“No!” Sam says, and Nick inexplicably snorts with laughter. Again, Richard Byron looks pointedly at her.

  “All right, enough,” Campbell grumbles. He sits heavily at his desk, rubbing his eyes. “I don’t want to hear that. Don’t make me hear that.”

  They smile at each other. “Sorry, Dad.”

  The meeting is nothing special, just a midsummer check-in. There are some routine issues with the activities and cabins. A boy in the Pigeons is having bedwetting problems; they need to restock the spare sleeping bags. No one says a thing about Poppy. There isn’t much to be said, Sam supposes—nothing has changed. She is still as dead as she was a week ago. Campbell looks over his checklist, tutting under his breath. “Oh, Nick. Sometime next week I want you to let Sam write a schedule on her own. Okay, Sam?”

  “Sure.”

  “Great. That’s all from my end. You got anything, Rich?”

  Byron leans against the back wall of the office. He puts a hand in his pocket and rolls his neck. His gaze touches on Sam briefly. “Just keep up the good work, that’s all. I know it’s been a tough one so far. I’m proud of you all.”

  As everyone files out, he waves Sam over to his side. She lingers back and leans against the thin wood panels beside him. For a second or two, he says nothing. He watches Campbell and Nick leave the room together. They stop to talk on the porch, just outside the screen door.

  “How is Poppy?” Byron asks her in a low voice.

  “Fine.” Sam squirms on the spot. She feels like there is another shoe left to drop. If he is going to fire her, she would rather he do it now, and quickly. Then she will rush to Rosie on the lifeguard dock and tell her everything. Maybe she will even be dragged away in a scene of dramatic heroism, spitting, cursing the world.

  “Good. Nothing weird? Nosebleeds? Overly exhausted?”

  “Nothing I’ve noticed.”

  “That’s good. She’s been pretty stable over on the other end, too.” He clears his throat, sips from his mug, then bobs his head at the door. His voice drops still lower. “You know, Gus would have an aneurism if he knew you spent the night out of your cabin. You—his golden child.” He chuckles. “How long has that been happening?”

  Sam looks at Nick through the screen. His hands are on his hips, hair rustled up by the breeze, chatting cheerfully with Campbell. “Not long.”

  Byron looks forward, too. Another sip of coffee—Sam can smell it, burnt and muddy, too long in the pot. He shakes his head good-naturedly. “Nicky was the first one to say he liked you for the shadow job. Last summer. We were down at campfire, and I saw the way he looked at you. I didn’t think anything would come of it. He’s so professional about those kinds of things, you know.” A tiny smile plays on his cheeks. “Maybe he could use a bad influence.”

  The rhythm of these conversations has become familiar to Sam. She knows he will ramble his way to his point, taking his time, amusing himself. “I don’t know,” she says, just to say something.

  He turns to lean on his shoulder against the wall, facing her. An oaky cologne mixes pleasantly with the smell of his coffee, strong and soothing. “He’s told you some things, hasn’t he?”

  Sam nods.

  “Do you know why I hired you?”

  She hesitates, thinking back to what Nick told her in the office weeks ago—a lifetime ago, really—about the doctors and teachers, the failed early summers. Is he referring to that, or to her, specifically? She glances out the screen door again. “Sort of,” she says.

  “So, you get it. It’s sort of a dance, these summers. There’s an art to it. Everything becomes a part of the bigger picture.” He sips from his mug, coughs. His eyes run up and down her. “Don’t worry, Sam. You keep my secrets, and I’ll keep yours. That seems fair to me. I do have a little job for you, though.”

  “Okay.”

  “Max and Logan Gill. I want you and Nick to take them on their campout next week.” Byron smiles at her. “You’re exactly what they need. I want you to go on the trip and enjoy yourselves. Go be kids. Don’t be careful while you’re up there. Do you understand what I’m getting at?”

  A wall has come down. For a fraction of a second, the authority, the esteem, is gone, and Sam is looking directly into the depths behind it. In an instant, it hardens back into place.

  “Monkey see . . .” he says, then shrugs. “Well, you know.”

  Sam folds her arms across her chest. She can feel the weight of him looming over her, a timbering pine, on the brink of crashing down. He could crush her like a bug in his fingertips. “Yeah.”

  Byron nods, smiles briefly at her again, and rises off the wall. He drains his mug and crosses toward the sink in the back of the room. “I can’t say that’s a Camp-appropriate shirt, by the way.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

  “Speaking of appropriate, tell your friend Elias to put a scarf on, will you? Kid looks like a leper.”

  “Okay.”

  He leaves the office. Sam watches him ruffle Nick’s hair as he passes him on the porch. She fingers the hem of her ridiculous T-shirt. Her head is pounding. For a moment, she closes her eyes and spins behind them and wishes he had just fired her.

  Logan

  Max’s cast comes off partway through the sixth week of Camp. Logan sees him showing off a shrunken, pale left forearm at the Hawks’ table. Nurse May gives him a tidy black wrist brace, smaller and much cleaner than the blue cast. He is practically unrecognizable, a new man.

  They leave for Pike Falls on Friday morning after breakfast. Logan meets Max and the counselors at the office. In her hiking pack is a single change of clothes and her swimsuit; her compass, water bottle, flashlight, and toothbrush; a pad hidden in a rolled pair of socks—just in case.

  Sam is coming on the trip, and Nick, one of the older counselors. Logan doesn’t know him beyond the occasional speech at announcements or song at campfire. Some people say he’s Elias’s brother, but she has never been able to tell if it’s a joke or not. They do look alike, a little, although Nick is taller and dark-haired and a lot less fun. He gives her a bag of food to carry in her pack: protein bars and powdered oatmeal packets for breakfast tomorrow morning. Max carries ham-and-cheese sandwiches and apples.

  To get to the trailhead, they have to drive over the bridge and through town on the other side of the lake, then a long way down a dirt road, deep into the forest. Normally this is done in the Camp bus, but since it’s just the four of them on this trip, they get to take the little red pickup truck that’s always parked at the barnyard. There are only two seats in the truck, the counselors tell them, so someone will have to ride with the bags in the open back. Max grips his healed arm protectively.

  “I’ll do it!” Logan jumps to the opportunity. “Please!” she adds, so Max can pretend he is letting her have it, just to be nice.

  “How about boys up front, girls in the back?” says Nick. “Max can help me navigate.”

  On their way out of Camp, they pass the barnyard and stables. They’re empty, to Logan’s disappointment. Sitting in the rattling back of the pickup with the wind and dust in her hair is the coolest she has felt all summer. They drive through the trees, past Lobster Point, up and over the bridge beside the dam. It must have been a thousand years since Logan looked down on the spillway from this height the first time, on her way into Camp from the doctor’s office. She closes her eyes and watches the light flash red to black as the shadows of the trees rush over them.

  “What’s the name of the town?” She has to shout over the roar of the engine and rushing air.

  Sam glances at her. She was gazing off, wearing that half-awake expression the counselors always have, apparently very deep in thought. “Smith’s Ridge.”

  Logan watches Sam. She sits with one knee up, an arm propped over it. Her tank top swoops low; her chest is flat and sun-spotted, ridged with bones. Pretty, Logan realizes, must mean something different to boys and to girls. For girls, prettiness is constant. Always on, always checked, adjusting braids and batting eyelashes. Boys see pretty in a single broad scoop, all or nothing. There is a special talent to it, she thinks—being pretty to boys.

  The town is empty. Like a ghost town. They pass through it quickly and the shady forest swallows them up, then the road gets rougher. Dust kicks up and sticks to their lips and eyebrows. Sam tells Logan riddles as they sway and bump up and down in the truck bed, trying to hold themselves steady.

  Their hike begins up a steep slope. The air is still and stifling. It’s quiet; all Logan can hear are their own footsteps and heavy breaths, and the occasional rustle of a chipmunk or bird in the scrub bushes. She starts to pant and sweat. Misery sets in and her shoulders ache under the pack. This wasn’t supposed to be so hard. Eventually, though, the ground levels out and the landscape changes around them. They cross a high meadow spotted with wildflowers. In the distance they can see snowcapped peaks. Dragonflies and chubby bumblebees float between the sprigs and green buds at their knees, heavy, swollen with sunshine. Max, who was huffing and puffing along the first part of the hike, breaks into a happy, light stride, his braced wrist swinging free.

  The counselors slow their pace. Nick shows them different plant species, points out animal tracks and names the peaks around them. Every so often, Sam winks at Logan and Max and picks up a heavy rock from the trail, then stuffs it into the top of Nick’s pack while his back is turned. The trail winds around and gently upward, over boulders and fallen logs, beneath trees a century old. Logan’s imagination carries her away—they are a family of nomads, wild people, scouting their way toward their next adventure. They sing campfire songs as they go.

  Around midday they reach the campsite: an open, needle-coated stretch of ground with a blackened ring of rocks for a firepit. The men’s room and women’s room are established on opposite ends, behind bushes and trees. They eat their sandwiches and change into their swimsuits. Logan feels instantly lighter, like she could run the rest of the way. Without the packs, they finish the trek up a pebbly incline and arrive at the top of Pike Falls.

  The waterfall itself, like the barn loft, isn’t as magical as Logan envisioned. It’s more of a trickle than a thundering flow, over smooth boulders and slime. That’s because of the drought, Sam says. The fact makes Logan uneasy; she didn’t know about a drought. She can’t remember when she last thought about the weather or the world outside Camp Phoenix at all. They clamber down into the ravine and look up, cool mist on their faces. It takes some splintering courage and heckling from the counselors for Logan to jump into the pool. She comes up gasping and kicking. The water is icy cold.

  She and Max climb and slip and tumble and splash each other. They shiver as they compare goosebumps, arm to arm. Something in Max has changed. With his shoulders thrown back and his hair on end and his arms outstretched for balance, he wanders the algae-slick rocks. He is bigger here, away from Camp and the other boys. Not older, exactly, but bigger. He smiles at her through chattering teeth.

  “Look,” he whispers, and points sneakily up toward the sunny rocks, where the counselors lie tanning. Logan looks and catches it with a delighted gasp: Nick’s hand on Sam’s back, close to her butt, the lightest touch. Maybe an accident—maybe not. She shivers and grabs onto Max’s arm, laughs so hard she almost falls.

  They get back to their campsite sunburnt and starving. Dinner is bean-and-cheese burritos and smoky-tasting hot chocolate, heated over the fire in a little metal pan. Afterward, Nick leads them up a short trail to an open lookout. The sun is setting. They step out of the trees, and the ground drops away below them. Logan never imagined so much world could exist in a single view—forest and mountains and streams, miles and miles laid out like a picture at their feet. She stretches one arm out, aiming to reach down and leave a handprint across the surface of the Earth. The sinking sun douses it all in golden orange.

  Nick cups his hands around his mouth and shouts out loud. The yell makes Logan jump; it thunders out and is lost in the hugeness of the landscape. Sam smiles wildly, then she copies him. They shout louder and louder, one after the other, howling and whooping. At first Logan laughs, bewildered—this is as absurd as his hand on her back—but Max opens his mouth and he shouts, too, so she tries it, lets her breath tear free from her lungs. Soon they are all screaming and stomping and beating their chests. Their voices rise like bubbles, floating away from the cliff, trapped forever in the atmosphere.

  When they leave the lookout, Logan can’t stop smiling.

  Darkness falls quickly. There are marshmallows to be toasted and stories to be told around the fire. It gets colder. They huddle up on logs and hold their hands close to the flames. Logan can feel the warmth leaching away through her sunburn; she tugs her sleeves over her fingers and hugs her knees to her chest. They beg the counselors for another rendition of Danny McGee. “The truest version,” she pleads. “Tell us exactly what happened.”

  Sam smiles, sneaky, like she’s telling herself a joke. “It was a long time ago, you guys. I wasn’t born yet. Nick wasn’t even born yet,” she teases him. Nick—plain and boring, Logan always thought—looks like a different person when he laughs at her. A weaselly curiosity nudges Logan, watching the grown-ups. She wishes Milly were here to smirk and speculate with her. “All we know is what people have told us.”

  “Did you go to Camp when you were a kid?” Max asks suddenly.

  Sam nods. “Of course. When I was your age. How else do you think I’d know the story?”

  “Were you a Raven?” asks Logan.

  “Uh-huh. And a Magpie, the year before that.”

  Max sits next to Logan on their log. He has his hood up, so she can only see the ridges of his eyebrows and nose, rimmed in red firelight. He rolls his marshmallow-toasting stick between his palms. “When was that?”

  “When I was eleven,” Sam answers.

  “I mean, what year?”

  “Max,” Nick cuts in with a choppy laugh. “If you want Sam to tell you the story, you’re going to have to let her talk.”

  Logan nods. “Tell us the truth,” she says. Only half of her is joking. She believes in the Danny McGee story as much as she doesn’t believe in it. Like when she was littler and had her first suspicions about Santa Claus, she is straddling the line. “Do you really think he’s a ghost?”

  Sam shrugs. She picks up her marshmallow stick and prods it into the glowing coals. “I don’t know, Logan. I really don’t want to scare you. Sometimes, though . . .” She flips the stick upright. Its tip is red and smoldering, a tiny trail of smoke swirling from the top. Sam holds it close to her face. She is cast in a dream-like glow from beneath her chin, shadows crawling over her hair. “. . . No. I don’t know.” Her voice falls to a whisper, like she is talking to herself.

  “Sometimes what?” Logan breathes. She leans her elbows on her knees and holds her chin in her hands. The fire is hot on her face.

  Sam glances at Nick. He frowns, like he’s warning her, and she nods. Her lips twitch before her words come out, to show that she is choosing them very carefully. “Let’s put it this way. There’s a reason we always tell you guys to stay on the trails. We don’t know what, and we don’t know why. All we know is that, as long as Camp has been around, bad things have happened to campers who wander off.” Sam shakes her head. Her voice lifts. “But that’s enough of that, I don’t want to scare you guys. Anyway—whoops! Look at the time, Nick.”

  He looks at his watch. “Oh, shit! We’d better go.”

  Logan knows the swear is intentional. He is trying to act like he’s treating them like grown-ups. She and Max have heard the way the counselors really talk to each other—they can’t be fooled.

  “Go?” Max repeats. He lifts his hooded head anxiously. “Go where?”

  The counselors are standing, zipping up their windbreakers and shuffling through their packs. “You guys didn’t think we were spending the night out here with you, did you?”

  “What?”

  Nick scoffs. “Come on, guys. It’s a campout. Time to learn some survival skills.”

  “What?”

  They shoulder their packs and tug their beanies over their ears. Before there is time to ask another question, they are gone, with a final shout over their shoulders: “Make sure you put the fire out! We’ll see you back at Camp!”

  Max looks at Logan. She swivels, searching for the counselor’s retreating figures, but she can’t see anything beyond the reach of the firelight. A nervous moment stretches. “They’re . . . kidding, right?”

  “Yeah.” Logan nods. She hopes she sounds brave. “Of course they are. They’ll be back in a second.”

  Seconds tick into minutes and the counselors do not return. For a long time, they watch the fire. Max’s leg bounces against the log. The flames sink low, and the embers smolder black and red and angry. “They have to be joking,” he says softly. Somewhere among the trees a branch cracks, and they both jump. “They have to be joking.”

  More time passes. Not sure what else to do, they put more sticks on the fire and decide to unroll their sleeping bags next to each other, for safety. They agree to accompany each other into the woods to pee, standing one at a time with their backs turned and their hands over their eyes. “Cover your ears, too!” Logan tells him as she crouches.

  They scrunch down in their sleeping bags on the hard ground. By now they have worn out the subject of whether or not the counselors are playing a prank on them. They agree—more or less confidently—that Sam and Nick are probably hiding not too far away, keeping an eye on them. Testing them, Logan suggests. Just to see how they might react.

  “Or . . .” Max says, and Logan giggles.

  She thinks of that light little touch, of Hugo’s words in the barn loft. Hot breath. Slimy tongues. “Yuck,” she says out loud.