As if answering her thought, the driver-side door opened, someone climbed in, and the car tilted almost imperceptibly. There was a moment while the driver adjusted his seat and probably checked the rearview mirror. It had to be a he—maybe one of the dads, she thought—because his movements were abrupt and masculine in some undefinable way, definitely not like a mom’s movements. It could be the man who had put on her seat belt, which might be worrying.
“Okay, kids, we’re about to set off,” he said. “It’ll be thirty to forty minutes before we get to the drop point.” He had a dry, deep voice, speaking louder than he needed to, as if wearing blindfolds made them deaf as well as blind, she thought. It definitely wasn’t the voice of Karl, who had been their leader all summer and who was supposed to be the Scout guide on this dropping. Was he one of the parent volunteers? “I’m Rutger and I’ll be driving you. Unfortunately, two Scout leaders from another group got sick and so some of the supervisors have been switched around, but we’ll be fine. Just settle in and try to see if you can figure out where we’re going. But don’t take off the masks, and obviously no talking.”
Karin tried to imagine what Rutger looked like, and the first picture that came into her head was Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner, that completely freaky movie Frank had made her watch a part of that one time. That white-blond villain with the terrifying blue eyes, shirtless, creepily muscular. Yeah, basically if that guy was driving them, they were all doomed.
“Give me a second to set the car’s GPS,” he said. “I’m going to put in my earbuds so I can listen to the driving directions and you won’t hear them. Just so you know.”
He turned on the engine, put the car in gear, and started off. But he didn’t get very far before it slowed. She felt it turn to the right and then suddenly jerk into reverse, heard the wheels crunching along gravel, backward. With her eyes covered, this felt more violent than it would if she had been able to see, she told herself. Within a moment, she heard the clutch move and the car jolt forward again.
She could hear the quiet ticking of the turn signal, and then the car swung to the left. They went a little distance before Rutger stopped and shifted into reverse. They rolled backward slowly, then jolted forward again. Was he lost or was he just a terrible driver? Karin knew that sometimes the leaders did this—made fake turns to disorient the kids so they wouldn’t know exactly where they were headed.
What the heck? She literally had no idea how to have a sense of direction when she was blindfolded anyway. She turned her face to the window and inclined her temple toward it, feeling the draft coming through the open slit at the top of the glass, which hissed quietly, like a garden snake. Sssssssssh.
Was it unusual that neither of the Scout leaders they’d trained with over the summer, Karl and Ilvy, was coming with them? Her stepdad and the other guide, whoever that was going to be, were supposed to follow in another car, filled with all the camping gear and cooking supplies for the overnight. She listened for the sound of that second car behind them but didn’t hear it. She had the instinct to turn around and look but realized that with the blindfold on it would be useless.
When Karin’s forehead touched the cold glass of the car window, her thoughts began to drift in a new direction. She thought of how she’d woken up that morning, at home in her bed, in the house she now shared with her mom and her stepdad, Martijn, and her two stepbrothers, who were only there sometimes.
The feeling she’d had that morning came back to her, lying there in bed and listening to the sounds downstairs of them fighting. They fought a lot these days—over what, Karin had no idea. Then she remembered what had finally roused her from her bed: the sound of something crashing in the kitchen downstairs. The sound of her stepfather cursing. And that strange sound after that—a very loud thud—that somehow had rippled through her entire body and made it convulse. That thud was no good, and then that eerie silence.
Chapter 2See You Again Tomorrow
Grace and Martijn stood arm in arm in front of the Scout Clubhouse, waving the kids off, even though that made no real sense. None of them could see anything. As soon as the car was out of sight, they let go and looked at one another, sizing each other up as one might a sparring partner. Then Grace silently picked up the rest of Karin’s equipment, sleeping bag, pillow, and rain tarp, and placed it in the back of the second car, an old Volkswagen.
Martijn would soon get into that car with Riekje, the sporty blond Scout leader, all of nineteen, who would be driving both of them to the camp, while Grace headed back to their house to have a much-needed night to herself. Glancing at the young woman, she felt only the quickest stab of jealous concern but almost immediately decided that if Martijn was into that whole scene, so be it. What she needed was a long bath and some time to catch up on the phone with her friends.
Grace gave the girl a wan smile, which was returned with an energetic leap in her direction and the sudden pumping of her hand.
“She’s going to love it,” Riekje said, perhaps misreading Grace’s weak smile as attachment anxiety. “The ones who are especially
