The Sign in the Smoke (Nancy Drew Diaries Book 12) by Carolyn Keene Page A

under the water. I thought she was dead.” Deborah’s voice broke on the word “dead.” I reached out and put my hand on hers sympathetically. But Deborah pulled her hand away.
    “She wasn’t dead, of course,” she went on after a few seconds. “One of the other counselors pumped the water out of her chest and got her breathing again. We called an ambulance, and she was rushed to the closest hospital.” She took in a deep breath through her nose. “She must have gone back into the lake to find her ring,” Deborah said finally. “She was in the hospital for a long time, I know that. She’d been without oxygen for too long. There were rumors of brain damage. But I heard she recovered.”
    “You heard?” I asked.
    Deborah looked up at me. Something flashed in her eyes—annoyance or defensiveness, I couldn’t tell which. “Her parents were pretty angry with the camp, and me specifically,” she said. “They sued Camp Larksong. That’s what cost the previous owners all their money—they ended up settling with the family. Anyway, I couldn’t exactly go to visit Lila. I’ve lived with the guilt of not waking up earlier every day of my life since it happened. But I couldn’t tell her how sorry I was.”
    Silence enveloped the office. I stared down at the folder, taking all of that in. It wasn’t Deborah’s fault—or was it? I tried to imagine one of my campers sneaking out to the lake in the dead of night. Would I hear it? If I heard it, would I be able to jump in after her and save her life?
    What would it feel like to see one of my campers dragged out of the lake, barely alive? Hauled off in an ambulance to be in the hospital for weeks?
    I shook myself, trying to disperse the terrible feeling that came over me. I glanced at Deborah, who was staring out the window, pain in her eyes.
    “It sounds really hard,” I said finally. “I’m sorry.”
    Deborah nodded slightly. “Don’t be sorry for me,” she said quietly. “I’m sure it was much harder for Lila and her parents. But maybe you can understand why, the lake . . . the thought of anything else like that happening there . . .” She stopped and shook her head. “I know what people say around this town. I know they say the camp is haunted, that something even worse happened here. But it didn’t .”
    She was quiet for just a few seconds. “If there is someone behind the strange things happening around camp,” she said, “they must know about Lila. Or they know some version of the story.”
    I let out a breath and pulled the manila folder into my lap. Carefully, I arranged it right side up and opened the cover. Inside were newspaper articles, pieces printed off the Internet, legal documents. I leafed through them all until something stopped me dead in my tracks, sending spikes of ice up through my chest.
    A photo accompanied one of the articles. I held it up for Deborah to see. “Is this Lila?” I asked.
    Deborah looked at the photo and nodded. “That’s her,” she said. “Lila Houston. She was thirteen years old.”
    My hand shook as I turned the article back around and placed it back in the folder, faceup.
    Lila Houston stared up at me from what must have been a school photo. She had round, dark eyes— and long, silvery-blond hair .

CHAPTER NINE

A New Suspect
    “IT’S A COINCIDENCE,” GEORGE WHISPERED that night at the campfire. We’d settled on a log far from the main action, and I’d used the time to update her and Bess on everything Deborah had told me. “It has to be . . . right?”
    “It seems like kind of a big coincidence,” Bess said. “A girl with silvery-blond hair nearly drowns in the lake . . . and a few years later, swimmers are attacked by a figure with silvery-blond hair?”
    I nodded solemnly. It takes a lot to freak me out, and I’m usually not one to believe in ghost tales. But this was really weird. The only thing was . . .
    “Lila isn’t dead,” George pointed out pragmatically, looking