Page 17 of The Note

“Already done,” Kelsey said. “I hopped into an Uber first thing this morning since it was definitely my fault we ended up leaving it there.”

“Oh wow, I’m way behind, aren’t I?”

“What time did you finally come inside last night?” Lauren asked.

“I’m not really sure.” She was about to mention that she’d thought she heard Kelsey in her room when she went to bed, but decided against it.

“We felt terrible leaving you,” Lauren said, “but we could not get you to move. We even tried sliding the lounge chair, but you definitely vetoed that idea.”

May could tell from the way they were acting that there was more to the story. “Yeah? Wow, I’m really sorry.” She blinked away a hazy recollection of Kelsey grabbing her arm. “I got mad at you for trying to get me to go to bed?”

“I think you were just tired,” Lauren said.

“No,” Kelsey said, laughing, “you were definitely mad. Like, hella mad. I’ve never seen you get that mad.”

Lauren shot her a corrective look across the table, because they all knew that wasn’t literally true. They had seen the video.

“Was I, like, yelling at you?” May asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Lauren said. “We were all overserved.”

“It does matter,” May said. “You guys know what happened before and the reasons why. I’ve been working really hard to get right. If I’m still acting out like that, I need to know.”

Lauren reached over and held her hand. “Sweetie, I promise you it wasn’t like the video, okay?”

Kelsey looked mortified as she realized what they were talking about. “Oh my god,” she said, covering her mouth, “no, not like that at all. I was only kidding. It was just kind of funny because I’ve never seen you that loopy. You kept talking about the water and how you couldn’t leave the water and we were all jerks if we didn’t stay and look at the water. Water, water, water. We finally gave up because it was clear you weren’t in any condition to go anywhere.”

“And, just to be clear, I did check on you,” Lauren said. “My pea-sized bladder can only stay asleep so long. The first time I got up, you were already in bed. I was going to open your door to make sure you were okay, but then I heard you snoring, safe and sound and sawing some big old logs.”

Kelsey pumped her hands in the air. “Moe was in the hou-ouse.”

They burst out laughing, and May covered her face with her hands. “Sorry, it’s so embarrassing.”

“Awww, but we love Moe,” Kelsey said.

Jenny West was the one who came up with the nickname at camp when they realized that the usually quiet, petite, polite May snored like an old fat man if she drank too much.Shhh, Moe, you’re snoring … Moe, roll over on your side.And in the morning, she’d hear all the details about all of her gross Moe noises.

But this morning, May was less interested in whatever disgusting snorts and rumbles Moe had made last night than about her insistence on staying outside near the water. She remembered now. She had been dreaming about Marnie Mann and the night she drowned.

11

It was the summer after May graduated and went back to Wildwood, where counselors had to work the entire camp term except for two designated “Off-Campus Nights.” Of course May and Kelsey had scheduled their free nights to be together.

For the first, May’s mother had “surprised” her by flying into Portland for the weekend. Instead of spending the night barhopping with Kelsey and a bunch of their Harvard and BC friends who had come up from Boston for the occasion, she had taken a sightseeing bus tour with her mother, followed by dinner at a Cantonese restaurant Mayhad researched online, only to have her mom complain that it was “froufrou” and “overpriced.”

When the second Off-Campus Night came around, May preempted any further visits by making clear to her mother she was going camping with her friends for the night.You’re taking a break from camping to go camping?It was a twenty-minute argument that ended only after May lied and said there would be no boys, even though she was a grown woman who could sleep with whoever she wanted, but of course she didn’t say that.

Nate had brought Ecstasy for the two of them, having heard from friends who had taken it at Tufts that it was the best high—and the best sex—they ever had. After two months of celibacy, May was more than game for the adventure. But they made the mistake of mixing it with alcohol. Instead of spending the night making out and feeling each other up as planned, Nate kept wandering around the woods, and May wound up blacking out at the tail end of the night. She was so wasted she didn’t even remember crawling alone into their tent to crash. She was horrified the next day to realize Nate could barely sleep because of her snoring. It was the first time any man had witnessed Moe in action.

What made that Off-Campus Night traumatic to this day wasn’t her failed drug-fueled sex experiment with Nate, though. It was Marnie’sdrowning. Her boyfriend had been at the campsite too. By the time May woke up the next morning, word had spread that he couldn’t find her.

May was the one who insisted they needed to call 911. She had also called Lauren, who had notified the camp owners, who contacted Marnie’s parents. By midafternoon, a full-blown search was underway. Marnie’s body wasn’t found in the lake until the following morning.

Until that night, May and Kelsey had never really had to deal with any serious responsibilities. As burdened as May often felt by expectations, the reality was that she was sheltered. School, piano lessons, camp. Scholarship and loan applications could be stressful, but they were normal kid things. Even once they were at camp as counselors, they were there to camp, too, while providing some gentle oversight to the kind of well-behaved kids who tended to go to art camps.

Marnie’s death changed all that.

Until that final summer, May had despised Marnie. In hindsight, maybe the two of them were too similar, both of them pianists and A-plus students. Marnie was admittedly the more talented musician, but her smugness about that fact could be insufferable.

---