As the sun peaks overhead, Sam turns off the freeway and picks up speed along an all-but-empty highway, over open plains brown and dry with drought. Tiny towns and dilapidated barns fly by. She rolls down the windows to let in the dry air and the stink of cows. The day is getting hotter. At a gas station, she looks back at her little black sedan to find it turned a muted gray, coated in a thick layer of dust. It will look like that until the summer ends.

  The highway shoots her upward, into green mountains, and dwindles to a winding country road. The air cools. Houses thin and then vanish entirely from the scenery, aside from the occasional wilting, suspicious-looking shed. Poverty turns to wilderness. Sam’s last glimpse of human society is a tiny child standing on a mobile home porch, dirty and diapered, holding a plastic jug. She shudders.

  Tall pines tower over the road on either side. The sun is sinking behind them when at last she turns onto a paved private road and spends the last hour of her drive in nervous silence through a dense, darkening forest. The smell of the air here is so distinct that she jolts and lifts her head when it reaches her; it’s the smell of rich dirt and crushed pine needles and something sickly sweet, like rot. Nature and decay. Some way along that final stretch of the drive, Sam feels a pop deep within her ears, and for a moment her vision blurs. She nearly drives off the road. When the fuzziness clears, she is offset, dissociated. She turns up the stereo and rolls the windows down again.

  At last, the car breaks out of the trees onto a bald ridgetop, and Sam realizes she has made it. To one side, the world stretches below her, endless and green. To the other, the ridge drops steeply into a thumbprint lake basin. Straight ahead is a tiny town. A wooden sign greets her:

  Welcome to Smith’s Ridge!

  Elevation: 4,856’

  Private property of Phoenix Genetics, Inc.

  There is no indicator of population on the sign. Smith’s Ridge is undeniably charming, alien but somehow nostalgic, like the set of a treasured childhood movie. Clapboard cabins and a few pastel storefronts line the single, one-lane road cutting along the ridgetop. At its end, slightly obscured by the pines, is a tremendous log mansion. High glass windows wink through the trees.

  Sam turns in the center of town and twists downward toward the lake and Camp on the other side, crossing a high bridge beside the dam. Old Hatchery Bridge, it’s called. As the story goes, there was once a fish hatchery at the foot of the dam. Its crumbling remains are still there: a squat, gargoyle-ish concrete shack. A black ribbon of lake water tumbles over the spillway, down the face of the dam and into a shallow pool. From there, the stream flows through the old hatchery’s foundations and sputters out on the other side, rushing down the mountain.

  Across the bridge, pavement gives way to hard-packed red dirt beneath Sam’s tires. She bounces her way through the trees parallel to the lakeshore. In the gaps between trunks and boulders she sees green water, flat and reflective under the late-afternoon sun.

  The dusty parking lot is already full of cars, each as dirty and dented as her own. Sam parks among them, feeling buoyant and surreal. She is late and figures she can blame that on traffic—silly as it sounds now. Traffic and freeways are already a world away. She shoulders her backpack and leaves her keys on the dashboard. A rocky trail carries her through the pines into the heart of Camp.

  The place is beautiful, bizarre, eerie as a painting in its emptiness. Open cabin doors creak in the breeze and branches shush and rustle around her. The trail delivers her straight onto the main lawn, a groomed green plateau overlooking the lake. To one side the land cuts up in a sharp dirt rise; a wood-plank staircase carved into it leads to a great old lodge with a tented tin roof. Near the base of the hill, before the lawn, a semicircular cement patio curves around a bell tower. The tower is built of stacked stones and concrete and rises up to twice Sam’s height. It looks like something medieval, an ancient relic. The sight of that bell tower, more so than anything else, twists an anxious knot in Sam’s gut.

  Sprawled along the set of splintery benches on the patio, where the whole Camp will sit for daily announcements once the summer starts, are about two dozen people in tired T-shirts and ball caps and ponytails. In the scattered excitement of their conversation, it takes some time for anyone to notice Sam crossing the lawn. She has nearly reached the announcement benches when a high shriek shatters the air. A little figure comes springing away from the group, sprints across the grass, and takes a flying leap into Sam’s arms, nearly toppling her.

  Rosie—tiny and dark, built like a bullet. Her cheek pressed to Sam’s smells like spearmint and sunscreen. Sam squeals as she drops her bag, spinning with her. Behind them, a gangly blond boy lopes across the lawn, shouting. Elias pulls her into a stiff hug. The edge of his sunglasses knocks against her temple, and Sam laughs. Here they are, she thinks in a rush, exactly as she remembered them.

  “I thought you weren’t coming!” Rosie gasps. Two long braids fall over her shoulders, swaying as she dances in place. “You said you were going to Paris.”

  “I did.” Sam grins, overwhelmed. “I’m back.”

  Elias gives her a crooked smile. “Couldn’t stay away,” he says, in a voice Sam remembers all too well, a lazy, affected drawl. “I knew it.” He turns to Rosie. “I told you.”

  “You did not.” Rosie snatches the sunglasses off his face. Sam tousles his hair, snickering, and they walk together to the announcement benches.

  She isn’t the last to arrive, but close to it. Everyone is back. One year older and none the wiser, they boast new facial hair and fresh tattoos, stories of school and travel and corporate internships. Sam sinks joyfully into the crowd, bouncing from one smiling face to the next. Jeremy looks like he has grown a foot. Jaeden is as stoically handsome as ever; Sadie, still round-cheeked and eager. Dane and Katie seem to have reignited their longstanding on-again, off-again relationship. They haven’t had long to catch up before the bell at the top of the tower sounds with a great resounding chime, and they all rise instinctively, ready to get back to work.

  The counselors sit down for a hasty, chattery dinner in the mess hall. There is no ceremony tonight, beyond a few words from their director and the older staff members. Formality and instructions will come later in the week. The air buzzes with excitement, and no one is able to sit still for long. At the ancient piano in the back of the dining room, Elias and his older brother, Nick, bicker their way through a trickling ballad as the rest of the group sings tunelessly along.

  Gus Campbell, the director of Camp Phoenix, is broad-faced and kind. He wears wire-rimmed glasses and doesn’t own a single item of clothing, to the extent of Sam’s knowledge, not made of khaki or promoting his children’s various high school sports teams. Emerson High Junior Varsity Lacrosse, his T-shirt reads. Go Dragons! He putters around the room with his plate in hand, smiling over them. “Sam Red!” He tosses her into a gruff, back-clapping hug when he sees her. “Good to see you, kid! Good to have you back!”

  In all the chaos of greetings and clattering dishes, Sam, Elias, and Rosie manage to sneak away from the crowd. They duck out of the mess hall and hurry down the slippery plank steps, across the lawn and downhill toward the lakeshore, where they sit at the water’s edge and bury their toes in the mud. The lake is frigid, soberingly cold so early in the summer.

  “I can’t believe we’re all here again.” Elias laughs. “I mean, didn’t you both say you weren’t coming back, at the end of last summer?”

  Sam looks out across the water. The sun has fallen below the ridge on the other side of the lake, and the blue of the sky is growing richer. She can see the glint of the windows high on the ridgetop, through the trees. A breeze billows tiny ripples over the lake’s mirrored surface.

  She does remember the end of last summer. She remembers how tired she was, how sick she felt. How she swore that she would get as far away as she possibly could. Still, she somehow forgot how beautiful the lake is after dinner, when the sun drops behind the ridge and the hues of the sky melt together.

  Rosie laughs and wiggles her feet in the water. “I don’t think we even believed it when we said it. There’s no way I’m turning down this paycheck.”

  Elias shakes his head. “It’s not just about the money.”

  He has filled out some over the past year, Sam notices. His shoulders are a little broader, his face less boyish, even now, flushed with the heat and excitement of the day. They are comic opposites, he and Rosie: pale against tan, soft against sharp. She has a narrow nose and a cutting jaw and piercing, speculative eyes.

  The three of them were the only new hires added to the Camp Phoenix staff last summer. They hated each other from the start. Rosie was too opinionated, Sam too pretentious, and Elias had a grating flare for the dramatic. It took some time and a few drunken mishaps, naturally, but they grew to love each other in a way only people forced into such close circumstances can. Now, here they are again. Rosie lives in Los Angeles; she’s on an all-female mixed martial arts team and takes women’s studies classes at night. Elias studies theater in New York on his parents’ funds. Sam lives in Paris. There isn’t a shred of sense to their friendship.

  “It’s not just about the money,” Sam agrees quietly. She squishes the silt between her toes.

  “You guys know about the murderer?”

  “Yup,” they chime together and giggle at each other.

  “So?”

  “So, what? Do I think he’s guilty?” Rosie squints at him, her face pinched into a hard, imposing frown. “Yes. It’s disgusting they’re letting him come.”

  “How long until they get here, again?”

  “Eight days. Wait . . .” Elias counts his fingers and nods to himself. “Yup. Eight days.”

  Sam looks again toward the facility on the ridge. She lets out a long rush of breath and sinks back onto the coarse sand, on her elbows, her chin wedged gracelessly to her chest. Soon there will be meetings, and training, and cabin assignments. Then there will be campers. A hundred grown-up souls in tiny bodies, running around under their strained and incompetent care.

  It was all very hazy, trapped behind fogged glass, until she saw the lake and the trees, until she was struck by the dirty, decaying smell of the forest. Now she remembers exactly how raw and exciting and busy it all is. It will be hard. Tonight, though, she can’t see any reason not to be happy she is back.

  A chime rings from the bell tower, and the three of them hop to their feet.

  Logan

  They come for her at seven a.m. A dark SUV pulls into the drive, and Logan steps out of her house exactly as she is: no phone, no keys, no wallet. As if she is going to be right back.

  Her husband will be flying from another airport to maintain their separation. Their daughter is already settled with Logan’s parents for the summer. Ten weeks is a long time for a kid so young. Every time Logan wrestles with her guilt over it, she returns to the same conclusion: the best thing for Emma, in the long run, is to have happy, healthy parents. Parents who love each other.

  The driver takes her to the airport, straight onto the tarmac, where a little white jet sits shrouded in the morning mist. Onboard are four or five men about twice her age. Logan takes her seat and orders a coffee, and they’re in the air before long. She sits back and closes her eyes. Home and life fall away below her.

  The flight is quick. They touch down on a tiny landing strip in the middle of a flat, dusty nowhere. From there, they are shuttled into private cars and driven another two and a half hours, deep into the mountains. Their destination is about as far away from anything as a place can get—isolation, total separation from reality, is the goal. The ridgetop town appears all at once, like a mirage in the thick wilderness. Just past it, the road leads them up to a grand log cabin structure, six stories high and warmly welcoming. Carved bears and tulips wave them up the front steps. It might be a ritzy ski lodge or a summer resort, a billionaire’s vacation home. There is no sign out front, no name on the door. Nothing to indicate what happens here.

  “Mrs. Gill?” they greet her, all smiles at reception.

  “Adler-Gill.” Logan nods.

  The interior of the building is cool and softly lit. Wood floors and high ceiling beams give it an air of rustic elegance, tinged with the sanitary gleam of a hospital. Staff in pale blue scrubs bustle through the halls. Logan’s room is on the fifth floor, small and dorm-like. A sliding glass door opens up to a narrow balcony, a view of the mountains. The paintings on the walls mirror the landscape outside.

  As directed, she goes straight into the bathroom and undresses. She takes a shower, then puts on the clothes left in neat stacks for her—loose, plain white cotton. With her hair still dripping, she steps out onto her balcony. Below her, a carpet of bristling treetops stretches down toward a green lake, its surface still and calm. On the distant horizon are blue-gray peaks. One floor down, she can see a man standing on his own balcony. Judging by the top of his head, he is not her husband. He probably isn’t Hugo Baker, either. A chill mountain breeze touches her wet scalp, raising goosebumps over her arms. Carried on it is the scent of pine trees and earth and lake water. The sounds of the forest, a trilling bird call and rustling needles, echo faintly in her memory.

  A series of vivid images rushes her. Scraped knees, sunburnt shoulders. Cool, murky water rolling on her skin. Dirty clothes ripe with campfire smoke, greasy food on a plastic plate, drifting to sleep on a grown-up’s warm lap. Logan blinks and wavers. The memories are happy, soothing, but they never sit quite right. Even here. They don’t feel like her own; they are borrowed from someone who never really existed.

  Logan has been to Camp Phoenix once before, five years ago. She was seven. Everything they say about the experience is true: it is pure, and renewing, and life-changing. It becomes harder to remember as time passes, though, and adulthood takes its toll again.

  An attendant comes by the room to take her weight and temperature. He gives her a few injections and leaves a tidy handful of pink pills to be taken over the next few hours. They are doping her up, preparing her body for the long weeks of suspension ahead. “A nice, long nap,” the attendant jokes, tastelessly.

  Next is a psychologist with a binder full of details. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Gill. Let’s go over your summer goals again, shall we?”

  “It’s Adler-Gill.”

  “Of course.” He winks at her. “Soon to be just Adler, right?”

  The whole day is a headache of drugs and wavers and paperwork. It’s a dreary, painfully grown-up process, considering the purpose of it all. Maybe there is something deliberate about that, Logan thinks. A final push before release.

  The next morning, she is scheduled to meet with the Camp’s owner. She approaches an intimidating dark oak door at the end of a long hall on the ground floor of the facility. For a moment she hesitates, like a schoolkid at the principal’s office, deliberating over whether to knock or to sit and wait. Just as she raises her fist, the door swings inward, and Logan swallows a yelp of surprise. She blinks, then gawks at the face staring dully back at her.

  It’s another client, a woman about her own age. From her appearance, she might be much older—but Logan knows exactly who this is. Her hair is yellow and stringy, her face sallow, lips turned down. Her eyes are bloodshot and empty. Still, her face is iconic, unmistakable, and Logan’s heart flutters despite herself. She chokes out an unclear apology as they edge by each other, trading places in the doorway. The door falls shut, and she is left looking across a polished wood floor at a man behind a long, sleek desk. Morning sunlight pours through a wall of high windows to her right, flooding the space between them.

  Richard Byron stands and moves around his desk to extend a hand to her. His shirt is untucked, his sleeves cuffed, wrists and fingers bare. He wears a close gray beard and a glimmering smile. “Mrs. Gill,” he greets her warmly. His handshake is firm and jaunty.

  Logan does not correct him. He has probably met with Mr. Gill already; the mistake is understandable. They settle at opposite sides of the desk. The leather of the chair is still warm from its last occupant. Unable to help herself, Logan points vaguely over her head, toward the door. “Am I wrong, or was that . . . ?”

  He laughs out loud. It’s a delighted, somewhat private laugh. Although they are the only two people in the room, that laugh somehow excludes her. “I know,” he says, shaking his head. “She’s looked better, hasn’t she?”

  Logan nods and permits herself a small smile.

  His hair is too long for his age and esteem, swooped playfully back from his brow. He runs a hand through it as he looks her over. Logan shifts in her seat, suddenly uncomfortable in the shapeless white hospital garb.

  “Glad to have you back, Mrs. Gill.” He speaks in a low, drifting voice. His attention shifts to the screen on his desk—skimming over her personal data, she imagines. “This will be your second summer, that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, what’s it been? Five years?” Richard Byron reads swiftly over his screen. “Why the long gap?”

  “Oh. Well, adult life, you know. I’ve had a lot on my plate, professionally. And I became a mother.”

  “Of course. Adopted a little girl, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s sweet.” He nods, and his tone shifts upward toward business. “Now, you didn’t come alone this year, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Right. And he’s never been to Camp before, has he?”

  “No, this will be his first summer.”

  “Right.” Byron nods. “So, we’re digging into the past to fix the present, huh?”

  Logan stiffens in her seat, unsure whether or not to be embarrassed. She supposes not. They have talked about it with their advisors over the course of a year, written their goals down in detail. To the man behind the whole process, it must be just another order of business. She nods.