Cameron

For seven years, Cam pretended she hardly knew Avery Mathis.

It was a pretty good lie, palatable solely because of the period they'd lived near each other. Cam interacted with many acquaintances—classmates, research assistants, rangers—for a year before promptly forgetting they ever existed.

Avery was just another passerby in the current of Cam's life. A pretty face. A hot-minute crush. Someone who would have been fodder for bar conversations if the circumstances had played out differently. "Hey, you know that famous YouTuber, Avablade? I had the dorm next to her in college. Wild, right? Yeah, I know... so hot."

But Cam hadn't bothered fine-tuning these would-have moments. She'd be dead before she casually said that someone was sohot. And to boil Avery down to her physical parts meant Cam wasn't better than any other fuckboy fan. Maybe she wasn't.

The start of the 2010 fall term settled over San José State like a sweaty towel. It was 102 degrees the day Cam moved back into her dorm, and according to the listserv, the air-conditioning in the wing remained in a semipermanent state of technicians are investigating.

Her roommate, Brittani-with-an-I, was best friends with the girl in the room across the hall, Lyndsey-with-two-Ys. Brittani liked to escape the heat at night by going to parties on the lawns of fraternity houses. Cam didn't blame her, though she'd rather lie on the pavement in the middle of the day than attend a frat party.

Plus, Cam was older than the other sophomores thanks to month-long backpacking trips and the corresponding ton of weed. She was old enough to buy alcohol, which Brittani knew. And if Brittani knew something, then the entire school did.

So in the evenings, Cam stayed back in her roasting dorm and studied.

During the second week of the semester, she discovered a crisp airflow in the hall, and kept the door to the room propped open until Brittani stumbled back at midnight. The night after, as Cam sat on her bed with her computer and a bag of pretzels, she asked Brittani to leave the door open as she left.

"Just ooonnnneee time, Avery. That's all I'm asking. It'll be fun! I'll stay with you the whole time, promise."

Cam looked up from her online calculus homework. Lyndsey stood in the hall sporting platform sandals and a kimono jacket. She held a half-finished iced Starbucks Something in her hand as she talked to someone through her open dorm door, though Cam was at the wrong angle to see what this Avery person looked like.

"I'm behind on work," said Avery. "Maybe if I catch up—"

Lyndsey gave an exasperated sigh. "That's what you said last night."

As Brittani and Lyndsey left, Avery yelled after them, "Well, if you keep going to these parties at the rate you are now, I'll have plenty of chances, won't I?"

She sounded like the droll and sexy Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a movie Cam had caught the week before school started. Avery surpassed even those high expectations when she swung into Cam's doorway minutes later.

Her blonde hair was twisted into a knot on the top of her head. She wore a loose tank top—on it a bloody, gross-looking man with a sword, and a diamond for a head—and a pink sports bra beneath.

She pointed a hitchhiker's thumb down the hall. "You mind if I crank up the AC?"

Cam tried to never stare at pretty girls for more than a couple of seconds. Her androgyny was hard enough to navigate without someone accusing her of being a leering butch. Going to college—a California college at that—hadn't shielded her from the stereotype. At least things were going better than they had in high school.

But Avery's question caught her off guard, and Cam blankly stared at her. "Up?"

"Umm, yes, I believe the word ‘up' came out of my mouth, though I can repeat myself if that would be best." Avery's expression was frustratingly vacant. Cam couldn't tell if she was irritated or trying to be funny.

"I thought it was broken," Cam said.

"Oh," Avery chuckled. "Oh, no. They just tell us that because the budget got cut again and the admins are finding sneaky ways to save money."

Cam raised her eyebrows. This was news. "Are you serious? I'm taking out a shit-ton of loans. I'm going to have to sell a kidney to recover from debt. The least they could give me is air-conditioning until October."

Avery grinned and then wrinkled her nose. "Tuition here isn't that bad."

"It is when I'm going to be in school for the next seven years."

This seemed to pique her interest. "PhD?"

"If I'm motivated enough."

"Seven years is a long time. You're gonna need to learn all the tricks to be that committed." She waved her hand. "I'll show you."

Cam hesitated for a second before shutting her laptop and sliding from the bed. She followed Avery down a hall that smelled like old Chinese food and BO.

"What's your last name?" Avery asked.

Cam thought it was a weird question, but responded anyway. "Yarrow."

"Dr. Yarrow... very nice ring to it. And your first?"

"Cam."

Avery tossed a look over her shoulder. "Short for something?"

Cam suppressed the urge to smile, hyperaware of how much she was enjoying Avery's prying. "Cameron."

"Cameron." Avery hummed. "That's pretty. Can I call you Cameron?"

Pretty. No one ever said pretty as a gut reaction to her first name. They said like a boy or like Cameron Diaz.

Cam scratched the back of her head and tugged her hair. "Uhh, sure."

"Great." Avery stopped in front of a dusty vent at the end and carefully lifted the lip, cringing as the hinges squeaked. "Just gotta make sure we set it back before the dorm super clocks in tomorrow morning. He's supposed to get in at eight thirty, but he's always late." She reached into the vent. Cam ducked her head beneath the cover to watch Avery fiddle with a small wiry thermostat, its face reading 87 degrees.

Avery jammed her thumb on the down button until the number 72 blinked back. A cold gust of wind hit Cam's face, and her knees almost gave out from sheer relief.

"There." Avery lowered the cover and turned toward Cam. "Now you know my most valuable secret, and you don't even know my name." She winked.

"Or do I, Avery?" Dumb joke, Cam immediately thought as she leaned against the wall. "I heard Lyndsey say it."

Avery smiled at her.

Cam cleared her throat and nodded at Avery's tank top. "Who's that?"

Avery pulled out the bottom of her shirt and glanced down at the silk screen print. "Pyramid Head." She dropped her shirt. "He's my boyfriend."

"He's ugly."

Avery laughed in surprise. "He's misunderstood is all."

Cam waited for clarification, but Avery didn't offer it.

"It's nice meeting you, Dr. Cameron Yarrow."

Cam flushed. "You're gonna jinx it."

Avery waved in dismissal and placed her hand on her hip, leaning against the wall to mirror Cam. She offered a delicate shrug. "Why believe in jinxes when you can believe in manifestation instead?"

Cam paced the floor of the cabin kitchen as she clutched Siena's near-empty Nalgene. Even as the exhaustion settled in, her body refused to sit still.

Siena watched her from the dining table. "Why didn't you tell anyone you knew her?"

"Because." Cam combed her fingers through her hair and tugged. "I'm an asshole who is terrible with that kind of grief stuff. Admitting we were close meant I'd have to mourn her. And now..." She cast a glance at Avery's destroyed bag lying in front of the door.

Avery had wanted Cam's attention, and Cam had kept pushing her away.

"This is karma. I fucked up, and now she's haunting us. Or something is."

"You don't believe in karma," Siena gently said. "Or ghosts. And telling someone you knew her after she disappeared wouldn't have changed the outcome."

Cam shook her head. "You don't know that."

"I do know you aren't being punished." When Cam didn't agree with her, Siena continued. "Were you close enough to her to know something the police didn't? Were you withholding information?"

"No," Cam replied. "I wanted her found as much as anyone."

"Did you sleep with her?"

Cam barked a bitter laugh to hide her discomfort. "Why the interrogation?"

"I'm your best friend," Siena said, lifting her pinkie. "It's just a question."

Cam sighed, releasing her hair and dropping her hand. "Sorry. No, I never slept with her. She kissed me, once. It's..." Cam quickly knocked the thought of that night out of her brain. "Not a good memory."

Siena didn't press further, which Cam appreciated as she leaned against the counter and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She despised how vulnerable the past few hours made her feel, and not just because she couldn't remember half of it. There were too many reasons she never wanted to think about Avery Mathis again. Hell, she'd almost backed out of the Alpenglow project when they got funded. Even years later, the thought of reentering Deadswitch made her stomach churn.

But the biggest reason she never wanted to think about Avery was that the past didn't care about Cam's guilt. She'd searched these woods for Avery once before. It had been seven years. She was gone. "I'm not expecting to find her alive, for the record."

"But some closure would be nice. I know it doesn't feel like it, but finding her bag is a good sign, even if it makes little sense. Nothing makes sense right now." Siena pushed her chair back and stood. "Something's wrong with this forest. I found a cabin at the end of a tunnel. You were transported down the mountain and don't remember it. Who's to say Avery and those other hikers didn't experience something similar?"

"Siena..." False hope ached worse than grief. "Hundreds of bodies have never been recovered from public land. Hundreds."

"I'm not saying she's alive," Siena argued. "All I'm saying is maybe her disappearance is more complicated than anyone thought."

Before Cam could respond, something thudded across the porch. Cam jumped as the door flew open and Emmett stumbled into the cabin. Another person clung to his neck, and Emmett held them up while their feet dragged across the floor.

Siena shouted Emmett's name and hurried toward him, but hesitated when Emmett lowered the person to the floor. Cam spotted a mess of facial hair beneath a mop of matted graying locks. The man wore an ensemble of animal skins and filth, and she could smell his fecal, salty stench all the way from where she stood.

He finally looked up. Cam dropped the Nalgene. It hit the ground and rolled toward Isaac.

"Holy shit," she whispered.