#Chapter 54: No Coincidences
Nina
Jessica, Lori and I had begun setting up camp not far from where the businessman had been murdered when I heard twigs and leaves crunching in the forest.
Someone was coming. “Oh my god,” Jessica complained as she fiddled with her tent poles, “this is impossible! Lori, I need help!”
“Guys,” I said, but they didn’t hear me. “I just helped you two minutes ago,’ Lori said, standing and walking over to Jessica with her hands on her hips while Jessica whined.
“Shh!” I said, which made them finally go quiet. “Do you hear that?”
My heart raced as I listened to the footsteps. They were getting louder, and definitely headed directly for our camp. I glanced over at my tent, which had the shotgun inside- 11 I could just get over there before anything bad happened.
“Hello?” a male voice called out from the woods. I knew that voice anywhere; it was Enzo.
And hearing it didn’t make me any less terrified. He stepped out into the clearing, holding a bundle of firewood with a backpack on his back and a big, stupid grin on his face.
“Oh, hey!” he said, as if he hadn’t followed us out here. I knew I should’ve stopped Luke! “Fancy seeing. you ladies here!”
“What a surprise!” Jessica said, practically squealing with delight. Despite what she had said in the cafeteria the other day about Enzo, she couldn’t hide her fangirl nature around him.
“You’re camping, too?” Lori said while I only continued inching toward my tent in silence, trying to get closer to the shotgun in case Enzo suddenly decided that we knew too much and that he’d need to kill us, just like he did with the businessman.
“Yeah,” Enzo replied. “Me and a couple other guys. It’s a nice weekend for it.” He looked over at me just as I was about to reach into the tent for the shotgun, his eyes flashing red for a split second as if to warn me not to do it. I swallowed, my heart practically beating out of my chest.
“Ooh, you guys should camp with us!” Jessica said.
“Jessica!” Lori growled, glancing at me.
“What?” Jessica replied. “It’ll be fun. You’d be okay with it, right, Nina?”
I felt betrayed that Jessica would be so dumb at the first sign of a hot guy to forget all of our morals, but her nonchalance toward him in the cafeteria the other day made me wonder now if he was using some sort of werewolf powers to make Jessica say these things… And when I saw how focused his eyes were on hers, and how her eyes seemed almost glazed over, 1 knew it to be true.
Enzo was manipulating Jessica into inviting him over.
“Uh… Sure, I guess,” I said, knowing that there was no way out now. Regardless of what I said, he would. find a way to get close to us. Enzo flashed another grin at my response, then looked up at the sky.
“Sun’s setting,” he said, walking over to our fire pit and setting down the firewood he had so nonchalantly collected on his way to stalk me. “I’ll just go get Matt and James, and we’ll be over in a minute.” James? As in… Graduate student James?
What sort of game was Enzo playing with me? Before I could ask, Enzo disappeared. Lori turned toward me, her eyes wide.
“What the fuck?” she said, to which I shrugged in return. There was no use discussing it now.
“I’m sorry,” Jessica said. “I don’t know what came over me just then.”
“You’re boy crazy, that’s what it is,’ Lori growled, stomping back over to her tent and continuing to set it up while she grumbled to herself.
“It’s okay,” I said, knowing that it wasn’t Jessica’s fault. “Maybe it will be fun.”
Or we’ll all be dead in the morning, I thought to myself. Soon enough, the boys returned; and, much to my dismay, James was in fact with them.
“Oh! Hey, Nina,” James said as they entered the clearing with their things. I blushed, mumbling a quiet “Hey”, and quickly looked away as I felt both James and Enzo’s eyes on me at the same time.
“I call this spot,” Matt said, walking over to an empty spot next to Lori’s tent, unaware that he would be barking up the wrong tree if he tried to get with her. James picked a spot opposite my tent, keeping a respectable distance that I wished
Enzo could learn from.
Meanwhile, Enzo walked over to me while I pretended to be fiddling with my backpack.
“Hey,” he said quietly. I kept glaring at the ground, pretending I didn’t hear him. He crouched down in front of me and pulled something out of his pocket, handing it to me; my eyes widened
when I saw that it was the newspaper clipping. I had left that in my room! How did he even have it?
“I would never do something like this, Nina,” he said quietly while I continued to stare in shock at the ground.
When I didn’t answer, he sighed and stood, walking away to set up his tent a little ways away from the circle of other tents.
I was relieved that he was at least setting up his tent away from mine, but I still didn’t believe him. If he was so innocent, then why did he follow me all the way out here?
The sun had gone down by the time everyone finished setting up their tents. I got the fire going because it was a good excuse to not socialize, although I couldn’t shake the feeling of Enzo’s eyes on me all of the time.
Soon enough, we had the fire going. We roasted hot dogs over the fire and shared a case of beer that Matt brought. I tried not to drink too much in case I needed to be alert, but I couldn’t deny that the alcohol helped to ease my nerves a bit.
Was Enzo telling the truth?
He had insisted that night in the diner that he would never kill anybody…. And, so far since I’d known him, he had never given the indication that he could actually be dangerous. If anything, he’d protected me from danger on multiple occasions.
Maybe it was just the alcohol, but as the forest grew dark and the fire blazed between us, our eyes locking across the flames every so often, I started to wonder if I should trust Enzo again.
After dinner, we roasted.
marshmallows and made s’mores, slowly finishing off the case of beer.
Lori, Matt, and Jessica all started to get thoroughly drunk. I was tipsy, and James seemed to be tipsy as well judging from his rosy cheeks and drunken poetry reading, which made Enzo roll his eyes. Even with Enzo there, however, I couldn’t help but blush a bit at how confident James was with his poetry reading.
Meanwhile, Enzo stayed completely sober.
At some point during the night, Jessica had an idea that made my heart drop.
and “Hey!” she said, standing up a grabbing an empty bottle from the case of beer and returning to the circle, holding it up for everyone to see.
“Who wants to play Spin the Bottle?”
