The Wild One by Colleen McKeegan

Author:Colleen McKeegan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

6

Then

“What do you think about this?” A can of shaving cream, its bubbly pink top popped off, was in Sarah’s hand.

“It’s perfect.” I held Catherine’s hairbrush above the sink as Sarah pressed down on the top of the Skintimate can, foamy gel snaking through the brush’s teeth and piling into a raspberry-smelling dollop. We smirked, our conspiratorial high giving us excited chills as we placed the sticky mess inside Catherine’s cubby, nestling the can next to her brush, covering our tracks, creating plausible deniability. It was just before dinner, our cabin empty, the other girls and Betsy already showered and waiting for Dan’s trumpet outside of the dining hall.

A few days earlier, I had stolen a cup from the kitchen. Sarah and I filled it with daddy longlegs, propping a book on top to block all the oxygen from entering. Daddy longlegs were always crawling in the corners of our cabin, their frail legs scaling our bunks. I wasn’t scared of them; girls at camp said their venom was toxic, but they were too small to bite humans. It was easy to underestimate them, to think they weren’t worth fearing. Even then I knew that creatures like that could still create harm if used in the right way. We picked each spider up with tenderness, knowing they were destined for something greater, dropping them into the glass until they were piled to the brim, twitching and writhing. I woke up early, before our cabin was coated in yolky sun, and I gave Sarah, snoozing above me, a shove. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, propping her head on the safety rail of her top bunk. “Do it,” she mouthed. I tiptoed toward Catherine’s bunk, cup in hand, and turned it upside down, the dead spiders scattering across her face, resting on her hair. An hour later, reveille played on speakers across camp, each of us slowly rolling out of bed.

“Oh my god, Catherine!” I shouted, everyone else except Sarah still in a half dream.

“What—” Catherine started to say, lying on her back, but stopped. One of the spiders fell into her mouth when she opened it. She sat up, spitting it across her bed.

“Ew!” Sarah screamed. “You’re covered in spiders!”

The whole cabin filled with excitement. Even Betsy jumped out of her bed. Disgusted screams bounced from bunk to bunk, Sydney curling up in a ball in hers, Larry grabbing her pillow and leaning over her top bunk to whack Catherine’s face, Betsy trying to calm everyone, Barrett yelling that they were harmless, to be careful, to not kill them. She didn’t realize they were already dead. “Get them off!” everyone, all at once, seemed to shout. Sarah and I couldn’t stop laughing, the whole scene too much.

“Maybe if you showered more, Wagner, you wouldn’t be such a spider magnet,” Sarah said, Catherine pulling the last spider from her hair, her expression blank as she dropped it on the ground and crushed it with her socked foot.

“That’s enough, Sarah,” Betsy said, the only counselor who saw through Sarah’s performances.

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