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.

----------------------------------------

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.

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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.

----------------------------------------

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?"