Crystal had no memory whatsoever of the night she'd gone with the others to try to catch the resorters in the act--nothing beyond following Kevin and Heather into the casino. The next thing she knew, she woke up at home, in her bed, the time gap disconcerting though not nearly so much so as the blood in her bed. She was unsure how she'd managed to soak through all her products until she realized she wasn't using any, that somehow during the night, she'd removed but not replaced anything, and the implications of that--whatever might have happened in the time since, all the ways she might have embarrassed herself--horrified her.

The girl groaned. It'd leave a stain on the mattress, for sure. That frustrating what-do-I-do-first? feeling briefly overwhelmed her, but she ended up rolling her sheets and blankets into a ball and just leaving them while she walked awkwardly to the bathroom to shower and take care of herself.

Steam and hot water felt amazing. Crystal hadn't realized how much her body ached, how tired she was, until she got in there. She wasn't typically one for examining herself, unimpressed with and embarrassed by her nakedness as she was, but an impulse to glance down revealed that her lower stomach was marred with red splotches, almost as if she'd broken out in some sort of rash. Crystal rubbed at her skin and felt nothing out of the ordinary as far as itching or pain, but the color was unsettling, nonetheless, and it stretched across her waistline, disappeared in the curls below. Only when she left the shower and began to dress herself did Crystal realize that the redness was warm to the touch, as well; while the rest of her fair skin cooled, the rash (if that's what it was) remained fever-hot.

Crystal was perturbed, but there was no pain, so she chose not to tell anyone. What would she say, anyhow? She couldn't recall what she'd been doing the night before, and wouldn't her mother reprimand her for that? Surely it would go away on its own. If it worsened, she'd tell. That was how Crystal consoled herself, anyway, and once she was dressed and had scrubbed her mattress as much as was reasonable, she managed to forget the redness on her skin, because more pressing concerns lay before her: she was signed up to work the breakfast shift, and the clock was ticking.

Padding down the stairs, Crystal first made a stop in the laundry room to stuff her bedding in the washing machine and start it and then worked her way into the kitchen to begin rummaging about for peanut butter and jelly. She wasn't particularly hungry, but the dining hall workers weren't allowed to eat the food prepared for the resorters, and she knew she'd be starving within an hour and resentful of the people to whom she'd have to serve eggs benedict and omelets and parfaits.

Jess sauntered lazily through the kitchen, past Crystal, and into the den, where she turned on some cartoons. Tom had re-arrived the day before and taken his daughter out for lunch and mini-golf in Red Axe, and Crystal wanted to know how it'd gone (concerned as she was for her younger sister's well-being in light of her jack-in-the-box father), so she hastily returned jars and bread to their places and sat on the arm of the sofa, ignoring the television. "How was mini-golf?"

"Oh, fine."

"Who won?"

Jess looked at her for the first time since Crystal had come into the room, grinned mildly. "Duh, who do you think?"

"Yeah," Crystal returned her sister's smile. "Tom's not particularly athletic."

"He's kinda pathetic."

Crystal snorted, thought, lit up and returned, "Glad I don't share his genetics!"

The girls shared a laugh, and Crystal was happy as she ate her sandwich; everything felt all right, good, comfortable even. And there seemed to be an energy buzzing through her, humming beneath her inner organs. An image of things wet and red and full of glass bits hovered in her thoughts, but it vanished when Jess asked her a question.

"When did you get home?"

"What--last night?"

"Yeah. I woke up around three and went to see if you wanted to talk. I couldn't sleep."

"Three? In the morning? I wasn't . . ."

Jess raised an eyebrow at her sister's drifting. "Don't you know where you were?"

"Of course I do," Crystal responded so assertively that Jess leaned back a bit. "I mean . . . it was a party. At the resort."

"Until three?"

Crystal didn't want to admit that she didn't remember, that she had no idea what'd happened after she'd gone into that casino, what she'd done in there, how she'd gotten out of it eventually, and whether or not she'd put herself to bed. And then that splotchiness on her stomach returned to her thoughts.

"Jeremiah has to know," she said aloud, lifting her head from the slump it'd dipped into. "I have to get to work. I need to talk to him." Crystal stood up.

Jess grabbed her older sister's sleeve as she was about leave the room. "Hey, that--that guy--the one who works with you--"

Crystal was caught off guard. She narrowed one eye.

"The creep," Jess elaborated, "that one?"

Kevin. She meant Kevin. "What about him?"

"Is he always, you know . . . in there ?"

A frown crossed Crystal's features. "Where?"

"His, where he works--oh, nevermind. Sorry. I was just--"

"Did he say something to you? Is he following you around again?"

Jess's sudden exasperation made it clear she regretted bringing it up. The girl plopped around on the couch, away from her sister's protective glare, and turned up the volume a bit. Crystal got the message but ignored it.

"Jess, if he bothers you, let me know, all right?"

"Yeah, fine."

"I'm serious. Something's off with that guy."

"I said I will!"

Unconvinced but fraught with her own concerns, Crystal let it go and made it out the door in plenty of time to get to work early.

The beautiful morning was blue sky and bluer lake, balmy breeze and the gentle moisture of the lake air. The rows of shops and eateries along the main road were just waking up, small-town schedules being far more lax than those of broader, more impersonal municipalities. Smells of coffee and donuts wafted out of Murphy's bakery; a "Come in! We're open!" sign reluctantly turned in Good Ol' Days's window; Starboard sat in quietude, adamantly remaining closed until two even on a day like today. The public beach itself was idyllic in its people-free state, and Crystal biked past it all with more enthusiasm than she'd ever felt in her life. Why did everything exude such a glimmer? Why hadn't she ever appreciated the colors of all the buildings and the details Port Killdeer had put into making itself charming? Pots of flowers and old-timey lettering on the street signs, curvy metal pedestrian benches to match the regularly emptied trash cans, awnings over a variety of storefronts, lampposts and banners and all other manner of things and Crystal had just never noticed it before. Oh, it'd always been there,but somehow she appreciated it, now. She saw it. And she saw the pier in its hazy summer morning protrusion out over the lake, and she saw the fur of trees hugging the shoreline in the distance, and the marina some ways off with its sailboat stick-masts poking upward and the diamonds on the water and a small child with its tired coffee-drinking, sunglass-wearing mother on the playground and the seagulls pecking about the grass and the two clouds lounging up under the sun and the sparkle and emerald and azure and all of it and everything was so, so beautiful she could hardly stand it!

She pulled her brakes as she neared the entrance to the resort.

The man sat in his guard booth, but she hardly saw him; she was too absorbed by the resort road, the way it appeared to tunnel, the trees wrapping around it as if desirous of luring someone in, the road darkening and threading deeper into the forest, the sunshine piercing the leaves to blinding--

--and before she knew what was happening, the girl found herself on the ground, having tripped over her bike as she'd tried to get off it.

"There now, there." A kindly voice was over her; a hand extended. Crystal took it without wondering to whom it belonged, hearing it add, "No need to be afraid."

Embarrassed, the girl righted her bike and looked at the gray-mustached man next to her, the guard from the booth. She didn't recognize him; in fact, it was one of the oddities of the resort, that they brought in even their guard from outside of Port Killdeer. Who knew where the elderly man came from, but he was there every summer, and where he went in the evenings was anyone's guess. Surely he had a residence on resort property, and yet no summer employee had ever paid him enough attention to discover its whereabouts. Crystal looked from him to the road, which presented in its typical manner, now, no hint of anything ominous. Something tweaked inside her stomach, a cramp, surely, and she bit her lip in order to stop herself from awkwardly clutching her gut in front of this person. Even though she'd seen him almost every day of working there, he was as much a stranger to her as she was to him.

"You all right, then? On your way?"

Crystal was about to nod politely, but something in the man's look stopped her from answering. The way he stared at her--and he was certainly staring, his eyes pinched and his mouth slightly hung open, his pink face stuck in one of those ugly expressions kids' mothers warned them against for fear of freezing their faces that way--it was unnerving. She felt beyond uncomfortable.

Rather than say anything at all, Crystal began to steer her bike toward the resort entrance. She'd walk the rest of the way. But the man whipped out a hand and wrapped his claw around her forearm, and the girl was forced to stop.

"You're the reason--I can smell it in you, now," he snarled, getting right up in her face. His breath was stale, and his wrinkles quivered in their close-up. Crystal attempted to back away, but he held her firm. The man lowered his voice to a husky whisper. "Time come again. But it'll be over soon, at least. You aren't the first, and you aren't the last, but God willing it'll be at rest again, soon." He let go a bit roughly, causing Crystal to stumble a bit, knock her bike over again; then he gave a sarcastic sort of click, added, "Not that God has much to do with it," and resumed his position in his booth.

Swallowing her confusion, Crystal trembled as she picked up her bike once more, keeping an eye on the guard booth, though the man had become reabsorbed in his newspaper and seemed no longer to notice her.

Best to get to the dining hall, she told herself, noticing with relief some of the other workers crossing the parking lot toward her. The presence of others gave her the courage to brave that liminal realm dividing the town from the resort, and the moment she stepped foot onto the road, enveloped herself once again in its verdant familiarity, she was sure she sensed something within her abdomen warm and tingle, radiating a strange and a discomfiting current.