In The Lake Sparknotes

Fausto Cercignani once said, "A secret remains a secret until you make someone promise never to reveal it." In The Lake by Natasha Preston, two girls, Esme and Kayla, promise to keep a secret from when they are about 9 years old at an old summer camp. They accidently set fire to the woods around their camp and not only were the trees burned but so was a little girl and that little girl wants revenge. They head back to that same summer camp ten years later and the secret they promised never to speak a word about was revealed and it was torturing them and the rest of the camp. The girl, Lillian, was painting harsh messages on walls, leaving dead animals in the food hall, and messing with the trails. Esme, Kayla, and their other CIT friends are on the hunt for this mysterious person, Lillian, that is terrorizing the camp. Little do the others know that it is all because of a secret kept by two 9 year old girls. In the end, Esme and Kayla face their secret head on and it ends in sad and unfortunate events for EVERYONE. The whole book talked about how

By keeping secrets the children were being scared by getting lost in the woods, the water bounce house being broken, and Lillian lurking in the shadows (find the 3 citations). Those incidents most likely scared the children with how they saw camp and being without their parents. There was no need to involve the kids, they were innocent bystanders. Another example is at the end of the book, Lillian wanted revenge and it is understandable but if they came clean and apologized when it first happened maybe all of them would still be alive and Esme wouldn’t get framed for murder (last page citation). What happened to Lillian was tragic but it shouldn’t cost 5 kids their lives, the situation escalated and became more of a tragedy because people kept secrets. If everyone told the truth from the beginning none of this would have