Luke Vanderwall missing at summer camp

Luke Vanderwall’s disappearance at Camp Ameewagan is the first killing Maren commits as a child, and the moment when private hunger becomes a public mystery that she and her mother must flee. The camp calls Luke missing; the bloody sleeping bag leads other campers to suspect murder. Maren’s account supplies the truth the adults do not know: she remained with Luke in his red tent, gave in to the urge to eat him, and left before morning.

The Night in the Red Tent

Before Luke disappears, he and Maren sit together playing Old Maid. Maren draws the old maid, but the cards cannot hold her attention. Her recollection fixes instead on smell: chili powder, rotten eggs, and cotton lint, alongside the impressions she associates with Luke’s eagerness for the outdoors—wet leaves, salty skin, and hot cocoa in a tin cup shaped by his hands. These sensory details register her appetite and her affection together; the scene does not separate the boy she knows from the bodily perception that is overtaking her.

Maren stops playing and thinks through the future Luke will not have: he will not grow up, become a forest ranger, ride another horse, fight forest fires, or live in a tree house. Luke drops his cards, takes both her hands, and asks her to stay. Maren’s response is divided: she does not want to, yet intensely wants to. She leans toward him, smells him, presses her lips to his throat, and feels him stiffen with anticipation. Luke strokes her ponytail as though petting a horse. The tenderness of their contact makes the turn more painful, but does not stop it; as Maren recalls it, once he breathes on her and she smells the chili, there is no going back.

Afterward, Maren stumbles out of the red tent and goes to the lake. She throws a grocery bag into the water, takes off her pajamas, and flings them outward; she watches her Little Mermaid T-shirt sink and hears the plastic bag fill with water. The actions show her trying to get rid of what she has with her, but the scene gives no indication that this removes the evidence of what happened. The night ends not with a confession or an explanation, but with Maren alone at the water’s edge.

Discovery at Camp

By morning it is raining, and Maren’s fingernails are rimmed in red. She puts on her poncho to hide her hands and scrubs them under the bathroom faucet. Another girl notices her, but Maren cannot get her nails any cleaner. At breakfast she follows the other campers to the mess hall, takes a waffle she cannot taste, and stands among them while the camp director announces that a camper is missing. The camp has notified the parents, and the children will be picked up that afternoon; until then, they must return to their cabins and may not go elsewhere on the campsite.

The official announcement gives the group a fact without an explanation. News-station vans are already in the parking lot, and the director will not speak to reporters. Back in Maren’s cabin, the other girls whisper that Luke was last out in the woods by himself and that the campers think he was murdered. One says they found his sleeping bag covered in blood. Maren stops the conversation, and no one speaks again. While the others make friendship bracelets, she lies in the corner wishing she could disappear. The contrast between the ordinary activity and the rumor leaves her knowledge isolated inside a room full of children who are trying to understand the absence through fragments.

The account briefly frames that account of the camp as though it could close with the words “THE END.” Maren then closes the book and wishes it were so. The wish marks the distance between an ending on a page and the consequences she still has to face: Luke has not simply vanished from her story, and the public account of a suspected murder remains incomplete.

Confession and Flight

When Janelle comes to her, she is eerily calm despite knowing that her daughter has eaten someone. She asks Maren to look at her and tell her it is not true. Maren hides her face again, then admits that she cannot deny it. Janelle has to carry her to the car. To the other parents, Maren appears to be a child taking Luke’s disappearance terribly hard; the apparent grief conceals what has actually happened.

Janelle wants to leave immediately. Camp Ameewagan is a three-hour drive away, but the director has their address on file, and Janelle reasons that if the camp discovers Maren was with Luke that night, the adults could trace them. She explains the danger calmly and tells Maren to gather her belongings as quickly as she can. Maren asks whether they are simply going to leave. Her mother’s answer is enacted through departure rather than an account to the camp: they drive away, and Maren watches the wipers move across the windshield as the road blurs beneath the car. Her thoughts turn to starting third grade at another school.

Consequences and Significance

Luke’s disappearance establishes a pattern in which Maren’s act is followed by concealment and flight. At the campsite, the director’s announcement, the reporters’ vans, and the bloody sleeping bag create the beginnings of a public investigation; at home, Janelle treats the address on file and the possibility of being traced as immediate reasons to escape. The family’s departure prevents the camp’s suspicion, as presented here, from becoming an accusation against Maren.

The event also joins attachment to violence without making either one cancel the other. Maren remembers Luke’s plans, their shared game, and his touch, while the same intimate scene carries her toward the irreversible act. The missing-child announcement translates that private encounter into a mystery for everyone else. Luke is named as absent and possibly murdered; Maren and Janelle know why he is gone, but leave before the truth can be spoken publicly.