.

    "Can I have a raise?" someone else yelled.

    "I don''t think I''m authorized to do that," Jonah said back.

    "But you do have the power to fire people, I see how it is," Zach said.

    "Are there any more actual questions?" Jonah ran an exasperated hand through her hair. "No? Okay, you''re all dismissed. See you tomorrow, Saturday crew."

    The assembly broke apart into muttering and chaos as some people headed for the doors, and others stuck around to chat.

    "There goes my ride," Amanda said, waving a cheeky goodbye as she ran after Jonah, who was trying to escape the pavilion without being accosted.

    "Do you walk home or do you have a ride?" Kyle asked Bay, who was standing and stretching.

    "Walk," Bay said.

    "Want a ride?" Kyle asked. "I have a car."

    "Nah," Bay said. "I''m gonna enjoy the nice weather."

    "You''d think you hadn''t already been enjoying it all day," Kyle said.

    "I need a chance to appreciate the cicadas in all their glory," Bay said with a smile. "I''ll see you at the party later though?"

    "Oh, yeah, for sure," Kyle said, brightening up significantly.

    <hr>

    Bay left in the general rush of people who headed back into the woods to take the shortcut back to town. It was by far the fastest route, if you didn''t mind going through the woods (which were admittedly a little creepy as the sun was going down). Everyone used their phone flashlights to illuminate the path, having carefully saved up their remaining battery life for specifically this task. As unobtrusively as she could, when they all got to the fence, Bay checked the status of her hole. It had been neatly patched up, but she thought that she might simply be able to use the new wires as a hinge, and still accomplish her same goal.

    Most people who were wearing backpacks tossed theirs up and over the fence, before taking running leaps and climbing, hands digging hard into steel wire. Bay climbed as well, with some difficulty, ripping her jeans on the top edge and falling several feet to the ground with the shock and tangle of it.

    "You okay?" someone asked, but she couldn''t see their face in the gloom, and couldn''t identify them.

    "I''m fine," she said, and hauled herself to her feet, knowing she''d have a blossom of a bruise on her hip when she got home.

    "You''ll get used to the fence eventually. Everybody falls sooner or later," the concerned stranger said, then vanished into the darkness.

    Bay made it home with no further incident, and fished the spare key out from underneath the mat to let herself in to her dark house. The place was comically empty: her family had moved cross country less than three months ago, and they hadn''t yet acquired much furniture to replace what they had sold back in Michigan. Bay hadn''t been consulted about the move, since she had been away at school during the entire process. She wasn''t happy about it, but she was, as her parents said, less than a year away from being an independent adult, as soon as she graduated college, so the indignity and anxiety of leaving her childhood home in the UP was not really something unexpected.

    She figured her family, both parents and younger brother, were out at dinner. She put some rice on to cook, and cleaned herself up so that she would be less filthy before the party. Bay ate her rice bowl standing around in her sparse bedroom. Most of her childhood belongings were packed away in boxes in the basement, and her two suitcases on the floor contained all the things that she had brought home from her junior year of college, that weren''t in a storage unit shared with a friend.

    The air mattress on the floor gave a sad wheeze when she kicked at it, and she opened up her second suitcase to reveal her true treasures: a whole stash of cameras and lenses, all neatly and delicately wrapped to keep them safe.

    Bay had gotten a job at Arcadis for two reasons. The first reason was that her parents had decreed that she couldn''t spend the summer sitting around doing nothing and earning no money. The second reason came after she realized that she was going to need to get a job, she figured she might as well find one that was visually exciting. The chaotic, gaudy, run down waterpark would be a suitable backdrop for interesting photography. If she could build up a body of work over this summer, that would make it less of a waste.

    She selected the tools she would take with her tonight. SLR with flash attachment, that might be best for party environment. And she wanted to try setting up some pinholes, to do ultra-long exposures, a couple days long, maybe. She headed back into the kitchen and rifled through the fridge, past the leftovers and the almost expired milk, to the tall tupperware where she kept all her film. She pulled out a box of photo paper, and two rolls of 800 speed color film. She tucked the film canisters into her pocket, and found the scissors in the kitchen junk drawer.

    Back in her room (windowless), she pulled out the pinhole rigs that she had made ages ago, and laid them out on the air mattress, along with the scissors and photo paper box, memorizing where everything was so that she could transfer the paper into the "cameras" by touch. When everything was set, Bay switched off the lights and gave her eyes a few seconds to adjust, making sure that there were no light sources elsewhere in the room that would wreck her photo paper. She really should get a darkroom light, if she was going to be doing this often, but the concept of buying one and then having to cart it around with her was annoying. So instead, she fumbled around in the dark, cutting the photo paper and jamming it into her pinhole rigs by feel, closing them up tight. Only when everything was safely tucked away could she turn on the light.

    There was still plenty of time before this theoretical party was actually supposed to start, and as she contemplated the several hours stretching before her, tiredness overcame her, and she lay down on the half deflated air mattress. She set an alarm on her phone, just in case, and then fell promptly asleep.

 Chapter Four - Sing For the Flames that Will Rip Through Here

    Jonah paced back and forth in the basement of her house, disguising the sound of it by the thumping of the clothes dryer next to her. She was doing laundry, and contemplating the state her life was in.

    Should she, or should she not go break up the party that she knew knew KNEW was happening over at Arcadis, as she stood and paced around.

    On one hand, she didn''t want to make new enemies out of her staff. They were freshly under her command, after all, and she wanted to have an easy summer, and not a terrible one. On the other hand, the thought of something happening at that party, while she was technically the one responsible for all of them, it was driving her crazy.

    Maybe Rebecca had had some kind of plausible deniability, not actually knowing that the parties had happened. But if some drunk idiot member of her staff fell into the wave pool and drowned, Jonah wouldn''t have that kind of recourse, of saying that she didn''t know it was happening. That lie would never hold up in a court of law. There were photos of her on various people''s Facebook pages, beer in hand, at these parties.

    And it wasn''t like people didn''t get hurt. The incident in which Mario had fucked up his ankle the previous summer had been when he climbed up the fence blackout drunk and fell off the top of it. Everyone was lucky that he had been able to stumble home in the dark, and he hadn''t decided to sue or something.

    She now felt retroactively bad for having gone when Rebecca was in charge. At the time, she hadn''t been thinking about potential consequences, because she knew the consequences wouldn''t fall on her shoulders, unless the police came, and that wasn''t likely to happen.

    Argh. It was driving her crazy. Jonah wanted to take her car and drive past Arcadis, just to peek in and see what was going on, see how crazy things were, but her sister had "borrowed" her car to go on a date with her weaselly looking boyfriend, and she wasn''t back yet.

    Maybe she should just go to bed. Get some actual sleep for once in her life.

    But she couldn''t do that.

    Frustrated with herself, with her coworkers (employees?), and the world, Jonah stopped the dryer and pulled out the still slightly damp shorts and tee shirt that were rattling around in there. She restarted the rest of the clothes, got dressed, and stomped upstairs. Her parents were asleep, or she thought they were, anyway.

    She stomped around the kitchen for a second as well, and angrily drank a glass of water. The damp clothes steaming on her body didn''t help her mood any.

    Finally, she made her choice. She fished around in the kitchen sink cupboard for the big flashlight, the one that she had used to use to walk to work before she had a car, and checked that it had batteries. It did.

    She was just going to take a look, she decided. She would only interfere if she thought something actually dangerous was going on. That was her intention, anyway.

    She retrieved her bike from the shed, and dangled the flashlight''s handle over her handlebars, then kicked off, headed out past the water tower, down towards the lake. It was about a mile of biking, but it was all flat and the roads were completely empty, so it went fast. There was a place where the road ended, where everyone stashed their bikes before they had to walk through the woods themselves. Jonah left her bike, tires still spinning, there next to several other people''s. She frowned, knowing that meant that the party was, in fact, on, and that there were plenty of people doing things she had explicitly told them not to do.

    It was always slightly creepy, heading through the woods at night. The cicadas were loud as ever, a perpetual shrieking whine in her ears, and every other sound seemed amplified by the pitch darkness outside the cone of light cast by her flashlight.

    As she approached the fence, Jonah became aware of a rattling sound, as though someone were shaking the whole thing with force. It was windy, but wind never rattled the fence like that. She cast her flashlight around for a second, wondering if it could be some sort of animal thrashing against it. A dear that had gotten stuck, perhaps. She didn''t think that bears tended to live around here, or wolves, or mountain lions, but she couldn''t help thinking that she might encounter one anyway. She existed on the border of curiosity and fear, and she crept forward, keeping her flashlight low to the ground, until the fence emerged, shining and silver, from the gloom. The rattling had not stopped, and now she could see the fence itself shaking ever so slightly. She followed the line of the fence, moving closer to the sound of the vibrations, and saw something that made her stop in her tracks and curse in annoyance.

    "What the fuck do you think you''re doing?" Jonah asked loudly, pointing her flashlight at the kneeling figure who was clearly re-opening the hole in the fence that Jonah had closed not twelve hours prior.

    Startled, the figure jerked and turned, caught red handed. It wasn''t Mario or Markus, it was that new girl, Bay.

    "Jesus Christ," Jonah said. "I literally told you people explicitly NOT to pull holes in the fence."

    "I was going to close it back up when I was done," Bay said. She was blinking rapidly in the harsh glare of Jonah''s flashlight, looking exactly like a deer in the headlights.

    "What the fuck do you need a hole for?"

    "I didn''t want to climb the fence with my backpack on."

    "Then chuck the backpack over first."

    "It''s delicate," Bay said.

    Jonah didn''t like the sound of that. She saw the offending backpack on the ground, and picked it up. Bay didn''t protest or stop her as she opened it.

    "If you have a backpack full of booze, I''m going to fire you," Jonah said, shining her flashlight into the backpack. She had a terrible thought that this, searching Bay''s backpack while neither of them were technically at work or even on work property, was probably very illegal, but Bay didn''t stop her. The light glinted off of shiny metal objects, and Jonah couldn''t resist pulling one out. It was a soup can? An empty one. She shook it, and it rattled ever so slightly.

    "Please put that back," Bay said. "It''s a camera, if you''re wondering."

    This really only made Jonah more confused. "Not alcohol, then?"

    "No." Bay reached up and took the backpack gingerly out of Jonah''s hands.

    "I''ve never seen a camera like that."

    "Complicated to explain," Bay said, but she became animated as she talked about it anyway. "It''s, well, a pinhole camera. If you have a small hole in something, it can act kinda like a lens, and project an image..."

    "I know how light works," Jonah said. "Fine. Pinhole camera. What are you doing with a backpack full of them?"

    "I wanted to put them out around the park. Get some interesting solography shots, with the slides and stuff in the background." Bay shrugged and zipped the backpack shut. "I also have my real camera in my bag. I didn''t want to toss that over the fence."

    Their conversation was interrupted when they heard the characteristic whistle and crack-pop of ameature fireworks going off. "Jesus fucking Christ," Jonah swore. "I cannot believe this."

    "What?"

    "Someone''s gonna get their hand blown off," she said. "And it''s gonna come down on me."

    "Fourth of July isn''t for a while, where''d they even get fireworks?" Bay asked, watching through the treetops as another firework sailed up and exploded in a shower of red sparks. Distant laughter and shouts cut through the cicada whine.

    "They probably saved some from last year," Jonah said. "I don''t know, I don''t really care. I should..." She paced back and forth. "I should fire them all."

    Bay leaned back against the fence. "You think you can run a park with zero staff? Threatening to fire everyone is not going to get you on the best of terms with everyone."

    "What do you know?" Jonah asked. She kicked at some dead leaves, swinging the flashlight around wildly.

    "I know that you physically can''t fire everyone."

    Another bang-pop of fireworks.

    "I could fire you."

    "You won''t."

    "I won''t?"

    Bay was silent for a long moment, leaving Jonah to stew. "You don''t want them on your bad side, but you need to get them out of the park. You could call the cops on them."

    "I don''t want them arrested, either," Jonah said. An idea was percolating in her mind. "You could help me out."

    "In exchange for what?"

    "In exchange for me not being mad that you cut a hole in the fence."

    Bay made a face. "And what do you think you want me to do?"The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    "Whoever''s in there with the fireworks probably has something that''ll make a lot of smoke. You figure out a way to get the smoke alarm to go off, the fire department will come. It''ll be loud enough to scare everyone away before they actually arrive."

    "Isn''t creating a false fire alarm like, a crime?"

    "It''s a crime for a good cause."

    "This place is chaotic."

    "That''s not my fault," Jonah said.

    "It kinda is your problem though."

    "It''s one that I''m trying to solve, here. Are you going to help me, or not?"

    Bay considered it for a second. "I want time to stick my cameras up first."

    "If someone shoots themself in the face with a rocket in the time it takes you to do that, I''m blaming you."

    "That would not hold up as a defense in court."

    "Just go," Jonah said. "I''ll get your backpack over the fence for you so you can stop ripping it apart."

    Bay stood, smiling. "Be my guest." She handed the backpack to Jonah, who slipped it on and took a nimble leap to climb the chain links of the fence. She landed heavily on the other side, and Bay scrambled up after her, significantly less nimbly. At the top, she wobbled a bit, slipped, and started to come crashing down. Jonah, instincts kicking in, grabbed her around the waist as she fell, sending them both heavily to the ground. Bay''s head knocked against Jonah''s face, causing her to exclaim, "Ow."

    "You didn''t have to grab me," Bay said, extracting herself from Jonah''s arms. "I''m fine."

    "Here''s your stupid backpack," Jonah said. "Be quick about this, will you? Or I''ll get tempted to just straight up call the police.

    "Don''t do that," Bay said. "I don''t want to get arrested."

    She took the backpack full of cameras back from Jonah, then scurried away, vanishing into the darkness. Jonah was left with nothing to do but clamber back over the fence and wait on the other side, nursing her bruised nose, and checking her phone.

    <hr>

    Bay arrived at the party out of breath, having hustled to get there. She saw several people she knew almost immediately, following the raucous sounds of the event. The lights of the park were on, at least all the ones by the big regular pool. The pool had some kind of stupid name, but Bay just thought of it as "the normal pool". She didn''t at first know why a waterpark bothered keeping such a thing around, when there were much more entertaining things going on, but when she asked during training, someone had explained that it was because summer camps rented out space there to teach swim lessons. People from the town also bought discounted season passes, just to use the pool to swim laps.

    In any event, that was where the mass of party goers was gathered, all around the deck of the pool, and some in it, even though the water was filthy with storm runoff lake mud. The firework lighter, a young man with curly blonde hair and no shirt, had a whole array of fireworks out in front of him. Bay looked around for Kyle and Amanda and found them both leaning against the wall of the changing room that led out onto the pool deck. Kyle had a beer in his hand, and he passed it to Amanda for her to take a sip. Bay headed over to them.

    "Hey! You made it! I figured you had changed your mind about coming," Kyle said with a grin.

    "Hah, yeah, I fell asleep. You''re lucky I woke up at all."

    "Damn, if you were that tired now, how are you going to doo a Saturday shift after the party?" Amanda asked.

    "The same way everyone else does," Kyle said. "Hungover. You bring anything in that backpack?"

    "No, I didn''t have time to stop at the--" She was going to say grocery, but then remembered that grocery stores around here did not sell alcohol, which remained odd. "Store," she finished lamely.

    "Eh, that''s alright. Amanda''s been bumming off of me all night."

    "I''m sure it''s because you''re a generous person, and you''re doing it out of the kindness of your heart," Amanda said, blowing a bubble.

    "Exactly," Kyle said. "And my motivations would be just as pure for giving it to you." He smiled cheekily at Bay.

    "He''s too old for you," Bay said bluntly to Amanda.

    "Hey," Kyle protested. "Now you make me not want to share."

    "I''m not really in a drinking mood," Bay said. "It''s hard enough getting over that fence sober."

    Kyle laughed at that. "I think drinking actually makes it easier. You think about what you''re doing less."

    "That somehow doesn''t seem like a good thing."

    "So what is in the backpack?" Amanda asked. "If it isn''t drinks."

    Bay pulled it off and opened it up. She took out her real camera from its protective pocket and snapped the flash on top. "Smile," she said.

    Amanda threw up a peace sign as she hung on Kyle''s arm, and Kyle took a casual sip of beer. The flash was blinding in the dark, and Bay wasn''t even sure that she had set the exposure correctly, but whatever. She advanced the film and let the camera dangle around her neck.

    "How retro," Kyle said. "You know phones take better pictures, right?"

    Bay rolled her eyes. "I go to art school. I can''t help liking retro things."

    Kyle laughed. "I''m just teasing you."

    "I know. Anyway, how''s the party been?"

    "Pretty decent. I think a lot of people skipped out because of the weather."

    "The weather?"

    "You didn''t check the forecast?"

    "No?"

    "You didn''t look up at the sky?"

    "It''s night, what am I supposed to see up there?" Bay craned her neck.

    "Well, usually the moon is a good place to start."

    "I just assumed it was a new moon," she said. She hadn''t actually assumed any such thing; she just hadn''t been paying attention.

    "Well, it''s supposed to rain. Oh, look, Jason''s gonna do another firework."

    Blond shirtless boy held up a firecracker, lit it, and tossed it onto the pool deck. It spluttered and danced around for a few seconds before falling into the pool and extinguishing itself, to a round of mocking cheers. "Better dive in and get that one," Kyle yelled.

    Jason laughed and did a mock bow.

    "I''m gonna take a walk around, if you don''t mind," Bay said. "I want to get some photos in."

    "Can I come?" Amanda asked.

    "Er... Sure." Bay didn''t have a great excuse to not let Amanda tag along, so she did, and the two of them walked away from the light of the party.

    "What do you want to take photos of?" Amanda asked.

    "I really want to hang these long exposure cameras up somewhere," Bay explained, taking out one of her soup can cameras and showing it to Amanda. "They''ll make interesting photos if I can put them in the right place where no one will touch them for a few days."

    "Hunh." This seemed to go over Amanda''s head, but she was fairly helpful as they trawled around the park, and pointed out a few good hiding spots where Bay could duct tape her creations where they wouldn''t be disturbed.

    "Should I be worried about putting them right next to the security cameras?" Bay asked.

    "Jonah told me those don''t actually work," Amanda said. "Do whatever you want."

    "Cool, cool." She didn''t honestly know if it would be worse that Jonah was right and the cameras did nothing, or if Jonah was wrong and the camera was recording her face, right up close, sticking her camera up on top of it.

    "Oh, we should go on the changing room roof," Amanda said. "Everyone loves hanging out up there."

    "Of the pool we were just at?"

    "Yeah. I''ll show you how to get up there. There''s a secret ladder."

    They had put pinhole cameras at most of the interesting looking attractions already, so returning to the flat pool with the last one was fine by Bay''s measure. They passed by Kyle, who was dangling his feet in the pool and waving a sparkler around.

    Seeing the sparkler, Bay remembered that she had an actual task to accomplish here, aside from hanging up her cameras.

    "Kyleeeeee," Amanda whined. "Let us on to the roof."

    "Why, you gonna jump?" he asked.

    "Bay wants to see it."

    "It''s not that thrilling."

    "Please..." She put on a smile, a pouting little thing. Bay admired her willingness and ability to manipulate Kyle to her will.

    "Fine," he said, pushing himself to his feet. "Anyone want this?" he asked the partygoers, holding out the sparkler.

    "I''ll take it," Bay said, seizing the opportunity.

    "Enjoy." Kyle thrust it into her hands. "Anyway, follow me."

    He trooped into the locker room, and faced a small closet. "It''ll take me a sec to get this open," he said.

    "I''ll be right back," Bay said. "Gotta pee. I''ll meet you here, or up there, if you''ve already gotten it open.

    "Sure," Kyle said. Amanda shrugged, and shot a dopey face at Kyle, who was pulling a credit card out of his pocket, and sticking it in the doorframe to jiggle the lock open.

    Bay scooted further into the locker room, sparkler lighting her path. She ducked into a bathroom stall, one with a smoke detector over head. Quickly, she pulled a bunch of toilet paper out of the roll, and crumpled it lightly into a ball. She jammed the sparkler into it, lit side down, and breathed on it lightly, hoping that the flames would catch. They did, and soon the ball of toilet paper in her hands flared up. She didn''t know what exactly to do at that point, so she dropped it on the floor. It threatened to go out, having burned through its initial offering of toilet paper, but she spooled out more, then exited the stall to grab handfuls of paper towel to feed the flame. She could smell it now, but it still wasn''t smoky enough. Maybe she just had to wait.

    But she didn''t have time to wait. She dropped all the paper towels she could onto it, hoped it would burn for a while, and exited the bathroom, heading back towards the closet where she had left Kyle and Amanda. It was open, and inside it was a ladder, which she climbed to get onto the roof.

    "Took you long enough," Kyle said with a smile. "Nice view."

    "Where''d your sparkler go?" Amanda asked.

    "Burned out," Amanda said.

    "Sad. Would have looked cool to throw it into the pool."

    "Let me set up my last camera," Bay said, thinking of the flames she had left unattended down in the bathroom. Being on top of a building with open, unsupervised flames was making her nervous.

    "Stick it in the gutter, that''s probably the best place for it," Amanda said. She pointed to the unguarded edge of the roof, and Bay nervously squatted down and duct taped her final pinhole camera in place.

    "Careful you don''t fall," Kyle said, humor clear in his voice.

    Bay stepped back from the edge. She was nervous, but the lack of fire alarm said to her that her plan had failed. The burning mess of paper towels probably had just extinguished itself and--

    The fire alarm went off, blaring. Bay jumped, teetering too close for comfort to the edge of the roof.

    "What the fuck?" Kyle swore.

    Amanda looked around, panicked. "What''s going on?"

    "We''ve gotta get out of here," Kyle said. "Fire alarm. That does summon the fire department, I think."

    People on the ground were already picking up their belongings and running pell mell towards the edge of the park and the woods.

    "Can we get down?" Amanda asked, panic in her voice. She didn''t want to be trapped on a burning building any more than Bay did, but Bay was at least reasonably sure that the fire wasn''t dangerous or completely out of control.

    "It''s probably okay," Bay said. "Someone probably just was smoking too close to an alarm, or something." She demonstrated her resolve by descending the ladder.

    There was a mild singed smell in the air in the changing room, but nothing worse than the smell that might occur from burning something in the oven. Enough to set off the alarm, not enough to actually cause a whole bare concrete building to go up in flames. She exited the building with no further investigation, and began running back towards the woods, hoping that Kyle and Amanda were following.

    Jonah owed her big time for this one. She was going to have to find some way to make use of that.

 Chapter Five - Catch Up, Keep Up, Get A Head

    The rain fell all night, but ended by morning, leaving a cloudy sky, damp grounds, and a relatively empty Arcadis Park. It was probably for the best that few guests had shown up, not least because Jonah was exhausted, but the rain had again churned up the lake, leaving all the attractions filled with water gone positively soupy with mud. Jonah walked the park in a quasi daze throughout her entire long shift, broken only by moments of sudden and great confusion when she was called upon to do anything.

    The staff, having no guests around to bother them, had apparently too much time on their hands to think about things that they needed Jonah to do, seeing her as an easier target than Rebecca had been. She was certainly more accessible, choosing to talk to her staff by leaning on and over the fences to the attractions and having a casual conversation, rather than either locking herself in her office or yelling at them. Everyone wanted her to do two things: process their paychecks and change their schedule. Everyone wanted off of Saturday shift.

    "I''m not taking anybody off of Saturday," Jonah said to the fifteenth person who asked. "We honestly need more Saturday staff."

    "What for?" Qwamae asked. "There''s nobody here. This place is dead."

    "Have you looked at the weather forecast for this week at all?"

    "I prefer to let it surprise me," Qwamae said with a grin.

    "It''s supposed to be terrible this week, but next Saturday will be the hottest day of the year, as far as I can tell."

    "They say that every weekend," Quamae said.

    "It''s bound to be true on one of them," Jonah said. "And when it is, it''s always packed here."

    "All the more reason for you to let me have Saturdays off," he pleaded, making doe eyes at her.

    "I couldn''t rearrange the schedule even if I wanted to. I still don''t have computer access."

    "What a convenient little lie."

    "Hey, I''m going to be here on Saturday, suffering, just like you are. Maybe if you don''t let your Friday nights mess you up so much," Jonah said with a pointed stare.

    Qwamae laughed and walked away, blowing his whistle at a kid who was holding another kid''s head below the water in the normal pool.

    Jonah did need computer access. She had walked around enough to work up the nerve to confront Mr. Calvin about it, and so she stood in front of his office, hesitating. His truck was splattered with mud. She couldn''t tell if he had gone off road with it, or just had a particularly unlucky encounter with a puddle. She knocked on the door and stared at it as she waited. Its windows gleamed in the somewhat eerie afternoon light.

    When the door finally swung open, crashing inwards, Jonah practically jumped out of her skin.

    "Jonah, I''m surprised to see you here," Mr. Calvin said. "What''s the issue? Haven''t come to quit on me, have you?" He laughed, a slimy kind of chuckle.

    "Er, no," Jonah said. "I''m just coming about, you know, I don''t have access to Rebecca''s computer, so I can''t do the schedule, and I don''t really know how to do paychecks, and everybody''s been asking for theirs. Rebecca usually handed them out on Saturdays because basically everyone''s here, so..." She trailed off. Her hands, which had been gesticulating somewhat randomly, flopped to her sides and she buried them in her pockets.

    "Ah. Yes. Paychecks. Now that is a tricky little thing, isn''t it. How about you come in? And shut the door behind you. You''re letting the air out."

    Mr. Calvin''s office was indeed frigid, kept cooler than a person could even be comfortable, and goosebumps broke out along Jonah''s arms immediately. Mr. Calvin, though, seemed perfectly content, even though icicles should have been forming underneath the vents of his window AC unit.

    Jonah had been inside the office before, but she hadn''t been in any of the rooms aside from the very first one, the one with a slightly filthy red carpet and a military surplus looking desk, on which Mr. Calvin perched.

    "So. First of all, I have something for you."

    "Uh, thanks?"

    "I got maintenance to find you all the keys." He pulled out a heavy keychain from his pocket, dangling with at least thirty keys, each with their own red tags, and tossed it at Jonah. She caught it, feeling the ice cold tongues of metal stabbing into her palm. She tucked the whole mass uncomfortably into her pocket, where they stabbed her side instead.

    "That should be helpful."

    "I imagine it will be. Now, I guess I should ask how your first few days have been going?"

    "Um. Fine, I guess." Jonah squeezed her hands into fists in her pockets, hoping that Mr. Calvin wouldn''t ask her anything about the night before. She didn''t know if he knew about the parties, or even the fire alarm. He probably knew about the fire alarm.

    "That''s good, good. I heard that you talked to the staff yesterday?"

    "Yeah. Just let all the aquatics people know that Rebecca quit and everything."

    "Did they take the news okay?"

    "I guess. I mean. We''ll see how the summer goes."

    "I''m sure we will."

    "Thank you for telling them to stay off the property at night," he said.

    "Oh?" Jonah''s voice squeaked on that line. "I didn''t know you got that detailed of a report of it."

    Mr. Calvin tapped his ears. "Word gets around. Don''t go telling people you''ll do things for them, though. That can only get you in trouble."

    "Okay," Jonah said.

    "Speaking of trouble, and of last night, I don''t know if you heard the fire trucks go by. Do you live anywhere near the road to Arcadis?"

    Jonah shook her head.

    "We apparently had some clowns who thought that setting off fireworks would be a thrilling idea."

    "Aren''t fireworks illegal in this state?" Jonah asked, guessing that playing dumb was perhaps the easiest way to get out of this without being forced to answer questions.

    Mr. Calvin just laughed at that. "Legal or not, I saw them going up, right over the Ferris wheel."

    "You called the fire department?" Jonah asked.

    "I drove here, to yell at whoever it was myself," Mr. Calvin said, a mean looking grin on his face. "But by the time I arrived, the fire department had already been summoned through the automatic alarm."

    "Wow," Jonah said, trying to keep the fear out of her face and voice. "What a coincidence. Did you see who set it off?"

    "Unfortunately, the perpetrators seemed to have escaped before either I or the fire department could make a catch."

    "Does the fire department usually, uh, catch people?"

    "I wouldn''t have minded if they hosed whoever was doing it down," Mr. Calvin said.

    "Hah." Jonah''s laughing was about as insincere as it could get.

    "Anyway, I would like you to please quietly ask around and figure out who was at Arcadis last night."

    "You think it was someone here?"

    "Of course it was someone here," Mr. Calvin said. "Don''t play stupid with me. I''m hoping for good things from you."

    "Uh."

    "I would like for you to figure this out for me. I don''t want to have bad apples working here."

    "I don''t think that anyone will just tell me that they came in here and shot off a bunch of fireworks. I''m their boss now."

    "Then you''ll have to find someone reliable to listen out for you," Mr. Calvin said. "I''m trusting you, Jonah."

    "Um. Okay."

    "Can I get your opinion on something?" His tone switched from serious to cheerful without any change in his facial expression. It was somewhat disconcerting.

    "I guess."

    "The fence."

    "What about it?"

    "Would it be worth trying to reinforce it, to stop people from coming over?"

    "It would make a lot of the staff pretty angry. It''s a lot faster to get here through the woods than it is along the road."

    "I know, but that''s also how certain people got away from me last night."

    "What would you do to reinforce it?" Jonah was curious now.

    "I read this article about how any fence can be electrified."

    "I, uh, wouldn''t do that," Jonah said. "It really seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Or a forest fire."

    "And people setting off illegal fireworks here at night isn''t?"

    Jonah was stumped by that question. "Um. I don''t know. I mean..."

    Mr. Calvin sighed. "Maybe you''re right. Barbed wire then?"

    "I don''t think the fence poles are tall enough for you to put it on the top?"

    "I would just have someone wrap it through the holes along the top."

    "I think that people would just cut through the fence again," Jonah said.

    "Again?" Mr. Calvin asked, a sudden sharp curiosity in his voice.

    "Oh, er, yeah, someone cut the fence open. I patched it up."

    "Who?"

    "Um. I don''t know," Jonah said. She did know, but Bay had helped her last night, so she wasn''t going to snitch her out just yet. "Tom just told Amanda about the hole, and she told me, and I fixed it. No idea who made it."

    "How unfortunate," Mr. Calvin said with the dryest possible voice. "Well, if there are any other holes in the fence, please report them to me."

    "Yeah okay," Jonah said. She desperately wanted to switch the topic. "Um. About the paychecks?"

    "Accounts does those. I have last week''s ready for you. You just have to bring me this week''s timecards, and it''ll get taken care of. And if you can remind people to clock in and out correctly, I''d deeply appreciate it."

    "Sure."

    Mr. Calvin did an acrobatic lean behind himself across the top of the desk and pulled out a thick stack of envelopes, each with the name of one of the members of the aquatics staff written on top of it. Jonah took the stack and held it gingerly, as though all of the checks in her hands were a kind of ticking time bomb. She noticed that some of them were thicker than others, and she couldn''t help but pull one of the thick ones out of the stack and turn it over in her hand.

    Mr. Calvin preempted her question. "There are several people who prefer to be paid in cash," he said. "Be very careful not to lose their envelopes."

    "Is that... legal?"

    "Why wouldn''t it be?" Mr. Calvin asked, staring at her.

    "I don''t know." Jonah shrugged and tried to drop the subject. "I''ll bring you the timecards."

    "You do that," Mr. Calvin said.

    Jonah escaped as quickly as she could.

    <hr>

    Distributing the paychecks gave Jonah another reason to do a lap of the park and check in on all of her employees. This took, of course, longer than expected, because it seemed like every three seconds she was having to tell someone to focus on not letting children drown in the swampy ponds that had once been pools, fixing random problems with all the waterslides, and generally being harrangued about the schedule. She was fed up when she finally made it to the wave pool, which was her last stop.

    She handed out the envelopes to the three guards on duty, then caught Bay''s attention and got her down off the tall lifeguard chair.

    "Bay, here''s your paycheck," Jonah said.

    "Thanks, I''ll just stick that down the front of my wet bathing suit," Bay said. Her legs were caked with streaks of dried mud; clearly she had needed to do a rescue earlier in the day.

    "I''ll show you where you can stash it until the end of the day," Jonah said. "Follow me."

    Bay rolled her eyes. "Seems very secure."

    "It''s a check, nobody''s gonna be able to cash it without you signing it."

    "Sure." But she followed Jonah back into the pump room behind the wave pool anyway. Jonah headed down the stairs. "I always just tossed mine in the tool drawer here."

    Against the wall there was a bright orange tool chest, which contained specialized equipment for fixing the wave pool devices. Jonah pulled open the top drawer of it and laughed. "Goes to show when the last time anyone was in here was." There was a torn up envelope that she pulled out, one that had her own name printed on the front of it.

    "Alright," Bay said, slipping the check in the drawer. She started to walk back up the stairs.

    "Wait, Bay, I need to talk to you about something," Jonah said.

    Bay paused on the steps, turning, hands on her hips. The dim light in the basement obscured her face. "What?"

    "Thanks for helping me out last night," Jonah said. "It was a good thing you were there."

    "You owe me big time, you know that, right?"

    "Yeah. Listen, Mr. Calvin was apparently sitting in the parking lot, ready to charge in to grab people who were setting off fireworks."

    "Yikes." Bay''s voice was flat.

    "Yeah. You didn''t see him, right?"

    "Everyone ran as soon as the alarm went off. Myself included."

    "That''s good. Listen, Bay, I know I already asked you to do me a favor, but..."

    "What?"

    "Can you tell whoever was setting off the fireworks that they can''t do that, or they''re seriously going to get caught? Mr. Calvin doesn''t fuck around. If he catches anyone, they''ll definitely be fired, and maybe get the police called on them, too."Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

    Bay was silent for a second. "I want something in exchange."

    "What?"

    "Switch me off wave pool."

    Jonah bit her lip. "Where do you want to be put?"

    "Someplace less chaotic."

    "I''ll think about it. I don''t want everyone to know that I''m switching around schedules."

    "Then I''ll think about telling the fireworks lighter to cut it out," Bay said, turning to go.

    "Wait, is there anything else I could get you instead?"

    Bay stopped again, this time with a foot on a higher step, and her back to Jonah. "The key to the roof of the front changing area."

    "Why the fuck do you want that?"

    "I put one of my cameras up there. I think it''s a decent spot, so I want to be able to switch the film out and get multiple shots."

    "Fine. I''ll make you a copy tonight. But you can''t go up there during guest hours."

    "I''m not stupid."

    <hr>

    The rest of the week passed in a kind of dizzying blur. Jonah came quickly to understand exactly why Rebecca had been so quick to hide in her office when she wasn''t out and about yelling at everyone: it was sheer chaos in the park, even on quiet days, when wrangling the aquatics staff was her responsibility. She wished that she had someone she could deputize, but the person who she trusted most to handle that kind of responsibility, Zack, was too pissed about the fact that he didn''t get her job to speak to her. She wasn''t going to open that can of worms.

    And the fact was, most of the lifeguards under her care were teenagers at best. Working at Arcadis was a summer job that people graduated from as they got real jobs and moved on with their lives. Jonah was trapped by being a kind of academic failure during the rest of the year, one who couldn''t manage to score any internship or research position or anything that would have kept her from coming back to her hometown every summer. A crowd of teenagers, put in charge of supervising a rowdy and often drunk mix of guests of all ages, it was a recipe for chaos.

    At least they had several days off that week. The rain didn''t let up on Tuesday and Wednesday, forcing the park to close, and scattered showers on Thursday kept the park light on guests. The rain was a blessing for Jonah in that respect, but it clogged up the machinery and made the rides malfunction, and the lack of ticket sales put Mr. Calvin in a terrible mood.

    Jonah took every excuse she could to go "inspect" the mechanical parts of various rides, but really what that meant was finding a quiet little building to hole up in and stare into space for fifteen minutes. It was the little things.

    On Friday, the cool weather that had been bringing buckets of rain with it broke, and the park was full up again. The staff, which had been enjoying an "easy" week, was suddenly in full gear and no one was happy about it. Four people had to be rescued from the wave pool, according to Bay. Jonah spent as much of her time in hiding as she could, not wanting to risk having to dive into a mud swamped ride to pull someone out.

    Mr. Calvin found her while she was in hiding, which was embarrassing.

    Jonah was "inspecting" the darkness inside a ride called "The Belly of the Whale", which was a classic tunnel-of-love style boat ride, but one that was inexplicably and intensely biblically themed, with extensive and large dioramas. Jonah did not particularly like the ride, especially when she considered that her dad had been working at the park when he had met her mother, and the fact that she was named after the main character of this particular biblical story. It had some unpleasant implications that she didn''t particularly desire to dwell on.

    Guests tended to avoid the ride as well, which made it perfect for Jonah to get some peace and quiet.

    In any event, Jonah had ridden one of the slow moving boats through the tunnel, and had clambered out onto the ledge of one of the dioramas. A flashlight dangled limply from her hands, and she leaned against the glass partition that stopped guests from getting inside the diorama and messing with the figure of the biblical Jonah on his knees, praying inside the whale.

    She watched empty boat after empty boat go by, and when a boat with a passenger on it approached, Jonah started to step into one of the empty ones, but Mr. Calvin''s voice stopped her.

    "Jonah, I was told I could find you out here," he said, a voice more jovial than Jonah had expected. Still, anything breaking the silence of the ride alarmed her, and she miscalculated her step and stumbled, falling to her knees in the little fish shaped boat and causing it to splash muddy water everywhere.

    "Are you alright?" Mr. Calvin asked.

    "Fine," Jonah muttered as she sat herself in the boat and pointed her flashlight behind her. Mr. Calvin was as greasy as he ever was, perhaps more so in this gurgling flashlight illumination.

    "What were you doing in here?" Mr. Calvin asked.

    "A guest said her kid dropped something on one of the dioramas," Jonah lied through her teeth as the boat bumped along down the hallway. "I was checking for her."

    "Oh, did you find it?"

    "No, I think the mud makes it too hard to see. It might turn up in the filter later."

    "Ah, yes, the mud, that was what I came to talk to you about."

    The boats emerged from the tunnel and into the glaring light of day, and Jonah stepped out of hers, followed moments later by Mr. Calvin. The ride operator, a teenager named Vi, tried to look as professional as she could, with both of her bosses standing right there in front of her.

    Mr. Calvin took Jonah''s arm, which made her skin crawl, and they walked away from the ride a little.

    "I''ve had some complaints about the mud," Mr. Calvin said.

    "I''m aware."

    "I would like your opinion on it."

    "What kind of opinion?"

    "How to get rid of it."

    "I think it just takes time. This is the raniest summer we''ve ever had, I think the lake is just all churned up."

    "Hm."

    "Do you think there''s another way to get rid of it?"

    "There might be a chemical solution. If we put a ton of chlorine in the water..."

    "I think that would cause more problems than it would solve, Mr. Calvin."

    "How long will it take for this all to clear out?"

    "If it doesn''t rain again, and you run the pumps on all the attractions all night, it might be like, halfway clearer by tomorrow." Jonah was bullshitting, but she didn''t want to give Mr. Calvin an answer he didn''t want to hear.

    "Oh, that''s good," he said. "Can you arrange that?"

    "Um. I guess?"

    "Perfect." He walked away, leaving Jonah rather flummoxed by the whole interaction. Mr. Calvin had owned Arcadis for years. He should have been just as aware of how the mud worked as she was. Granted, this had been a very rainy summer, but that shouldn''t have made this much of a difference.

    It took up the rest of Jonah''s afternoon to get all the pumps running.

    <hr>

    That night, Jonah returned home, completely exhausted, and neatly dodged her entire family. She had no desire to talk to any of them, so she found her little couch where she slept and simply curled up and fell asleep, blanket covering even her face. She had meant to wake up around ten, in order to get something to eat, but she woke up in pitch darkness at midnight instead, with the feeling that she had forgotten something very important.

    She fumbled for her phone in the darkness and checked the time. Oh. That was what it was. It was Friday again. Party night.

    Jonah blearily texted Bay, the only person she could text about this sort of thing. She received a response almost immediately.

    >are u @ cicada

    < what

    >the party

    <there a reason you''re asking

    >i''m not gonna get u in trouble i just want to know whats going on

    <yes im there

    >no fireworkks?

    <all quiet on the western front

    >what

    <no fireworks.

    >calvin didn''t show up right

    <if he did we wouldn''t be here

    >whos with you

    <you must think im the worlds biggest snitch

    >if i wanted to get u all in trouble id just callthe police

    <u could show up yourself

    >lol

    >how long will u stay for

    <honestly i just want to change the film in my cameras and then im out of here

    >did u cut open the fence again

    <no im not dumb

    >just checking

    <k g2g. gn

    >see u tmrw

    Although that exchange didn''t completely soothe her mind, knowing that still anything could happen at these parties, it at least took long enough that Jonah''s eyes began to water in the phone-glow, and her brain was fuzzy once again with sleep. She bid Bay goodnight, and the phone dropped to her chest, tumbling to the floor as she fell asleep.

    <hr>

    Jonah was late to work the next morning, on account of not plugging in her phone, and thus her alarm not going off. Her dad woke her up when he stumbled downstairs, turning on all the lights in the room.

    "What are you still doing here?"

    Jonah tried to roll over, miscalculated the direction, and fell onto the floor with a thud, her phone stabbing into her ribcage.

    "What time is it?" she blearily asked.

    "Ten."

    She bit her lip to stop herself from swearing. So it was out the door with no shower and no breakfast,and just the same clothes she had worn all day yesterday. She was able to charge her phone with a battery bar that she pulled out of the junk drawer in the kitchen and shoved into her pocket, so the day could have at least been a little bit worse.

    She biked/walked to work rather than trying to battle the cars that were sure to be filling the parking lot. The day was already a scorcher. Perhaps it really was the hottest Saturday of the year. She had thought that yesterday had been hot, but that was nothing compared to this.

    As she came to the fence, she saw that the stupid hole had been opened up once again. Jonah didn''t have time to fix it, but she did have time to send an angry message to Bay.

    >I thought you said you didn''t open up my fence again

    She attached a picture of the fence.

    Bay texted back when Jonah was just walking into the park grounds proper, immediately surrounded on all sides by a press of guests, overwhelmed with heat and light and shouting.

    <I swear I didn''t do it

    <btw can you come help us? there''s something wrong w/ the wave pool

    <maintenance is busy

    <so i was looking for u earlier

    <hope u don''t mind that i sent everbody else to guard other places while its broken

    Reluctantly, Jonah made her way across Arcadis to the wave pool. She had hoped that she could sneak into the office where the timecards were and fill hers out without anyone noticing that she had been gone, but clearly that wasn''t happening. She arrived at the wave pool and found Bay there alone, shooing guests away. She had put up the ''attraction closed'' cones, but the wave pool was always so popular that it didn''t discourage quite everyone, even though the ride was clearly not running.

    "What''s the issue?" Jonah asked.

    "Same as last time. Water level again," Bay said, gesturing at the swampy looking wave pool that was dangerously low on water.

    "Well why didn''t you fix it? I showed you how."

    Bay gave her a look. "I''m not stupid. That was the first thing I tried."

    "And?"

    "And the filter wasn''t the problem. There just isn''t any water coming through the pipes."

    "What?" Jonah said, then groaned as she realized what was going on. "Nevermind, I know what the problem is."

    Bay raised an eyebrow and waited for Jonah to elaborate. "I ran the pumps on every ride all night long, to try to get the mud out. Probably the main line filter is clogged up."

    "Shouldn''t everybody be having this same problem, then?"

    "Only the wave pool has a giant fucking crack in the bottom of it. And probably everybody turned off their flow when they came in. I saw that most of the attractions were less muddy looking than they were before." They were certainly far from entirely clear, but it was better than what had been like swimming through water black as tar.

    "Ah. Do you know how to fix it?"

    "I''d prefer to have maintenance do it," Jonah said.

    "They claim they''re busy."

    "With what?"

    "Ferris wheel, I think?"

    Jonah looked across the park at the Ferris wheel, reaching up into the sky. It wasn''t moving. "Fine. I''ll go fix it."

    "I don''t know if I should thank you," Bay said. "It''s peaceful around here when this thing is broken."

    "Well, you''ll want to summon everybody back from wherever you sent them." Jonah had to imagine that the other wave pool guards had gone to find a spot of peace and quiet, rather than actually going to lend assistance to some other attraction.

    "Sure."

    "I''ll text you when I''ve fixed it, so you can make sure that the water is running."

    "I''ll keep an eye out."

    Jonah left the wavepool and headed back the way that she had just come from, towards the woods. It was a bit of a walk to the lake, and she hopped the fence gamely. She was glad to be in among the trees, as it was a relief from the sun, if not from the heat. The cicadas screamed, but the screams from the park grew more and more distant.

    The lake came into view, ripples lapping at a silty shore. There was a path cut in the undergrowth, and Jonah stepped onto it and followed it, squinting as the sun bounced off the water directly into her eyes. The path led to a short pier and a weird little building built into the surface of the lake: the pumphouse that fed all the attractions at Arcadis. It opened with a keycode (a very insecure 5555).

    She entered the pumphouse and immediately saw the problem, or part of it, anyway. The two big pumps had shut down at some point during the night, probably from their emergency shutoff, to stop their motors from burning out. It was a classic thing that happened when the major filter got too clogged. She went over to the big safety switch on the wall and flipped it to the off position: she had no desire to have the pumps reactivate while her hand was in their guts. She kicked the filthy bucket that was used to clean the filters across the floor towards the manhole cover.

    Jonah knelt down on the concrete floor and reluctantly strained to open the large manhole cover that hid access to the filters. It slid aside with a nasty scrape. Jonah steeled herself, staring down into the dark pit for a second, then reluctantly reached inside, scooping out handfuls of grime. It was the usual stuff: dead leaves, branches, old grocery bags, and mud after mud after mud. Then her fingers tangled into something that she thought was weirdly stringy grass. She tugged on it, felt it give a little but not enough, and yanked harder. It took more effort than she was expecting, and she fell backwards onto her butt as it came up from the hole, clutched in her hand.

    It took a long moment to process what she was holding, in the light that filtered in through the pumphouse''s grimy windows. She was holding a handful of human hair, and attached to the human hair was a severed human head, covered in mud, but distinct nonetheless.

    Jonah gave a stifled cry, coughing and choking and trying to let go of it. But the hair was so thoroughly tangled in with her hand that she couldn''t until she used her other hand to pull it away. The head dropped to the floor, and made a dangerous sort of half roll towards the hole in the floor back into the water, and Jonah was forced to catch it again, this time with both hands.

    The whole moment felt like a series of disjointed sensations. Her hands were already so dirty from pulling things up out of the filter that she couldn''t feel the texture of the skin, and she didn''t smell anything other than the foul odor of the rotting leaves in the lake water, but she could hear the sort of wet squelching sounds that came as her fingers slid on the head, and she could see it. That alone would have been too much.

    The head had clearly belonged to a woman. That was clear even underneath the mud. She was pale skinned, and her hair (what was left of it, after some had been ripped out by the filter pumps) was long and straight.

    Jonah stared at it for a second, then gingerly stood, holding it in both hands. She exited the filter house and walked a few steps down the pier. She didn''t know where she was going. She couldn''t just march back into Arcadis holding a severed head. She didn''t want to put it down again. There was an irrational fear in her stomach that it would somehow start walking away if she wasn''t holding onto it. but she didn''t want to be holding it, either. She needed to... She needed to...

    She returned to the pumphouse, kicked over the bucket which held the slime that she had pulled out of the filter before. It spilled, leaving a massive pile of sludge on the concrete floor. She kicked the bucket out the door then. Gingerly, Jonah put the head down on the pier, looking at it with half her attention as she rinsed the bucket out in the lake water. Once it was clean(er), she carefully picked the head back up and put it in the bucket. There. Nothing bad could happen to it there.

    Now that she didn''t have to look at it so directly, the horror of it hit Jonah more fully, and she stared down into the swirling lake water, feeling her stomach roll and bile threaten to come up and choke her. She imagined the head more luridly than it actually looked, and that wasn''t helping her at all.

    She didn''t manage to quell the nausea, and she puked over the side of the pier. She wanted to rinse her mouth out with the lake water, but the thought of the fact that the head had just come out of the lake water stopped her. The thought of the fact that that there were probably other body parts in the lake made that thought worse, and she couldn''t help but think that all the vague shadows down at the bottom were now hands and legs and torso. She gagged again, but crawled over to the other side of the pier and managed to not throw up, mainly because there was absolutely nothing left in her stomach.

    She had to do something.

    She rinsed her hands in the lake, then pulled her phone out of her pocket. Her hands shook so badly that she almost dropped that in the lake, which would have been a major problem.

    At the dialing screen, she hesitated. 911 seemed too much. This wasn''t an emergency, precisely. Nothing more could be done for the head. She should probably call Mr. Calvin. She wanted to call her sister.

    Jonah dialed the non-emergency police line.

    "Thank you for dialing the Blacklake township non-emergency line. If you are currently experiencing an emergency, hang up and dial 911. Please hold as your call is transferred to an operator. There are"-- a robotic voice-- "two"-- and back to normal--"parties ahead of you. Please be aware that all calls on this line are recorded."

    The jaunty hold music that rang in Jonah''s ear was at complete odds with the severed head in a bucket not five feet away from her. A cloud passed over the sun as she waited. She jumped a little when the generic music ended and a woman''s voice greeted her.

    "Thank you for waiting, can you please tell me your name, location, and reason for your call."

    "Hi, uh, my name is Jonah Wylan, and I''m the, er, aquatics staff leader at Arcadis Park, and, um, well I found something in the lake?"

    "Could you clarify, please?"

    "I was cleaning out the water pumps, the ones that feed all the rides and stuff at the park, and when I was cleaning the filter, I found, guh--" Jonah found it hard to say out loud exactly what she had found. The bile rose in her throat as she tried to, and though she mouthed the words, no sound came out.

    "Are you alright, Ms. Wylan?" the operator asked. "Are you experiencing an emergency?"

    "It''s not an emergency, exactly, sorry, I know I''m not being very helpful."

    "Please take a deep breath, Ms. Wylan."

    Jonah did, and she could hear her own stuttering breath over the phone line.

    "What did you find in the lake, Ms. Wylan?"

    "I thought it was grass but when I pulled it out, it was--" She took a deep breath. "I found"-- a tiny hiccough of hysterical laughter interrupted her sentence-- "somebody''s head."

    "Let me just confirm what you told me, Ms. Wylan," the operator said. "You are at the Arcadis Park lakefront, and you found a head in the water filter?"

    "Yeah," Jonah said. The relief of having it said out loud was palpable, and her heartbeat thrumming in her ears suddenly calmed back down to a reasonable level. She could feel the relief.

    "Is there anyone with you?"

    "No, I''m by myself."

    "Were there any other body parts?"

    "No? I don''t know? Do you need me to look?"

    "No, please stay where you are and do not touch anything."

    "I already touched it, is that okay?"

    "That''s fine, Ms. Wylan. I''m going to send the police to your location. Please do not move."

    "I don''t want them to bother people at the park," Jonah said. "Can you tell them to not... be loud?" She didn''t want to cause chaos among the guests on the busiest Saturday of the season. Mr. Calvin would kill her for that. It was funny, that that was the kind of thing that she was thinking about.

    "I will pass that request along," the operator said. "Please stay on the line."

    That didn''t sound like the request was about to be honored. Jonah switched her phone to speakerphone, so that she could write a text message to Bay.

 Chapter Six - The Scene of the Crime

    > bad news.

    > police are on their way

    > i need u to meet them at the front and lead them 2 me

    > don''t let them cause guest panic

    > take them outside fence if u can

    Bay had expected the text message from Jonah to tell her to test the pump. This was not the message she expected. She looked around, peering through the crowd to see if the coworkers she had summoned back were arriving. They were: Kyle and Amanda jogging back to the wave pool, both of them looking more mussed and sweaty than they had any right to be.

    "Where were you guys?" Bay asked.

    "Er, helping out at the flat pool," Kyle said.

    "Yeah. Qwamae wanted us to, uh, clean the locker room."

    This was clearly a lie. They probably had been in the locker room, but she somehow doubted cleaning had anything to do with it.

    "Did the wave pool get fixed?"

    "No," Bay said. "Keep guests out of it."

    "Where are you going?"

    She silently showed Amanda and Kyle the text messages from Jonah. Kyle looked legitimately shaken, and Amanda looked around, as though the police were already here. "What are the po--" Kyle began, but Bay shushed him, glancing around at the guests.

    "Don''t cause a scene. Don''t let guests in the wave pool. If Mr. Calvin comes, you can tell him what''s going on, but don''t say shit to anyone else, okay?"

    "Why are you giving me orders?" Kyle asked, suddenly defensive. "I''ve worked here for longer than you."

    "Shut up," Amanda said, slapping his arm hard enough to make a sound. "We''ve got it," she said to Bay.

    "Great." Bay hurried away towards the front gate of the park. She glanced back at Kyle and Amanda before the crowd became too thick, and saw them huddling together, discussing things. She shook her head and jogged headlong out of Arcadis. She reached the parking lot and increased her speed as she went past all the parked cars, the lights bouncing off their hoods and mirrors and windshields, almost blinding her.

    She miraculously made it to the front entrance as the police van pulled into the lot, and she flagged it down with some apprehension, waving her arms like a madwoman. It pulled over to the side of the parking lot, and, panting, Bay put her hands on her knees and stood for a moment as she waited for the officer to acknowledge her.

    "Are you Jonah Wylan?" the officer, a man with an ugly chinstrap beard asked.

    "No, I''m Bayleigh Fernandez," Bay said. "Jonah told me to bring you to her, so you don''t have to go through the park and scare the guests."

    The officer looked at her silently for a moment. Bay could see that there were others in the van, though she couldn''t see their faces in the shadows. Another police vehicle pulled into the parking lot. They had been using their lights but not sirens.

    "This place is owned by Reginald Calvin, isn''t it?" the officer asked, but he wasn''t asking Bay, he was asking one of his fellows in the van. A muffled response that sounded like a yes. "You and Green go find Calvin," the officer said. "I''ll take my team and go with her."

    The engine of the police van shut off, and a muffled crackling of radio indicated communication with the outside world. The van was awkwardly parked along the side of the road leading into the lot, but it hopefully wouldn''t cause a problem there. More officers than Bay had been expecting spilled out of the van and the vehicle behind it. Bay waited for them to wait for her to lead the way, and then she did, skirting around the outside of the fence and taking the beaten dirt path through the woods towards the lake.

    "Can you tell me what you''ve been called out here for?" Bay asked, trying to make conversation as they walked. The officers were speedwalking behind her, but they weren''t egging her to go faster, so she figured she had time to indulge her curiosity a little bit. The park and all its nosy guests whom they were not supposed to disturb were far away. "Jonah''s not in trouble, right?"

    "We''re not at liberty to comment on an active investigation," the leader of the police said, as though speaking some kind of rote line. "And we would appreciate your assistance in keeping this area clear of interference."

    "That''s why we''re heading through the woods," Bay said. She would have rolled her eyes, if she didn''t have to keep looking steadily at the ground in front of her, to not trip on the various branches and debris that littered the path.

    They passed by the spot where Bay had cut a hole in the fence, and she saw, as Jonah had said, that someone else had gone and ripped it back open. She would have to talk to Jonah and convince her that she hadn''t reopened the hole. She wasn''t stupid. Caught once, that was enough for her.

    Perhaps she should be nervous about the police, actually, thinking about this. They could have been called because of something that happened at the party the night before, which Bay had attended. She hadn''t seen anything crazy, but she had also stuck by the pool with Kyle and Amanda. Until they got too handsy on eachother and she gave up and went home. The fence had still been intact, at that point, she thought. She would have definitely taken the opportunity to crawl rather than risk life and limb going up and over, especially as she had had a couple beers and had been feeling their effects. She mulled this over as they got closer to the lake, and the sunlight reflecting off the water hit them through the trees.

    "Pump house is this way," Bay said, turning left when they reached the lakeshore. It came into view past a little extension of trees presently, the pier and squat concrete building an intrusion over the smooth water. Jonah sat on the pier, staring with a thousand-yard stare out at the group of police as they came forward. She had her knees up to her chest, and her arms wrapped around them, as if that would keep her steady.

    Bay broke into a jog, heading down the silty lakeside towards Jonah.

    "Stop right there," the officer said. Bay skidded to a stop. "Thank you for leading us here, but this is an active crime scene, and I would hate for you to disturb it."

    "Can somebody please tell me what is going on?" Bay asked, hands on her hips. She looked between the police and Jonah, who was just now standing up. "She''s allowed to be here?"

    Jonah came towards them now.

    "Are you Jonah Wylan?" the police officer asked.

    "Yeah," Jonah said. "Um. It''s over there." She pointed to the pier.

    "What''s over there?" Bay asked.

    Jonah shook her head, seemingly unable to find the words. One of the police officers walked down the creaking pier and looked inside the bucket that sat on it innocuously. He nodded at the officer in charge.

    "You put it in the bucket?" he asked.

    Jonah nodded.

    Bay was growing increasingly frustrated, but she didn''t want to make herself a target for these police officers, who all seemed very tense.

    "Where did you find it?"

    "Do you want me to show you?" Jonah asked.

    "Yes."

    She walked a couple steps, waited to see if the police offers were following her (they were) and went down the pier towards the pumphouse. Bay stood awkwardly as they passed her, and then decided that she wanted to know what was going on more than she didn''t want to get in trouble, so she followed behind the group as unobtrusively as she could. Behind her, several police officers cordoned off the area with yellow tape, and another began taking photographs of everything.

    As Bay passed the bucket, which one officer stopped to photograph, she caught a glimpse of the object of everyone''s attention: a severed head. She stifled a cry, not wanting to attract attention to herself. She jammed her hand over her mouth. The slightly more distracted part of her brain took note of the cameras that the officers were using. DSLRs. Probably five years old. Apparently photographing evidence was not enough to invest in the highest end stuff, at least for a tiny community in which not that much crime happened.

    Blacklake was a small town. This was probably almost every police officer on duty, coming here. It was a sick thought, that everyone was here to just experience the most exciting thing that had maybe ever happened in town.

    "I came to clean out the filter, because Bay told me that the wave pool wasn''t filling, and I figured this was where the clog was," Jonah said, her voice sounding steadier now that she was describing something that everyday vocabulary had easy words for.

    "Was it in the filter, or in this little building?"

    "It was underwater, in the filter. This is just where you access the pumps," Jonah said. "Here." She punched in the keycode and opened the door.

    "Who has the passcode for this building?" the officer asked.

    "Er. Any of the staff who have worked here for a while. It''s just 5555."

    An officer made a note on a clipboard. Bay stayed outside as the photographer, leading officer (whose name she still hadn''t caught-- she resolved to look at his badge when she saw it next), and Jonah entered the building. Their conversation was clear.

    "What''s all this?"

    "I had to dump out the muck I had pulled out of the filter so that I could put, uh, it in the bucket."

    "And this metal thing?"

    "The filter cover."

    "Was it like this when you arrived?"This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    "No, I moved it so that I could get to the filter."

    "Did you touch anything else in here?"

    "Just the bucket. And I mean the floor and stuff. And I scooped all of that out by hand."

    "Alright. Can you step back outside?"

    Jonah blinked as she reemerged into the sunlight. While Bay had been listening to the proceedings inside the filter house and not paying attention, someone had covered up the head bucket with a sheet. That was good.

    "Is the intake directly underneath the building?"

    "No, uh, if you sneak around the edge of the pump house you can see it there. It sticks out the back. Careful ''cause it''s easy to fall in."

    "Thank you. Let''s step away from this area," the officer said. Bay finally caught a glimpse of his nametag: Andover. What a stereotypically cop sounding name, she thought.

    He walked back down the pier, giving a wide berth to the sheet covered bucket. Andover gestured at the rest of his team, the ones standing around on the pier, that they could go into the little pumphouse. The photographer was still in there, clicking away, bright flashes illuminating the dim interior.

    Andover led Jonah to the edge of the woods, stationing himself in between her and the pumphouse and its now hidden gory scene. Bay lingered behind him.

    "I''d like to ask you a few questions," Andover said. "Just to establish a kind of timeline of events."

    "Okay," Jonah said.

    "I''m going to record this for posterity."

    "Okay."

    "Great."

    Bay was watching this exchange with a growing worry in her stomach. She didn''t know that much about murders, and she didn''t think that Jonah had done it, but she did know what her dad had always told her about police. Don''t trust them. Don''t talk to them. Get a lawyer.

    Andover continued. "You said you came here because Bay-- is that Bayleigh Fernandez-- had said the pumps weren''t working?"

    "Yes, that''s right. At the wave pool."

    "Is it usually your job to fix the pumps?"

    Jonah shrugged, clearly miserable. "I do whatever needs to happen to keep the park running."

    "What is your actual position?"

    "Aquatics staff head."

    "And how long have you served in this position?"

    "Uh. About a week."

    Andover made a note on his little notepad, but Bay couldn''t read it. The ferocity with which he scribbled seemed like a bad sign, though.

    "Who is usually responsible for fixing the pumps?"

    "Maintenance," Jonah said, but she sounded deeply unsure of herself. "I think, anyway. But like, the staff at each ride, they usually know tricks to get things working on their end, so they don''t have to call maintenance down, because they''re always busy."

    "Why didn''t you call maintenance for this problem?"

    "They were fixing the ferris wheel, I think?"

    "You think?"

    "That''s what Bay told me."

    This line of questioning was starting to make Bay very, very nervous. She was still being ignored by the officer, but she didn''t like the fact that her name kept coming up. She didn''t like the way that Andover was staring at Jonah, and Jonah was looking over his shoulder, as all the police bustled about the scene of the crime (or at least the scene of the crime discovery.) Bay tried to position herself in between Jonah and the lake shore, so that she couldn''t see it. "Get a lawyer," she mouthed as obviously as possible, but Jonah ignored her.

    "Could you just walk me through the chain of events of today?" Andover asked.

    "Uh, ok." Jonah looked around a little bit nervously, and her eyes focused on Bay. "I came in to work late, because my alarm didn''t go off."

    "What time was this?"

    "Um, like" -- Jonah''s face scrunched up as she tried to remember-- "I probably got here at like ten thirty, ten forty?"

    "And then what happened?"

    "I texted Bay, because I needed to ask her something," Jonah said. "And she told me that the wave pool was broken, so I went there."

    "The wave pool was the only attraction that was having issues?"

    "Well," Jonah began, launching into an explanation, "yesterday, Mr. Calvin had asked me what I thought the best way to get rid of the mud in all the water rides was."

    "Mud?"

    "Since we pull from the lake, whenever we get heavy rain, that stirs up the bottom pretty bad, and it makes the water cloudy. It''s not actually mud, like, thick, but it''s gross looking and brown. Since today was definitely going to be busy, Mr. Calvin wanted it out."

    "Okay."

    "So I told him that the best way to do it would probably be to flush all the rides overnight, since it hadn''t rained in a couple days, the lake was probably all settled, so we could get clear water in and dirty water out."

    "Do you usually not change the water?"

    "We cycle the rides just enough to keep the water safe-- some rides need it more than others, like, depending on the number of people who pee in them? Sorry, it''s kinda gross."

    "I get it. Continue."

    "So we were flushing all the rides, so the pumps were probably going crazy over night."

    "Why did it take until this late in the day to discover that there was a problem with the wave pool?" Andover asked.

    "Well, the other rides probably switched off their filtering as soon as their staff came in in the morning," Jonah said. "The wave pool always has problems though."

    "Such as?"

    "It has a big crack in the bottom."

    Bay broke in, trying to save Jonah from her own, rather confused explanation. Andover looked at her, clearly surprised by the intrusion. "We were running the wave pool as usual early in the morning, but it drains way faster than other attractions, because of the force of the waves and the big crack in the bottom of it, so by like ten, Kyle noticed that the water level was getting too low to be safe, and we tried turning the pumps back on. We checked the local pumps and filters, and saw that no water was getting through there, so I asked Jonah to fix the big one there." Bay pointed at the filter house.

    "So the pumps ran all night without problems?" Andover asked.

    "I don''t think there''s a way to know that," Jonah said. "Employees probably weren''t checking how much water was flowing in and out when they turned the flow off at their individual rides when they came in. We don''t have that great of a system of measuring it. The filter could have gotten clogged during the night. But, like, that wasn''t what was clogging it. It was all the leaves and stuff. The gunk on the floor. I have to get rid of all that on a pretty regular basis anyway. Well, usually maintenance does."

    "Did you call anyone from maintenance?" Andover asked.

    "I did, but they didn''t answer their phone," Bay said.

    "They never do," Jonah added.

    The sound of the chain link fence rattling startled the trio out of their conversation. The rarely used gate that separated Arcadis from the lake was rattling open. It was rarely used because it was held shut with a padlock, to which only maintenance (and Mr. Calvin) had the keys. Aquatics employees who needed to access the pumphouse jumped the fence, as they always did.

    "What the hell is going on here?" Mr. Calvin yelled.

    Andover frowned and turned away from Bay and Jonah. Bay sidled up to her and they both scooted backwards, away from the red faced Calvin.

    "Please calm down, Reggie," Andover said.

    "Your two goons over here are telling me I need to shut my park down on the busiest weekend of the year," Calvin yelled, stomping over towards Andover. His manner changed distinctly though as he got closer to Andover, and he clapped him on the shoulder and smiled. "How''s the kids?" he asked.

    "They''re fine," Andover said. "Look, Reggie, we found something in your lake."

    "I think calling it my lake is a bit of a stretch," Calvin said. "Town wouldn''t let me buy it."

    "Alright, well, we found something in your pumphouse."

    "Such as?"

    "A dead body, Reggie. You see why we''d like to shut the park down, in order to investigate."

    "If it was in the lake, it has nothing to do with me," Calvin said. "I''m not shutting the park down. We operate on pretty thin margins, you know. Ticket sales pay salaries. I''m not giving out refunds."

    "We''re going to have to search the lake. You won''t be able to pump water in," Andover said.

    "So I go without pumping water for like a day."

    Calvin looked over at Jonah and Bay, as if he had just now noticed them. "What are you two doing here?"

    "Ms. Wylan was the one who discovered the body," Andover said, keeping a remarkably calm voice as he tried to placate the still somewhat agitated Calvin. "And Ms. Fernandez led us here when we arrived."

    "You should get back to work," Calvin said. "Outside the park bounds technically means you shouldn''t be getting paid."

    Bay was grateful for any excuse to leave. "Come on," she said, tugging on Jonah''s arm.

    "I was interviewing them, before you arrived," Andover explained, still patient. "I''d like to continue doing so."

    "They don''t know shit, I''m sure. Look, if you need to talk to them, have them write down their numbers and you can call them after their shift. Park closes at eight."

    Andover looked torn at this, caught between his obvious police duties and the friendly relationship he seemed to be trying to maintain with Mr. Calvin. He finally sighed and ripped off a piece of paper from his notebook and handed it and a pen to Jonah. "Phone number, please."

    "Can I use your back?" Jonah asked Bay, who leaned over and allowed Jonah to scribble her phone number down on the paper using her back as a surface. She handed the now very wrinkled paper back to Andover.

    "And girls, please don''t mention this to anyone," Andover said. "I''d prefer not to have anyone come to the lakefront while we investigate."

    "If you''re going to park your cars in the parking lot, people are going to find out," Bay muttered under her breath.

    "What? Oh, that can''t be helped," Andover said. "Closest place to park."

    "How are you going to search the lake?" Calvin asked. "You got police boats?"

    Bay didn''t wait to hear the answer. She grabbed Jonah''s arm and tugged her away from the scene. Jonah looked back over her shoulder as they walked away, passing through the gates into Arcadis.

    "I should quit," Jonah said. "I should quit."

    "What? Why? This has nothing to do with you," Bay said as they walked, trudging slowly back through the forest towards the park proper.

    "I mean, it kinda does."

    "Sure, you found it, but that doesn''t mean that it''s your problem." Neither of them really seemed able to say the words severed head.

    "Whose problem is it then?"

    "The police. That''s why they''re there. Obviously."

    "It feels like it''s my responsibility."

    "That''s insane."

    "Don''t you feel like you need to do something about it?"

    "No?" Bay scrunched up her face. "I mean, I want to know what happened, and it sucks that it did, and I want to make sure that no one else gets killed, but it''s not actually my job to, you know, figure that out."

    "You think it could happen again?"

    "I mean. People who do that, I feel like it probably isn''t an isolated incident."

    "Did you see it?"

    "Yeah. Just a glimpse."

    Jonah pulled her phone out of her pocket. "Don''t tell anyone I took this." She showed a photo to Bay. It was of the woman''s head, though it was framed in such a way that the neck (and obviously missing body) were not visible. "Do you recognize her?"

    "No. Should I?"

    "I don''t know."

    "What, you think she was at Arcadis?"

    "Maybe?"

    They came to the edge of the park proper, now, and stepped out behind the waterslide and fit themselves into the crowd. Jonah was covered in mud a little bit, from cleaning the filter, Bay presumed, so guests looked at her a bit oddly. Better than being covered in blood, which Bay thought might be the alternative. Though the head hadn''t been particularly bloody. Maybe most of that had drained out into the lake before Jonah got to it. She was grateful that Jonah had found the head, and not her.

    "What are we going to do about the wavepool?" Bay asked, bringing the conversation back to something concrete and mundane. They walked towards it, pushing through the crowds.

    "You''ll just have to leave it off. We can''t run the pumps."

    "Okay. You know, if we''re not pumping, isn''t the water going to get gross?"

    "We''ll just have to put in a ton of chlorine," Jonah said, with a heavy sigh. "I''ll go around and tell everyone that."

    At the wave pool, they found that Kyle and Amanda had vanished, after putting up ''Do Not Enter''/''No Lifeguard On Duty''/''Out of Order'' signs and cones. Kids had ignored that, and were splashing through the knee deep water at the edge of the wavepool. Bay took out her whistle and blew it at them.

    "Can you read? Out of order! Out!" she yelled. The kids scrambled, laughing and running into the crowd. "Where the hell are Kyle and Amanda?"

    "I''ll yell at them when I see them," Jonah said. Her voice sounded suddenly exhausted, and the harsh sun overhead cast deep shadows over her eyes.

    "Hey, Jonah, are you okay?" Bay asked.

    Jonah laughed a little. "Fuck no."

    "Understandable."

 Chapter Seven - The Right Hand Knows Not What the Left Hand is Doing

    Jonah tramped off through the park, making her way to each attraction that she thought needed to be told to dump chlorine until further notice. The boat rides didn''t need it really, until the water started to stink, and the police would probably let them start pumping again before then. The waterslides needed it, but probably less than the regular pool. Lazy river needed it... The list churned through Jonah''s brain, and she walked around, methodical and dead eyed, giving out the instructions.

    She was met with some resistance.

    "When are we going to get our paychecks?" Mario asked.

    "What are the police doing in the parking lot?" Qwamae wondered.

    "I don''t think we have enough chlorine," Rachel said, scratching her head. "Can you get some?"

    Every ride, as usual, presented its own problems.

    She had saved the flat pool for last, as it would definitely require the most chlorination of all of them, which the staff certainly wouldn''t appreciate.

    "Hey. Zach," she said, summoning him off his chair. "Order is from Mr. Calvin that we need to start chlorinating."

    Zach looked at her, frowning and squinting in the afternoon sunlight. "Why?"

    "Pumps are down until further notice."

    "Why?"

    "Something weird happening at the lake."

    His facial expression shifted, but Jonah didn''t understand to what. "What''s weird happening at the lake?" he asked, sounding slightly disturbed.

    "Look, I don''t really have that information to give out," Jonah said. "Can you just chlorinate the pool?" She did have the information, of course, but she wasn''t supposed to tell anyone, so that wasn''t technically a lie.

    "I want to hear what''s going on from Mr. Calvin."

    "Zach, I know you''re pissed at me for taking Rebecca''s job. But I''m not here to antagonize you or argue with you or whatever. Can you just do it? Clear the pool and dump some chemicals. It''s not that hard."

    He looked at her. "What''s the matter with you?"

    "I''ve had a shittier day than I could possibly explain, and," -- she looked at her phone to check the time -- "there''s still like four hours of it to go."

    "You''d better watch out, or you''ll turn into Rebecca."

    "I''m not turning into Rebecca. Do you have some sort of other problem, Zach?"

    He shook his head, some of the tension going out of his shoulders. "Didn''t get a lot of sleep last night."

    Jonah pressed her lips into a line before she spoke. "Perhaps if you didn''t spend so much time in places you didn''t belong on Friday nights, you''d have better Saturdays."

    Zach shook his head. "Forget I said anything."

    "Look, if it''s any consolation, I''m like thirty seconds away from quitting too, and you can have my stupid job then."

    "Whoo." He was unenthusiastic.

    "Yeah. About how I feel right now." Jonah ran a hand through her hair.

    "Did you not put on sunscreen this morning? You''re a lobster."

    "Oh. Yeah. I was running late." She laughed a pathetic laugh. "Guess that''s not helping my mood any."

    "You could take a shower in the locker room. Might help you feel better."

    "Somehow I doubt that getting soggy on top of everything else would help."

    "Get somebody in there with you..." Zach said, cracking a weird looking smile.

    "Fuck off."

    "Yeah."

    "Anyway. Have you seen Amanda and Kyle? Bay said she sent them to you to help out here, since the wavepool''s broken."

    "Kyle''s scrubbing the locker room. No idea where Amanda went."

    "They''re not in there together?"

    "They''re a couple?"

    "Yeah, I think so. A deeply unpleasant one."

    "That''s sure an age gap."

    "Whatever. Not my business. If they want to have a nasty falling out in like two months, that''s their prerogative."

    "It sure is."

    "Ok, well, as long as Kyle''s working."

    "Hey, speaking of working, paychecks?"

    "I''ll get them as soon as Mr. Calvin decides to hand them to me."

    "I eagerly await."

    Jonah shrugged and disengaged herself from the conversation, listening behind her as Zach blew his whistle and cleared the pool so that he could chlorinate it. She went into the locker room, looking for Kyle.

    He was there, but he wasn''t scrubbing. He was leaning against the wall, looking at his phone with intense concentration. The tinny strain of Amanda''s voice echoing out through the speakers filled the locker room.

    "That doesn''t look much like scrubbing," Jonah said, pointing to the mop leaning against the wall next to Kyle.

    He looked up at her and, with a guilty expression, put his phone in his pocket. "Oh, hi Jonah. I thought, er, you''d been arrested."

    "Fuck off."

    "Gladly." He grabbed the mop and tried to beat a hasty retreat from the locker room.

    "Kyle."

    "What?"

    "Where''s Amanda?"

    "I don''t know. In the park somewhere, I guess." He was clearly lying.

    Kyle had failed to shut off the audio from whatever he had been watching, and so Jonah could still hear Amanda''s muffled voice issuing forth from his pocket.

    "Don''t be dumb. I''m not in the mood."

    "She''s investigating whatever''s going on down at the lake," Kyle admitted.

    Jonah groaned. "Tell her to stop."

    "No."

    "Kyle."

    "Jonah."

    "I''m serious."

    "So am I."

    "I don''t want to be responsible for her getting in some kind of stupid trouble with the literal actual police," Jonah said.

    "And she wants to know if the whole park is in danger of getting serial killed," Kyle said.

    "Are you kidding me?"

    "She''s super worried."

    "And so she thinks the best thing to go do is to skip work, hide in the forest, and spy on the police?"

    "She came up with this idea on her own."

    "And why are you supporting her in it?"

    Kyle''s voice was unexpectedly high when he responded, "Curiosity?"

    "Don''t tell me you''re worried about getting serial murdered too."

    "Yeah," he admitted, and rubbed his chin.

    "Don''t be stupid. Unless they find more than one person, it''s definitely not a serial killer." Jonah paused. "Wait, how do you know that someone died?"

    Kyle looked around, and leaned against the locker room door to prevent anyone coming in. "Can I show you a picture?"

    "Do I want to see the picture?"

    "Probably not."

    "Show it."

    Kyle pulled out his phone, and swiped away from the... livestream... of Amanda whispering to her phone as she hid among the trees at the edge of the lake, spying on the police. "How many people are watching that?" Jonah asked.

    "I don''t know," Kyle said, sounding a little too innocent.

    "How many people did she send the link to, Kyle?"

    "I told you, I don''t know."

    "Jesus fucking Christ. Show me the picture."

    "Okay."

    The picture in question was a screenshot of a snapchat, with Amanda''s smiling icon at the top. The image was blurry, and Amanda had "helpfully" circled the relevant part in clumsy drawn red, with an all caps "OMG". The image showed police carrying a wet looking white cloth, on top of which was a severed arm, cut off clumsily somewhere just below the shoulder. A hack job, not one that a butcher would do.

    Detachedly, Jonah said, "I''m surprised they found another piece so fast."

    Kyle didn''t say anything in response. She reached out towards the picture, zoomed in as best she could on the already blurry image. Around the wrist of the arm was a tiny strip of green.

    "Is that...?" Jonah asked.

    "Maybe?" Kyle said in that same, curiously high, voice.

    "Take a deep breath," Jonah said, though she could use that same advice herself. Her heart was thudding and noises were ringing in her ears that had no source. She slid to the ground, sitting on the filthy concrete of the locker room floor.

    The green bracelets were given out to season pass holders, and got them free sodas at a bunch of the food stalls around Arcadis. They often were passed around between friends and family. Mr. Calvin thought it was a good system, regardless, since he said that even if just one family member bought a season pass, and they passed the bracelet around between them to get free drinks during the day, that still meant a whole bunch of other people paying for tickets. Soda was cheap to pass out, far less valuable than the idea of getting bodies into the park.

    "You think that they were killed in Arcadis?"

    Kyle shook his head, seemingly helpless.

    "Tell Amanda to get out of there. She''s just going to give herself nightmares." Jonah put her head between her knees. She breathed deeply, closed her eyes, tried to get all of this out of her head. So much for Amanda having nightmares: she was going to have way worse ones, she was sure. "How did Amanda get to work, anyway?" Jonah asked. "I usually drive her in but I didn''t today."

    "Er."

    "What."

    "She passed out at the party last night. I took her back to my house."

    Jonah looked up at him sharply. "What?"

    He clarified, waving his hands. "Not like, blacked-out passed out," he said. "She fell asleep on a lounge chair."

    "If I find out that you did anything to her--"

    "I didn''t, I swear. Absolutely nothing happened last night." The denial was too false sounding.

    "I''m going to have a talk with her."

    Kyle actually seemed relieved at that. "Fine."

    Jonah stayed on the floor for a second longer, trying to work up the motivation to do what she had to, which was get up and go find Amanda, and get her away from the scene of an active crime investigation. Her body was resistant to moving, or perhaps it was more in her mind. All of her skin felt too tight, and she ached all over. It could be psychosomatic, or it could be the fact that she was wickedly sunburned from not having put on sunscreen that morning. She was nauseous, and that too could have been from the heat, or from her brain, or from the fact that she had barely eaten or drank anything all day, and what she had eaten that morning she had directly thrown up. Miserable. She was a miserable creature, on the floor of a miserable changing room, in a miserable waterpark.

    "Should I quit, Kyle?"

    "What?"

    "Quit. Get the fuck out of Arcadis."

    "Usually people don''t start saying that until like, after the first month of the summer."

    She laughed, a hollow laugh. "Well, this is the first time I''ve seen somebody get murdered and chopped up into pieces and thrown into the lake."

    "There''s a first time for everything," Kyle said, a false cheerfulness in his voice.

    "Sure. And a last time, too. If I quit I won''t have to deal with any of this."

    "And if you quit, we''ll all be stuck with Zach, who''s a real taskmaster."

    "You never know, could be whoever Mr. Calvin sees first when he walks out of his office after I quit on him."

    "I know you''re not going to, so there''s no point in you continuing to whine about it."

    "Says who?"

    "I''ve known you for years. You''re only pretending to be lazy."

    "This isn''t lazy."

    "Sure it isn''t," Kyle said. "We need you here."

    "Urgh." Jonah peeled her head out of her hands, feeling the crispy and feverish skin of her forehead give a painful tingle as she looked up. "Maybe it would be better if taskmaster Zach was in charge. He''d make you mop."

    "I''ll mop, I''ll mop. You gotta get off the floor, though."

    Jonah sighed and heaved herself to her feet. Her body moved as though through molasses, weighing a thousand tons. She stumbled out of the dim locker room, off the blisteringly hot pool deck where Zach was still dumping in chlorine, and out back, pushing through crowds until she got to the edge of the trees. It was with a great reluctance that she entered the woods, though since it was several degrees cooler there, and the sun wasn''t beating down quite as hard, that made it significantly more pleasant. She realized she had no idea where Amanda was, but she figured she could find out.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

    Jonah opened snapchat on her phone, a rarely used app, and found Amanda''s icon. It still had the video message she had sent almost a week ago, the one where she had been searching for the correct twine to fix the hole in the fence. Jonah ignored that, and used the app to pull up Amanda''s geolocation. She stumbled through the woods, watching herself grow closer and closer to Amanda''s dancing emoji figure. It was stupid and too cheerful of a thing to have to watch, as she got closer to the lakefront.

    It was a good thing that she had been tracking Amanda this way, because she was nowhere near the pumphouse, and was a good distance away from the police. Jonah got close enough to see her back, the bright orange of her staff tee shirt a dead giveaway as she sat behind a bush. She was hidden from view of the lakefront, sure, but not from behind.

    Jonah had no desire to give Amanda a heart attack, so she announced her presence in the classic way: by taking a snap of Amanda''s back and scribbling over it ''behind u'' as she leaned against a tree about ten meters away. The snap sent, and Jonah could hear Amanda whisper to her livestream, "Why the fuck is my boss snapping me?" before whipping around to stare at Jonah.

    Jonah made a beckoning motion, and put her finger to her lips to indicate that Amanda should be quiet. Then she held up her phone, pointed at it, and made a throat cutting motion to indicate that Amanda should kill the livestream. Amanda glared at her through this entire pantomime, but seemed to actually comply, pressing a couple buttons on her phone and shoving it into her pocket before coming over. Jonah grabbed Amanda''s arm.

    "Ow," Amanda whined.

    "Shut up," Jonah said quietly.

    They walked back towards Arcadis together, and stopped just before the trees gave way to the real park.

    "What the fuck do you think you were doing out there, Amanda?" Jonah asked.

    "I needed to know what was going on?"

    "What do you think would have happened to you if the police found you instead of me?"

    "I don''t know," Amanda said. She was petulant and guilty sounding, but that made Jonah more pissed off than it assuaged her.

    "It''s not a game," Jonah said. "It''s not just funsies."

    "Don''t you think I know that?"

    "Then why were you treating it like one? Think it''s so fun to livestream the police pulling body parts out of the lake, hunh?"

    "People deserve to know what''s going on," Amanda said. She put her hands on her hips now. "How do you think we''re supposed to stay safe if people don''t even know that there''s some kind of murderer walking around Arcadis."

    "There''s no murderer walking around the park, you absolute moron," Jonah sad. She wanted to shake Amanda.

    "How do you know?"

    "I think the last thing a criminal wants to do is return to the scene of the crime."

    "But that''s usually how they get caught. By doing the same thing more than once."

    "How many true crime podcasts do you listen to?" Jonah asked, intending it as a rhetorical question.

    "Uh. Like four?"

    "They''ve clearly rotted something important in your brain," Jonah said. Some of the anger left her as she looked at Amanda, who had her arms folded over her chest. She was just a kid. Jonah sighed. "Look, it''s not healthy for you to fixate on this. You''re just going to cause everybody to panic. Let''s just wait for the police to do their jobs, okay?"

    "But people deserve to know."

    "They''ll learn about it when it''s on the news, just like everybody else."

    "Tom told me that Mr. Calvin chased the news people away."

    "What?"

    "Yeah. Earlier."

    "Is he like, allowed to do that?"

    "I think he owns all this land. So, maybe?"

    Jonah rubbed her nose, then winced as it crinkled up her terrible sunburn. "I guess I understand why he''d want to do that."

    "Bad publicity to have a murder happen here."

    "It might not have happened here here."

    "You keep telling yourself that," Amanda said.

    "Look, Amanda, I should honestly fire you for you not being at work. Saturdays are already tough. I can''t have you skipping work, and causing mass panic among the staff by doing... that." She waved her hand, trying to indicate the whole of this whole mess.

    Amanda cringed back. "Please don''t. My dad will be so pissed at me."

    "I won''t. But I should."

    "Thank you so much. I''ll be on my best behavior for the rest of the summer, I swear."

    "Great. The ONLY reason I''m not kicking you is because this is like, major extenuating circumstances."

    Amanda smiled up at her. "And because you''re a nice person."

    "I''m not a nice person. I''m just trying to have everybody make it through this fucking terrible summer."

    "You are nice."

    "Lie to yourself if it makes you feel better. Oh, by the way, I meant to ask you..."

    Amanda looked slightly worried. "What?" she asked, suspicious.

    "You and Kyle."

    "What about it?"

    "Has he been pressuring you? Do you feel safe?"

    "Oh my God, are you my mother or something?"

    "He''s like five years older than you are. I don''t want to have him taking advantage of you."

    "He''s super sweet."

    "That doesn''t make someone unable to take advantage."

    "It''s fine. Don''t worry about it."

    "If he ever does anything to you," Jonah said. "Please tell me."

    "Now you''re trying to be nice, and it''s making me mad. Go back to being mean. Threaten to fire me again."

    "If I catch you fucking him on park property, you''re both out."

    Amanda scream-laughed at that. "You shouldn''t talk like that to your employees. Oh, and by the way, you don''t have to give me a ride home anymore. Kyle will."

    "Cool. Great. That makes me the opposite of nervous about your well being."

    "Chill out. You''re like an old lady."

    "I''m the old lady of Arcadis Park. Here to stop you from having all kinds of fun. Now you need to go out and work."

    "Wave pool''s broken."

    "Lazy river always needs more eyeballs."

    "Urgh."

    <hr>

    Jonah trudged out to the parking lot at the end of the day, then remembered that she had not driven to work. That realization was almost enough to cause her to lay down on the ground and hope that one of the other departing staff members with cars would run her over.

    She turned back around and headed into the park once more. Mr. Calvin spotted her.

    "Jonah!"

    "Hi, Mr. Calvin," Jonah said. "Congratulations on not needing to shut down the park." There was no enthusiasm in her voice, but she didn''t have a choice but to talk to her boss.

    "It''s a miracle I was able to keep the police from causing too much trouble."

    "And I was told that you kicked out news crews?"

    "Oh, well, just someone from the Lakeside Report who keeps a little too close ear on the police scanner."

    "No bigger news stations showed up? From out of town, I mean?"

    "I would have kicked them out, too."

    Jonah nodded. "They''ll report on it anyway, I''m sure."

    "Well, as long as they don''t go including pictures of the park, and rampant speculation, it shouldn''t cause too much of a problem with guest numbers."

    "Maybe you''ll get all the crime junkies flocking in..." Jonah said with a yawn.

    "Oh... That''s not a bad idea. I should get someone to turn Belly of the Whale into a horror experience."

    "Whatever you say, Mr. Calvin."

    "Unfortunately, they''re not going to let us pump until they find the rest of the body. How are the attractions holding up with the chlorine?"

    "You''ll have to buy some more."

    Mr. Calvin frowned. "Really?"

    "We don''t usually go through this much."

    "How unfortunate."

    "And the wavepool won''t be able to work until we can pump again and fill it."

    "Now that is a real loss. Maybe I can hook it up to a hose, just use town water."

    "The reason you don''t do that is because town water costs money," Jonah reminded him. "Better to just keep it closed. And if it drains all the way, maybe you can fix the big crack."

    Mr. Calvin laughed. "That is the dream, isn''t it. How have the staff been?"

    "Fine, I guess." Jonah certainly wasn''t going to admit to Mr. Calvin that the staff were emphatically not fine, what with at least a good couple of them convinced that they were going to get serial murdered, and with some of them skipping work to go spy on the police, and who knows how many following Amanda''s livestream...

    "That''s good, that''s good."

    "Hey, Mr. Calvin, could you maybe like, post a guard at night?" Jonah asked, crossing her fingers inside her pants pocket.

    "I don''t have the money for that," Mr. Calvin said. "Night guards cost way more than lifeguards." He laughed again, as though that had been some kind of joke.

    "Sure, but..."

    "You don''t think that there''s a murderer around, do you?"

    "I mean, there clearly is."

    "A repeat one, though."

    "I don''t know. But it would make the staff happy, probably."

    "I''ll think about it." He would definitely not think about it.

    "Cool. I''ll let the staff know that you''re considering it."

    "Or maybe the police will post someone."

    "Hm."

    "Yeah. Well, I''ve got a wife to get home to," Mr. Calvin said with a salacious wink.

    "Goodnight," Jonah said, but he was already turning and walking away, heading through the gate towards his ugly truck, leaving Jonah standing alone.

    She watched him go for a second, then made a slow journey across the park. When she got to the normal pool, she stopped, as against the setting sun, there was the silhouette of a figure on the roof of the changing room building.

    "Hey!" Jonah yelled.

    The figure jumped, obviously startled, and Jonah was glad that they didn''t fall. She didn''t think that she could cope with more than one death in a day. The figure walked towards the edge of the roof, and as they got closer, Jonah could see that it was Bay.

    "Hey yourself," Bay said.

    "What are you doing up there?"

    "You''re the one who gave me the key."

    "That doesn''t answer the question."

    "I''m getting my camera back," Bay said. "Should have a nice sun trail on it at this point."

    "Oh. Well, you should get down and get out of here."

    "You going home?"

    "Yeah."

    "I''ll walk with you."

    "Okay."

    Bay walked away from the edge of the roof. She disappeared into the building, then reappeared a moment later at the door.

    "You''re right that I probably don''t want to be alone here at night," Bay said. "Gotta think twice about this place now."

    "Yeah." Jonah scuffed the pavement as they walked together towards the woods.

    "How was the rest of your day?" Bay asked.

    "Terrible. Yours?"

    "Mostly alright. You know the whole staff somehow know, right?"

    "Yeah, I''m aware. It''s Amanda''s fault."

    "What did she do?"

    "I assume you were paying enough attention to your job to not watch the little show she put on?"

    "Show?"

    "She snuck out back and secretly filmed the police. Livestreamed it. At the very least, Kyle was watching, but probably more staff were too."

    "Her parents will probably kill her for using up so much data."

    "She probably has unlimited. I wouldn''t do something like that unless I did."

    "You want to know the fundamental difference between yourself and Amanda?" Bay asked.

    "What?"

    "You have common sense. She does not."

    "I feel like I really don''t, sometimes," Jonah said. "I probably should have fired her as soon as I found out."

    "If you start firing people over actually fireable transgressions, you won''t have any staff left."

    "You''re not wrong."

    They entered the shadowy woods, and they both turned on their phone flashlights to illuminate the way out. At the fence, Jonah gave up on the idea of climbing over, and just crawled through the hole.

    "Told you this thing was handy," Bay said, coming through after her.

    "Did you cut it open again?"

    "I promise I didn''t."

    "I really have to find out which of my idiot staff did, then. I don''t want to keep patching it up."

    "Just leave it open. Makes it easier for me to get through. I''m lazy like that."

    "The first time a coyote gets into the park, that''s when you''ll say ''Oh, man, wish our fence didn''t have massive holes in it.''"

    "Want to get dinner?" Bay asked, as they got closer to the road, and to civilization.

    "I''m filthy."

    "Do you have anything good to eat at your house?"

    "No," Jonah said, and realized again that she hadn''t eaten all day, or at least not since she had pulled a severed head out of the water. She was really trying to block that out of her memory, though.

    "Then let''s get pizza. I''m sure Pizza Bella won''t care if you''re dirty."

    "You''ve convinced me."

    Their bikes were the last two tossed along the roadside where all the staff left their bikes. They pedaled them down the dim streets, Jonah breathing slightly heavily, feeling vaguely dizzy as they passed in and out of cones of streetlight illumination.

    The front of Pizza Bella was a welcome sight, and there were plenty of other people there, couples, teens, other Arcadis staff members, who all seemed intent on ignoring eachother. Bay and Jonah leaned their bikes against the building''s outer wall (fairly certain that no one would steal them).

    "I''m gonna wash my hands," Bay said. "Be right back."

    Jonah slid into a booth as Bay disappeared. She would order pizza when Bay came back.

    On the wall, a TV was silently playing the news. Jonah watched it switch from some mundane story about endangered birds to a news reporter standing in front of the Arcadis Park sign. She felt like her eyes were burning a hole in the screen as the subtitles scrolled along.

    "Our news team was able to acquire this footage from a witness at the scene who wishes to remain anonymous." The scene switched to something that was immediately recognizeable as Amanda''s footage, and Jonah''s hands curled into fists underneath the table. The jittery image showed police wading out of the water carrying a white cloth. Jonah presumed that the arm was contained inside of it.

    "The victim has been identified as thirty two year old Justine Mulvais, a resident of nearby Sachutt."

    A facebook image of a smiling woman.

    Jonah felt sick and had to look away. Bay came back and saw the expression on Jonah''s face. "What''s the matter?"

    Jonah pointed at the TV in the corner. Bay stared at it. "They haven''t found any more body parts or the murder weapon."

    "Just means we won''t be able to pump the rides any time soon," Jonah mumbled. She couldn''t think of anything more coherent to say.

    "Oh, wow, body was in the water for less than a day."

    "Not surprising." Jonah''s voice felt muffled as it left her mouth. Like she was talking through cotton balls.

    "Sorry, I''ll stop talking about it. Pizza?"

    Jonah stood up, and the two of them went to the counter to order slices.

    "I''ll pay," Jonah said.

    "What? I''ve got cash."

    "I make more money than you."

    "Like what, two dollars more an hour?"

    "Three."

    "Fancy." But Bay stopped protesting, and Jonah paid for both of their pizza slices and sodas.

    "Thanks for the pizza," Bay said, as they ate.

    "No problem."

    "I know I asked before, but are you doing okay?"

    "Does it matter?"

    "Against my better judgement, I find myself caring," Bay said.

    "Hah. I guess the true test will be if this pizza stays down, and if I can sleep tonight."

    "Yeah, I feel like there will be a lot of people with nightmares."

    "I''m sure."

    "Think staff are going to show up to work tomorrow?"

    "If they don''t, I''ll fire them."

    "You won''t."

    "I won''t."

    Jonah sighed. The pizza was good, but greasy. She ate it, feeling it settle like a lead weight inside of her.

    "Do you like being aquatics head?"

    "No," Jonah said with a bitter laugh.

    "Why''d you take the job?"

    "Because I can''t say no to things."

    "That''s fair. You''ve been working here a long time, right?"

    "About a million years. Well, six."

    "Why don''t you do something else?"

    "Curious about my life?"

    "Just trying to get to know you. Seems nice since you bought me pizza. My goal this summer was to make some friends, you know."

    "Hah. Well, I''m an academic fuckup three fourths of the year, so I get to spend the fourth fourth here instead of getting an internship or something useful."

    "What do you study?"

    "Biochemistry."

    "Nice."

    "It would be if I was good at it."

    "Why don''t you switch majors?"

    "Sunk cost."

    "That''s fair."

    "What about you?"

    "Film."

    "That''s cool."

    "Well, I worry that a successful art major is still less employable than an unsuccessful biochem major, so is it really?"

    "Arcadis Park clearly welcomes all who have made weird choices in life."

    "Clearly."

    "How come this is only your first year working there?" Jonah asked. "You''re my age, right?"

    "Senior, yeah." Bay shook her head. "Family just moved here."

    "Oh, where''d you live before?"

    "The UP. Michigan."

    "Cool."

    "Eh. It''s about the same as here. Just even less stuff."

    "Thrilling. Why''d your family move?"

    "My mom wanted to be closer to her parents. She''s originally from around here."

    "Oh, makes sense. Do you like it here?"

    "It''s fine. I''m not really planning on staying. If I can get a job somewhere else when I graduate, I will."

    "Gonna move to LA?"

    "Hah. I know people say that you have to be in Hollywood to actually succeed in film, but you know, Toronto is the film capitol of the north, so I might go there. Probably cheaper."

    "You''d have to get Canadian citizenship."

    "Or just a job that''ll get me a visa."

    "Yeah."

    The conversation had sufficiently distracted Jonah from the thought of the dead body in the lake, but clearly Bay couldn''t resist bringing it back up after a momentary silence fell.

    "Do you think they''ll catch whoever did it?" Bay asked.

    "Jesus, Bay, I''m still eating." Jonah put down her pizza crust and took a sip of soda. "I don''t fucking know. It''s been like, a day."

    "Well, if they find the murder weapon, do you think there''ll be prints on it?"

    "I don''t know."

    "The killer seems kinda dumb."

    "Why?"

    "I mean, they chopped up the body, but it was still recognizable, and pieces of it were found right away."

    "They probably wanted it to get found. Sick satisfaction from seeing people freak out."

    "Oh." Bay looked down at her plate. "I guess."

    "Look, I don''t know. It''s probably bad for everyone to do all sorts of speculating."

    "Can''t help it. I just keep seeing it in my head," Bay said.

    "How do you think I feel?"

    "I''m sorry, Jonah."

    "It''s fine."

    "Are you coming to work tomorrow?"

    "What else would I do?"

    "Stay home."

    "And be depressed? And think about how all the staff are probably depending on me, and how the whole place is going crazy? And have to deal with my family? And wonder if Mr. Calvin''s going to fire me?"

    "Alright, alright," Bay said. "I shouldn''t have asked."

    "Sorry for snapping. I''m in a terrible mood."

    "You need like six ibuprofens and some aloe for that sunburn."

    "I know. I''ll take some when I get home, and then pass out until I need to be back at work. Just like every sucky day."

    "Well, tomorrow at least you can be guaranteed that you won''t pull anything else gross out of the filters."

    "Knock on fucking wood."

 Chapter Eight - The Masters Tools, the Masters House

    Bay found it impossible to get to sleep and stay asleep that night. She had always been a light sleeper, her entire life, and cursed with insomnia in periods that came in waves of weeks at a time, but this was a different kind of sleeplessness than she was used to. Her air mattress provided her no comfort as she rolled around in the dark of an unfamiliar room, unable to stop thinking about what she had seen.

    A woman was dead. Her head had been in a bucket. Like some kind of scene from the French Revolution, with heads coming off under the guillotine. She somehow doubted that poor woman''s death had been so easy and clean, though. It was a horrible thought that people who were executed probably had an easier time of it, but Bay couldn''t help but think it.

    Almost without meaning to, she looked up a news story about the death, found the woman''s name. It was a shock, perhaps, that the police had not only identified her but had released that information to the public. Justine Mulvais.

    It didn''t take long to find the woman''s socials. She had linked her Facebook and Instagram, both of which were public. It didn''t take a lot to confirm that she had found the correct J. Mulvais: the most recent photos were all taken at Arcadis. The comments were such a jarring thing to look at-- a completely innocuous last few posts, but under each one was someone (a friend? a curious stranger?) writing "RIP" or crying emojis or some other message that did nothing to capture the gravity or enormity of what had happened. Social media wasn''t designed for eulogizing.

    Bay clicked on one of the people who were tagged in the photo, a smiling woman carrying a child, probably about four years old, on her shoulders. Marie Whittacre. Her most recent Instagram post was a black square, and Bay checked to read the caption.

    <blockquote>

    "i told justine to txt me when she got home safe but i figured she had just forgot. i fell asleep and didnt try to txt her til this morning and then i get a call from police saying they found a body wearing my bracelet at the park nd can you identify the body and i told them right away who it was.

    cant believe it

    best friend since we were three years old we went to every single thing together and now shes just gone. if i didnt have ray i have to look out for idk what id do

    who the hell would kill a woman like that and do what they did to her it makes me die just thinking about it and if i ever find out who did it god cant stop me from what i need to do

    they made me look at her to make sure they had the right person and i swear i wish i hadnt seen it nobody but the devil is meant to see things like that. glad they called me and not her ma shes a nice woman doesnt deserve what happened to her daughter doesnt deserve to have to see that

    dont call me dont text me i dont want to talk to u unless youre justine and justine is dead so dont talk to me i swear to god"

    </blockquote>

    It was a painful thing to read, and Bay put down her phone feeling shaken. It was voyeuristic for her to creep on this woman''s socials, but she couldn''t undo doing it. Clearly this woman, Marie, knew that people were going to look, or she wouldn''t have put up a statement like that, but that didn''t make Bay feel any better for having looked.

    She had felt sick after seeing the dead woman''s head, but that was probably nothing compared to what Marie had experienced when she had been made to ID the body. Her finger hovered over the private message button, considering sending her a message, but Marie had been clear that she didn''t want to talk, and what would Bay have said, anyway? Nothing.

    She stared up at the black ceiling of her room, laying flat on her back, listening to the unfamiliar house creak in the wind. The social media photographs were confirmation that the woman (Justine, she reminded herself-- a person, not just a body) had been killed at Arcadis, or at least taken from there. The question was when, really. Had she been dragged off into the woods? Kidnapped as she walked back to her car in the parking lot? Tied up in a locker room and hidden until the park was empty for the night? The idea was too creepy.

    She kept imagining it, some kind of faceless monster, creeping up behind this woman, dragging her down the shadowy path back behind the pavilion, holding a knife to her back to force her to walk along... Bay wondered how exactly she had been killed. Probably the head wasn''t the first thing to go. Maybe it was. The scenarios danced through her mind, each grimmer than the last, until she pictured the wolf dragging the body along through the woods, up to the fence and... She stopped. It wouldn''t be so easy to hoist the body up and over, or to force a living person to climb. Maybe the body parts had been hacked up beforehand, and tossed over one by one. Or. The fence.

    Oh, God, the fence.

    She picked up her phone, texted Jonah.

    > the fence hole

    A reply came faster than Bay had been expecting, but perhaps she should have been expecting that Jonah was not asleep.

    < what about it

    > actually.

    > do you want to know what I''m going to say?

    < everyone who asks me that question knows the answer is no but i tell them to tell me anyway

    > the woman was murdered like from cicada, right

    > i looked at her fb and that was the last place she was

    < yeah. probably. at least too many coincidences for it to not be

    > i was thinking

    < that''s generally a bad idea

    > i know. anyway

    > i kept imagining like how the murderer got the body out

    > and i know I didn''t make the fence hole open again

    > and we know that the fence hole re opened over the night b/c it was closed yesterday

    > and that same night there suddenly was a body in thelake

    > anyway. thats my thoughts

    < makes sense ig

    > i don''t like the idea tho

    < why

    < aside from general murder bad

    > its not like the hole is that visible right

    > like if you were just someone coming to the fence for the first time

    > you wouldn''t see it

    > you wouldn''t know its there

    > you wouldn''t think to use it

    > if you wanted a hole in the fence youd probably cut a new one

    < yeah

    < true

    > so theres like. two bad possibilities.

    > murderer knew abt the fence hole somehow probably

    > so either they''ve been hanging out at arcadis and watching us

    > or

    < really don''t like what you''re implying

    > me either

    < you can''t just say shit like that bay

    < the amnt my neck is already on the line for the staff is like

    < so fucking much

    > i know i know

    > i mean

    > i don''t think that any of the staff are killers

    > not like i know anybody that well.

    > i guess

    < look i''m not that good at reading people but i don''t think

    < i mean maybe

    < literally fuck all of this

    > maybe it was mr calvin

    < lol

    < it would make a dumb kind of sense

    < but probably not

    < hes weird and bad but i don''t think he''s murder culpable

    > look idk if it would feel worse to have one of the staff do a murder or have someone creeping

    > either way feels extremely bad

    < yeah

    < i mean somebody else could have cut the fence back open for no good reason

    < you left the party early on friday right

    < someone could have done it for some reason then

    > yeah

    > it could be unrelated ig

    > i hope its unrelated anyway

    < i''d say youre gonna give me nightmares but ive already got those

    > yeah sorry for texting you my half baked murder theories at 3am

    < its fine lol. not like i haven''t also been thinking about it nonstop

    < god i''m so not looking forward to tomorrow

    < think abt how on edge i am rightnow

    < then multiply that by not sleeping

    < and sunday crowds

    < and probably half the staff isnt gonna show up

    < im preemptively losing it

    > got any cold medicine you could take

    The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    < lol

    < maybe

    < i should like try to sleep for real tho

    < gn

    > night

    Bay put her phone down again. Sleeping was useless, but there wasn''t anything else to do.

    <hr>

    Jonah had been right about Sunday, in some ways. Bay arrived on time, hyped up on as much coffee as she could physically put in her body. Out of an abundance of caution, she had biked to work along the roads, rather than taking the shortcut through the woods. It had turned a short commute into a long one, and a much more dangerous one, as cars whizzed by on the badly paved roads with no shoulder to speak of.

    She wasn''t the only one who had the same idea. She found Genesis, the girl who ran the information desk, outside the main Arcadis gates, looking bemusedly around.

    "What''s the matter?" Bay asked, pedaling up beside her.

    "Oh, hey. Bay, right?"

    "Yeah."

    "Just wondering where the best place to put my bike is. Usually I don''t have to worry about it."

    "Oh. Hm." Bay considered this problem. "Do you have the gate code?"

    "Yeah."

    "We can probably toss them in the wave pool pump house. It''s usually not full of things."

    "Well, what if the wave pool needs to pump?"

    "Hah. You think the police are going to be done searching the lake?"

    Genesis looked around, slightly conspiratorially. "Probably not until they find the murder weapon."

    "And that seems real likely to happen," Bay said. "I''m sure they''ll give up before they do."

    "Why?"

    "I mean, I feel like dumping the murder weapon in the same place you put the body is a recipe for getting caught. But what do I know about murder?"

    Genesis shrugged. They walked their bikes over to the gate, and then through, and then pedaled through the still empty park.

    "Rest of the staff not here yet?"

    "Hopefully they''re just all running late and not skipping," Genesis said.

    "I wouldn''t bet money on it."

    "Me neither."

    The bikes were locked inside the wave pool pumphouse, and Bay stood outside, feeling the muggy air of the summer morning surround her. The park was weird when it was quiet and not quite fully light out. Walking past the still waters of the normal pool, when no one was around, she had the curious urge to jump in, or perhaps float across the top, footsteps so light as to not even leave a ripple on the surface of the water.

    "Coming here to help out now that the wave pool''s dead?" someone asked, coming up behind Bay and startling her. She turned around quickly. It was Zach, who she knew but didn''t know. Granted, it wasn''t as if Bay really knew knew anyone outside of Kyle and Amanda and Jonah.

    "Oh, hi Zach," Bay said. "I don''t know. Someone should probably stay at the wave pool just to stop guests from wandering into it and drowning themselves." Bay made a nervous kind of laugh at her own joke, but Zach just frowned a little.

    "Should probably drain it."

    "It does that on its own pretty well. It was pretty low this morning when I came past it."

    "It drains faster when the wave pumps are going. Pushes water right out through that crack."

    "I know," Bay said. "Where is everybody? It feels like people should be here by now."

    Zach waved a hand around at the park. "I think that more people than usual will be skipping their shifts."

    "Jonah thought that might happen."

    "It doesn''t surprise me."

    "Why are you here?" Bay asked.

    "I''m not afraid of getting murdered," Zach said flatly. "I suppose I should ask you that question."

    "I, oh, I don''t know. It didn''t really occur to me not to come." Bay half laughed again. "Jonah''s rubbing off on me, I suppose."

    "She here?"

    "Probably she will be. She came in late yesterday though."

    "She''s the one who found the body, right?" Zach asked. "It would have been better if she didn''t come in at all yesterday."

    "Part of the body, anyway," Bay muttered. "I mean. I guess it''s better that she found it rather than having it sitting around in the lake?"

    Zach just frowned. "If half the staff aren''t going to be here, Jonah should probably do triage on what rides are going to be open and who''s going to staff them."

    It was at that moment that Jonah showed up, with Kyle and Amanda in tow. Jonah looked terrible. Her sunburn was still clearly raw, and the kind of raw that made one shiny with it. Her hair lay flat on her head, as she hadn''t styled it. Her staff shirt was wrinkled, and her eyes had the deepest bags under them that Bay could have possibly imagined.

    "You look rough."

    "You look only marginally better, so you don''t have that much room to talk," Jonah snapped. Bay shrugged. Jonah''s poor mood was understandable.

    "Hey, don''t antagonize the few staff you have left, Rebecca," Zach said.

    "Fuck off. Where is everybody else?"

    "I''ve seen a few people around," Bay said. "But I think you were right that we''re going to have tough numbers today."

    "Urgh. I guess I need to change up the staff assignments... Zach, can you make an announcement and get everybody to meet here so I know who actually is here?"

    "Sure." Zach headed away from the flat pool, headed to who knows where, and a minute later, his voice rang out from the crackly speakers around the park. "Aquatics staff, we''re meeting right now at the pool. Hustle."

    "Taskmaster," Kyle said.

    "Not in the mood," Jonah said.

    They all waited around silently for a minute, each lost in their own private contemplation, until the rest of the staff who had shown up for work trickled in from around the park. It was about half the normal roster. Jonah sighed, took down names of who was there and who wasn''t, and quickly decided which rides actually needed staff, and which ones were ill attended enough to be closed. Everywhere was still criminally understaffed. The pool they were standing at usually had a rotation of three guards, but today it was just going to be two, on the chair all day. They didn''t have anyone to switch with. Every slide got one guard. That was it. It was a blessing that the wave pool was closed to begin with. Jonah sent everyone shuffling off.

    "And what am I doing?" Bay asked, after she realized that she hadn''t been given an assignment.

    "You''re going to go patch up the hole in the fence."

    "Wait, shouldn''t we tell the police about it?" Bay looked around, whispering.

    Jonah grabbed her arm and pulled her into the locker room, where they didn''t see anyone else. "Why?"

    "Shouldn''t they, I don''t know, search it for clues?"

    "Does it really matter how the body got over the fence?"

    "I don''t know," Bay said. "But there might be fingerprints."

    "If they can get fingerprints off the fence, they''ll only find mine and yours and Amanda''s. And loo, Bay, I..."

    "What?"

    "I don''t want the police in here investigating the staff. I don''t think that anyone did it, and telling them about the hole would only bring that down on us. Some fucking creep who''s been watching us wouldn''t--"

    The door to the locker room opened, and Jonah hastily stepped back from Bay, shutting her mouth. "What are you two doing in here?" Kyle asked, looking at them rather suspiciously.

    "Making sure there''s no corpses in the drains," Jonah muttered, pushing past him and leaving.

    "She''s just pissy about Amanda," Kyle said to Bay, who watched Jonah go, rather forlornly.

    "What did Amanda do?"

    "Well, it took both of us showing up at her house this morning to convince her to come to work. And then she eventually rode in my car, which I don''t think made her any happier."

    "Your relationship with Amanda is none of my business," Bay said.

    "Glad you see it that way," Kyle said. "Anyway, what were you doing in here?"

    "Having a conversation. Is that illegal now?"

    "It''s just weird."

    "Not like you haven''t had plenty of ''conversations'' in here."

    "I really have no idea what you''re implying," Kyle said, failing even to fake innocence. "I didn''t know Jonah was into you."

    Bay rolled her eyes. "Have fun guarding this pool all day long."

    "Me and Zach will have the greatest time in the world. Through our long association, we''ve learned to communicate with each other across the pool deck with a sophisticated kind of sign language."

    "I''ll go tell Amanda that you''re going to spend the whole day watching how Zach moves his body."

    That got a laugh out of Kyle, finally. "Look, tell her I''m sorry that she''s all alone on waterslide duty."

    "Better than the wave pool."

    "Yeah."

    Bay left the locker room, letting Kyle do whatever he needed to do in there before the park opened. Bay made her way to the maintenance shed, looking around for the twine that had been used to tie the fence back together before. She found it pretty easily, though she couldn''t find the wire snips that she would need to accompany it. She settled on a pair of pliers, figuring if she needed to, she could bend the wire back and forth enough times to break it. Besides, this spool of wire was almost out.

    The park was open by now, and the first few early crowds were pushing through the park, dispersing and making nuisances of themselves. Odd, Bay thought, how the staff seemed to be the only real people in this transient place, even though the guests were the reason for them to exist. And yet, to the guests, the staff probably had as much meaning to their lives as wallpaper. Completely different worlds, existing overlaid on each other, meeting at the edges.

    With so few people around yelling, the piped in music was the loudest sound, and it grew quiet as Bay entered the woods and made a beeline for the fence. It was only after she had gotten there that she realized that, perhaps if a murderer was around, they might be waiting to ambush someone who had gone into the woods alone. Still, she was there at the hole now.

    The discarded fence chunk was nowhere to be seen. Bay had hoped to pick it up and patch it back together in the same way it had originally been repaired, by weaving the edges with twine, but since it didn''t exist, that wasn''t going to happen. She looked around for it for a minute, kicking up the most visible piles of leaves, and peering past the nearby trees, but gave up rather quickly. It was a little worrying that it was gone (after all, why would someone steal it?), but she had a task to do, so she sat down to do it.

    In school, Bay had taken one semester of a textile arts class, so knew the basics of weaving. That artistic technique was not what she employed now. Instead, she simply ran her twine back and forth through the nearby fence links, making rows of wire, then repeated it on the diagonals until she ran out of twine and was forced to wrap the edges together with her fingers. It was a clumsy job, but it sealed up the hole. No coyotes would get through, anyway. If human murderers did, that was a different problem, and clearly one that a fence couldn''t solve.

    She stood, on legs that ached from being crossed, and began the slow walk back to the park. As she walked, something shiny caught her eye, half buried in the leaf litter. Thinking it might be the missing fence piece, and cursing herself for not looking for it harder earlier, Bay stopped and kicked at it gently with her toe. It was not the missing fence piece. It was a pair of wire snips. She had the sinking feeling that they had been the ones she had been unable to find earlier, while looking through the maintenance shed.

    Cautiously, as though they were a live bomb, Bay cleared all the debris away from them with her foot, careful not to touch the wire snips herself.

    She pulled out her phone and called Jonah, wiggling slightly as she listened to the dial tone. When Jonah answered, her voice echoed, as though she were in some kind of cave.

    "Did you fix the fence?" Jonah asked.

    "Yeah. I need you to come admire my handiwork."

    "Really?"

    "Are you busy?"

    "I''ve been riding the Belly of the Whale and calling up everyone who''s not at work to yell at them. Other than that, no."

    "Ok. I need you to come see it."

    "You''re not on speakerphone, by the way."

    "I''m just being cautious."

    "I''ll be there in like three minutes." Jonah hung up, and Bay waited in the woods, feeling like every creak of the wind in the branches was something more unpleasant. Even though it was a cloudless day, and hot, it somehow felt eerie.

    Jonah arrived, somewhat out of breath, and she took a different path through the woods than Bay had, so Bay had to yell to catch her attention.

    "Over here," Bay called. "Careful," she added, when Jonah was several steps away from stepping on the wire snips. She pointed at them, making sure that Jonah saw.

    "That''s not a murder weapon."

    "It''s fence cutting shears," Bay said. "Also, for the record, the piece of the fence that got cut out is gone gone."

    Jonah bent down, looked closely at the snips. "I think these are..."

    "From the maintenance shed," Bay said. "I couldn''t find them earlier."

    "So, whoever cut the fence came from Arcadis."

    "Yeah."

    "Doesn''t necessarily mean they did the murder."

    "It''s weird, though."

    "Why?"

    "It''s on this side of the fence," Bay said. "The Arcadis side."

    "So?"

    "Well, they cut the fence using clips from Arcadis."

    "You assume they''re from the park, anyway."

    "Yeah. I mean, I guess we should try to find out for sure."

    Jonah had a concentrated look on her face, then it brightened. "I think we can, but continue what you were saying?"

    "So somebody cuts the fence. They go through. They have to come BACK, in order to get these wire snips way over here."

    "Hm."

    "Weird."

    "That makes me feel like it''s way less likely for the fence to have been cut by the murderer."

    "Why?"

    "Why would they come back this direction?" Jonah asked.

    "To try to put the evidence back?"

    "Then why would they leave it here?"

    "Maybe they dropped it?"

    "Argh, we''re just going in circles," Jonah said. "Did you see any footprints or anything?"

    The leaf litter on the ground wasn''t the type of material that retained footprints. "No."

    "And you''re saying the fence piece is missing?"

    "Yeah."

    Jonah ran her hand through her hair, sticking it up into short little spikes. "Okay. Okay."

    "Okay what?"

    "Here''s my thought. If the fence piece is like, deliberately hidden, maybe it was the murderer who went through."

    "Why would they get rid of it though?"

    "Fingerprints?"

    "Then they wouldn''t want to leave these laying around." Bay gestured at the snips again, laying on the ground between them like some kind of dead thing.

    "Maybe they like, scratched themself on the sharp edge and got DNA in it."

    "Wouldn''t they be more likely to get themself on the like main fence part?"

    "Did you see any like fabric scraps or anything when you were over there?"

    "No."

    "This sucks."

    "Should we tell the police?"

    "Why are you so trusting of them all of a sudden?" Jonah asked. "Weren''t you telling me to get a lawyer yesterday?"

    "I thought you were too zoned out to see that," Bay said. "I thought they were asking you questions that implicated me a little too much."

    "Yeah, and that''s why I don''t want to tell the police now. I don''t want them poking at everyone. Fuck. Mr. Calvin would kill me if I told them that they needed to start interviewing staff."

    Bay paced back and forth, sticking her hands into her pockets. "So what do we do?"

    "I don''t know." Jonah made a kind of unintelligible groaning sound. "Fuck this so much."

    "Yeah. I guess we have to decide if it''s worse for the police to, you know, be at Arcadis, or if it''s worse that maybe one of the staff DID do it?"

    "Obviously that''s worse," Jonah snapped. "Sorry. You know what I mean."

    "Yeah. What was it you were going to say before, about confirming that these came from Arcadis?"

    "You think they came out of the maintenance shed, right?"

    "Yeah."

    "When I was patching the fence up the first time, Amanda sent me this stupid snapchat video of her trying to figure out the best type of twine to use. It might show what was in the shed."

    "You still have it?"

    "I never looked at it. It should still be in my inbox or whatever."

    "Ok. I hope it does."

    Jonah pulled out her phone and poked around at it. "Here, you record this with your phone. I don''t know how to save a snap video."

    "Let''s get out of the way so I don''t get that in frame," Bay said, nodding once again to the snips. "Just in case."

    "Yeah."

    It was an awkward configuration, as Jonah held her phone so that Bay could record the screen of it with her own. It was possibly the dumbest thing that she had ever done.

    The tinny voice of Amanda rang out. "Jonahhhhhhhh," she said. "Which wire is better? Green or black?" The image spun around somewhat dizzyingly as Amanda flipped the camera back towards herself. "Tell me, or I know I''ll bring you the wrong one." She was standing with her back to the wall of the shed, on which were hanging giant gardening shears, the ones that maintenance used to prune back particularly unruly bushes. The sight of it jogged something in Bay''s memory, but she waited until the video of Amanda nattering on finished.

    "I think those wire snips were on the table in the back," Jonah said, as soon as Bay closed her recording of the phone screen. "The blue handle was kinda visible."

    Bay considered how exactly she wanted to voice her suspicions. "How often does maintenance actually do landscaping?" she asked.

    "Never, if they can help it," Jonah said. "Why?"

    "How likely is it that they''d be pruning bushes today?"

    "Not likely at all."

    "Those big shears..." Bay said. "The ones on the wall behind Amanda..."

    Jonah''s face paled, even beneath her hellish sunburn. "Oh, Jesus."

 Chapter Nine - Withholding Evidence

    Jonah paced back and forth. The idea that the murderer was someone who worked at the park was beginning to eat at her. The coincidences were just a little too many. But even still, she hated the idea of getting the police to interview everyone.

    "Maybe you could ask maintenance if they''re using it? Or if they moved them? Or maybe they broke or something?" Bay asked. Her voice was high and thin.

    "And what do I say to them?" Jonah asked. "Like, hey, just so you know, I think someone used one of your tools as a murder weapon. What if one of the maintenance guys IS the murderer?"

    "I don''t know," Bay said. "Maybe you should tell Mr. Calvin?"

    Jonah laughed, an anxious sound. "Like fuck I''m gonna tell Mr. Calvin."

    Bay watched the video on her phone again, sending Amanda''s voice, now twice as distorted, ringing through the woods again. "Jonahhhhh."

    "You really think that''s the murder weapon?" Jonah asked.

    "You got a better look at... It... Than I did," Bay said. "Do you think..."

    "I really don''t want to have to picture that." She couldn''t help but picture it, though. Someone, long arms coming out of the darkness, holding the heavy garden shears, strong enough to cut through tree branches, definitely enough to go through the soft skin of somebody''s neck. Would they open wide enough? How many chops would it take? Jonah felt ill. "Maybe," she coughed out. "I don''t know."

    "I mean, did it look like it was sawed off? Or what?"

    "Stop, stop," Jonah said, waving her hand. "I''m not an expert."

    "Okay."

    "Look, I know who I can ask," Jonah said.

    "Who?"

    "One of the maintenance guys, Frank, he always brings his daughter in to work because apparently she gets into trouble if she stays at home over the summer."

    "And she doesn''t get in trouble hanging out here?" Bay asked.

    "Not my problem," Jonah said. "But I have her number. I can ask her."

    "Fine."

    Jonah dialed with shaking fingers. It took a moment for the other end to pick up, and she put the call on speakerphone.

    "Felicity?" Jonah asked.

    "Sup."

    "You at Arcadis today?"

    "You know it."

    "What''s your dad up to?"

    "If you need him to do something, he told me to tell you he''s busy."

    "With what?"

    "Uh..." There was a muffled sound of Felicity''s voice in the background, but then she came back onto the line. "Replacing a refrigerator."

    "Yeah. Cool," Jonah said.

    "Precisely."

    "Anyway, is he using the big landscaping clippers for anything? The real big shears? The ones that are usually hanging on the wall of the shed?"

    "Let me ask him." Again, muffled sounds. "No. What do you need them for?"

    Jonah made up a lie very quickly. "Some kid wedged a branch into the lazy river. I can''t get it out without cutting it."

    "A kid put one in?" Felicity sounded suspicious. Perhaps Jonah''s lie wasn''t as good as she had thought.

    "That''s just what I was told. I didn''t see it happen."

    "Ooookay."

    "Anyway. You don''t know where the shears are, do you?"

    "If they''re not where they usually are, I have no idea."

    "Cool. Great."

    "You need someone to come down to lazy river?"

    "No," Jonah said. "I''ll try putting a rope around it."

    "Great, yeah, my dad says for you to take care of it yourself."

    "I will. Thanks, Felicity."

    "No problemo."

    Jonah hung up. The twitchy feeling in her arms made her want to chuck her phone away from herself, and possibly vault the fence and run away and never come back, but she resisted both those urges.

    "Now what?" Bay asked.

    "Let''s double check that the shears are actually gone, and not just misplaced."

    "What about this?" Bay gestured to the little clippers still on the ground between them.

    "I don''t fucking know." Jonah ran her hand through her hair, winced as every motion caused her sunburn to flare up in pain.

    "Okay, okay. I guess we can just leave it here."

    "If someone touches it, I''m quitting. Can''t handle any more shit."

    "Should I put leaves over it?" Bay asked, going to kick some.

    "We''ll never find it again if you do. Just leave it."

    The two walked back out of the woods. Coming back into the populated park was less of a relief than Jonah had hoped. Where being out in the woods one felt that every sound was potentially dangerous, there were far fewer sounds. In the park, every anonymous guest''s face could have been the face of a killer, and even the staff weren''t beyond suspicion.

    "Hey, Jonah," Markus called out as they passed the slide he was manning. "People have been trickling back in. You might want to make sure they''re at the right rides now."

    "Glad I scared them," Jonah yelled back up to him, though there was no enthusiasm in her voice.

    "What did you tell the staff that you called?" Bay asked, curious.

    "Oh, that Mr. Calvin would reduce their base pay if they were no calls/no shows too many times."

    "Would he?"

    "Hah. I don''t think accounting is sophisticated enough for that."

    "Effective threat."

    "Well, as long as no one quits."

    "Might be better for them if they did," Bay said. Jonah shot her a look, and Bay shut up for the rest of the walk. At the maintenance shed, Jonah punched in the very insecure code and entered.

    "It might not have been the staff," Bay said. "The code to basically every building is the same. Anybody with eyeballs could have watched someone put it in and then come in here..."

    "Yeah." The interior of the shed smelled like woodchips and was dusty, dark, and cluttered. "Look around. Maybe they''re underneath something."

    "I feel like I shouldn''t touch things too much," Bay said. She used the corner of her shirt to lift up a large, empty cardboard box. A mouse scuttled out from behind it. Bay yelped, jumped backwards, and crashed into a shelf holding who knows what, sending cans of paint and tools and loose lightbulbs careening to the ground. Bay herself fell. The mouse scurried underneath other piles of things and vanished.

    "Jesus Christ, Bay!" Jonah yelled.

    Bay made a weird choked sound and turned half away. Jonah crouched down next to her, hesitated for a second, and then grabbed Bay''s shoulder, which was shaking. "Sorry," she said. "Shouldn''t have yelled."

    "It''s okay," Bay said, voice weak. She rubbed at her face with her arm. "I can''t not be dumb, can I?"

    "You''re not dumb. Probably should have warned you about the mice and shit," Jonah said.

    "Just gross," she said. "Hate mice."

    "Understandable." Jonah''s hand slid down Bay''s arm, and she grabbed her hand to pull her to her feet. "No big deal. Nobody''ll even notice that things fell on the floor. It''s already too much of a clusterfuck in here for that to matter."

    Jonah sealed that point by kicking some of the broken glass from a shattered lightbulb away underneath the shelf. It was true that the maintenance shed did not look materially different, even with slightly more things on the floor.

    "If I was going to cut up a body, I''d probably go for the chainsaw," Bay said, attempting to make a joke. It didn''t land, as her voice quivered too much.

    "I don''t think it even works. Look, no chain."

    "Classic Arcadis."

    "Truly."

    They were talking to make up for the fact that no matter what they turned over, there seemed to be no sign of the big clippers they were looking for. Jonah didn''t want to admit that to herself, so she just kept looking until it felt like they had examined every object in the place.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

    Bay was finally the one who admitted it. "It''s not here."

    Jonah sighed. "Yeah."

    "Now what?"

    Jonah didn''t want this responsibility. She didn''t want to feel like this was her problem, but somehow it was, because the aquatics staff at Arcadis were here problem, and so she was responsible for any of them either getting murdered or being murderers. Both of those scenarios were very bad. She was the person with this information. She had to do something about it.

    "Should I call in an anonymous tip?"

    "I don''t think those are actually anonymous."

    "The police are probably still searching the lake."

    "You could go talk to them."

    "And what would I say?"

    "The truth?"

    Jonah looked at Bay, the thin pressed line of her mouth, the way her brown eyes cast sullenly down at the floor. Jonah wanted to ask her to come with her, so that they could talk to the police together, but this wasn''t Bay''s problem. "Why are you even here, Bay? What am I doing, dragging you into this shit?"

    Bay looked up, startled. "I''m helping."

    "Yeah, but like, it''s not your responsibility. I shouldn''t have gotten you involved."

    "I''ve been in deep with you since you caught me pulling that fence apart," Bay said, cringing slightly.

    "Are you the murderer?" Jonah asked. Bay flinched. "Sorry, I just had to ask. I know you''re not. Dumb thing to say."

    "It''s fine. I''m not, for the record."

    "Yeah, I know. Okay. I''m just stalling. I''ll go talk to the police. You should go... I don''t know. Find a ride to man or something."

    "I feel like you''re kicking me out."

    "There''s no reason for me to keep pulling you around like this. I''ve somehow deputized you. Should have probably gotten Zach or something. He''s like, experienced."

    Bay actually looked hurt at this suggestion. "Am I not good enough?"

    "Fuck, Bay, I''m trying to apologize for dragging you around and making you look at a corpse and being involved in all this shit for no fucking reason. Just take the apology." Her voice was rougher than she had intended, but Jonah couldn''t control her tone, or the language that came out of her at every event.

    Bay actually laughed, though, genuine this time. "You''re the worst boss I''ve ever had."

    "Great," Jonah grumbled, but smiled. "And I''m procrastinating again."

    Bay opened the door of the maintenance shed, again using her shirt as a protective barrier. "Police. Text me with what they say, okay?"

    "And keep dragging you through it?"

    "If I''m already knee deep in mud, I''m gonna need a shower regardless of if the mud goes up to my hips or my shoulders."

    "Fucking wave pool mudslide."

    That had been a nonsense jumble of words, but Bay responded, "Exactly."

    <hr>

    The police had gotten a boat into the lake. It wasn''t a police boat-- it looked like one that had been borrowed from someone. Maybe it was one of the officers'' pleasure craft that they had temporarily donated to the cause. Regardless, it was sitting out in the center of the lake, and Jonah could see tiny figures on it, doing some inscrutable business. There were a couple other policemen hanging out on the lake shore as well, talking into walkietalkies. One of them was the officer that Jonah had talked to before, Andover. Jonah made herself known as she exited the woods, not wanting to catch police by surprise.

    "Excuse me!" Jonah yelled, waving from the treeline. Andover looked up.

    "Can I help you?" he asked, walking over. When he got closer, a spark of recognition lit up his face. "Oh, Ms. Wylan, good to see you."

    "You didn''t call me," she said.

    "Yeah, I decided I didn''t need any more statements from you at the moment."

    "Has Mr. Calvin been bothering you?"

    "Oh, he doesn''t bother me," Andover said. "I''ve been friends with Reggie since we were in high school together."

    "Er. Okay."

    "What brings you back over here, Jonah? I''m afraid I can''t let anyone at the crime scene."

    "Um." She rubbed the back of her neck, wincing as the sunburn crinkled. "Look. I don''t exactly know how to say this."

    "Shoot," Andover said.

    "I''m worried that one of my staff might have killed that woman. Or someone who''s been stalking people at Arcadis. I don''t know."

    Andover laughed. "What?"

    "I''m not kidding," Jonah said, scowling. "I really wouldn''t say something like that if I didn''t believe it."

    "Ms. Wylan, we''ve already arrested someone in connection with this case," Andover said. "And I can assure you, it was not one of your staff."

    The world seemed to tilt on its axis. Jonah wished she had a chair to sit on. "What?"

    "Please rest assured that we are diligently investigating. Interviewing the victim''s family lead us to someone with much more of a motive than random Arcadis Park staff members would have."

    "Oh." She seemed to be unable to form words.

    "I''ll take down your concerns," Andover said, pulling out his notebook.

    "I guess maybe it''s nothing, if you''ve already arrested someone," Jonah said, floundering.

    "It doesn''t hurt to have more information." He clicked his pen. "What causes you to say it might be a staff member?"

    "Just, well, there''s this hole that someone cut in the fence, and I, er," -- she realized she had no desire to mention Bay''s involvement in this -- "found the wire clippers that had been used to cut it on the ground in the woods."

    "And you think this is connected to the murder because?"

    Jonah felt stupid. "Because it happened that same night?"

    "Hmm." Andover scribbled something down. "Is there anything else?"

    "And the big clippers, the ones for trimming branches, are missing out of the maintenance shed."

    "Alright," Andover said. "That''s it?"

    "Yeah, I guess." Jonah didn''t mention that the fence piece had gone missing, because she was already feeling like she had stepped into a hole that had no bottom. She was glad that her face was already so burned red, it couldn''t show her embarrassment.

    "Well, thank you for telling me. It doesn''t hurt to have more information," Andover said. It was crystal clear that he didn''t find this new information illuminating in any way. "Do you have the clippers you found? And can you show me the hole in the fence?"

    "Er, I left them on the ground. Didn''t want to touch them. But yeah, I can show it to you."

    "Excellent. Wait right there, I''ll grab an evidence bag and my camera."

    Jonah stood awkwardly, watching as Andover retrieved his supplies. He said something indistinguishable to the other police officer on the shore, who laughed. He returned with a camera slung around his neck and an indulgent smile on his face.

    "Lead the way, Ms. Wylan."

    Jonah did, passing through the open gate and into the woods. Andover followed a couple steps behind her. It was a good thing she knew these woods backwards and forwards, or she probably would have lost the little clippers on the ground forever.

    "Have you found anything else in the lake?" Jonah asked, trying to make conversation.

    "The victim''s family has asked that we not distribute that kind of information," Andover said.

    "Oh. Yeah. I understand." She didn''t really know what else to talk about, but Andover seemed content to provide topics.

    "You don''t have to worry, Ms. Wylan."

    "Okay."

    "I know that when something like this happens, it can cause a real, um, upheaval in the community, and I''m very grateful that you''re interested in helping, and also in keeping your park running normally."

    "Thanks?"

    "But I just want to say, it''s not your responsibility. Don''t let yourself get paranoid."

    "I''ll try."

    They came to the fence hole first. "So, uh, this is the fence. I, um, patched it up, but then I realized I probably shouldn''t have done that? Sorry." She again had no interest in mentioning Bay.

    "That''s quite alright. Why did you patch it?" Andover asked, writing in his notebook.

    "Coyotes get into the park if there''s holes in the fence," Jonah said. "Or at least that''s what Mr. Calvin always told me."

    "Does he know about this hole?"

    "Er, no. Just me and a couple other aquatics staff, I think," Jonah said. "He doesn''t really care about this kind of thing, so I don''t bother him with it."

    "That''s Reggie for you," Andover said. He took a couple photographs of the fence.

    "And you say this hole was made on Friday night?"

    "Well..."

    "What?"

    "It had been made before, and I patched it up, but someone opened it again over Friday night."

    "Hm." More writing in the notebook. "Do you know who opened it the first time?"

    "Um." Jonah was caught in not wanting to lie to the police, and also not wanting to tell them a ton about the staff. "Yes."

    "Who was that?"

    "One of my staff."

    "Name, please," Andover said, sounding slightly bored.

    "Officer Andover, I''d, er, prefer not to get them in trouble for something dumb."

    He laughed. "Ms. Wylan, this will be completely confidential."

    "I''d still honestly prefer not to say. I know they didn''t open it the second time."

    Andover had lost his humor. "You realize that is this goes to court, and you are required to provide evidence, this won''t look good, right?"

    "I know," Jonah said. She kicked at the leaf litter rather despondently.

    "Fine. So you had closed the hole, and someone reopened it on Friday?"

    "Yes."

    "And you''re sure it wasn''t the same person both times?"

    "Yeah."

    "How do you know?"

    "I trust them to tell me the truth." Again, Andover wrote in his notepad.

    "Alright, show me the wire snips you think were used on this." Jonah led Andover away, and towards the place where Bay had found the clips.

    "You cleared away these leaves?"

    "Yeah, I kicked them," Jonah said. "But I didn''t touch that." She pointed at the blue handled wire snips.

    Andover photographed the scene, then picked up the wire snips carefully, and put them into a plastic bag, which he labeled.

    "Is that everything, Ms. Wylan?" he asked.

    "Um. Yeah."

    "Well, I thank you for your interest in helping us. If you do find any more information, please do bring it to my attention."

    "If you already caught someone, I guess I probably won''t have any."

    Andover smiled, a patronizing expression. Jonah found herself disliking him, partially because of that, and partially because he seemed exactly like the type of person who would be friends with Mr. Calvin. "That''s not an issue, Ms. Wylan."

    "Yeah."

    "Alright, I have work to get back to, so if you don''t have anything else?"

    "No, yeah, sorry for taking up your time," Jonah said. "I''ll get back to my shift."''

    "You do that."

    <hr>

    > talked to the police

    > fucking weird as hell news

    < what did they say abt the clips? and hole and shears and stuff

    > he put the clips into evidence

    > and took photos of the hole

    > but he said they arleady arrested someone

    < who

    > idk someone they found thru interviewing the family

    < i''ll see if i can poke around on fb

    < im like morbidly curious now

    > its not worth it bay

    < its not?

    > i just want to put this whole thing behind me

    > like if they arrested someone who has nothing to do wth ap that''s better

    > so i don''t have to think abt it anymore

    > feels gross to poke around in like a raw wound

    < youre not wrong

    < i''ll try to resist the temptation for your sake

    > lol that honestly makes me feel a bit better

    < see this is me trying to make frineds with you

    > youre a good friend bay even if i have only known you like a week

    < trauma bonding

    > fr though

    > thank god this wknd is almost over

    < just gotta make it through the rest of the summer

    > we will

    > i promise

    < yeah now that we know there isn''t a murderr around

    > fun to joke about

    < want to get pizza later?

    > fuck it

    > sure

    > make 50% of my diet pizza bella

    < its good pizza

    < i''ll pay this time

    < don''t want to scam you out of your extra $3/hr

 Chapter Ten - Pinholes to the Past

    True to her word, Bay did not creep on the social medias of the dead woman, her family, or her friends. She spent the rest of the long, long Sunday guarding the lazy river, including rescuing one particular child who somehow managed to trap himself underneath his inner tube and nearly drown. This made Bay unpleasantly wet, and the humidity in the air made her fail to dry for the rest of the day. She felt like a walking ball of slime when the day was finally over.

    Several staff were hanging around the wave pool when she went to retrieve her bike, among them Amanda, Kyle, and Zach. Amanda was laying on the back of the wave pool deck, at the deepest end, reaching her arm down to demonstrate or measure exactly how much water had drained out of the crack in the bottom. The water was still murky and brown, and now had an unpleasant stink to it, the consequence of days of stillness on the piped in lake water. Kyle was watching her with an indulgent expression, but Zach seemed much less happy to be waiting around.

    "You eager to get this place open again?" Bay asked, coming up behind Amanda. Amanda rolled over onto her back and stared up at Bay. She blew a bubble with her gum, which seemed to Bay to be an impressive feat, considering the angle of her body.

    "I''m just trying to guesstimate how long it will take to drain," she said. "There''s a bet out."

    "Who''s betting?" Bay asked, curious and wondering if she should tell Jonah to stop.

    "Bunch of staff," Amanda said. "Kyle''s acting as our bookie."

    "Ah, yes, I trust Kyle with my money," Bay said, rolling her eyes.

    "That was my response as well," Zach said. "I have no interest."

    "Then what are you doing here?"

    "Amanda doesn''t want to be alone here without a double escort," Zach said with a deep frown.

    Bay sighed. "Guys, Jonah talked to the police. They arrested the murderer already."

    Amanda sat up. "Really?"

    "Yeah. Apparently it was someone who knew the lady," Bay said.

    Kyle and Zach shared a look, and Bay wondered what it meant. "The police said that?" Zach asked.

    "According to Jonah," Bay said. "It''ll probably be on the news tonight. They have to give some kind of statement to the press."

    "Does that mean they''re done searching the lake?" Amanda asked.

    "They might not want to let us use it until they find all the, um, parts," Bay said.

    "Oh, ew, yeah," Amanda said.

    "I guess that means you don''t need us to escort you anymore," Kyle said, nodding to Zach and beginning to walk away.

    "See you tomorrow, Amanda," Zach said and followed Kyle. Amanda stood up, scrambling to her feet.

    "Don''t leave me here! You''re my ride home!" But Kyle and Zach had already vanished around the corner. Amanda frowned and didn''t run after them.

    "He seems like a terrible boyfriend," Bay said. "No offense."

    "He''s fine. He''s just been acting like a dumbass the past couple days."

    "Well, I''d say his first dumbass move was dating a sixteen year old."

    "I''m not that young," Amanda said. "It''s really not as bad as you seem to think."

    "Maybe only because he seems to have the emotional maturity of a small dog. Puts you on even footing."

    "I should probably be offended," Amanda said, shaking her head. "Look, he''s not that bad. And I know I''m going to break up with him in like two months, so it literally doesn''t matter."

    "Don''t get your heart broken."

    Amanda laughed. "You know, the best kind of sad teenage girl music to listen to is the kind where all the singers tell you to be a heartless bitch. I take all advice from my idols."

    "I somehow managed to miss that train," Bay said flatly.

    Amanda just laughed. "You hang out with Jonah, right?"

    "Yeah."

    "She still around to give me a ride home?"

    "We''re going to get pizza,"Bay said. "Actually... Does her car have room for my bike?"

    "No way."

    "I''ll pay you five dollars to ride my bike back to my house," Bay said. "That will solve both our problems."

    "Can''t you just leave your bike here and take me with you to get pizza?" Amanda asked.

    "No, thanks," Bay said.

    Amanda frowned. "Come on, I''m a human being too."

    "Go find Kyle and get him to drive you home. I''m sure he hasn''t actually gone that far." Amanda scowled, but acquiesced, running back down the concrete path and yelling for her boyfriend.

    Bay retrieved her bike and enjoyed the looseness and freedom that came from pedaling it down the now deserted pathways of Arcadis. Though she was still in many ways upset about the dead body in the lake, and everything that entailed, the sudden release valve of guests clearing out, and the knowledge that someone had been arrested in connection with the death relieved much of the tension that had been building up inside her. She smiled in the gloom, looking around for Jonah.

    Jonah was talking to Mr. Calvin outside of the information desk area, and Bay stopped a little ways away, in the shadow of some trees, so she could hear what they were saying, but they probably couldn''t see her unless they were looking. She hadn''t meant to eavesdrop at first, but that was what she ended up doing.

    "...paranoia among my staff isn''t healthy," Mr. Calvin was saying.

    "I know, I''m sorry," Jonah said. "I''m trying to calm everyone down."

    "I''m not just talking about them."

    "Oh?" Jonah''s voice was remarkably calm, but the sudden twitch in her legs, like she wanted to run, gave her away to Bay immediately.

    "You don''t need to go bothering the police," Mr. Calvin said. "I don''t want you wasting my dollar or their time. You''ve been hired as an aquatics director, not as a private detective."

    "Sorry," Jonah said, and this time, she failed to sound sorry at all. "I just thought that they should have that information."

    "I will ask Frank about where my tools keep disappearing to," Mr. Calvin said. "So I thank you for bringing that little attrition to my attention, but other than that, you''re not Sherlock Holmes. You''re a lifeguard."

    "Okay." Jonah jammed her hands in her pockets. "They arrested somebody else anyway, so."

    "Precisely. And even if they hadn''t, I wouldn''t want them dragging the park further into it than it already is. Seriously, accusing the staff? You understand how much panic you could have caused?"

    "The panic was already in progress."

    "And you went and made it worse."

    "I wasn''t about to tell the staff that," Jonah protested. "I have discretion, unlike--" She stopped herself.

    "Careful what you say."

    "Yeah."

    "Anyway, it''s all behind us now, so hopefully we''ll be able to start running the pumps again." Mr. Calvin''s demeanor was back to cheerful, as though he hadn''t just been talking down to his employee.

    "Fingers crossed on that."

    "Alright, I''ll see you tomorrow, Jonah."

    "Bye."

    Jonah leaned against the rough brick of the building for a minute, until Mr. Calvin had vanished. "I see you back there," she said aloud.

    Bay stepped out of the shadows, bike at her side. "Sorry, I didn''t want to interrupt."

    "It''s fine. How much of that did you hear?"

    "Plenty. Mr. Calvin is--"

    "I''m used to it," Jonah said, cutting her off. "Pizza?"

    "Yeah. Think my bike will fit in your car?"

    "Sure."

    "Amanda said that it probably wouldn''t."

    "Amanda doesn''t have the slightest clue how anything works. I can put the back seats down."

    "Oh. Great."

    "She get over her morning nonsense?" Jonah asked as they walked to the parking lot.

    "Amanda? Well she was asking for both Kyle and Zach to follow her around, but she cheered up after I told her that somebody was arrested."

    "It''s like someone getting arrested actually proves that they did the crime," Jonah muttered.

    "They probably did," Bay said. "Most murders are done by people who know the victim. It makes sense."

    "Sure."

    "Anyway, if Amanda is less paranoid and needing half the male staff in this place to escort her around, that''s a bonus."

    "She just likes the attention," Jonah said. "And I''m sure Kyle is all too happy to provide it."

    "Zach isn''t."

    "Well, who knows what his deal is. He''s still pissed at me for stealing his job."

    "I''m sure if he knew the kind of nonsense you''re putting up with, he wouldn''t want it."

    Jonah laughed and unlocked her car, a beat up tan vehicle that was probably at least ten years old. She reached into the back seats and flattened them down, so that Bay could wedge her bike into the trunk. It fit, barely, and left dirt streaks on the cloth upholstery. Jonah didn''t notice or care, and just got in the front seat.

    The radio was playing some sort of jangly pop music, and Jonah turned it down to barely above a whisper volume. They didn''t talk as they drove, Jonah''s headlights carving out slices of air. Bay stared out the windows into the trees that lined the road, catching glimpses of things that could have been deer.

    "Long fucking day," Jonah said when they got to Pizza Bella. She stopped the car and turned off the engine, but made no move to get out and go in. Bay turned and looked at her. Jonah''s head was pressed back against her headrest, eyes closed, chin tilted to the sky.

    "Yeah. Longer week."

    "You working tomorrow?"

    "I don''t even remember my schedule," Bay said. "I''ve kinda just been showing up under the assumptions that I have work."

    Jonah laughed. "I think you have Tuesdays and Thursdays off."

    "Shit schedule."

    "Yeah."

    "What about you?"

    "I don''t think that I get days off?" Jonah said. "Since I got promoted."

    "Seems inhumane."

    "Not like Mr. Calvin would tell me that. But if he came looking for me and I wasn''t there, or if there was some kind of problem that needed me, and I was gone, I don''t know what would happen."

    "He should promote Zach, and then each of you would only have to work half the time."

    "Now that would be the logical move. But when has Arcadis ever been run in a manner approaching logical?"

    "I wouldn''t know," Bay said. "This is my first summer."

    "I''ll pray for your sake that it''s also your last."Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    "Sounds like you''re hoping I die."

    Jonah laughed. "When you die, you get to go to the great Arcadis Park in the sky, where no child has ever pooped in the bumper car ride."

    "Sounds like a dream."

    "To sleep, perchance to dream." Jonah laughed again as she said this, and, with deliberate sluggishness, pulled herself out of the car. "Pizza time."

    The interior of Pizza Bella was cheery and tacky, a slice of the universe in which it felt like nothing bad could happen. They got pizza and settled down (Bay paid, as she had promised). As it had been before, the television was playing the local news. Jonah faced away from it-- Bay had noticed her choose her seat with deliberate positioning, so that she wouldn''t see the television screen. That left Bay facing it, which she didn''t entirely mind. There wasn''t currently anyone talking about the murder, but she kept an eye on it to see, as someone inevitably would.

    "How does your family feel about you working literally all the time?" Bay asked, as they ate their pizza. "Don''t they miss you?"

    Jonah snorted. "It''s a relief for all of us when we are as far away from each other as possible."

    "Really?"

    "Absence makes the heart grow fonder."

    "Fair enough. You love them most when you''re away at school?"

    "Oh, absolutely. It''s the dream to not have to come back here someday."

    "Do you think you''ll have a job when you graduate?"

    "You sound like my faculty advisor," Jonah said. She forlornly picked a mushroom off the top of her pizza.

    "Sorry."

    "It''s fine. I mean, that''s the goal. And if it doesn''t happen, well..."

    "Arcadis will always be here to welcome you home," Bay said.

    "Until somebody comes to their right mind and shuts it down due to how shit it is."

    "Hah. It''s not that bad. Probably on the same level as any other waterpark."

    "You ever read Dune?" Jonah asked, rather a non sequitur.

    "Ages ago."

    "I dream of living in the fucking desert."

    "There''s plenty of it out there for you to move to."

    "Someday."

    "Yeah."

    Jonah tore up a napkin, very slowly, and stared across the table at Bay. Bay was looking up at the television. The story had changed from one about a dispute with the local sanitation union to the pressing story of the day: the murder. A mugshot plastered the screen, and the subtitles scrolled along.

    "Bryan Gomes, 32, and a resident of Stackhousen, was arrested this morning on suspicion of having killed his on-again off-again girlfriend, Justine Mulvais. Bryan was arrested in his home, and is currently being held without bail. We go now to Justine Mulvais''s sister, Christine, who--"

    Bay looked away from the television.

    "Do you think he did it?" Jonah asked Bay.

    "How do you know that''s what I was watching?"

    "You were staring directly at the TV. Also, I can see the reflection in the window." Bay craned her neck and saw that the dark outdoor window she had her back to was indeed quite reflective.

    "I don''t know," Bay said. "I''m not a jury."

    "Is it bad for me to say that I hope he did?"

    "Well, if the other option is like, a serial killer or Arcadis Park staff, no? I mean, she''s already dead. If they''ve caught the person who did it..."

    Jonah sighed and stared down at the scratched, mustard yellow surface of the table. "I guess if I were the police, I''d definitely suspect a woman''s terrible boyfriend."

    "Let''s hope Amanda doesn''t get murdered. The police will have to arrest Kyle," Bay joked.

    "Fuck all that," Jonah said, and put her head down on her arms on the table, pushing napkins out of the way to do so.

    "Sorry," Bay said. "I shouldn''t--"

    "I''m just losing it," Jonah said. "It''s not you or that or anything. It''s me."

    "You need a break."

    "Can''t take one," Jonah said, voice muffled. "I''m so fucking tired."

    "You can just not turn up to work tomorrow. Pretend like you thought that your old schedule still applied, and that you have the day off."

    "I can''t. I''m responsible."

    "You don''t have to feel responsible for," -- a lightbulb clicked in Bay''s mind -- "everything that happens at Arcadis. It''s messed up if you feel responsible for that woman."

    "Haha. You get it."

    "It''s not your problem," Bay said. "It''s so, so, so not your problem, now that they know who did it."

    "I can''t help the stupid fucking way I feel."

    "You need therapy."

    "Who doesn''t?" Jonah lifted her head up. "Whatever. I''ll go to work. I''ll make it through tomorrow, and then the tomorrow after that, and then eventually the summer will be over, and fingers crossed that I never have to come back."

    "Yeah." Bay felt a resounding pity for Jonah then, who looked extremely lost and tired. Wanting to offer some kind of comfort, she reached out and awkwardly patted Jonah''s bony elbow. "It''ll be over before you know it."

    "This isn''t even the worst summer of my life," Jonah said. "The first year I worked at Arcadis was beyond terrible."

    "Why would you keep working there then?"

    Jonah shrugged, an apologetic kind of smile on her face, though Bay had no idea who she was apologizing to. "I couldn''t say no."

    "That''s crazy."

    "Besides, it gets me out of the house."

    "Maybe it''s like, not my lane to say this," Bay began, "but if you ever need a place to go, you''re always welcome at my house. We don''t have any furniture, though."

    Jonah laughed. "It''s fine, Bay. I''ve lived with my family for like, twenty-one years, I think I can survive them for one more summer."

    "If you ever do need a place to go..."

    "Thanks," Jonah said, and she looked at Bay with real appreciation. "You''re too good for this place, Bay."

    "Eh, so are you." Jonah smiled again, and Bay realized that her hand was still on Jonah''s elbow. She didn''t remove it, though.

    "Don''t let me drag you down with me," Jonah said. "Get to Toronto or wherever as fast as you can."

    "I''ll do my best." There was a brief pause as they looked at eachother, Bay unsure of how to fill this new, not quite awkward, silence between them.

    Jonah figured out how to break the moment. "Oh, hey, those photos you were taking in the soup cans, how''d they turn out?"

    "I haven''t developed them yet," Bay said. "It''s kinda a tricky thing."

    "Really?" Jonah sat up straighter and leaned forward.

    "Well, the paper inside them is like, super overexposed. If you developed them normally, it''d just turn black. So you have to scan them in, and you get one shot at it. It always makes me kinda nervous, so I haven''t done it yet."

    "You should! I want to see how they turn out."

    "You could help me," Bay said, the words falling out of her mouth and surprising her. "I''d be happy to have company."

    Jonah''s smile was wide and genuine. "You know, that sounds like fun."

    "I can''t promise that the pictures will be that thrilling. I might have exposed them all wrong."

    "I don''t have any frame of reference, so I''m sure it will all be cool to me."

    "When I say you need to keep your expectations low, I really mean it. Solography is really... I mean it''s not that thrilling."

    "I want to see what your art looks like."

    Bay''s face heated up. "Really all you''ll see is more shots of Arcadis."

    "It''ll be better because you took them. After all, what''s the jingle say? Arcadis-- where the greatest people play!"

    "I''m not familiar with that one," Bay said. The way Jonah had sang it made it sound like the cheesiest radio jingle, one from a bygone era where radio jingles were much more of a thing.

    "You haven''t been around here long enough to remember when that ad was on every local tv station five hundred times a night."

    "Sounds like I was spared."

    "You really were. That''s the least earworm-y part of it."

    "I''ll take your word for it."

    Jonah grinned. "If you''re looking for the time of your life, don''t look too far away. There''s something waiting for you, on every summer day." She was tuneless, but endearing.

    "Stop, stop, I don''t need more commercials drilled into my brain!"

    Jonah just laughed.

    "If you really want to help me out with my photos, though, you can come to my house tomorrow night. We can scan them in then."

    "I''ll consult my calendar," Jonah said, and made a show of looking at her phone. "Oh, perfect, I''ve got absolutely nothing else going on. I''ll be there."

    Bay laughed.

    <hr>

    The next day at Arcadis was long and grueling, but Mondays were always far quieter than weekends, and all the staff had realized that murderer or no, they had to come to work. Bay wouldn''t have described it as a sense of normalcy that had returned to the park, and she certainly wouldn''t have called it a sense of calm, but it at least was a sense of drudging obligation onto which the function of the park hung. People were still gossiping, talking about their own pet theories, if the police could be believed.

    On her break, Bay sat with Qwamae at one of the picnic tables as far from the park proper as one could get, and they chatted about the state of things. Bay liked Qwamae-- he was a solid, dependable guy, and he seemed averse to causing drama, though not averse to discussing it.

    "Think they''re going to find the murder weapon?" he asked her, as they both gnawed on hot dogs.

    "They''re spending so long in the lake, I hope they find something."

    "It seems like sketchy evidence to convict someone on, if they can''t find even how he did it."

    "I mean, it''s pretty obvious how he did it," Bay said. "Her head was cut off."

    "Well, don''tcha think that it''d be easier to take the head off if she was already dead some other way?"

    "I don''t know," Bay said. "The whole thing makes me sick."

    "Oh, yeah, it''s a tragedy when a man kills his girlfriend. Happens all the time, though."

    "You just said there''s no evidence to say that he did it!" Bay said.

    "Somebody''s gotta play devil''s advocate."

    "Training to be a lawyer?" Bay asked.

    "Hm, my mother''d sure be happy if I made that career pivot," he said with a wide smile. "But I don''t think I could stand wearing a suit all the time."

    "The money might make it worth it."

    "See, making fifteen an hour here keeps my head from getting too inflated," Qwamae said. "Keeps me grounded." He finished his hotdog and wiped his hands on his shirt. "Don''t let a murderer getcha!"

    "Yeah, same to you," Bay said as he walked away.

    The rest of her day was spent in a kind of anticipation, which she at first chalked up to her new posting. With the wave pool still down for the count, she had been reassigned to the tallest waterslide in the park, and the one closest to the lake. This meant that she could easily see over the tops of the trees, to where the police were still conducting their search for who-knows-what out on the lake. She kept staring out at it, then catching herself and returning to sending sunburned teenagers down the chute.

    By the time Arcadis closed, her feet hurt, and she wanted to do nothing more than pass out until the next morning, and revel in her potential day off. But then she remembered that she had agreed to bring Jonah to her house to develop her film, and that was the cause of the excited jitters in her stomach. She was excited to see how her film had turned out, and she was excited to hang out with Jonah as well. Friends. She was making friends.

    They met up at the parking lot entrance, and once again, Bay was forced to dump her bike into Jonah''s trunk.

    "I should just carpool you to work," Jonah said. "Now that Kyle takes Amanda."

    "You don''t have to," Bay said. "I''m fine with biking."

    "There''s no point in me not carpooling you," Jonah said with a grumble. "You don''t live very far from me."

    "Well, if you insist," Bay said with a smile. "But don''t come pick me up tomorrow morning. I have the day off."

    "Wish I had the day off."

    "I''m telling you, skip work, hang out with me."

    "You don''t even understand how tempting that sounds," Jonah said. "Well, let''s go get these photos done."

    Bay''s house was dark when they arrived. "No family home?" Jonah asked.

    "They''re probably out at a movie. My parents are real film buffs."

    "Hah, nice."

    "Well, it used to be nice when they would take me. Now I work all the time and they go without me."

    "Well, how fun is it to watch movies with your parents anyway?"

    "I enjoy it," Bay said. "It saves me money on movie tickets. And besides, if I didn''t have a solid film lover upbringing, I probably would have majored in something dumb like biochem."

    Jonah just laughed.

    Bay let them both into the house. It creaked and echoed around them, being still almost completely barren of furniture. "Like I said, sorry about the lack of like, stuff."

    "It''s a nice change," Jonah said. "Cute house."

    "Thanks. I don''t feel like I live in it at all."

    Bay led Jonah upstairs, through the dark stairwell, into her bedroom. "Welcome to my little alcove," she said. "We''ve got all you could possibly need in life: air mattress, clothes, computer, and more cameras than you could shake a stick at." She pointed each of these things out as though she were the arbiter of some great kingdom. Jonah smiled and plopped down on the air mattress, which wheezed, half deflated.

    "So, how do you do film?" Jonah asked.

    "Er, I have all of the cameras in here, let me get this set up. It''s actually good that you''re here to help. This will probably be easier with two people."

    "Cool."

    Bay explained how the process would work. Jonah would go underneath the blankets with her laptop, so that the light from it couldn''t expose the film even more. Bay would line up the images in the scanner, and Jonah would press the button to scan them. Rinse and repeat for each broad rectangle of photo paper that Bay would pull from the soup cans.

    "They probably won''t look like anything," Bay said. "I''ll have to do heavy post processing on them to get it to look like an actual image."

    "Stop warning me about how terrible it is," Jonah said. "I think it''ll be cool regardless."

    "I hope so."

    They began the process. Bay turned off all the lights in the tiny bedroom. It was weirdly cozy, to be there with another person, with just the whirring of machines and their soft voices. They were alone in the universe.

    "Alright, it''s lined up. Go ahead and press the scan button."

    The scanner whirred, and light flared out under Bay''s hands, as she crouched over the scanner on the floor.

    "Looks great," Jonah said. "I can see the ferris wheel."

    "Hah, amazing. Didn''t expect it to come out at all."

    "I trust you to make good work," Jonah said. "This just confirms my suspicions."

    "One of them has to be a dud."

    "Shush."

    And they scanned in the rest of the photos. Bay dumped the now destroyed film into a black plastic bag, just in case there was something she could do with it later, and flipped on the lights, blinding herself.

    "Alright, you can come out of the blanket now," Bay said.

    Jonah emerged, fiercely sweaty. "Oh, thank god."

    "Shocked you didn''t suffocate under there."

    "I, too, am willing to suffer for art," Jonah said. "But I''m glad to be free. Nobody needs this many blankets in June."

    "Let me see the images."

    Bay took over her laptop and flipped through the photos. They were all negatives, and most were hugely dim and blurry, to the point of being nearly indistinguishable. That could be cleaned up in post processing, but it was also clear that Jonah had just been trying to stoke her ego by saying that the images were good.

    "These do not look super great right now," Bay said. "I''ll definitely have to clean them up."

    "Can you show me what they would look like cleaned up?" Jonah asked, leaning over Bay''s shoulder. The warm heat of her body so close put goosebumps on Bay''s arm.

    "Uh, yeah, sure, I can clean up one right now. But only one. I don''t want to spend like six hours fiddling with this right now." She laughed, a kind of nervous tic. She picked one of the most bland looking photos, one that was pretty clearly taken from the top of the changing room that looked down onto the normal pool. It was a boring shot, composition wise, with just one streak of sun going vividly across the sky.

    She pulled it into lightroom, and set herself to the task of adjusting it so that it looked like something real. Jonah watched silently behind her, not commenting as Bay inverted the colors of the photo, then cranked the contrast as high as it could go. As Bay moved the sliders around, the image came to take on recognizable forms: umbrellas, lawn chairs, trees, lane lines strung across the pool. The pool water itself was sluggishly dark, probably due to all the mud that had been in it when the photo was taken.

    "What''s that?" Jonah asked, pointing to one of the lawn chairs, where a blurry form obscured part of it.

    "Hm," Bay said, and zoomed in. There wasn''t a ton of detail that she could rescue from the image, but she could make a guess. "Looks like someone took a nap. Probably at the party right after I set this up. The film is more sensitive to things that are there for long periods of time, and there at the beginning of the exposure. It''s this thing called, um, reciprocity failure, I think." She explained this with only half her attention, zooming back out to the full photo and continuing to try to mess with it. She was trying to bring out the maximum clarity between the umbrellas and the pool deck, because she thought that was the most important part of the composition.

    "And what''s that?" Jonah asked, again pointing to a section of the photograph, this time in the pool. It was a pale smudge against the dark background of the water, and Bay obligingly zoomed in and tried to fiddle with the dials to bring it into sharper clarity.

    As she did, she immediately wished that she hadn''t. A body emerged, pale and ghost like, still blurry and indistinct, but clearly recognizable as a human, floating atop the water.

 Chapter Eleven - Like Tears in Rain

    "I can''t deal with this right now," Jonah said, abruptly sitting up. "I''m gonna go home, and I''m gonna sleep, and I''m gonna pretend that I don''t see what''s on your computer screen right now, and I''m gonna..."

    Bay shook her head, minimizing the program. "This can wait until tomorrow."

    "It can wait until forever, as far as I''m concerned," Jonah said, but she knew she was lying to herself. The ghostly form floating on the surface of the pool was going to haunt her nightmares, like something straight out of a Junji Ito comic, if Junji Ito worked in smeary looking black and white film, rather than crisp ink lines.

    "Yeah," Bay said, a trembling note in her voice. "We can put it away for now."

    "How do I keep getting you involved in shit?" Jonah asked, and leaned back on the air mattress. It was so flat that when she put weight on her elbow, she could feel the hard wooden floor through it. "It''s not fair."

    "Don''t worry about it," Bay said. "Seriously."

    "I should go home." Bay didn''t say anything, and Jonah got the feeling that Bay probably wanted her to stay. Maybe it would be better if they each weren''t alone, to cope with this by themselves, but Jonah wanted to forget about it rather than cope. Even though she had just laid down, she struggled back up into a seated position. "Enjoy your day off," Jonah mumbled, then stood.

    "Jonah," Bay began, but then trailed off.

    "What?"

    "Stay sane out there," Bay said finally, though with a reluctance that indicated that was not what she had originally wanted to say.

    Jonah put a pained smile on her face. "I''ll try."

    "You know you can call me if you need me, right?"

    "Okay."

    "I''m serious. Don''t worry about dragging me through it. I''m already through it, okay?"

    "Alright," Jonah said. "I will. I promise."

    Bay smiled. "I''ll walk you out."

    <hr>

    As Jonah had suspected, the image did not leave her brain. It seemed to exist perpetually behind her eyeballs, warping and shifting to fit itself in to whatever scene she was looking at. She stared at the road as she drove to work the next morning and pictured a ghost like body standing in the road. She imagined it floating down the gentle waters of the lazy river, bobbing across the wave pool, laid out on the forest floor, decomposing into a fine white foam on the lake surface.

    She couldn''t stand the memory of it feeling so unreliable, so, during the middle of her shift, she texted Bay and simply asked for the picture. Bay sent it to her without argument or comment, and Jonah took the time to really examine it. Bay really had worked magic on the photo, and while the image was in no way "clear", it was impossible now not to notice the pale spot on the surface of the pool, and it had enough clarity to distinguish arms from torso and legs from each other. The head was almost invisible, because the hair blended in to the pool water. If it wasn''t for that, Jonah might have been able to explain the image away as someone simply doing the starfish, back float, on the pool surface. But a person does not starfish face down for long enough to get captured clearly in a night time pinhole photo. She didn''t need years of working as a lifeguard to tell her that.

    The other mysterious thing about the photo was the smudge on the lounge chair. It was even less distinct, indicating movement, but it was human sized. The fact that the two smudges were coexisting was a weird sticking point.

    Jonah was in her normal hiding place, which was to say that she was riding the Belly of the Whale around over and over, not getting off and just letting the boat carry her through the dark tunnel, past the biblical displays which had lost all meaning and recognition. The ride operator, a bored kid named Tom, didn''t really care, especially since the ride almost never had anyone on it to begin with. Jonah would get off eventually. She just needed space to think, and this was better than Rebecca had done, hiding away in her office. At least anybody could come and find her here if they needed her.

    First, she needed to establish the identity of the dead body in the pool. She strongly suspected that it was Justine Mulvais, the same dead woman in the lake, but she didn''t have any reason to say that, other than a desperate hope that Arcadis did not have two dead people on the same night. Jonah did a cursory google search, checking to see if there were any news stories about missing people. Predictably, all the results were filled with were stories about Justine. On one hand, not having a separate person who might be dead was good, but on the other hand...

    It all came back to Arcadis, once again.

    All the news stories about Justine were on the subject of her boyfriend, who did seem like a real scumbag, and looked like a jerk in his mugshot, but that might have just been what happened to people who had mugshots and news articles written about how they maybe probably killed their girlfriend. She didn''t think that she could make any judgements about that. She knew that if she didn''t know anything else about this case, all the weird things that had been happening at Arcadis, the photo, and her personal connection to pulling the head out of the lake, she probably would have read the news articles and decided that yes, this Brian fuck was indeed guilty. Could anyone blame her for that? She ran the thought over in her head like marbles.

    The boat she was in sailed past a diorama of the biblical Jonah being swallowed by a great whale, his legs sticking comically out of the whale''s mouth. Not how whales worked, but Jonah found herself jealous of her biblical counterpart. If only she could get swallowed up, spend a couple days digesting somewhere dark and warm, and eventually get spit back up onto foreign shores with new clarity and purpose. It sounded good.

    The boat knocked against the walls of the ride. Jonah refocused.

    What were the facts? At first, she felt like there were none, but then she began to construct a timeline of events. She started it during the last time anyone was known to have seen Justine Mulvais alive, Friday afternoon, at Arcadis.

    Friday afternoon. Justine was alive, and at the park with her friend. Her friend left, leaving Justine behind. Jonah didn''t understand why Justine had stayed behind��that was unclear from the news articles. All that had been explained was that the friend had left because her young child was getting cranky. Perhaps it was just one of those things��random life moments where someone makes an inexplicable choice, like going to a different grocery store than usual, and on the way they get hit by a truck. Fate or bad luck, or some mysterious guiding hand pushing them in the wrong direction. Mulvais stays at the park, and she doesn''t leave it alive.

    What else happened on Friday? Jonah struggled to recall the mundane afternoon. It hadn''t felt like anything at the time. The rides were all full of mud. Mr. Calvin told her to turn the pumps on for all the rides, so that they could be clear for the Saturday crowds. She had gone home and passed out.

    It was a Friday. Oh. She had texted Bay that night. Bay had been at the park, setting up her cameras. She claimed to have left the party pretty quickly.

    Those stupid fucking parties. Jonah should have called the cops on them when she had had the chance.

    The timeline was muddled here. Had the fence been cut before Bay left? She texted Bay to ask.

    >on friday night, did u see the fence cut when u left the party?

    < not afaik

    < it was really dark tho

    < and I wasn''t paying attention or thinking about it

    >k thanks

    That didn''t clear things up, precisely, but Jonah felt like Bay would have seen if the fence had been cut. After all, she probably would have been happy to have a little path through which to carry her delicate cameras.

    Jonah''s boat emerged into the bright sunlight, she drifted past Tom, who had his head leaned on his arm and was staring into space, and then vanished back into the darkness.

    Who else had been at the party?

    Amanda, Kyle, Zach, probably a ton of other Arcadis staff. All the regulars. At some point, there had been someone sleeping on a lounge chair. At probably the same time, a body had been on the surface of the pool. Bay hadn''t seen the body, certainly, so the body must have appeared after she left. And somehow, somewhen, after the time that Bay left, that body had ended up chopped up and in the lake.

    Probably.

    She was still operating under the assumption that the pool body was Justine Mulvais.

    Maybe that chopping was done with the shears that were missing from the maintenance shed. Maybe the body was dragged out through the hole in the fence. Maybe the boyfriend had actually done it, somehow, and his plot involved having Justine''s body in the pool for some amount of time. Maybe that was him in the lounge chair. But no, Jonah looked closely at the smudge in the seat, it was too small to be the hulking figure that the news reports showed.

    How had Justine died, and how had her body gotten from the pool to the lake? She certainly hadn''t gotten up and walked.

    There was not enough information. All that this photo did was confuse the existing (and accepted) story. Sure, if this was Justine, it showed that the murder weapon was not the shears, because she was dead before she got chopped up.

    Jonah was thinking in circles, as the Belly of the Whale took her round and round.

    She needed more information, and there weren''t any good places to get it. She would have to start with the only thing she had access to: the Arcadis staff. And she was going to do that without talking to the police, or Mr. Calvin, or anybody else, because they were right. She wasn''t Sherlock Holmes; she was just a lifeguard. But a dead body in a pool seemed, rather unfortunately, exactly the purview of a lifeguard. Like it or not, for her own sanity, and because it felt like to her it was her job, she was going to get to the bottom of this.

    She got out of the little boat as it came around to the entrance of the ride, and she headed back into Arcadis. The park wasn''t very full��Tuesdays tended to be fairly empty, and the sky threatened rain, though it hadn''t started yet. The air was positively soupy, and it was unpleasant to leave the cool, cave-like environment of Belly of the Whale. There was a reason that it had become her refuge, even though she had never liked the place.

    Jonah made a circuit of the park, checking all the rides and their operators, just to make sure that all of her staff were accounted for, and there were no disasters that she needed to solve. It all seemed fine at the moment (what a rare and wonderful thing), so she went and tracked down the person that she wanted to talk to. Amanda seemed like an easy first target.

    Amanda was not where she was supposed to be (guarding the Thunderdome waterslide with Marcus). Jonah called up to Marcus to see what had happened to her.

    "I kicked her out," Marcus said with a shrug.

    "What?"

    "She wouldn''t shut up!" He seemed truly aggrieved. "There''s only so much I can take in terms of hearing about how annoying her high school is, and how cool Kyle is. Kyle is not that cool."

    Jonah stifled a laugh at that. "Where''d you send her?"

    "I told her to go find literally anything else to do. I don''t really care. I can handle Thunderdome myself."

    "I''ll find you a replacement partner. Someone less chatty."

    "You do that."

    Jonah completed another circuit of Arcadis, this time looking a lot more closely for the wayward Amanda. Not finding her at any of the rides, Jonah resigned herself to stalking her location on snapchat, once again. Amanda''s little dancing emoji hovered over Arcadis, wiggling its arms around the normal pool. Jonah frowned, knowing exactly what that meant. She stomped over to the normal pool, saw Zach sitting in the lifeguard chair on the deck and went over to him.

    "Are Kyle and Amanda making out in there?" she asked him, jerking her head towards the changing room.

    "Kyle has Tuesdays off," Zach said mildly. "If I remember correctly, he begged you to switch his day off to Fridays, and you said no."

    Jonah''s face flushed, embarrassed at her error and misplaced anger. "Oh. Okay."This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

    "I''m pretty sure she''s mopping, like I told her to. There was a poop incident."

    "Isn''t there always?"

    "It''s the nature of changing rooms," Zach said. "Anyway, I had enough guards, and no idea why she presented herself to me, so I sent her in there to deal with it."

    "Markus kicked her off of Thunderdome because she couldn''t shut up. You can send one of your guards over to him so he has coverage."

    Zach turned and yelled at one of his fellow guards, the one sitting on the other end of the deck. "Hey, Jim, when Amanda comes out, you''re headed to Thunderdome."

    "Can I take my fifteen first?"

    Zach glanced at Jonah. "I don''t give a fuck."

    "Sure," Zach yelled. To Jonah, he said, "Perhaps you should start giving a fuck, as you say."

    "I''m experimenting with this new level of misery," Jonah said. "Maybe I''ll be shit enough that Mr. Calvin will fire me, so I don''t have to commit to quitting at the end of the summer."

    "Jonah, you need to get yourself together. I''ve been having a worse time than you, and you''re getting paid more. So stop it with the pity party."

    "Oh yeah? Did you pull a decapitated head out of the lake?" she asked, a little too loudly. A couple guests looked at her, shocked.

    Zach refused to respond, just staring out across the pool with a completely inscrutable expression. His face was half hidden by his baseball cap. Jonah stomped away, towards the changing room. Zach and whatever his issue was could go fuck themselves, for all she cared. Still, she couldn''t help but glance behind herself as she headed into the changing room, looking at him on the chair, wondering what exactly was going on with him.

    She found Amanda in the changing room. It wasn''t that hard, because as soon as she opened the door, she could hear Amanda''s voice.

    "And so I said, I think my chemistry teacher from last year is like, the absolute worst, because she always yelled at me when I came in like, half a second late. And also she failed me, so it''s like, do I have to risk taking it over? Or can I just, like, not take chemistry? And I asked Markus his opinion and he just told me I should have passed chemistry in the first place, and I was so mad��"

    Jonah found Amanda with her phone pressed between her shoulder and her ear, ineffectively mopping the changing room floor. She looked up when she saw Jonah. "Oh, hey, your sister''s here to yell at me," she said into the phone with a wink. "Gotta go. Yeah, bye, I''ll see what I can do, I just have work, like, all the time. No you can''t meet him. Seriously, hang up. Byeeeeeee."

    Jonah watched this half conversation with a bored expression and Amanda finally hung up the call and put her phone in her pocket.

    "I''m working," she said, before Jonah could even say anything. "You can''t yell at me for doing what Zach told me to do."

    Jonah raised an eyebrow, and Amanda had the decency to shut up. "I didn''t come to yell at you," Jonah said.

    "That''s a first, and also a relief."

    "But you really shouldn''t be on the phone during work. My sister knows that."

    "Well, you know, I was bored in here by myself."

    "Whatever."

    "So what did you come to talk to me about?" Amanda asked, leaning dangerously on the mop.

    "Don''t stand like that. If you fall, you''ll knock your teeth out." Amanda readjusted her posture so that the mop handle was not directly below her chin. "I wanted to ask you about last Friday."

    "What about it?" Amanda asked, suddenly very suspicious.

    "I want to know who was at the party, and what happened there," Jonah said.

    "Why?" Amanda asked, narrowing her eyes.

    Now this was a lie that Jonah had realized she would need to make. It hadn''t been easy to think of a good one, one that would get Amanda to give her enough information without feeling like she was snitching. "Nobody''s in trouble," Jonah said. "But I found something valuable that I''m pretty sure was lost by one of the party attendees, and I want to return it as discreetly as possible."

    "What did you find?" Amanda''s eyes were still narrowed.

    "You know how when someone looses something, they''re asked to prove it by describing what it is, rather than having the person who found it announce, ''hey, I found a wallet with forty dollars and twelve gift cards in it'', and then everyone tries to claim it? Same deal here."

    "Hm," Amanda said. She scratched her chin. "Seems like it would be easier for me to just tell everyone to talk to you."

    "I would like to handle this without rumors going everywhere," Jonah said. "So, if you could tell me who was where and doing what at the party, I could take care of this quietly."

    "This feels like entrapment," Amanda said. "Isn''t that against the law?"

    "Look, I swear to God I''m not gonna take a list of names to Mr. Calvin or whatever. I have a vested interest in having staff left to me for the rest of the summer."

    Amanda laughed at that. "True."

    "So, I''d love it if you could tell me who was at the party, and doing what, where, and when."

    "I don''t know. It was kinda boring," Amanda said, twirling her hair around. "Everybody just seemed, like, kinda tired, and no one had brought anything fun to do."

    "Sounds depressing."

    "Yeah, I don''t know. It was like everybody there though. Me, Kyle, Zach, Qwamae, Tyler, Bay, Jacob, Genesis, Chris, Vi, I don''t know, like, everybody who usually comes. I bet you know the list better than I do."

    "And did anything interesting happen?"

    "Kyle and I made out. Bunch of people played truth or dare, but none of the dares were like, even interesting. They were all dumb guy shit like climb this or drink the pool water or take a shot. Bay left early because she said the whole thing was too depressing. I had like one drink and fell asleep. It was kinda dumb."

    "The parties generally are," Jonah said. "I don''t know why I bothered to go to them for so long."

    Amanda shrugged. "It''s better than not going."

    "Could you be more specific about what happened after Bay left?"

    "Kyle and I walked around, then he and Zach challenged each other to some dumb game that I wasn''t paying attention to. I fell asleep. When I woke up it was like, stupid morning. Kyle said I could stay over at his house, so I did."

    "Who was around when you woke up?"

    "Well, nobody at first, and I thought that everybody had just LEFT ME, but I texted Kyle and he and Zach were still around hanging out. Everybody else went home while I was asleep though." She sounded genuinely aggrieved.

    "And where were Zach and Kyle hanging out?"

    "Why would I care? They were completely drunk. I think they might have gone swimming in their clothes or something dumb like that."

    "What?"

    "They were soaking wet," Amanda said. "I''d have honestly preferred if they went skinny dipping, even if that''s gay. Kyle got mud on me when he hugged me."

    "Seriously, Amanda?" Jonah shook her head. But she had to move on with her questioning. "Do you know where they went swimming?"

    "I bet they turned on the wave pool," Amanda said. "Seems like the kind of stupid thing they''d do."

    "Yeah, it does." Jonah sighed. "Did you see anything weird when you woke up?"

    "Like what?"

    "I don''t know," Jonah said. "Like weird noises, or people."

    "No." Amanda''s eyes were narrowed again. "You''re not very good at lying to me."

    "What did I say that was a lie?"

    "You were all like, ''oh Amanda, I have to return this precious object to someone'', but you''re still fishing around about that lady who got murdered."

    Jonah couldn''t precisely deny it. "Well, did you see anything weird?"

    "Like I just said, no." And she blew a bubble with her gum, as though to underscore her point. "Don''t go telling me that you think I was like half a second away from getting murdered. They caught the dude. It was classic boyfriend revenge."

    Jonah shook her head helplessly. "I feel really bad about the whole thing."

    "Isn''t everybody telling you it''s not your problem to worry about?"

    "Yeah."

    "Then it''s not your problem to worry about."

    "You''d think that you''d be more interested, since you''re like a true crime guru."

    "I''ll be interested when there''s a podcast miniseries about the case," Amanda said. "Or even when the trial''s in the news. I''m not interested in you trying to scare me with dumb conspiracy theories."

    "Is it really a conspiracy theory if I''m the only one who''s worried about it?" Jonah asked.

    "Hm, good question."

    "Well, can you humor me for like, one more second?" Jonah asked.

    "Fine."

    "Come outside for a sec."

    Amanda leaned her mop on the wall and followed Jonah out, both of them squinting in the muted outdoor light, that was still much more than the dark changing room. "Which chair were you sleeping on?" Jonah asked.

    "Seriously? That matters?"

    "Just tell me."

    "That one." Amanda pointed across the pool, to a chair currently occupied by a mother grasping a squirming toddler. The mother somehow saw Amanda''s pointing and frowned across at them. Jonah did the mental math, comparing the photograph in her head to the scene laid out before her. It was a match, as she had thought it might be.

    "You done interrogating me now?" Amanda asked.

    "Yeah, sure. Uh, Zach wants you on the chair."

    "Fine," Amanda huffed. "If you insist."

    "It''s what you get paid to do."

    "Yeah, like you''re getting paid to investigate crimes that already got solved," Amanda said, loud enough for Zach to hear. He looked up and stared at them with a piercing look. Jonah shook her head and walked away.

    She would have to talk to Zach, but she had no desire to do so now, so she walked away, back to her real duties, trying not to picture that ghostly body on the surface of the pool as she did.

    <hr>

    It was again at the end of the day that Mr. Calvin found her. He had a stormy look on his face, and a rough sound in his voice that didn''t bode well. Jonah was helping to put away the boats from lazy river when he came around, and he pulled her away from the work with a rough word.

    "Jonah," he said.

    "Um, hi Mr. Calvin," she said, wiping her hands on her shorts.

    "Can I speak with you for a minute?"

    "Sure?"

    "In private." He gestured for her to follow him, and they walked a significant distance away from the rest of the staff, though some of them watched them leave with pity and curiosity clear in their eyes.

    "I''ve been hearing some disturbing things, Jonah," Mr. Calvin said.

    Jonah looked down at the ground. "I''m not sure I know what you mean."

    "Wasn''t it just a few days ago that I told you to stop spreading panic around my staff?"

    "Yeah, I guess," Jonah said. She didn''t entirely know where this was going or where it had come from, but she didn''t like his tone, or the way he looked at her with his slimy eyeballs. "I haven''t been bothering the police."

    "Yes, I''m aware," Mr. Calvin said, with a dry voice. "But I''ve been told that you have been quote unquote investigating things."

    "Not really," Jonah said.

    "Oh?"

    "I really haven''t. I just talked to people."

    "Talking to people makes them nervous, in case you hadn''t noticed."

    "Sorry," Jonah said. "I��"

    "I don''t really care what your motivations are. The outcome, that you''re making the rest of my staff paranoid, remains. The police already caught someone. Let the dead rest, okay?"

    Jonah didn''t say anything.

    "Do you understand, Ms. Wylan?"

    "Yeah." She kicked at the ground, feeling like a petulant thirteen year old.

    "This is your last warning. There''s plenty of people here who want your job." It clicked then that it was Zach who had snitched on her to Mr. Calvin. The anger boiled up inside of her, but she tamped it down. She was tempted to spit out that she quit, right then and there, but she felt tied to Arcadis, and she wasn''t going to give up any of this without at least a fight. Make them fire her. That was the way it would have to go. "Do you understand?"

    "I already said I did," Jonah said. "I''ll keep my thoughts to myself."

    "You do that. It''ll be better for the whole staff."

    Jonah shook her head and started walking away. Mr. Calvin''s eyes bored holes in her back, but he didn''t follow her or call out to stop her. She returned to angrily putting away the boats in the lazy river, stacking inner tubes with such vigor that the whole stack threatened to topple over.

    Fuck Arcadis. Fuck Mr. Calvin. And fuck me, Jonah thought.

    <hr>

    Zach was in the parking lot walking down towards the road, and Jonah ran after him. A light misty rain was falling, and the sun was low enough in the sky as to be a non-entity. It was the parking lot lights instead that illuminated the rather desolate scene. Only a few staff cars were left in the lot, and the temperature had dropped precipitously, raising goosebumps on Jonah''s arms exposed by her orange staff shirt.

    "Zach!" Jonah yelled, running past her own car in an attempt to reach him. "Zach!"

    He didn''t stop, and Jonah grew more perturbed as he stepped out into the road, continuing to ignore her. She continued to head towards him, and eventually got close enough to grab his arm. He yanked it away from her and continued walking.

    "What the fuck is your problem, Zach?" she asked. It would have been a yell if she wasn''t so pathetically out of breath. It was mostly a wheeze.

    "Could ask you the same question," Zach said, walking away still. Jonah continued her dogged pursuit, though now that she had caught up with him, she could catch her breath.

    "You didn''t have to rat on me to Calvin," she said, hissing.

    "Thought you wanted to get fired."

    "Fuck off! I''ll get fired on my own terms, and not because you''re messing with my life, trying to steal my job."

    "I''m not stealing shit, Jonah."

    "Then what the fuck are you going to Calvin for?" She was loud enough now that her voice almost echoed in the weird silence of the tree lined streets.

    "You''re prying into shit that''s none of your business."

    "Like fuck it''s my business! I told you all to stay out of the park, and you were there Friday, and I want to figure out how somebody fucking died!"

    Zach stopped and turned, staring her down with red eyes. Had he been crying? It seemed odd to her-- Zach had always been, if not stoic, at least the same breed of masculine that wouldn''t allow him to show too much weakness.

    "Nothing happened," Zach said. "Absolutely nothing. And I don''t trust you not to turn on everybody, the way you''ve been acting."

    "And how have I been acting?" Jonah was incensed.

    "You think you''re better, now that you''ve got a position. You can wander around, and hide out in the whale, and tell people what to do, and you can spend your time investigating, or whatever, because you''re above everything else."

    "So it is about my job."

    He twitched, face damp from the misty rain. "It''s about that, and this shit place, and everything else."

    "I''ll talk to Kyle and figure out what happened on Friday, if you''re not going to tell me."

    "Can you give it a rest, Jonah?" He just sounded tired, now. "Amanda passed out. Kyle and I got drunk as fuck. That''s it. Long story short. Leave me alone."

    "Then why are you acting so weird?"

    "Because apparently, according to you, I was hanging out in the woods at Arcadis, smashed out of my goddamn mind, while thirty feet away some woman was getting murdered. We left Amanda just sleeping there. And you''re digging up things because you''re searching for somebody to blame, because, I don''t know, you want to think that the world is a terrible place in a weird way. It''s just a terrible place. Some lady gets murdered by her boyfriend. It happens at Arcadis and there''s nothing any of us could have done to stop it. Fuck."

    "Jesus, Zach, that''s not your fault."

    "Sure it fucking isn''t." And he sounded incomprehensibly bitter.

    "I wish this hadn''t happened."

    "Yeah. Can I go now, or are you going to try to interrogate me like you did Amanda?"

    "I mean--" Jonah began, and Zach cut her off.

    "That was a rhetorical question. I''m leaving. Don''t follow me."

 Chapter Twelve - Junk in the Trunk

    Bay woke up the next morning to the sound of hard rain pounding against the roof of her house. She rolled over on her now completely deflated air mattress and checked her phone. The blinking notification gave her an instant feeling of relief: the email from [email protected]</a> telling her that the park was closed for the day due to inclement weather. The rain wasn��t predicted to let up until well into the night, and a high wind advisory had been issued for the whole county. The news was a boon for all who wanted to go back to sleep, a curse for all who wanted a paycheck. Bay was happy to be in the former category, and she turned off her alarm and passed out again, waking up groggy at noon.

    Her phone had a new string of messages on it, these ones of a much more personal nature, from Jonah.

    < hey bay

    < I need to get the fuck out of my house

    < Amanda is here hanging out with my sister for some unknown reason

    < theyre both driving me crazy

    < you got anything you��re doing today

    >sorry for the late response

    >I just woke up

    >yeah I��m not busy

    > since I was supposed to be working lol

    >want to get lunch? (not pizza)

    Jonah responded immediately.

    < sounds good to me

    < I��ll come by to pick u up?

    >cool cool

    This exchange provided the impetus for Bay to finally crawl out of the cave that was her bed, shower, and put on human clothes. Her Arcadis staff shirt lay wrinkled in the corner of her bedroom, and she was glad that she didn��t have to wear it. Orange was not a flattering color on her.

    Her whole house was empty, both her parents being at work, and so when Jonah arrived and honked her horn outside the house, there was no one around to tease Bay about it. She dashed out through the rain, hands covering her head as best she could, and slid into the raggedy front seat of Jonah��s car.

    ��Don��t own an umbrella?�� Jonah asked.

    ��Even if I did, I wouldn��t bother to use one to go twenty feet. You��d get more wet standing outside the car folding it back up then you would just running.��

    Jonah laughed, and put the car onto the road. ��I��m so glad to have the day off.��

    ��Rain is truly a life giving thing.��

    ��It��ll be even more so when I finally move to Arizona or whatever.��

    ��Are you actually serious about moving to the desert?��

    ��Why wouldn��t I be?��

    ��I don��t know.�� Bay, for whatever reason, had a sudden desire to not have Jonah pack up and head to New Mexico or the Sahara.

    Jonah sang a little song. ��Benson, Arizona, the warm wind in your hair. My body flies the galaxy, my heart longs to be there. Benson, Arizona, the same stars in the sky, but they seemed so much kinder when we watched them, you and I.��

    Bay smiled. ��What��s that from?��

    ��Hah. A movie. Dark Star.��

    ��Don��t think I��ve ever seen it.��

    ��I��m shocked that I��ve seen a movie that the film student hasn��t. It��s a real cult classic.��

    ��You��ll have to show it to me one day,�� Bay said.

    ��I��d love to. Where shall we eat lunch?��

    ��I don��t know any of the restaurants around here, except for Pizza Bella. You��ll have to pick.��

    ��Shalimar��s it is, then. You like Indian food, right?��

    ��Sure.��

    ��They��ve got a weekday lunch buffet.��

    ��Ideal.��

    Shalimar��s was a cozy little restaurant, tucked in the tiny ��downtown�� that wasn��t much of a downtown. It indeed had a delicious smelling lunch buffet, and Bay and Jonah helped themselves to naan and rice and chicken curry.

    ��How was work yesterday?�� Bay asked as they ate.

    ��Fucking sucked,�� Jonah said. ��I got yelled at by Mr. Calvin.��

    ��For what?��

    ��Same thing you saw me get yelled at for before.��

    ��You talked to the police again?�� Bay was startled, because she thought that Jonah would at least tell her that she was going to take the photo to the police.

    ��Oh, no way. I was just asking Amanda what happened at the party on Friday. She was the one in the chair in the photo, I��m pretty sure.��

    Bay lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ��Did she see the, you know.��

    ��No, unless she��s lying, and I don��t think she was. She was like, dead to rights though apparently.��

    ��Hunh,�� Bay said. ��I feel like I would have woken up if something like that had been so close to me.��

    ��The vibes coming off of it would have been simply atrocious,�� Jonah said, voice flat, but with a crease around her eyes that indicated that it was a joke. Bay laughed a little, but felt a bit bad for laughing. They were talking about a real, dead, human person, after all.

    ��I��d say the smell would be more so, but there really wasn��t much of one.��

    ��God, gotta stop talking about it,�� Jonah said. ��I��m eating. Don��t want to think about that aspect.��

    ��Fair,�� Bay said, and shut up briefly. She couldn��t contain her curiosity for too long, though, and she asked, ��So why did Mr. Calvin yell at you for that?��

    Jonah frowned deeply, mixing her rice with a little too much vigor. In a nasally voice, which was nothing like Mr. Calvin��s, but was clearly intended to be mocking anyway, she said, ��Don��t spread paranoia among the staff, Jonah. Don��t you know I��m not paying you to be a detective, Jonah. Zach wants your job real fucking bad, Jonah.��

    ��Oh.��

    ��Yeah. So it was Zach who snitched on me.��

    ��Rude of him.��

    ��Yeah. And I tried to talk to him about it later.��

    ��Talk?��

    ��Okay, sure, I yelled at him a little. But he was getting weird about the whole thing.��

    ��In what way?��

    ��He��s personally offended that I��m investigating. I think it��s because he feels guilty, for like, not stopping the murder from happening, or something.��

    ��I mean����

    ��What?�� Jonah asked, looking sharply at Bay.

    ��It seems like you also feel some kind of responsibility, to keep you investigating,�� Bay said.

    Jonah��s breath came out of her in a deflated huff. ��Arcadis is mine. I��m responsible for what happens there. And, you know, I found her. I feel like���� She trailed off, looking and sounding lost.

    ��I get it,�� Bay said quietly. ��I��m not judging you.��

    ��Thanks.��

    ��So, are you going to stop investigating?��

    ��I don��t know,�� Jonah said. ��It��s all coming up dead ends. There��s still Kyle, who I haven��t talked to, and we can show the photo to the police, but they��ll probably just laugh at me.��

    ��What, why?��

    ��I mean, it doesn��t look like much. Anybody with access to photoshop could whip up a pale smudge floating on the pool. You don��t have the original anymore, because you said it got wrecked, so it��s like�� What evidence is it? Nothing.��

    ��They��d have to take it seriously,�� Bay said. ��It would be shoddy work if they didn��t.��

    ��The main guy, Andover or whatever, he��s deep in it with Mr. Calvin. If Mr. Calvin told him that I��m making up lies just because I��m paranoid, he��d probably believe that.��

    ��I mean, I could take it to the police instead of you,�� Bay said.

    ��They know you��re my friend, and Mr. Calvin would just say the same thing about you. But even quicker. He��d just straight up fire you. I get warnings because aquatics staff head is, well, there��s me, and then Zach for backup if he actually does fire me, but after that, who��s left?��

    ��I don��t know,�� Bay said. ��So, what are you going to do?��

    Jonah sighed and stared out the window, where the rain went down in thick sheets, the indoor warmth fogging up the glass. It was a day that felt unseasonably cold. ��I��d like to talk to Kyle without Zach snitching on me again,�� Jonah said. ��Not like I actually think he��ll have anything to say. Apparently, he and Zach were off messing around in the wave pool in the time that the body appeared and then vanished again.��

    ��You think he might have seen something?��

    ��I mean, he��s the only other person who might have.��

    Bay tapped her fork on the side of her plate. ��I think you shouldn��t talk to him,�� she said, trying to make her meaning clear in her words. The confused expression on Jonah��s face indicated that she hadn��t quite understood. ��I think that YOU shouldn��t talk to him,�� she said again, putting more stress on it.

    ��Oh,�� Jonah said. ��So����

    ��Shhh, plausible deniability,�� Bay said. ��I don��t want you to get in more trouble with Mr. Calvin.��

    Jonah grinned. ��You��re getting yourself in deep on that one.��

    ��Exactly. No one can say that you��re dragging me through it. You can stop feeling guilty now.��

    ��You��ll tell me what happens, right?��

    ��Nothing��s going to happen,�� Bay said with a wink.

    ��Right.��

    ��I have tomorrow off. But maybe I��ll stop by Arcadis anyway.��

    ��Wow, three day weekend. Aren��t you special.��

    ��Maybe it��ll keep raining all week, all summer long, and I��ll never have to go into work again,�� Bay said.

    ��I think�� I��d prefer not to be completely underwater,�� Jonah said. ��If it comes down to that.��

    ��Don��t you want this place to turn into the Venice of the east coast?��

    Jonah just laughed. ��We��ll steal the paddle boats from Arcadis and row them around.��

    ��I want one of the fish shaped ones from Belly of the Whale,�� Bay said. ��Keeping it classy.��

    ��I wouldn��t go so far as to call literally anything at Arcadis classy,�� Jonah said. ��Seems a bit of a stretch.��

    They finished lunch, talking about basically anything except Arcadis and its myriad issues. Bay learned all about Jonah��s school friends, and how different it was going to school for biochemistry rather than film. Bay pulled out her phone and showed Jonah the silent film she and a couple of her classmates had made the previous semester, a weird comedy short about a man who desperately craving a certain kind of soda, so badly that he would do anything to get it. Jonah said that it wouldn��t have been out of place in Charlie Chaplin��s repertoire, which Bay took as a compliment.

    After they ate, the rain was still pouring down as heavily as it had ever been, and both of them seemed loath to go their separate ways. Bay, because the day stretched out before her like a chasm, with nothing to do and no one to see, and Jonah because her home was a deeply unpleasant place. Bay didn��t ask about it, but she had gathered plenty. So they sat in Jonah��s car in the Shalimar��s parking lot, the windows fogging up around them, making a bubble of their own.

    ��I guess I should take you back home,�� Jonah said, clearly reluctant.

    ��I��m not in a rush.��

    ��We��re not exactly doing anything,�� Jonah said.

    ��Are people obligated to be engaged in activities at all times in order to hang out? We could just chill.��

    ��I don��t want to make things awkward,�� Jonah said, starting the car.

    ��It��s not awkward,�� Bay said. ��We��re friends.��

    ��Yeah.�� Jonah drove silently, though Bay noticed she took the long route back to Bay��s house, which took them past the gloomy entrance to the park. The ferris wheel and all the tall waterslides stood silhouetted and empty against the grey sky. The radio was turned way down low as the car bumped along.

    Jonah pulled into Bay��s driveway. Her house was dark; it was still too early for her parents to be back.

    ��You could come in,�� Bay said. ��My parents won��t be back for a while.��

    The awkwardness in Jonah��s voice was palpable. ��I wouldn��t want to impose.��This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

    ��I swear you��re not imposing,�� Bay said. ��I���� She didn��t know how she wanted to finish that sentence. She knew she wanted to say something, but she couldn��t put her finger on what it was. She didn��t want Jonah to leave, and she didn��t want to keep this odd tension between them. She wanted��

    She had decided to work at Arcadis park to make friends. That goal had been accomplished, shockingly. But Bay felt that there was something else missing, like the pieces weren��t all fitting together. It had nothing to do with the murder. It had nothing to do with how stupid Arcadis was. It had everything to do with Jonah, sitting beside her in the drivers seat, hands tight on the still wheel, staring out the windshield as rain slid down and the wipers squeaked their way through the silence of the car.

    ��You��re not dragging me into things,�� Bay said. ��I want to hang out with you. I��ll make up something for us to do if I have to. I can show you how all my cameras work. You can waste a roll of film. We can develop it in instant coffee.�� She was rambling, now, suddenly desperate for Jonah not to kick her out of the car and drive away. ��I��ll show you how to make a pinhole camera. I��ll play all the dumb shorts I��ve made at school. We can watch that movie you mentioned earlier, you know, Benson, Arizona, the world seemed so much kinder when we watched it, you and I.��

    Jonah turned to her, and a smile was cracking at the edge of her face. ��Alright, alright, you��ve convinced me.��

    "Oh, thank God, because I put a lot of effort into that convincing."

    Jonah turned off the engine and they headed inside, each trying and failing to shield themselves from the still torrential rain. A flash of lightning darted across the sky, and several seconds later a crash of thunder followed. Bay fumbled with the key, leaving them stranded in the rain. Finally, she unlocked the door and ushered Jonah in.

    The house was absolutely dark, a darkness that couldn''t just be chalked up to the outside gloom. Bay flicked the lightswitches and nothing happened. The power was out.

    "Must be all the wind," Bay said. "Hold on, I''ll get you a towel." She fumbled her way to the bathroom in the dark and grabbed one of the plush towels from the closet, returning and handing it to Jonah. She rubbed it on her head, and her short hair frizzed out into little tufts everywhere.

    "Can''t watch a movie if the power''s out," Jonah said.

    "Stop trying to escape," Bay said. "You''re here now,might as well stay. Want some tea?"

    "How can you make tea with the power out?"

    "Gas stove, dummy," Bay said jovially. "I''ll just have to waste a match to light it." She trooped into the kitchen, with Jonah following. There was still only the bare minimum of furniture, but it was enough. Bay found the matchbook and lit the stove, putting the water on to boil.

    "Kinda cozy," Bay said. "With the power out, I mean."

    "Yeah," Jonah said. "I''d start to miss the internet pretty quick, though,if it went on for too long."

    "I''m sure it''ll be fixed soon enough."

    They waited in silence until the tea kettle shrieked. Bay puttered around, trying to make herself feel more in control of the house she lived in. All the while, she felt she could feel Jonah''s eyes on her, a pressure drilling into her back.

    ��Sugar? Milk?�� Bay asked, opening the dark fridge and pulling out the milk.

    ��Sure, whatever,�� Jonah said quietly. Bay prepared the tea and carried the two mugs to the living room, which had just a couch in it, no other furniture. She sat down on the end and waited for Jonah to make her move. Jonah sat on the other end, which wasn��t too far away, and pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her mug of tea on top of them.

    ��Now what?�� Jonah asked.

    Bay looked at her, in the dim light that was making it through the rainclouds and the windows of the house. She had a charm to her, that Bay hadn��t noticed in the harsh park glare. Her face was pointy, pale beneath her awful sunburn, brown eyes that were a little too wide, and that hair that stuck up short and fluffy on the top of her head. Bay hadn��t ever really looked at her before. Jonah caught the noticing, and studied Bay back, a gentle, quiet contemplation from both of them.

    ��I��m glad I decided to work at Arcadis,�� Bay said.

    ��Think you��re the first person to ever say that.��

    ��If I wasn��t there, I wouldn��t have gotten to meet you.��

    Even in the dim light, it was obvious that Jonah blushed a little. She looked down into her tea cup awkwardly. Thunder cracked outside, and a particularly strong gust of wind threw snaps of rain against the windows.

    ��I��m nothing special,�� Jonah said.

    ��Sure you��re not,�� Bay said. She brought up her foot and kicked Jonah��s leg gently. Jonah laughed.

    ��You��re too nice to me,�� she said again. ��And too good for Arcadis.��

    ��If I am, so are you.��

    Jonah shook her head. ��You told me you didn��t need me to flatter you, about the photos. Don��t need to flatter me about my whole existence.��

    ��I wouldn��t call it flattery if it��s true.��

    ��Hah.�� Jonah drank her tea, wincing at the heat. ��I don��t want to make you--��

    ��You��re not making me.��

    They seemed to be unable to say what they really needed to, with Jonah drawing back into herself, and Bay pressing against the issue but unable to articulate what it was that she wanted or needed from Jonah. Something had to buckle and give under the pressure, and Bay knew it would have to be her to make that change, but she couldn��t say it. She put her cup of tea down on the floor instead (wouldn��t it be nice to have a coffee table!) and leaned towards Jonah. The new leather of the couch felt slick against her knees.

    ��Am I dragging you into this?�� Bay asked. ��Maybe I am.��

    ��No,�� Jonah said. Her voice was quiet. ��I--��

    Bay put her hand on Jonah��s, the one that was holding the mug of tea. Jonah transferred the mug to her other hand and put her tea down on the floor. Bay smiled up at her, grabbing her hand. Jonah gave it a tentative squeeze.

    ��So���� Bay whispered. ��Now what?��

    ��Now you kiss me, stupid,�� Jonah whispered back.

    And so Bay did, scooting the rest of the way forward. She tilted her head and closed her eyes and pressed her lips against Jonah��s. Jonah��s other hand reached up to tuck Bay��s hair behind her ear.

    It was good. It was cool in the house, but Jonah��s lips were warm against hers, and her hand was sweaty. The thunder roared; the rain came down; there was no one else in the house, and it was as good as it ever could be.

    <hr>

    The next day, the weather had cleared up considerably, and Bay had woken up in a kind of happy daze. The mood soured as the day wore on, though, because she found herself with little to do but ruminate. She wanted to hang out with Jonah. Jonah was at work. It was a conundrum.

    She had promised herself that she would stop by Arcadis, originally to try to ��interview�� Kyle, but now she wanted to say hi to Jonah. Dumb. It wasn��t as though she didn��t see her every other day of the week. It wasn��t as if them kissing eachother changed that much.

    Except, it very much did. Bay could at least now put a name to the warm feeling that rose in her chest, and she could justify its existence there. That was good about their change in status.

    But, on the other hand, she had a fear lurking now on the edges of her thoughts, like a ticking clock. The summer would only last so long. Strange to think that she would ever want the eleven hour days at Arcadis to be longer, but she did. Strange that this summer, which had originally stretched out in a long line of boredom, was twisted in a knot by this new spark of happiness. Amanda and Kyle knew they were breaking up at the end of the summer. What did that mean for Jonah and Bay, Bay had to wonder?

    She tried not to dwell on it. Let the days come as they may.

    In any event, she did haul herself to the park, in the relative cool of the evening, as the sun slipped just to the edge of the trees. The park was still open. Bay took the shortcut through the woods, dumping her bike and hiking through the trees. She took a detour that would bring her close to the lake. The water in it was brown and churned up from the rain of the day before, and she saw no sign of police anywhere. They had either found all of what they were looking for or had given it up. Bay wondered if that meant that Arcadis was pumping water in again. She headed to the fence, checked the fence hole out of a kind of instinct and found it to be closed, exactly as she had left it. She clambered over, unencumbered by cameras or backpack or anything else, and then she was in the park.

    Without her staff uniform on, Bay blended into the thinning crowd of guests, though she moved with much more confidence as she walked among them. She craned her neck and looked around for any sign of Jonah or Kyle. Either one would do.

    She ended up finding neither Jonah nor Kyle, but she did see Amanda, once again guarding the top of the Thunderdome waterslide. Bay squeezed her way up the stairs, past a line of protesting guests.

    ��I��m not in a bathing suit; I��m going to talk to the guard; I��m not cutting,�� Bay muttered as she shoved past people. She finally made it to the top and squeezed next to Amanda where she sat on a tiny umbrella shaded stool.

    ��You��re out of uniform,�� Amanda said. ��How scandalous.��

    ��It��s my day off,�� Bay said.

    ��Then why in the,�� -- she looked around at the small children who were lined up to go down the slide -- ��world are you here?��

    ��Purely a social visit,�� Bay said. ��Have you seen Kyle or Jonah?��

    ��What do you want with them?��

    ��Just to talk.��

    ��Hah. No, I��ve been stuck here all day,�� Amanada said. ��The view isn��t even that exciting.��

    From this high, Bay could see that most of the attractions of the park were full of muddy brown water. ��The pumps are going again?��

    ��Sure are.��

    ��Guests must be thrilled.��

    ��I think they��re glad we��ve just stopped putting in way too much chlorine. I know I am. I was getting like, burned.��

    ��Ew.��

    ��Yeah.��

    ��Anyway, know where Kyle or Jonah might be?��

    ��Jonah, I��d check the stupid whale ride she likes. For Kyle, I dunno, but I��m gonna meet him at his car in like, half an hour so that he can take me home.��

    ��Cool, thanks,�� Bay said and turned to go down the stairs.

    ��You don��t wanna take the slide down?�� she asked. ��It��s a shortcut.��

    ��Do I look like I��m wearing a bathing suit?��

    ��That��s never stopped anybody and you know it.��

    Bay laughed and pressed past the guests to go down the stairs once more, causing only minor chaos on the way.

    She went to the Belly of the Whale, looking for Jonah. There was no line, which was entirely predictable. The guard at the attraction was Tom, who Bay barely knew.

    ��Is Jonah in there?�� Bay asked.

    ��She��ll be around in a minute,�� Tom said, waving his hand at the turgid water and empty boats that bumped past in it. Bay waited in awkward silence, and then Jonah appeared out of one end of the ride, ignoring the world as she stared at her phone.

    ��Scoot over,�� Bay said as Jonah��s boat sailed past. ��Let me in.��

    Jonah was so startled that she dropped her phone onto the floor of the ride. ��Bay!�� She obligingly scooted over as she picked up her phone.

    Bay stepped clumsily into the moving boat and sat down, pressed up against Jonah in the small seat. ��What are you doing here on your day off?�� Jonah asked. The little boat turned the corner and entered the pitch black tunnel.

    ��Just my social duty.�� They seemed to be out of hearing range now of the front of the ride, so Bay now felt free to say, ��I really came to chase down Kyle for information, but I figured I��d stop by and see you while I��m here. Just hanging out in your office?��

    ��Let��s just say that I��m taking my allotted fifteen.��

    ��Hah.��

    They were in the dark, and it seemed uncharitable to break the silence, but Bay wasn��t quite sure what the rules of her being here were. She slid her hand around in the dark and found Jonah��s, weaving their fingers together. They passed a diorama of the biblical Jonah on the stormy seas, getting tossed overboard by the sailors of his ship.

    ��I��m just killing time until the end of the day,�� Bay said quietly. ��My plan is to corner Kyle when he gets back to his car.��

    ��Good luck,�� Jonah said. ��I don��t know what you��re planning to ask him.��

    ��I��ll make it up as I go along. As long as it��s not you doing the asking, it��s probably fine.��

    ��Don��t cause too much of a scene in front of Amanda, okay?��

    ��Why not?��

    ��She��ll make a fuss.��

    ��Sure.��

    They lapsed into silence again. The boat knocked gently against the walls of the ride. They passed the diorama of Jonah being swallowed by the whale. ��It��s so stupid,�� Jonah said, pointing at it, her other hand just barely visible in the dim glow of the display��s lights. ��Had the person who made that ever seen a whale?��

    ��I��ve never seen a whale,�� Bay said.

    ��Should go on a whalewatching tour someday. My middle school, at the end of sixth grade, we got to go on one.��

    ��Did you see any whales?��

    ��Yeah,�� Jonah said. ��They look pretty small from far away.��

    Bay leaned heavily on Jonah in the dark. Jonah leaned her head on top of Bay��s. The next diorama was Jonah kneeling and praying inside the whale��s belly. It seemed spacious. It looked like it was very heavily inspired by the scene in the Pinnochio movie along the same lines.

    The ride was very long. Bay said, ��Don��t you think we should use this ride for its intended purpose?��

    ��Prayer and contemplation of Biblical mysteries?�� Jonah asked, a clear joking tone in her voice. Bay tried to move her head, and accidentally bumped it against Jonah��s chin. ��Ow,�� Jonah complained.

    ��You alright?�� Bay asked, taking that as an opportunity to touch the side of Jonah��s face with her free hand. It was clumsy in the dark, but the feeling was there.

    ��Of course,�� Jonah said, sounding a little breathless. ��Yeah.��

    Bay leaned in and their noses bumped together. Jonah squeezed her hand tightly. They kissed for a little, as one was intended to do in a tunnel of love ride, then Jonah broke away. ��We��re almost at the end,�� she said, pointing to a diorama of Jonah sleeping under a tree. ��Just a little bit more.��

    ��Of course you have this whole ride memorized.��

    ��What else am I supposed to do?�� Jonah asked. ��Close my eyes the whole time?��

    The last diorama came into view, the Biblical Jonah standing underneath a shrivelled tree and looking up to the sky. ��How easily things are given, and how easily they��re taken away,�� Jonah muttered.

    ��What?�� Bay asked, confused.

    ��Nothing,�� Jonah said with a laugh. ��There��s the entrance.��

    And the bright light came into view. Bay clumsily stood and exited the boat, holding out her hand to help Jonah out. Jonah smiled at her. Her weight nearly caused Bay to topple back into the boat, which was perhaps Jonah��s intention, but Bay held firm, and Jonah ended up on land once again.

    ��Back to work?�� Jonah asked.

    ��I��m gonna go ambush you-know-who.��

    ��See you in a bit, then,�� Jonah said. ��Good luck.��

    ��Thanks.��

    Bay headed off towards the parking lot, and Jonah disappeared into the park. Kyle��s car was easy to find in the parking lot. He drove a red sedan, with one of the back windows completely busted open and covered over instead with a plastic bag. Bay leaned against it, bored, watching the ferris wheel make its slow circular journey over the treeline. Guests who were leaving the park streamed past her, not processing her at all. Mothers harangued their grumpy children, teenagers shouted at each other across the lines of cars, and vehicles beeped and clattered as they all tried to fit their way back out onto the road. It was chaos, but the mundane kind of chaos that seemed comforting to Bay, in a way. The shadows grew longer and longer, and the sky went through an arrangement of purples and pinks as she stared up at it. The day was cool and the air was clear. Arcadis could be a fine place when it wanted to be, she thought.

    After most of the guests had gone, the few staff who had cars began to trickle out, laughing and talking to their friends in matching orange shirts, or just trudging their way to their cars, tired to the bone after a long day. Kyle approached. Bay could tell it was him because he seemed to be sprouting two heads as he jogged sloppily across the parking lot: Amanda was riding on his back, laughing and screaming.

    ��Put me down! You��re gonna drop me!�� He took a particularly tight corner and her screams redoubled, half choked out by her laughter, and bouncing in her throat with the rhythm of Kyle��s feet on the ill-paved ground.

    Bay watched them come, closer and closer, and then she saw that Amanda was right. Kyle was going to fall over. He stumbled over a broad crack in the ground, and his center of gravity was too high to recover. With one prolonged shriek, he and Amanda toppled to the ground. Bay jogged over, momentarily forgetting that she was supposed to interrogate him, wanting to make sure that nothing was seriously wrong.

    Amanda clambered off of him, seemingly unhurt. Kyle gave out a long groan and lay unmoving, facedown on the ground. Amanda crouched next to him as Bay arrived..

    ��Are you okay?�� Bay asked.

    ��Fuuuuck,�� Kyle said, long and slow, wincing as he moved his arms out from underneath his body.

    ��Aw, Kyle���� Amanda said, wedging her hands underneath his side and trying to roll him over onto his back. One of the few remaining cars in the parkinglot beeped and swerved around them.

    Kyle was a mess. The wounds hadn��t quite started bleeding yet, but he had scraped his hands trying to break his fall, and his knees badly as well. The scrape on his right arm went from palm to elbow. His face had been mostly spared, and just seemed to be dirty on his cheek a little bit, but that was proven wrong when he opened his mouth to say something, and a bit of blood came out. ��This is your fault,�� he said to Amanda. ��Eugh. Bit my tongue.��

    ��I told you to put me down, idiot,�� Amanda said. She patted his face. ��I��m sorry.��

    ��I��ll live,�� Kyle said.

    Bay felt like she was third wheeling this situation suddenly. ��I��ll, um, go get a first aid kit,�� Bay said.

    ��There��s one in his car,�� Amanda said. ��Here.�� She fished in Kyle��s pocket and tossed Bay the keys.

    ��Wait, no,�� Kyle said, and Bay looked at him, confused. Amanda made a shooing motion and sent Bay away.

    ��Shush, stupid, it��s fine. Go get the first aid kit.��

    Kyle seemed about to protest more, but Bay was already several steps away at that point, heading back to Kyle��s car. She unlocked it and pulled open the front passenger door. The car was filthy, with old fast food wrappers everywhere, and smelly towelsW that Kyle had brought to work and not dried properly, just left to get moldy in his car. Bay shook her head and tried not to touch them as she searched around for the first aid kit. It wasn��t in the front seat, or glovebox, or chucked into the seats behind, so Bay was forced to unlock the trunk and look around in there. Unbelievably, there were more towels. He must have had an infinite stash of them. She pulled some aside, trying to see if the first aid kit was on the floor of the trunk, and her hand found something hard and cold. She pushed it out of the way, but it was heavier than expected, and the towel covering it slid down, revealing a pair of thick red plastic coated handles. With some trepidation, Bay uncovered the rest of the object, her heart rising in her throat.

    There, in Kyle��s trunk, wrapped in filthy, and, she noticed, muddy, towells, were the heavy shears from the Arcadis maintenance shed.

    Bay stepped back, as though she had been bitten.

    ��Did you find it?�� Amanda��s voice called from further down the parking lot.

    ��No!�� Bay yelled back. ��Where is it?��

    ��Underneath the front seat,�� Amanda yelled back. ��Do you need me to come help you?��

    ��No, I see it now,�� Bay lied. As quickly as she could, she took a photograph of the shears, closed the trunk, and retrieved the nondescript first aid kit from underneath the passenger seat. She ran back to Kyle and Amanda, trying not to let them see her panic. She couldn��t help but stare at Kyle with wide eyes, but he was laying on the ground, eyes closed, letting Amanda poke at him. ��Here,�� Bay said, thrusting the first aid kit at Amanda.

    ��You got a water bottle? We should wash these out before we put bandaids on,�� Amanda said, poking at Kyle��s horrible looking knee. There were bits of gravel stuck into it.

    ��This might be better off done inside,�� Bay said. ��How about you walk him back to Arcadis?��

    ��I just want to go home,�� Kyle said, struggling to his feet with a visible wince. ��I��m fine.��

    ��No you��re not,�� Amanda said. ��You��re the opposite of fine.��

    ��I��d rather be the opposite of fine at my house than at Arcadis,�� he said, stumbling towards his car.

    ��Gimme his keys back,�� Amanda said with a deep frown. ��I��ll drive you home, baby. Don��t want to touch the steering wheel with those hands.��

    ��Whatever.�� Kyle was already far down the row of cars, and Bay put the key into Amanda��s outstretched hand. She ran after him, leaving Bay standing alone in the parking lot, watching as Amanda clumsily backed out the car and drove away.

 Chapter Thirteen - The Rackets We Had About Blue Mountain Lake

    Jonah grinned as she saw Bay running towards her, dashing across the parking lot towards where Jonah waited by her car. The grin fell away as she saw the expression on Bay''s face: alarmed, urgent, and wide eyed.

    "What''s wrong?" Jonah asked. "You okay?"

    "We need to talk. Somewhere away from here. Now," Bay said, breath coming in little spurts. She pulled on the door handles of the car, and Jonah hastened to unlock it. The door swung open and Bay almost fell down as it released under her hand. She got inside and slammed the door shut. Now with almost as much urgency, Jonah got in and started the car, pulling them out of the Arcadis parking lot with a screech of tires and no destination in mind.

    "Where are we going?" Jonah asked Bay, who was still catching her breath and staring out the window.

    "Don''t care," Bay said. "Anywhere private."

    Jonah pulled them off the road as they passed the public library, closed this late in the day, and she idled the car in the parking lot. "This good?" Jonah asked.

    "Yeah." Bay closed her eyes and tilted her head back.

    "You need a second?" Jonah asked.

    "Just trying to collect my thoughts before I say something."

    Jonah waited in anticipatory silence, and when that silence stretched on for a while, she rolled down the windows and killed the engine of the car, wanting to save gas. There was no one around in the parking lot to hear them, and the nighttime sound of screaming bugs and frogs. The sun was gone, and the parking lot had lights only at the edges, casting the interior of the car into deep shadow. Jonah turned on the front interior light.

    "I tried to talk to Kyle," Bay finally said. Jonah let her continue without interrupting, even though she was curious about the tried appended to the front of that statement. "He was fooling around with Amanda in the parking lot, and he fell and scraped himself up pretty badly."

    "Dumb," Jonah couldn''t resist saying.

    "Amanda sent me into his car to grab a first aid kit that he kept there." Jonah nodded, though Bay still had her eyes closed. "When I was looking for it, I found something." Bay had this firm tone in her voice, flat and calm, that indicated that she was trying not to let whatever emotion was gripping her get the better of her.

    "What?" Jonah asked.

    "It could be nothing."

    "What is it?"

    Bay pulled her phone out and swiped through it. She offered it to Jonah, silently. Jonah''s breath caught in her throat as she stared at the image. Nestled among towels as one would nestle a sleeping baby in blankets, were the shears that had gone missing from the maintenance shed days before. The towels had smears of mud on them, crusted and dried, sticking the fibers into harsh tufts. The shears themselves appeared clean.

    "Did you... touch it?" Jonah asked, somewhat breathless.

    "By accident."

    "Ah." She was unable to form a cogent thought, not quite knowing what had to be done.

    "Those are definitely the ones from the shed," Bay said. "You can compare the video that we have."

    "I will," Jonah said. She slid through Bay''s photos to find the recording of the snapchat video. It played, and as soon as the tinny tone of Amanda''s voice rang out through the car, Jonah turned the volume down, waiting for the shears to show up on screen. There they were, hanging innocently on the wall. The exact same ones. She stared again at the photo.

    It was beyond belief, inscrutable with its meaning just out of reach. Or, really, its meaning was completely visible, but it was beyond what Jonah wanted to believe.

    "Should we tell the police?" Bay asked finally. The gears in her brain must have been clicking just as they were in Jonah''s, putting the pieces together that no one wanted to admit out loud.

    "Tell them what?" Jonah asked. She could imagine the situation now, if she went to Andover. They still had nothing, not really. "''Officer Andover, I have this photograph of a person in a pool, and I think it''s a picture of Justine Mulvais, right after she died. And I found a piece of missing maintenance equipment in the trunk of one of my employee''s cars.'' He''d say: ''Fire your employee for stealing, and also that''s not evidence, and we caught someone with a motive and no alibi.''"

    Bay sighed. "But this..."

    "Do I want to say that Kyle murdered someone? Does he seem like the kind of person who would?" Jonah asked. "I''ve known him for years."

    "I don''t know," Bay said. "But you and I-- we know all this... stuff."

    "Maybe we can get them to tell us what actually happened. Present them with the evidence we have, and they''ll have to confess."

    "They don''t have to do anything. Kyle knew that was in his car, and he tried to stop me from seeing it."

    Jonah shook her head, feeling it throb. "Why would he keep a murder weapon in his car? Why wouldn''t he bury it, or throw it out, or put it back in the shed?"

    "I don''t know," Bay said. "I can''t explain any of this. It''s some kind of nightmare."

    "I don''t want to confront him and have him tell me some kind of lie."

    "Is it worse if you confront him and it turns out that this is the truth?" Bay asked. She ran her hand over her eyes, and Jonah could see how tired she looked.

    "If he refuses to talk to us, what will we do?"

    "I think we have to corner him, and Zach," Bay said. "They''re in this together."

    "And Amanda?"

    "I don''t think she knows anything. I think she really was completely asleep."

    "She could be a better actor than either of them."

    "I don''t think so."

    "So..."

    "How are we going to confront them?" Bay asked. "That''s what we have to decide."

    "How can we get them, and all the evidence--"

    "What evidence?"

    "The two photos you have. That''s enough."

    "Okay."

    "We have to get them without them being suspicious."

    "Can we use Amanda?"

    "How?"

    "Tell her to summon them," Bay said, squinting as she thought. "Get her to bring them to some other location, where we can..."

    "Do you think they''re going to be at the party tomorrow night?" Jonah asked.

    "Fuck," Bay said. "I don''t know."

    "I feel like..." Jonah began, then paused as she collected her own thoughts. "If something had actually happened last Friday, and I was Zach and Kyle, I wouldn''t ever want to come to the party again."

    "But it would look weird to everyone if they didn''t go. They have always gone, haven''t they?" Bay asked.

    "Yeah. For years," Jonah said. "I think... You need to make sure that Amanda is at the party. If she''s there, Kyle and Zach will have to come. Kyle will come for Amanda, and Amanda will come for Kyle."

    "What if they don''t?" Bay asked.

    "Then we''ll try something else on Saturday. I think this is our best bet, though."

    "And if they do show up? What will we do?"

    "We''ll have to corner them."

    "What will we say, I mean?"

    "I don''t know," Jonah said. "I''ll think of something."

    "Okay, okay."

    "Should we record what they say?"

    "I think that''s illegal," Jonah said.

    "Do we actually care at this point what''s legal and what''s not?"

    "If we''re looking for evidence to give to the police, yes."

    "Is that what we''re doing?" Bay asked.

    "I don''t know. But we have to do it, don''t we?"

    "Yeah."

    "So you''ll make sure Amanda, and Kyle and Zach with her, come to the party?"

    "I''ll do my best."

    "I trust you."

    "Thanks."

    "Is that it? Is this our plan?" Her hand hovered over the ignition.

    "I guess so," Bay said.

    Jonah twisted the key. "Then let''s do it." They drove home, keeping the windows open. Bay''s hair flipped all around in the breeze. When Jonah pulled into her driveway, in which there were two cars, Bay hesitated before getting out. Jonah reached over and tucked a piece of hair behind Bay''s ear. Bay smiled at her in the gloomy darkness.

    "See you tomorrow?"

    "Yeah. Tomorrow," Jonah said.

    <hr>

    Friday wasn''t unbearably hot, but it was unbearably humid. The sweat didn''t evaporate off of Jonah as it should have, and her clothes clung to her body as though they were glued to her. She barely saw Bay, though as she made her rounds of the park, she kept an eye out and tried to offer a smile. It was hard to keep herself focused on her day to day activities and acting among her staff like nothing was wrong. She didn''t see Zach or Kyle, and she intentionally tried not to seek them out. In fact, she avoided the flat pool where Zach was almost the whole day, only glancing at it as she walked by to ensure that nothing was too amiss.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

    The wave pool was finally open once again, and Amanda waved Jonah over to talk.

    "I can''t believe I lost my bet, and I''m back guarding this stupid thing," Amanda said.

    "Bet?"

    "I thought it would drain out all the water before the police finished searching the lake," Bay said. "I lost five dollars."

    "Sucks to suck," Jonah said, distracted as she watched children sail in inner tubes over one of the tall and half-muddy waves. "Good that we got to run the pumps again."

    "And now all we gotta do is keep running them until the mud is gone," Amanda said.

    "Yeah. Hey, Amanda, if they break, I''m sending you down to the pump house to fix them."

    Amanda squealed. "Ew, no. I''ll quit before I stick my hand in there."

    Jonah laughed, but it was a bitter laugh more than anything.

    The day crept on, seeming to only grow hotter and slimier and more anxious. The tension that Jonah could feel was fully inside of her: the rest of the park had returned to some kind of normal state. Death was far from the guests'' minds, and the staff were again focused only on making it through the day.

    Night came, and Jonah drove Bay home, carpooling almost silently.

    "Did you get Amanda to say she''s coming?"

    "Yeah," Bay said, and that was the end of it.

    "I''ll meet you at the fence," Jonah said. "Or maybe you should go in first?"

    "I''ll go in first. Text you when I think they''re in a good position to talk to."

    Jonah nodded, hands tight on the wheel as she sat in Bay''s driveway. "Good luck, then."

    "It will be okay," Bay said. "The worst they could do is lie."

    "I don''t know about that," Jonah said. "I worry that it might be worse if they told the truth."

    She let Bay leave, and drove back to her own house. She laid on her couch in the dark with an alarm set, trying to rest before the prepared drama of the evening, set up like a play on a stage before her, but the terror of it that had crept upon her would not leave her limbs, and she rolled to and fro, unable to stay steady.

    The time came. She crept out of her house silently, not letting her family know where she was going, and took her bike and the big flashlight, carving a single path of light through the dark streets.

    The woods were empty, dark, and deep. Jonah pressed through them, ignoring all the sounds of birds and rustlings of animals. This time, there was no shaking of the fence, no Bay crouched furtive in the darkness. Jonah waited on the outside of the fence, sitting down with her back to a tree and her flashlight off, waiting for the text message from Bay.

    <hr>

    Bay didn''t like these parties. She hadn''t liked the first one she had been to, the one where she had lit a fire in the bathroom, and she hadn''t liked the one the week before. At the time, she had just found it annoying and sad, but in retrospect it had taken on a dark cast in her memory. This time, she had arrived prepared for the night to go badly. She had her backpack on full of cameras, perhaps an odd affectation, and she had jammed a bottle of vodka in it, taken from her parent''s house. It was intended as kind of a bribe, to get Kyle and Zach to come away with her, to a more secluded place.

    She was one of the first people there, and she waited around at the flat pool for other people to show up. The pool water, despite being empty, was almost visibly churning, as the pumps worked to take out the muddy rain water and bring  in clear water from the lake. Bay stared down into it.

    "Oh, you''re early," Amanda said, coming up behind her. Amanda put her hands on the small of Bay''s back. "Should I push you in?"

    "Absolutely not," Bay said, extracting herself and turning to face Amanda. Kyle and Zach were behind her, and Bay wondered if it would be more or less suspicious for her to make eye contact with them. She smiled instead. "Glad you could make it."

    "Well, SOME people didn''t want to come," Amanda stressed, tossing her hair and looking back at Kyle and Zach. "But I didn''t want to come alone, so I begged and pleaded."

    "Why didn''t you want to come?" Bay asked, a risky move, but she kept her voice light. "Your hands okay?" She nodded at his scrapes, now wrapped in bandages.

    "I''m fine," Kyle said. "Just exhausted from the week."

    "You had a day off in the middle," Amanda pointed out. "No excuses!"

    "Clearly wasn''t enough," Kyle said. "I wanted to sleep."

    "Just think about how much better tomorrow will be when you''re hung over," Zach said, slapping Kyle on the back. "We''ll just do our best to enjoy ourselves. It''s our inoculation against the weekend."

    Other people trickled in, coming in through the parking lot or emerging from the woods. Someone jumped in the pool. Someone else blasted music from some dinky bluetooth speakers. All told, about thirty staff arrived, passing drinks among themselves.

    Bay sat on the edge of the pool, dangling her legs into it. She didn''t want to make her moves too soon, because that might cause Kyle and Zach to freak out. She wanted to wait until it seemed like the opportune moment. Still, she couldn''t help thinking about Jonah out in the woods, waiting on her.

    > they''re here, but don''t come yet

    >i''m gonna try to get them out by the lakeside by themselves.

    > not yet b/c I don''t wnat it to be too sus

    < k

    < just let me know and i can come in.

    Amanda sat down on the side of the pool next to Bay. "Who ya texting?"

    "Your mom," Bay said, and Amanda laughed.

    "Seriously, who?"

    "My girlfriend," Bay said, which wasn''t even a lie.

    "Aww, I didn''t know you weren''t single." Amanda said this with a tone that indicated she had considered Bay very single, and judged her for it. Luckily, Bay was immune to the judgemental opinions of seventeen year olds.

    "We go to school together," Bay said, which was a lie. "And we''re the same age." She could give as good as she got from Amanda.

    Amanda stuck out her tongue. "You gonna hang up your cameras?" she asked.

    "Hah, yeah, I guess I should while the night is still young. I''m mostly just relaxing at the moment."

    "Hard to relax when you don''t have anything to drink," Amanda grumbled. "Kyle decided to be a cheapskate and not bring anything."

    "Maybe that''s the real reason he didn''t want to come." Bay elbowed Amanda gently, who laughed.

    "I think he''s just in a bad mood. I think his cuts actually really hurt."

    "He did take quite a fall."

    "What were you doing in the parking lot, yesterday, by the way?" Amanda asked.

    "Oh, nothing," Bay said, trying to act innocent. "I just wanted to stop by and say hi to everyone."

    Amanda squinted at her, clearly not buying the explanation. Bay did her best to distract her from whatever that thought process was by pulling her backpack towards herself and opening it up just a smidge.

    "Ohh," Amanda said, seeing the vodka bottle glint in among the nondescript soup cans. "Gimme."

    "Don''t let everyone know I have this. I don''t want to share with that many people."

    "Haha, yeah, got it," Amanda said. She winked, an exaggerated gesture. "Want me to come help hang up your cameras?"

    Bay nodded. Amanda was practically doing her work for her. "I think that I want to put some down by the lake, now that the police are gone. Maybe get some good shots of nature rather than the park. I''ve used up all my creative ideas for vistas around here."

    "Sure, sure," Amanda said, clearly already not caring about whatever Bay was going on about. "Can they come?" She nodded behind herself at Kyle and Zach, who were engaged in helping another staff member stand on his head and then tip himself backwards into the pool, landing with a painful sounding smack.

    Bay pursed her lips, in mock thinking, as though she didn''t actually want the boys to come. Don''t let Amanda get suspicious. "I guess."

    Amanda grinned.

    "Don''t let anyone follow us," Bay said. "I don''t want to share. And grab some cups."

    "Will do," Amanda said and traipsed off. As Bay pulled her feet out of the pool and put her shoes back on, she saw Amanda tap Kyle and Zach lightly on the shoulders, then lean in between them and whisper something conspiratorially into their ears. Bay did her best to make it look like she wasn''t paying attention.

    "Cameras?" Zach asked when he came over.

    "As always," Bay said, and tilted her bag to show him the cameras and the vodka. He smiled a little bit, though it was a clearly tense smile.

    "I want to try to get some nature shots." Bay walked away from the music of the party, as purposefully as she could, and didn''t look behind herself to see if everyone else was following her. They were, because she could hear Amanda nattering on about something completely inane.

    They passed into the woods. Bay purposefully made as much of a noise as she could with the fence as she clumsily climbed over it, doing her best to warn Jonah that they were coming.

    "Careful," Kyle said. "Don''t want to drop and spill the good stuff."

    "Yeah, yeah," Bay huffed as she dropped to the ground, landing heavily on her feet. Zach, Kyle, and Amanda all made it over nimbly, though Amanda complained the whole time.

    "This is why I get you to drive me, baby," she said. "Don''t have to scratch myself on the top of this."

    "You''ll live," Kyle said. "Not like driving is a guarantee you won''t get scraped up."

    "Awwww," Amanda said. "You''re okay."

    The remaining walk to the lakeside was a short one, and the moon lit the scene eerily. The pumphouse was visible, squat on the surface of the lake.

    "It''s beautiful out," Bay said, a genuine appreciation. "Let''s find some places for the cameras."

    "And then we can drink?" Amanda asked, whining.

    "Yeah, yeah," Bay said. "Here, you can pick a spot," she said, handing a soup can camera to each of her three followers. Try to face them north, so that you can get the sun in ''em."

    "Which way''s north?" Kyle asked, shaking his soup can.

    "Put your back to the ferris wheel. That''s north," Bay said. "And when you do set them up, take off the tape on the front. That''ll start the exposure." She pointed it out.

    Kyle and Zach didn''t seem suspicious, even though she thought that they should be. They mostly seemed bored, but willing to do whatever Amanda asked. Since Amanda had hauled them here, they would comply with the camera nonsense. It seemed mundane. Maybe that was why they weren''t worried. Bay had fiddled with her cameras at both of the other parties, anyway. This wasn''t anything new. Even though Bay was telling herself all of this, she couldn''t stop the nervousness inside of her. Her heart felt like it was pounding so hard that it was audible, and she worried that as she delivered her instructions, she was squeaky and out of breath from it.

    She sent the three away to find good spots, and she wandered in the other direction, soup can camera in hand. As soon as she was out of their sightlines, she texted Jonah.

    > k, I''m at the lake wth them

    > amanda is here, so maybe be carefl

    She didn''t wait for a response, jamming her phone in her pocket. She hastily duct taped the camera she was holding to a tree, not really caring about the image that it would produce. Her hands shook. When she accidentally dropped the duct tape on the ground, she couldn''t stifle a yelp of nervous laughter.

    Bay jogged back to the lakeshore. Kyle, Zach, and Amanda were wandering among the trees. Amanda stopped at one and wedged her camera in between two low hanging branches.

    "How about that, Bay?" she called, looking around behind herself for Bay.

    "It looks fine!" Bay called back.

    "Great, now pay up." Amanda traipsed over to Bay and held out her hand.

    "Did you bring cups?"

    Amanda''s face fell, as though from the top of a cliff. "I forgot."

    Bay rolled her eyes, but realized this was useful to her. "Go back and get some, stupid," she said.

    "Kyle, come with me!" Amanda yelled.

    "What?" Kyle asked.

    "He''s still trying to stick the camera somewhere," Bay said. "Just run fast. Don''t drag him and his scraped knees into it."

    "Ugh, but what if I get murdered?"

    "There''s no murderer," Bay muttered. "They caught the guy."

    Amanda made a dramatic sigh. "If I die, this is your fault."

    "You''ll survive."

    Amanda dashed off to the woods, moving at a speed Bay hadn''t considered her capable of. That motion brought Kyle and Zach back over to where Bay had crouched on the lake shore. Tiny waves lapped up at her feet, and the moonlight reflecting off the water shone in Bay''s eyes.

    "Where''s she going?" Zach asked, standing behind Bay.

    "To get cups."

    "Beautiful night," Zach said.

    "Yeah. This place would be nice if we weren''t obligated to be here for like, forty some odd hours a week."

    "Most places are like that," Kyle said, punching Zach''s shoulder. "Arcadis is nothing special."

    "What''s that?" Zach asked, pointing down the shore, where a figure was emerging from the trees.

    "Amanda?" Kyle called.

    Bay knew it was probably Jonah, but her heart pounded in her throat anyway, and she positioned herself behind the two men. It might appear to them that she was asking for protection, but really, she was getting ready to tackle them in case they decided to run.

    Jonah came forward, and her face and figure were visible enough to Kyle and Zach now that their postures grew tense and hostile.

    "What are you doing here?" Zach yelled.

    "Am I not allowed to enjoy a walk along the shore at night?" Jonah yelled back. "Lovely day."

    "You set us up," Kyle said, turning to Bay with a scowl.

    Bay didn''t have either wherewithal or reason to deny it. "What do you think I''m setting you up for?" she asked instead.

    Kyle was silent, but at least to his and Zach''s credit, they didn''t run, just stood closer together and watched as Jonah came forward.

    "Good evening, gentlemen," Jonah said when she was within a couple yards of the group. "Bay."

    Bay couldn''t quite smile at her, but she nodded.

    "What do you want?" Zach asked.

    "The truth," Jonah said simply. "Is that too much to ask?"

 Chapter Fourteen - Take Me Home Tonight

    Jonah approached the group, studying the expressions on their faces. Kyle and Zach looked like they had been caught-- defensive and angry. Bay looked nervous but glad to see her.

    "The truth about what?" Zach asked.

    "I think we both already know that," Jonah said. "I want to know what happened last Friday. Where you were and what you saw."

    "Nothing. Nothing happened," Kyle snapped out.

    "I think we both know that that''s not true. Amanda''s not here, you can say what you need to say," Bay said.

    "I''m not blaming you for anything," Jonah said. "And we''re the only ones who know." She spread out her hands. "I haven''t told anyone else anything. I just want to find out what''s going on."

    "And why do you think that we have anything to do with it?" Kyle asked. He was being defensive, but Zach was silent, staring at her with an expression of stubborn resignation.

    "I don''t have a lot of evidence. That''s why I''m asking you what happened. But..." Jonah trailed off. "Here," she said, and pulled out two folded pieces of paper from her pocket-- printouts of the two evidence photos that she had: the blurry black and white pinhole photo, and the crisp phone photo of the landscaping shears in the trunk of Kyle''s car. "Look."

    "What am I looking at?" Zach finally asked, voice very quiet.

    "This is a photograph that Bay took of the flat pool last Friday," Jonah said. "There. You can see Amanda sleeping on the chair."

    "Okay," Zach said.

    "And there." Jonah jammed her finger into the paper so hard that it wrinkled. "In the pool. There''s Justine Mulvais''s body."

    A silence fell across the group, so Jonah kept talking. "We know you were there. You two and Amanda were the only ones left at Arcadis. You had to have seen what happened to her, what somebody did to her, how she got into the pool. You have to tell me."

    Her hands shook as she switched the papers around, putting the landscaping shears on top. "And that," Jonah said. "These were in your car." She looked at Kyle. "I don''t know why, but I do know that they disappeared from the maintenance shed, and that somebody cut the fence back open, and..." Jonah trailed off.

    Bay took the lead then, as Jonah floundered. "So. What were you doing? What did you see?"

    Zach whipped his head around to stare at her. "I don''t have to tell you anything."

    Jonah shook her head. "You don''t tell us, we''ll go to the police, and they''ll pull it out of you. I don''t want to do that. Did you see Justine Mulvais get murdered?"

    "No," Kyle said, and he sounded both emphatic and honest.

    "What did you see?" Jonah asked. "You''re acting like there''s something here, tell me I''m not losing my mind. You don''t have to hide anything."

    "Why were those shears in your car, Kyle?" Bay asked. "That''s what''s killing me."

    Kyle and Zach stared at each other, and Zach''s face was angry, at Kyle now. "You''re an idiot," he said.

    "What was I supposed to do?" Kyle asked, and his hands twisted together in front of him, guilt on his face.

    "What are you going to do, Jonah, when you learn the truth?" Zach asked.

    "I don''t know," Jonah said. "I just want to know that there''s no murderer still loose. I want to know that Justine was killed by her boyfriend. I want to know that he chopped her up into little pieces and threw her into the lake, because right now, it seems that he didn''t do that,and the police arrested the wrong person because they had no real evidence. I have evidence but I don''t understand what it means and--" Jonah was almost hysterical at this point. She glanced up at Bay, who bit her lip. "Arcadis is my responsibility," Jonah said. "It''s my job to find out what happened, so that it never ever happens again."

    "You can''t stop people from dying," Zach said.

    "I''m sure as hell going to try!"

    "Tell her what happened," Bay said. "We need to know."

    It was at this point that Amanda returned, coming out of the woods and skidding short as she saw the confrontation that was taking place, the expressions on everyone''s faces.

    "What''s going on?" she asked, holding up plastic cups. "What are you doing here?"

    "Hi, Amanda," Jonah said. "We''re having a friendly conversation."

    "It doesn''t look that friendly," she said, sidling up to Kyle and putting her hand on Kyle''s arm. He shrugged her off, looking miserable, and she frowned at him deeply. "What''s going on?"

    "We''re trying to figure out exactly what Zach and Kyle saw, last Friday night, while you were asleep," Bay said, her voice flat and calm. Jonah appreciated her steadiness at that moment.

    "What do you mean? They were off doing some stupid shit," Amanda said.

    Jonah thrust the printout of Bay''s pinhole photo at her. "There''s you," Jonah said. "That''s why I needed to know what chair you were sleeping on. And there''s Justine Mulvais. While you were asleep, someone took her out of the pool. I need to know that there''s not some murderer still around."

    "And so you sent me through the woods BY MYSELF?" Amanda screeched. "You lied to me! And you!" She turned to Kyle. Her anger was fierce and explosive, and Jonah was glad to not be on the receiving end of it. Bay stepped back, wincing at the strength of Amanda''s voice. "You LEFT ME, and there was a dead body RIGHT THERE?" Shocking everyone, she reached out and slapped Kyle across the face. The sound rang out, echoing, and Kyle stumbled back.

    "What the fuck?" he yelled. "Fuck you!"

    Amanda seemed about to jump him, so Jonah and Zach both independently reached in and stopped her, grabbing one of her arms.

    "Calm down, Amanda," Zach said.

    "I could have been killed!"

    "You were never in any danger," Zach said.

    "But the murderer!" Amanda said, trying to wrench her arms out of Zach and Jonah''s grasp.

    "There''s no fucking murderer," Kyle said. "It doesn''t exist."

    "Shut up," Zach said. "Don''t say a single thing."

    "I''m tired of this shit," Kyle said. "There''s no murderer. There never was. You talked me in to this shit and I don''t want to go to jail for you, because this is your fault."

    "Shut up," Zach said, and released Amanda to step towards Kyle. Bay interposed, squeezing between the two of them, and stopping Zach from laying her hands on him.

    "No one is going to jail," Jonah said. "The police aren''t anywhere near here, I haven''t talked to them, nothing. I just want you to tell me what the fuck is going on." She stared between Zach and Kyle, who both were glaring at eachother.

    "He''s going to blame me for getting caught," Kyle said. "It wasn''t my idea. It''s not my fault."

    "Jesus Christ," Jonah said.

    "What did you DO?" Amanda asked, and again it was Jonah who had to stop her from getting at Kyle.

    "Everyone just shut up and let Kyle talk," Bay said, sounding extremely frustrated. "Tell us what happened."

    "Fuck, I don''t know what happened," Kyle said.

    "Yes you do," Jonah said. "Tell us what you know."

    Kyle suddenly decided that he was going to shut up, and a silence fell between them.

    "I''m going to call the police," Bay said.

    "No," Zach said. "Don''t."

    "Then talk!" Amanda yelled. Jonah winced now at the extreme volume.

    Zach''s voice was quiet when he spoke. "I was guarding the flat pool all day on Friday. At some point during the afternoon, that woman drowned in it. That''s it. That''s all that happened."

    "How did she end up in pieces in the lake?" Bay asked.

    "She was already dead," Kyle said. "It doesn''t matter."

    "Yes it fucking does," Jonah said. "Stop acting like this." Jonah shook her head. "This is fucking insane."

    "HE decided that if somebody found out that he had let her drown on his watch, he''d go to jail for life," Kyle said, jerking his head at Zach.

    "That''s not how anything works!" Amanda said. "You idiot!"

    "We were drunk as fuck," Kyle said. "Not thinking straight."

    "Is this true?" Jonah asked Zach, who was still quiet.

    He didn''t say anything, just stood there as Kyle confessed, trying to lay the blame at his feet.

    The situation was calcifying in Jonah''s brain. Mulvais had drowned, somehow, it didn''t really matter. The muddy, filthy water of the pool on Friday had probably stopped anyone from seeing her body, all the rest of the day. When the pool water cleared up, she floated to the top, or at least was visible on the surface of the pool. Jonah could picture the scene-- Amanda sleeping on the chair not ten feet away, Kyle and Zach talking in hushed drunk whispers about what they were going to do-- the unimaginable feeling of guilt that Zach would have had crashing down on him-- the horror of the future, the idea of someone finding out. But they hadn''t disguised it well enough. They hadn''t expected anyone to see, certainly not Jonah.

    "We wanted to make it look like someone had hated her, so that no one would think that it happened here, no one would look at him," Kyle said, pointing at Zach.

    "You decided that it would be better if someone else went to jail instead of you?" Bay asked, incredulous. "That''s sick."

    "I never thought the police would arrest anyone," Zach said. "I didn''t think..."

    "You didn''t think," Jonah said flatly. She sounded like her own mother. The horrible truth of it was inside of her.

    "Now what?" Amanda asked. "I''m breaking up with you, by the way," she said to Kyle.

    "Not the time, Amanda," Bay said.

    "What other time am I gonna have?" Amanda asked. "I assume you''re about to call the police, and then you''re going to be arrested, I''m not going to visit you in jail or anything."

    "Shut up, Amanda," Bay said.

    "You don''t need to be rude to me," Amanda said. "I''m not the one who apparently decided to cut up a woman into lots of teeny tiny little pieces, so that some innocent guy would go to jail for the rest of his life." She put her hands on her hips. "You''re lucky this state doesn''t have the death penalty."

    Jonah couldn''t quite think straight. Two thoughts were sticking out in her head. The muddy water at Arcadis had caused this woman''s death.  And she, she was the head of aquatics at Arcadis. She was responsible for Justine Mulvais dying. She was responsible for Zach and Kyle deciding that a better course of action than confessing was to pretend like someone else had killed her. To obfuscate their part in this. She couldn''t believe Kyle had gone along with it: he hadn''t even been guarding the flat pool that day. But he was Zach''s friend, and that was what friends did.

    If Zach had been the one that Mr. Calvin promoted, what would have been the outcome of this? Would anyone have died at all?

    Zach was talking very quietly. "I think it happened when I was the only one on the chair. Jeff had gone to the bathroom-- he had food poisoning or something-- and there were these kids in the deep end who kept holding eachothers'' heads underwater for way too long, dangerously long, and so I got off the chair to deal with them, but one of their parents started yelling at me, and I had to calm him down, and the whole time I just had my back to the pool, but nothing seemed wrong, I didn''t think, but you can''t see down to the bottom when it''s full of mud." He kept going on, the sentence extending to encapsulate the story, not pausing for breath.

    Jonah let him continue, and his words filled the nighttime silence.

    "Please don''t tell anyone," Zach said. He probably thought that his words were falling on deaf ears, but they were falling into Jonah''s just fine.

    She didn''t know what she was going to do. She looked between Zach and Kyle, each younger than herself. She thought about the responsibility that, when push came to shove, was on her shoulders. The buck of Arcadis Park responsibility stopped with her. She thought about what would happen to the rest of the staff, and to Kyle and Zach. And then she thought about herself. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    Images flashed through her mind, of how little she was worth, in the grand scheme of things-- even if this incident had never happened, what was her future? To be condemned to return here to Arcadis forever, never achieving anything, never changing. Stagnant in this life that had a grip on her because she just wasn''t good enough to break free of it.

    She weighed this all in her head-- on one hand, her own life, caught up in this regardless, and on the other, Zach, Kyle, the innocent man arrested already. Justine Mulvas''s body was the fulcrum on which this all rested.

    It clicked in Jonah''s brain, and she relaxed as she made a decision.

    "Bay, can you make sure everyone waits here? I have to go, um, do something," Jonah said.

    "What?" Bay asked, clearly confused. "Aren''t you going to call the police?"

    "Not yet," Jonah said. "I have to clear out everybody at the party." That was a convenient lie.

    "Oh, shit, yeah," Bay said. "Forgot about that. You can pull the fire alarm again."

    "That was you?" Amanda asked, staring at Jonah. "You nearly scared us all to death."

    Jonah shrugged. Might as well take the rest of the blame for that, too. "I''ll be back. Just wait here."

    Bay began to say something half in protest, but Jonah was already gone, jogging away through the woods, dashing over the fence and into Arcadis. She fully expected Kyle and Zach to escape from Bay, and who knew what Amanda would do, but none of that really mattered. She had her own mission, now.

    She snuck around the corners of the party, and tried not to let anyone see her. There was one task she had to do here, and it didn''t involve clearing out the party. They would be gone of their own volition before any police arrived on this scene, she was sure. Instead, Jonah fished the big Arcadis keyring from her back pocket, and let herself quietly into the dark informational building, where, at the back, the big staff schedule and list of ride responsibilities was posted. She tore it down from its place of honor on the wall and crept into the dark bathroom, where she stood above a stall, ripped it into shreds, and flushed it down the toilet. Would have been easier to burn it, but she didn''t have a match. There wasn''t any other copy of the staff schedule, as far as she was aware. That was the only document that linked Zach to the pool on that day. Witnesses might place Zach at the scene, but when Zach figured out what she was doing, he would go along with it. It was to his benefit, after all.

    Once that task was complete, Jonah left Arcadis, again sneaking around the edges of the place (no one saw her or made any indication that they saw her), and running through the woods and out to where she had left her bike. She didn''t head home, though. Instead she pedaled along the dark streets, no cars passing, until she came to Kyle''s house. She had been there once before-- when the two of them had been in high school, Kyle a couple years behind her, they had been placed in the same elective: entrepreneurship. She had been part of his group, and they had worked on their final project at his house. It was right along the side of the main road, and so Jonah couldn''t help but remember that time every time she drove past it in her own car.

    Her phone was ringing in her pocket. Bay. She ignored it.

    Kyle''s car was sitting innocently in the driveway. All the lights were off in his house. Jonah crept up to the car. The back window was still just covered with tape and  plastic sheeting. Jonah pulled the tape off, reached her hand in the resulting hole, and unlocked the car. She opened the door, then, and popped the trunk.

    There, exactly where Bay had left it, was the set of Arcadis park landscaping shears, the ones that had been used to cut Justine into pieces. She pulled them out, not caring that she was getting her fingerprints all over them. That was kinda the point.

    Awkwardly, she balanced them on her knee, holding them in place with one hand as she cycled away from Kyle''s house, now towards the center of town. About a half hour had passed since she left Bay. Her phone kept ringing. When would Bay give it up?

    As she headed into town, Jonah stopped at a random patch of trees near a road sign, made note of their location, and walked a little way into the woods. She tossed the shears on the ground and kicked some dirt and leaves over top of them. No one would ever find them unless they were looking, and that was good enough for now.

    She continued on. The police station was well lit, as it had to be. Jonah stuck her bike in the rack, stuck her hands in her pockets, and walked up to the front door. Before she opened it, she took one last look around, breathing in the warm night air, hearing the frogs and bugs singing their nighttime songs, seeing the moon up overhead as a cloud passed half in front of it. This contemplation couldn''t have taken more than a half second, but it felt like it lasted a hundred years, the rest of Jonah''s life.

    She opened up the door and stepped inside. The uniformed woman behind the desk, who was reading a novel and clearly not expecting anyone to show up at the police station at this hour, looked at her with some confusion.

    "Can I help you?" the woman asked.

    "I''d like to confess to a crime," Jonah said, feeling lighter than the air.

    <hr>

    A quiet form of chaos had broken loose as soon as Jonah vanished into the woods.

    "Jonah wants us to keep you prisoner here?" Amanda asked, looking between the two men. "I don''t know how or why she expects me to do that."

    Kyle and Zach were looking at each other. From what Bay could tell, they definitely had some kind of silent communication going on, born of long association. She didn''t like it. She wished she could split them up, or tie them down until the police came, or something, anything to keep them here. But Jonah had left her absolutely nothing with which to do that, and they were in the middle of the forest, not the maintenance shed where there was certain to be rope and such. She was half tempted to send Amanda back to get it, but Amanda was looking increasingly like she had no desire to stick around and be part of this, and besides, if Amanda left, it would just be Bay guarding Kyle and Zach.

    Even with Amanda, Bay was barely two inches over five feet tall, and Amanda was such a waif she never should have qualified to be a lifeguard. Kyle and Zach weren''t exactly peak human specimens, but they were both far taller than Bay, and heavier than either her or Amanda.

    Jonah shouldn''t have ever left. She should have just called the police where they were, and if everybody at the party got in trouble, that would have been on them. It would have sucked, but it would have been better than this tense state. Kyle and Zach were just standing there, staring at eachother.

    Bay thought that they were most likely judging just when Jonah would be far enough away for her to be of no use if they made their escape. It was like a timer ticking down. Bay knew it.

    She had to wonder where they thought they would go. Would they run away? Try to leave the country? Try to disguise their identity? It all seemed like it might be useless.

    At least, on the plus side, they had no lethal weapons here, because the only way to really, really get out of it would be to kill all the witnesses: Bay and Jonah and Amanda. They could blame it on the serial killer who didn''t exist. In a funny way, that would be the best solution, because it would certainly let the innocent man out of jail, and if Zach and Kyle were clean enough, they''d never get caught.

    On the other hand, she would be dead. Her eyes glazed over as she thought about all of these things. Amanda was still loudly complaining about nothing, threatening to walk away and call the police herself, or to not call the police, alternating between these two ideas with a confusion that caused Bay to tune out. Kyle and Zach continued to stare at eachother. The clock ticked down.

    Zach made a kind of hand signal. Bay barely would have noticed it in the darkness, had everything not been so stark and still as to make every movement as visible as a camera flash.

    A fraction of a second later, Kyle and Zach both launched themselves away from Bay and Amanda, running down the wet shore of the lake, quick as gazelles.

    "Kyle!" Amanda screamed, and Bay was off running, abandoning her bag and Amanda, and sprinting after them. Her legs were much shorter than theirs were, but she wasn''t slow, so she almost caught them, reaching out to try to grab the back of Kyle''s shirt. Her fingers brushed it and snagged on the fabric, but he kept moving, and it slipped out of her fingers. The long grasp caused her to stumble on some of the lake shore''s rocks, and she went down, hard, feeling a sudden sympathy for Kyle in the parking lot the day before.

    "Are you okay?" Amanda asked, coming over.

    "Get them!" Bay yelled, trying to clamber to her feet. Amanda didn''t move, though, and Kyle and Zach disappeared into the trees. Bay stumbled forward a few more feet, but there was no point in chasing them further-- she wouldn''t be able to catch them in the woods. Maybe she could rely on predictions about where they would go to find them, but it would be useless to chase them through the woods.

    It had been about fifteen minutes since Jonah left. She had probably cleared out everyone from Arcadis by now. Bay called her. The phone rang and rang, but Jonah didn''t pick up.

    "Come on, come on, come on," Bay muttered.

    "Are we going to follow them?" Amanda asked.

    The phone call went to voicemail. Bay hung up and slipped the phone back into her pocket.

    "We''ll never catch them," Bay said. "We should probably call the police."

    "Why don''t you?"

    "Jonah isn''t answering her phone. She might not have finished getting everyone out of the park yet."

    "So?"

    "So we should head over there, see what''s going on, and then we can call the police."

    "What will we say about what we''re doing here?"

    "I don''t know, don''t care right this second," Bay said. She walked back to where she had dropped her backpack, feeling every step in her scraped knees. "Let''s go." She put her backpack on her back and trudged through the woods, towards the Arcadis fence. Amanda followed her, though she didn��t seem thrilled about it.

    At Arcadis proper, the party was still going on, though a few of the participants had gone home, probably out of boredom or tiredness. It seemed like Jonah had not interrupted the party at all, which worried Bay, to say the least. Had Jonah fallen in the woods in the dark or something? She couldn��t imagine what could have prevented Jonah from clearing out the park.

    ��Have you seen Jonah?�� Bay asked Qwamae, who was fiddling with the speakers blasting music.

    ��What? Why would Jonah be here?��

    ��I don��t know,�� Bay said. ��Just wondering.��

    ��Figured she��d become too much of a party pooper, now that she��s the boss,�� Qwamae said with a grin.

    ��She��s not that bad,�� Bay muttered. She walked away and pulled Amanda slightly out of hearing range of the rest of the attendees. ��Where the hell is Jonah?��

    ��How would I know?�� Amanda asked. ��I want to go home.��

    ��Shush. We need to figure out what we��re doing here.��

    ��Just tell everyone that the police are coming,�� Amanda said. She seemed to be growing increasingly bored of the whole endeavor, and Bay couldn��t exactly blame her-- the situation had dissolved completely, and the party around the edges of the pool seemed mundane in comparison.

    ��Are we calling the police?�� Bay asked.

    ��That��s your problem.��

    Bay stared around at the people who were gathered in little clumps, talking and drinking and laughing and playing, and she thought that it would be best to get them out of here. There was no good or pleasant way to do that, so she took the most direct route.

    Bay walked back towards the speakers, where Qwamae had finished his fiddling, and she pressed the power button on them, plunging the event into dead silence. There was a general outcry.

    ��Hey, turn that back on!��

    Bay waved her arms. ��Guys! The police are on their way! You gotta get out of here!��

    A few of the more timid attendees immediately took off running, but the more belligerent ones didn��t, and instead confronted her.

    ��Says who?�� Tom asked.

    ��Says me,�� Bay said. ��I was taking photos from the top of Thunderdome and I saw them coming.��

    ��They could be going somewhere else,�� Mario said.

    ��I don��t want to risk it,�� Bay said. ��They��re probably hyper aware of this place since, you know.��

    That seemed to get through to the group, and a couple more started making for the woods. With that, the party lost the quorum required to call itself a party, and everyone else slowly departed. Bay and Amanda remained, though Bay wasn��t sure why exactly Amanda was still there. It seemed like she desperately wanted to leave.

    ��Can I go?�� Amanda asked. ��This is beyond stupid.��

    ��I need you to tell me where you think that Kyle would have gone.��

    ��He can��t go far without his stupid car. Obviously he��d go back to his house first.��

    ��So should we tell the police to go there?�� Bay wondered aloud.

    ��He doesn��t live that far away. I��m sue he��s already long gone, if he��s skipping town.��

    Bay bit her lip and looked around at the empty Arcadis park, the still churning waters of the pool, now slightly clearer. Where the hell was Jonah?

    ��I��m gonna call Jonah again,�� Bay said. ��I��m worried about her.��

    ��It��s not like there��s a murderer around to get her, APPARENTLY,�� Amanda stressed.

    ��She said she was going to get everyone out of here, and then she disappeared. That doesn��t seem like her.��

    ��Maybe she��s hanging out in that stupid whale ride.��

    ��Doubt it.�� Bay pulled out her phone and dialed Jonah. Once again, it went to voice mail. ��Fuck.��

    ��Jonah��s potty mouth is rubbing off on you,�� Amanda said derisively.

    ��You��re one to talk.��

    Everything seemed so lost, Bay was having a hard time putting all the fragments together. She and Amanda were standing impotently at Arcadis, Zach and Kyle were gone, and Jonah was missing. She didn��t want to call the police until she found Jonah, but she had no idea where Jonah went, and every second that ticked by, the worry grew.

    ��Maybe we should���� Bay began, then found she couldn��t complete the sentence. Call the police? Could this even be counted as an emergency? Where did Jonah go? That was the crux of it.

    If she were Jonah, where would she be? But Bay didn��t know Jonah well enough to answer that question-- for all that they had made out with each other and been working through all of this together, it wasn��t even as if Bay had ever been to Jonah��s house.

    ��You know where Jonah lives, right?��

    ��I guess,�� Amanda shrugged.

    ��Let��s see if she went back to her house.��

    ��She wouldn��t have gone there,�� Amanda said derisively. ��She can��t stand her family.��

    ��I��m aware, but maybe she needed something from there?��

    ��Maybe she did actually call the police,�� Amanda said. ��And they arrested her.��

    ��Why would the police arrest her?��

    ��Or they picked her up to interview her at the police station, or something.��

    ��But wouldn��t they send a car here?��

    ��Look, I don��t know,�� Amanda said. ��Call the police or don��t. I don��t care. I��m tired.��

    ��Can��t you understand that this is serious?�� Bay yelled, completely exasperated.

    ��Nobody��s in danger. It��s like one in the morning. I want to go to sleep.��

    ��Fine, get out of here, if you want to go so badly.��

    ��And you��re going to do what, stay here?��

    ��I don��t know!�� Bay yelled again.

    ��Calm down!��

    ��You!�� Bay took a deep breath and tried to stop yelling at Amanda. She was just a kid, after all.

    ��I don��t want to go home by myself,�� Amanda said. ��Kyle was supposed to bike me back.��

    ��Jesus, Amanda, there��s nothing dangerous.��

    ��And what if I get hit by a car in the dark, hunh?��

    Bay dropped her hands to her sides, defeated by Amanda��s childish petulance and insistence on an escort everywhere she went. ��Fine. I��ll bike you back to your house. Where do you live?��

    ��Middle of town.��

    It would get them out of the park, at least. Bay didn��t know if that was a good or a bad thing. Kyle and Zach had to be long gone by now. Seemed like she should call the police on them, but maybe they should wait until each of their parents filed some kind of missing persons report. That would get them onto police radar, literally.

    It was too late for Bay to think quite straight.

    They trudged through the woods, achingly climbed the fence, and emerged onto the other side where all the bikes were kept. The only two left were Bay��s and Amanda��s.

    ��Did Jonah drive here?�� Amanda asked, pointing out the discrepancy.

    ��No, I don��t think so. We would have seen her car in the lot.��

    ��Hunh,�� Bay said. ��Weird.�� She knew that Jonah wasn��t here, but it was an odd confirmation that she wasn��t.

    The two of them peddled through the dark woods, glad to emerge into the relatively well lit town center. Bay stared around herself with wide eyes as they biked, trying to catch some sort of sign of Jonah, or Kyle and Zach. But there weren��t any bike tracks on the ground-- it was too dry for that-- and none of the occasional cars that whizzed past looked like Kyle��s red beater.

    ��Where do you live?�� Bay huffed as they passed the high school.

    ��Not that much further.��

    They passed the police station, and Bay stared at it, wondering if she should stop and go in and talk to people there about everything that had gone on. That would be her next stop, she decided, making up her mind.

    ��Hey, that��s Jonah��s bike,�� Amanda said, pointing it out in the police station bike rack. Bay slammed on the brakes, screeching to a stop. The traffic light up ahead blinked silently from red to green in the empty street.

    Sure enough, that was Jonah��s bike. Bay got off her own and tossed it carelessly next to Jonah��s, stomping up to the police station door.

    ��I thought you were taking me home!�� Amanda yelled.

 Chapter Fifteen - Call the Police, Call Your Priest

    The door of the police station opened behind Jonah, who was in the middle of giving her name and address to the woman at the desk. The desk woman still seemed bored and had not yet tried to ask what crime exactly Jonah was trying to confess to. Maybe this was because Jonah did not look like the type of person who one thought of as needing to confess to serious crimes. She was, after all, a young white woman, and she wasn''t known for being in trouble with the police.

    "Can I help you, ma''am?" the police woman at the desk asked, leaning around to look at the newcomer.

    "Sorry," that person said, and it was Bay''s voice. Jonah blanched and turned around, a sudden wild panic on her face. Bay was about to screw everything up.

    "Go," she tried to mouth to Bay, but Bay didn''t see, or ignored her, and marched up to the desk, casting a glance down at the paperwork.

    "I''m here to report a crime," Bay said.

    "Well that makes the two of youse," the woman said. "Have a seat there and I''ll take your information in a second."

    "I''m not trying to report a crime," Jonah said. "I''m trying to tell you something that I did."

    "What am I, a priest?" the woman asked. "You''ll tell me what''s been done first, and we can figure out the rest. You look too old to be playing pranks."

    Bay hadn''t yet moved. "Jonah didn''t do anything," she said. "It was--"

    "Shut up," Jonah hissed under her breath. "Let me do this."

    "Do what?" the desk officer asked.

    "Confess," Jonah said again. She felt like she was standing on the deck of a ship, Jonah, weathering the storm, begging the crew of the boat to toss her overboard to be swallowed up.

    "She''s trying to take the blame for something that she didn''t do," Bay said. "Don''t listen to her."

    "You know what?" the woman asked. "It''s too late at night for this. One at a time or I''ll--"

    The door opened again. All three woman turned to see the newcomer. It was Amanda, of course, standing with her hands on her hips. "Oh, so you are here," Amanda said.

    "This isn''t a public house," the police woman said. "What is it that you want?"

    "I wanted her to finish taking me home," Amanda said, pointing at Bay. "But she got sidetracked, clearly."

    "Can you take a seat then, ma''am?" The policewoman pointed at the dinky orange chairs that lined the wall. Amanda gave them a derisive glance, then dragged her feet as she went to sit down, glaring at Bay and Jonah.

    "Hope this doesn''t take too long," she said. "I want to go to bed."

    "You''re welcome to leave," Bay said, then turned back to Jonah and the policewoman. "As I was saying--"

    "What''s going on out here?" The scene further dissolved into chaos as the door behind the desk opened, and Officer Andover stepped out into the little glassed off space. "Mary?"

    "That one wants to confess to a crime, that one wants to tell me information about a crime, that one is here for fun, apparently, because no high schooler in this town appears to have a reasonable curfew," Mary, the policewoman, said.

    Andover squinted across at Jonah and Bay. "Didn''t Mr. Calvin tell you both to stay out of police business?"

    "Yes, but--" Jonah and Bay said the same thing simultaneously, then looked at each other.

    "Mostly he only told me that," Jonah said, breaking into the opening in the conversation.

    "I have new evidence for you," Bay said, getting the words out as fast as possible. "I know who killed Justine Mulvais, it was--"

    "Me," Jonah said.

    "No it wasn''t!" Bay said, whipping her head around. "It was--"

    "Jesus Christ," Andover said, waving his hand at the both of them. "It''s too late for this."

    "Can you hear me out?" Bay asked. "Then I won''t bother you again."

    "Fine, fine,"  Andover said. "Mary, you can take the back room. I''ll deal with this."

    "Only too glad to make this your problem," she said as she abandoned her creaky desk chair and slammed through the door at the back. Andover took her seat, pushed her abandoned novel out of the way, and looked through the glass partition at the three women in the lobby.

    "You, you go first," Andover said, pointing at Bay.

    "Justine Mulvais drowned," Bay said. "I can prove it." She pulled out the crumpled pieces of paper, the photographs that Jonah had printed earlier. She slid them through the little slot at the bottom of the desk.

    "What am I looking at here?" Andover asked, smoothing the first printout out. The harsh blue lights inside gave the photo a dingy looking cast.

    "That''s the view from the top of the changing rooms above the pool at Arcadis," Bay explained. "My hobby is making pinhole photos, and I had set that one up to get a shot of the pool last Friday."

    "Uh-hunh," Andover said. "I''m not particularly interested in your art projects."

    "Look in the pool water," Bay said. "This is from the night that Justine Mulvais died-- that''s her body, right there, you can kinda see it."

    "You know, any kid with a computer could have made this," Andover said. "You can''t even see her face."

    "She''s face down," Bay said. "That''s how you know she''s drowned."

    "And how do you know this is from that night? That it''s her?"

    "Who else could it be?"

    "That doesn''t explain how she ended up in the lake," Andover said.

    "Did you tell him about the missing shears?" Bay asked, turning to Jonah. "Before?"

    Jonah stared down at the mottled wooden surface of the police desk beyond the pane of glass. She wasn''t going to respond to Bay. She wanted to take the fall for this.

    "Yes, Ms. Wylan told me about tools that had gone missing from the maintenance crew," Andover said. "We never recovered them from the lake."

    "I found them," Bay said. "That''s them, in the second photo. They were in the trunk of--"

    "She''s lying," Jonah cut in.

    "No I''m not! I don''t know what the hell you think you''re doing, but you''re not going to take the fall for Kyle and Zach being idiots," Bay huffed.

    "Ms. Rodriguez, please just continue with your story," Andover said, sounding extremely tired. His hair was mussed, Jonah noted, as though he had been woken from sleep.

    "They were in the trunk of Kyle Traver''s car. He and Zach Hicks worked together to cut up Mulvais''s body and toss it in the lake."

    "And why on Earth would they do that?" Andover asked. He was bored now. "Mr. Calvin will not appreciate you two trying to pin the blame for Ms. Mulvais''s death on park employees."

    "Mr. Calvin doesn''t know any of this," Bay said. "It''s true, though. They were in the park that night."

    "How do you know that?" Andover asked.

    "There''s always these parties on Friday nights-- look at that first photo again," Bay said. She then proceeded to explain Amanda''s ghostly presence in the chair.

    "And you say you were asleep that whole time?" Andover asked, leaning around to look at Amanda, who was playing a game on her phone.

    "I sleep through anything, I guess," she said. "But yeah, Kyle and Zach were definitely there. And they did it. I don''t know why you don''t just tell him that they confessed and then drove out of town."

    "Oh, yeah," Bay said. "They did do that."

    Andover stared at her. "Cool," he said flatly. "This is all a very funny story. I''m glad that you''ve decided to waste police time by telling it to me. And you. What''s your deal?" He turned to Jonah.

    "I did it. I killed Justine," Jonah said, though with every moment her voice was less steady. She had felt ready to confess before, but now that Bay was standing here, and had presented her own, real, evidence, Jonah wasn''t quite there.

    "No, she literally didn''t," Bay said, glaring at Jonah.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    "I was guarding the pool that day."

    "No she wasn''t."

    "Justine drowned while I wasn''t looking. When I was at the party--"

    "She wasn''t at the party."

    "--I discovered her body and realized what had happened. So I used the shears to cut her up, and I put her in the lake."

    "No, Kyle and Zach did," Bay said.

    "And so why did you pull out her head from the drain?" Andover asked, looking across at Jonah.

    She had given a thought to this question. "Because I was worried that no one would find her. I wanted to get caught."

    "You''re trying to tell me you''re some kind of psychopath?"

    "I''m trying to--"

    "She''s lying," Bay said again. "And I don''t know why."

    "I let you have your turn to talk," Andover said. His tone changed, suddenly, and he looked at Jonah with a kind of pity on his face that overtook his tiredness. "Look, Ms. Wylan, I understand that this has probably been an extremely difficult time for you. But what happened to Ms. Mulvais is not your fault. I highly recommend that you find a qualified therapist to discuss this with."

    "I''m not crazy," Jonah protested, horrified that her words were being misconstrued.

    "I''ve seen this happen to people in the past," Andover said. "They''ll try to rationalize a horrible event by taking on the blame for it."

    "But I buried the shears out in the woods," Jonah said.

    "Ms. Wylan," Andover said, then stopped. He sighed, a defeated thing. "Ms. Wylan, I''m taking your statement because I am obligated to. Please take a seat and fill out that form."

    "Sure," Jonah said. That might be the best she was going to get. She took the form and the pen from the desk and went to sit down on one of the chairs, a couple seats away from Amanda. It squeaked loudly at her. She didn''t have a desk, so she struggled to begin filling out the form on her knee.

    "She didn''t do it," Bay said again. Andover shared a look with her.

    "She didn''t do it," Amanda said from the back.

    "Will you both shut up?" Jonah said.

    "Ms. Rodriguez, may I talk to you for a minute, alone?" Andover asked. He held open the door for Bay, and they vanished into the back for a minute, leaving Amanda and Jonah alone in weird silence.

    "Kyle''s not going to thank you for taking the fall for him," Amanda said with a yawn. "Not like you''re going to be able to. That guy thinks you''re crazy."

    "I said shut up," Jonah said.

    "I don''t know what''s gotten into you," Amanda said. "Like an hour ago you were happy to figure out that Kyle and Zach had done it. It''s their problem you know." Amanda paused for a second and looked over at her. "You''ve always been too much of a pushover."

    "I''m not a pushover," Jonah muttered, stabbing the pen into the paper so hard that it accidentally punched through and marked her knee.

    "Just because Zach or whatever asked you so nice to not tell on them, that doesn''t mean you have to do it."

    Jonah didn''t respond, just continued writing down her statement. In the silence of the lobby, Jonah could hear a muffled conversation happening between Bay and Andover, though she couldn''t hear the words, just the tone.

    "Bay''s gonna hate you for this," Amanda said finally.

    It wasn''t fair of her to bring up Bay, the one good thing that Jonah had going for her.

    "Mr. Calvin''s probably going to fire you," Amanda continued.

    "I''m doing this to protect Arcadis," Jonah said through gritted teeth.

    "Yeah, well, it''s not fucking working because no one believes you."

    The back door slammed open, and Bay emerged back into the lobby.

    "Ms. Wylan, I''d like to take your fingerprints."

    That felt like a smidge of victory to Jonah, and she stood hastily, putting the papers down on the seat beside her. She followed Andover into the back, where she looked with some curiosity at the fingerprint machine. Andover walked her through the process, smushing each of her fingers in turn against the glass, the image of the prints showing up on the screen.

    When she was done, he gestured wordlessly for her to sit in a nearby chair, and she did, suddenly feeling the lateness of the hour.

    He looked silently at his computer for several minutes, clicking and typing in rapid bursts.

    "Ms. Wylan," he began, then paused, looking over at her as she sat, rather hunched, on the chair. "Your fingerprints are not on any of the evidence that we collected," he said. "Not even the evidence that you yourself provided to us, those wire snips that were used to cut the fence."

    "But the shears--"

    Andover pulled another chair out, turned it around, sat on it backwards, leaning over the back of it to look at her. "I should have told you to get counseling earlier," he said. "It''s very traumatic, to go through what you did. No one is prepared to walk into work one day and end up seeing a person who was mutilated. It can sometimes cause the mind to play weird tricks on itself."

    "I''m not crazy," Jonah said.

    "I''m not saying that you are crazy," Andover said. "I''m saying that everyone processes trauma differently, and if you''re processing it by taking on feelings of guilt, that''s natural. But it doesn''t mean that you were responsible for what happened to Ms. Mulvais, and it doesn''t mean that you need to be punished for it."

    The breath was catching in Jonah''s throat, and she couldn''t exactly tell why. She knew she hadn''t actually killed Justine. She hadn''t cut her into pieces and thrown her in the lake. She knew that. So why was Andover''s quiet voice getting to her now?

    She opened her mouth to say something, and only a ragged kind of wheeze came out, the words frozen in her throat.

    "Take all the time you need," Andover said. Jonah stared at the floor.

    "I have to be responsible for what happens at Arcadis," Jonah finally managed, tears welling up in her eyes. "That''s my job."

    "Arcadis is a different question entirely," Andover said. "But you did not kill that woman."

    "I--"

    Andover handed her a tissue, a rough thing that was clearly in position to wipe down the surface of the fingerprint reader, not meant to comfort crying women. "It''s alright," he said. "I think it''s time for you to go home. Up you come."

    She followed Andover back into the lobby, clutching her now damp tissue like it was a lifeline.

    "I''d like to interview you as well," Andover said, pointing at Amanda. "Follow me."

    She groaned, standing with reluctance. "I shouldn''t have come in here," she said as she passed Jonah, following Andover into the back, leaving Jonah and Bay alone in the lobby.

    Jonah sat down at the seat that she had been in, and noticed the form she had left there was gone. She refused to look at Bay, figuring that she had taken it.

    "What are you doing, Jonah?" Bay asked. "What is this all about?" Her voice was pathetically quiet.

    Jonah shook her head mutely. She shredded the tissue in her hand, wrapping it around her index finger.

    "Do you want to go to jail and get blamed for all of this?"

    Jonah couldn''t answer.

    "I didn''t want to come here to have to save you from yourself," Bay continued. "But I guess I am." She sounded sad and angry at the same time. "Don''t you have anything to say that''s not a false confession?"

    "I''m sorry," Jonah said. "I had to."

    "No, you didn''t."

    "It would be better for everyone if I took the blame."

    "I can''t imagine what could cause you to say that."

    "Zach would make a better aquatics head than I would. And Kyle is just a kid."

    "You''re wrong on both counts." Bay paused. "And even if you weren''t, you''re worth a hundred thousand times what they are."

    "Thanks for thinking so," Jonah said.

    "You want to throw your whole future away for them? Everything you have?"

    And Jonah couldn''t help but say, "What future?"

    "Jesus, Jonah," Bay said, breathless. "You want to move to the desert, you want to graduate, you want to get away from here. You told me yourself."

    "None of that''s going to happen, though. It''s just..." Dreams that she had to keep herself getting through every horrible day. But she didn''t say that out loud.

    "Of course it''s not going to happen if you send yourself to jail for something you didn''t do!" Bay was loud, and when she stopped yelling, the sound of her taking a couple harsh breaths filled the room. "Besides..."

    "What?"

    "I thought you cared about me."

    And that made Jonah look up at her, to see the twisted expression on Bay''s face, the kind of pathetic, kicked puppy look that she had taken on, with her hair all falling around her face.

    "I do," Jonah said.

    "Then why the hell do you want to throw that away?"

    Jonah couldn''t answer that question, and she didn''t get a chance to, because Amanda emerged from the back room, along with Andover, and gave a thumbs up.

    "Alright," Andover said, rubbing his eyes. "I''m not going to keep the three of you here. I would advise you to not leave the state, for the time being."

    "Wasn''t planning on it," Amanda said.

    Jonah just silently nodded.

    "Go home. Get some sleep. If I need additional information from you, I''ll contact you in the morning."

    Andover watched silently as the three women left, moving with varying degrees of both energy and enthusiasm.

    The cool night air once again hit Jonah, and she felt for a moment like she was drowning in it. She stared around herself, at the yellow halos of streetlights, at the way the stars lay half-masked by clouds in the sky, at the way that Bay''s dark hair glinted when she passed directly under the spotlight.

    "We going home?" Amanda asked, disentangling her bike from the other two with a crashing sound that broke the chorus of bugs.

    "Yeah," Bay said. "Come on, Jonah."

    Jonah grabbed her bike as in a daze, and merely followed behind Bay and Amanda, heading to Amanda''s house first. Amanda didn''t even say so much as goodbye as she abandoned her bike around the front of her house and vanished inside, leaving just Bay and Jonah.

    "I''ll bike you home," Bay said.

    "It''s fine," Jonah replied. "I can go by myself."

    "No, really," Bay insisted.

    It wasn''t that much of a fight, and Jonah kicked off, down the streets, to the slight outskirts of town where her rather rickety house stood. All the lights were off, and the overgrown front yard looked menacing and dirty.

    "Are you going to be okay?" Bay asked, when they stopped.

    Jonah leaned on one foot, half on the bike and half off. The streetlights were far away here, so it was mostly the moon that lit Bay, casting her as a statue cut out of the darkness.

    "I''m fine," Jonah said.

    "You aren''t acting fine."

    "I''m sorry. This isn''t going how I planned."

    "That''s because your plan was stupid," Bay snapped.

    "Sorry," Jonah apologized again.

    Bay sighed. She reached out her arm, but she wasn''t quite close enough to touch Jonah, so she let it drop. "Don''t do anything else crazy, okay? I can''t take it."

    "You shouldn''t have let me drag you into this."

    "I''m gonna go home before I say something that I regret, okay?" Bay said. "You should probably sleep on this and do the same."

    "Okay."

    "Goodnight, Jonah," Bay said. Even though she was clearly beyond frustrated, there was still an affection in her voice that caused Jonah to want to cry again. She wondered how permanently she had messed things up with Bay, with herself, with everything. It all felt horrible, and she wanted to sleep for a thousand years.

    "Night, Bay," she said. She wanted to call after Bay as she biked away down the street, tell her something else, that she was sorry again, or that she loved her, maybe, but she couldn''t fight past the block in her throat, and Bay vanished down the street, tiny form on silver bike disappearing into the darkness.

    Jonah headed into her own house, leaning the bike against the outside wall, and fumbling her way through her dark and cluttered house until she found her couch. She collapsed onto it, fully dressed, and stared sleeplessly up at the dark ceiling above her, the occasional car passing by on the road outside casting their headlights'' eerie shadows onto the ceiling. She thought that she wouldn''t, couldn''t, ever sleep, but then sleep overcame her, pulling her down into the sea, or worse, into the thick mud of Arcadis Park.

 Chapter Sixteen - Benson, Arizona

    Bay wasn''t that surprised when Jonah didn''t show up to carpool to work the next morning. Not being surprised didn''t mean that she wasn''t disappointed, and that disappointment (and the waiting on someone who clearly wasn''t coming) made her late for work. She didn''t have time to take the long route to the park, following the roads all the way, so, once again, Bay abandoned her bike in the dirt on the edge of the woods that ringed Arcadis. She emerged several minutes later and out of breath in the back side of the park.

    The place was weirdly empty. Completely empty. The sky was heavy with grey, low clouds, but that didn''t mean that the park should be deserted, especially not on a Saturday. Mr. Calvin wouldn''t close the place without a torrential downpour, and that certainly wasn''t the case. She hadn''t gotten an allhands email telling her that the place was closed, either.

    Still, the sheer emptiness of the park made her feel like she was walking through a dream. Just to check, she pinched herself, felt the pinch, and continued on towards the front, looking all around for any signs of life. The only things around were squirrels who ran away as she passed and the ever-present whine of the cicadas.

    As she passed the normal pool, someone yelled out to her.

    "Stop! What are you doing?"

    Bay skidded to a halt, looking all around for the source of the voice. It wasn''t immediately apparent, but then the person spoke again, and Bay identified that they were standing atop the changing rooms. "How did you get in here?"

    The speaker was a police officer, a young man with a beard and short cropped hair. He seemed distinctly unpleasant, and Bay had a bad feeling in her stomach about the day.

    "I work here," Bay said. The man stood on the edge of the building and looked down at her.

    "How did you get in?" he asked again.

    "I came in through the back, like I always do."

    "Stay right where you are. I''m going to escort you out through the front."

    "But��" Bay began to protest, wanting to say that her bike was in the back, but the man disappeared down the ladder. He emerged about thirty seconds later, and glared at Bay.

    "This place is under investigation," he said. "You shouldn''t be here."

    "Sorry," Bay said, just to get him to stop talking to her. He walked her towards the front gates, and there the noise of people was apparent. Bay could pick out the strains of voices of staff members she knew, and the sound of Mr. Calvin yelling, as well as a general hubbub of guest voices.

    Bay was forced to hop the turnstile that let people into the park to get out, as there were people leaning against the edit doors, preventing Bay from exiting. Satisfied that she was outside, the police officer turned back and left to return to whatever his duty had been.

    "What''s going on?" Bay asked, spotting Genesis in the crowd and heading towards her. Since Genesis manned the information desk, Bay figured she''d have more information than random other lifeguards around.

    "Police were here before I got here," Genesis said, pointing out the cruisers in the parking lot, some with their lights going. "They blocked the entrance and said the place was under investigation. Mr. Calvin''s over there yelling at them."

    "Is the park going to open?" Bay asked.

    "I dunno. You''d have to ask them."

    Bay had absolutely no intention of drawing further police attention to herself, or the attention of Mr. Calvin. She was slightly worried about Jonah, though, as police being here and Jonah not being here were a worrying thread. If Andover had changed his mind and decided to arrest her... The thought was unpleasant.

    "Hey, Genesis, are we getting paid to stand around here, or can I go home?" Tom asked, leaning against the entrance turnstile.

    "I don''t know, you''d have to ask Mr. Calvin," Genesis said. "Why do people think that I have these answers?"

    "Because you work at the front desk," Bay said, then pushed past Genesis towards where Mr. Calvin was yelling at a police officer.

    The woman taking the brunt of his anger seemed mostly bored with it. "Where''s Andover?" Mr. Calvin asked. "I want to talk to him."

    "Officer Andover is not on duty right now. I''d be happy to take a message for him."

    "I don''t want to talk to the human equivalent of a voice mail. I want someone to explain to me why exactly you are obstructing access to my park. I have paying customers here."

    Mr. Calvin was perhaps optimistic in saying that, because most people seemed to be driving into the lot, observing the police presence, and turning tail and driving away as fast as they could. Bad business to have police close down your waterpark.

    "Mr. Calvin, you have seen our warrant," the woman said, sounding like she had already said this about a hundred times.

    Bay decided she didn''t want to be directly in Mr. Calvin''s line of fire, so she sidled along the fence away from him, back towards the group of staff, bunched up and talking, clearly enjoying their non-work, but also grumbling and asking if they could go home and go back to bed. It was rather reminiscent of the couple times that Bay had been in a lecture hall and the professor had been late-- people wondering what their actual obligation to stay in class was, and considering if they were likely to get in trouble if they left. If the prof doesn''t show up in fifteen, we''re legally allowed to leave. If the cops don''t let us open the doors soon, Mr. Calvin has to pay us for the day AND we can go home and sleep. It seemed too good to be true.

    Amanda was there, looking more exhausted than her usual blase attitude. "You look wiped," Bay said, coming over to her.

    "No thanks to you," Amanda said.

    "Have Kyle or Zach contacted you?"

    "Literally what makes you think that they would?"

    Bay shrugged. "You were dating one of them, and friends with them."

    "I broke up with Kyle, in case you don''t remember that."

    "I know, I just wasn''t sure if you were actually serious."

    "Why wouldn''t I be serious?"

    "I wasn''t sure that you ever take things seriously."

    Amanda had enough energy in her to chuckle. "You got me there."

    "So you haven''t heard from them?"

    "Were you not listening, or is your brain just broken?"

    "Okay, okay," Bay said, backing off.

    "Is Jonah around?"

    "I haven''t seen her."

    "Did they arrest her?" Amanda whispered, nodding at the cops milling around.

    "I somehow doubt it."

    "She always shows up to work, though."

    "Maybe Mr. Calvin told her that the place was closed."

    "Hah. Maybe. Are you going to try to talk to her?" Amanda asked.

    Bay scuffed her foot on the asphalt, scattering a couple pebbles out into the parking lot. "I don''t know."

    "She was being really stupid."

    "Yeah," Bay said. "I don''t know how I feel about that."

    "I''m pissed at her."

    "You didn''t seem that invested in the whole thing."

    "I can be pissed and disinterested at the same time," Amanda said. "Especially if it''s, like, two in the morning."

    "I suppose so."

    "Are you mad at her?"

    "I don''t know," Bay said again. "She was the one who was going to suffer for it, so it''s not like I can say she was trying to hurt other people, so, like, do I have actual justification to be mad at her?"Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

    "Well, you did spend a ton of effort in investigating the whole thing, and she was about to throw that away because Zach asked her nicely, so, yeah."

    "You''re right," Bay said. But that wasn''t the real reason she felt, not precisely angry, more like sad, at Jonah. It was part of it, perhaps, but it was by far not the foremost or only thing. Jonah had claimed she had no future. What about Bay?

    Amanda and Kyle hadn''t lasted, clearly. So where did that leave the summer''s other couple? Bay stared up at the sky, thick with clouds, and the bright point of the sun behind the clouds, until it began to hurt.

    "Do you think they''re going to catch Zach and Kyle?" Amanda asked.

    "Probably," Bay said, but she wasn''t really paying that much attention to the question, or putting much thought into her answer. Kyle and Zach would get caught eventually. There weren''t that many places they could go and remain undetected, if there were warrants out for their arrest. It would be pretty hard for them to get money, and their parents would be looking for them, too, and didn''t they both have colleges to get back to in the fall? If they didn''t end up in jail, that was. Bay wondered what would happen, but she didn''t think about it too hard. Her own future, and Jonah''s, they weighed more heavily on her now than Kyle and Zach''s.

    "Think they''re gonna go to jail?" Amanda continued.

    "They didn''t actually kill anyone," Bay said. "I don''t know." She kept this all to a whisper, because she didn''t want the nearby staff, who almost certainly hadn''t learned about the drama, to hear. "You didn''t tell anyone what happened, right?"

    "Hah. No."

    "Good. Wait until the police deal with it."

    "If you insist."

    "I do."

    "Do you think that they''re going to open the park?"

    "Amanda, why do you think that I have the answers to any of these questions?" Bay asked, growing slightly annoyed with her.

    "If you''re going to be pissy about it, I''ll go talk to someone else," Amanda said. "I''m just asking for your OPINION."

    "Fine by me."

    Amanda huffed and walked away, leaving Bay rather alone in the crowd. The atmosphere was weirdly relaxed, or at least Bay was. Having solved the mystery, for real, beyond a doubt in her mind, and feeling like someone was taking care of it now, it allowed some part of her to unclench for the first time in over a week. It was a tension that she only now consciously realized that she''d been holding inside of her. She pulled out her phone.

    She hesitated.

    What would be the point of trying to call Jonah right now? Would it accomplish anything? Would it make Bay feel any better?

    She stared through the chinks in the fence at empty Arcadis, watching the morning sun wash the structure of the Ferris Wheel in a greyish yellow glow. What had she come here for? What was she staying for?

    She hadn''t come to work at Arcadis just to make money, or just to have something to do over the long summer. She had wanted to make friends. And she had, in Jonah. Tracing that thought back, to just the beginning of this summer, Bay realized that she didn''t want to be standing there, waiting for the park to reopen. There were more important things than being beholden to a crummy job or a solved mystery.

    She started walking away, heading through the parking lot. Behind her, the other staff loudly commented on it, wondering if they could leave too. Bay didn''t care if they followed her. She was going, at least for now.

    She walked down the parking lot until she reached the place where the fence curved in, and she followed it down until she reached the long path where she had stashed her bike. From there, it was a quick ride to town. The sun was peeking out through the clouds. The bugs were buzzing their tuneless noise.

    Bay retraced her path from the night before, following the roads down past the police station (how few cars there were there, since they all seemed to be at Arcadis!), down towards the edge of town.

    Jonah''s house looked even shabbier in the light, and there was only Jonah''s car in the driveway. Bay leaned her bike against the crumbling siding of the house and rang the doorbell. She waited, somewhat impatiently for a minute, then rang again. Rude, but she wasn''t going to go away. Jonah had dragged her into this, perhaps, but now Bay was in it, and wasn''t going to give up on her that easily.

    Jonah answered the door, wearing a long pyjama tunic, with hair that was mussed from sleep. She held the door open wordlessly for Bay to enter, and Bay followed her inside. The house was a mess, and coming apart at the seams. Jonah led her into the kitchen, where a half eaten bowl of cereal sat surrounded by old mail and random objects: dishes; a discarded sweatshirt; some high school textbooks that had no business being there, considering school was not in session. Jonah scooped up an armful of this garbage wholesale and deposited it on top of other things on the side of the table. Some of the junk mail slipped off the table and onto the floor. Jonah didn''t bother picking it up. She just gestured for Bay to sit at the now clear spot. "Cereal?" she asked. "It''s all I''ve got."

    "No, I ate," Bay said, feeling intensely awkward. Jonah sat back down and continued to eat her own cereal. Bay watched her, unsure of what else to do. The sun was streaming in through the kitchen windows. "Did you forget to set an alarm?" Bay asked.

    "I think I''m quitting," Jonah said. She stirred the cereal around. It appeared to be extremely soggy. "What about you?"

    "Police shut the park down. I don''t know when Mr. Calvin''s gonna get it reopened. So I decided I didn''t want to spend my whole day there."

    "Smart."

    "Is it?"

    They lapsed into silence and Jonah finished her cereal. "Are you mad at me?" Jonah asked.

    "If I was that pissed, I wouldn''t be here." She looked around the room, at all the mess. She was tempted to say that she understood now why Jonah was so invested in her work at Arcadis, and in getting away, if this was what she had to come home to, but she bit her lip and decided that would be meaner than it needed to be. Jonah probably didn''t need anything like that said aloud. It hovered unsaid but mutually understood in the air between them.

    "Why are you here, then?" Jonah asked.

    "I wanted to make sure you were okay."

    "Why?"

    "Why do you think, idiot?" Bay snapped.

    Jonah offered her a wan smile. "You just can''t stop yourself from getting pulled into my messes, can you?"

    "Shut it," Bay said, but she smiled a little bit. "I might let you drag me down, but I''m trying to pull you up. Every action has an equal opposite reaction, or whatever."

    "It''s not worth it," Jonah said. "I don''t think it''s possible."

    "It would help if you weren''t so gloomy about it."

    "Can''t help it."

    "Yeah, you can," Bay said. "Look. I, for one, am glad you''re not in jail."

    Jonah gave a kind of half sigh, then looked across at Bay. A ray of sunlight fell across her eyes, causing her to blink and lean back to escape. "Yeah. I probably should be too. I don''t really know. I guess I was being crazy."

    "A little, yeah."

    "I really did throw the shears in the woods though."

    "How?"

    "I stole them out of Kyle''s car."

    Bay laughed. "It would have been hilarious if he''d come back to find you robbing him, and you''d be like, ''let me dispose of the evidence, asshole.''"

    "I really don''t know how he would have handled it."

    "You''d have been the one with the shears at the time," Bay said with a grin. "You could''ve just, you know." She made a giant snipping motion.

    "I really don''t think they''re that effective as a weapon," she said, but she was smiling now. "Where do you think they went?"

    "No idea," Bay said. "But I doubt they''ll get far."

    "Why not?"

    "They''re gonna get found," she said. "I''m sure the police are after them."

    "Still," Jonah said, and she had a wistful look on her face. "Might be nice to get away."

    "You''ve got too much of your brain wrapped up in Kyle and Zach''s troubles. Forget about them. It''s over."

    "I''ll try."

    "Are you really quitting Arcadis?"

    "I don''t know," Jonah said. "I want to. But I also don''t want to. I''m probably going to get fired anyway, just for bringing trouble down on Mr. Calvin."

    "He can''t fire you. Zach''s fled the country or whatever. You don''t have a replacement lined up."

    "He''ll just pick whatever joker happens to be standing in front of him at the time. You want my job?"

    "Oh, hell no," Bay said. Jonah just laughed. "Before you make any hasty decisions, or preemptively fire yourself, maybe we should go find out what actually is going on with the park."

    "Nothing good. It''s literally never anything good."

    "Do you want to know, or do you not care?"

    "I want to not care, if that makes sense."

    "Yeah, it does."

    Jonah stood up and dropped her bowl in the sink. "If I do get fired or quit or whatever, I don''t know what I''m gonna do for the rest of the summer. It''s not like there''s a lot of places around here that''ll hire someone for like, two months."

    "You could take the summer off and do something fun."

    "And be stuck around here?" Jonah asked. "No, thanks."

    Bay considered this for a moment. "You could leave."

    "And go where?"

    "Road trip. Go west, young man."

    "Hah. I don''t think life works like that."

    Bay rested her chin on her hands, arms propped up on the table. "Why shouldn''t it? You''re an adult. Adults are allowed to take summer road trips."

    "I don''t deserve fun or nice things. Besides, I don''t have the cash. I won''t exactly be flush with it if I''m not working anymore."

    "Don''t want to drive out west to see the desert?" Bay asked. "Get yourself a cute little cactus?"

    "Not by myself, no."

    "Oh, you''re inviting me?" Bay asked. Jonah stared down at her. It was like her face was showing her exact thoughts as she tried to process what Bay was saying, running through confusion to humor to anxiety and back to confusion again.

    "Let''s go see what Arcadis is up to, before you say anything else silly," Jonah said. "Be right back. I gotta get dressed."

    She vanished down the hall, leaving Bay alone with the dripping of the sink, until she returned a minute later, wearing her staff shirt.

    "That''s probably unnecessary," Bay said. "I doubt they''re open."

    "We just have to match, don''t we?" Jonah asked, pointing at Bay.

    "I''d prefer to match in something less ugly. Orange is not my color."

    "I think you look good regardless," Jonah said, and Bay blushed a little. "Ready to go?"

    "Sure."

    Jonah held up her keys, and they got into her car. "Should I put my bike in the back?" Bay asked, though Jonah had already started the engine.

    "It''s fine," Jonah said. "I can bring it to you later."

    "Okay."

    Jonah was about to put the car into drive, but Bay said, "Wait."

    "What''s up?" Jonah asked, alarmed.

    Bay hesitated a moment, then twisted in her seat, leaning towards Jonah. "I''m not mad at you, you know. Not really."

    "I know," Jonah said. "But you probably should be."

    Bay grabbed Jonah''s wrist, her hand that was reaching for the shift stick. "Maybe we both just need to figure out how to relax and enjoy the rest of the summer."

    "Maybe." Jonah turned to look at her, and Bay tried to make what she wanted clear in her expression. Jonah reached over and tucked her hair behind her ear. Bay shivered at the touch, and closed her eyes.

    Kiss me, stupid, she thought. And Jonah did.