The door at the end of the hall is shut. Sam hesitates, swishing the air between her cheeks, tasting vodka and cigarettes. She knocks.

  “Come on in!”

  She steps into a high, bright room. One wall is entirely taken up by tall windows; through them, Sam can see the slope of the ridge and the lake, the lawn, the mess hall steps. A little speck of a person sprints up the stairs, late for dinner.

  “Sam Red.” Byron beams at her from behind his desk. The screen in front of him is swiveled aside. Spread over the polished desktop are a stack of papers, a tumbler, and a bottle of amber liquor, half empty. The space around him is clean, modern, academic. In front of the desk are two leather seats. He waves for her to sit and Sam steps forward. This feels distinctly rehearsed—serious to the point of comedy, like something from an old, bad spy film. Sam thinks she ought to have a hand on her holster. She sits.

  “Sam Red,” he says again. “That’s, ah . . . monosyllabic, isn’t it?” He smacks his lips. His smile is crooked, his eyes red and steady. He produces another crystal tumbler and fills it, then passes it wordlessly across the desk. Sam recognizes the label on the bottle. The same bottle has been gathering dust in the back of her parents’ liquor cabinet for years, too expensive to touch.

  “Thanks.”

  He nods. “I heard about last night at the talent show. Our little dead girl.” He says this like a joke; he is using the words of Phoebe’s blackmail intentionally. “How is she?”

  “Fine.” Sam sips from the glass. She would like to have a taste for expensive liquors someday. If this bourbon—if it is bourbon—is supposed to be any better than Jeremy’s plastic jug of vodka, she is none the wiser.

  “And how are you? I hear we’ve made you an assistant director. That must feel nice.” He looks her over. There is another shoe left to drop. Sam can feel it falling. She waits. “Of course, no one cleared that with me, but that’s fine. That’s fine.” He smiles. “I approve.”

  “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about? Or is it about Poppy?” Sam eyes the papers on the desk. They are client profiles, she can see, but she can’t make out the pictures on them. Maybe they are new clients, set to come to Camp a year from now. A world away.

  “Neither, actually.” Byron drains his glass and stands, leaving his chair swiveling behind him. He picks up the bottle by the neck as he walks around the desk toward her. His shirt is creased from sitting, open at the chest. “Poppy’s fine, by the way. Considering. No changes on this end, I mean.” He sinks into the chair beside Sam. “What I needed to tell you is that you’ve got to stop sticking your pretty little nose in the campers’ private lives.”

  Sam blinks. Byron refills the glass in his hand, then sets the bottle on the desk. Thunk. He angles toward her in his seat.

  “Don’t play dumb with me, all right? You know what I mean. I’m talking about you getting all riled up over Hugo and that girl getting handsy in the boathouse.”

  Sam clasps her tumbler with both hands. “He assaulted her.”

  He snorts, loud and sudden. “Jesus, Sam. Listen, I know your generation is a little more sensitive about these things, but back when I was growing up . . .” He lifts a finger from his glass to gesture toward the window. “When both of those two were growing up, we didn’t just throw words like assault around every time someone got a little uncomfortable. You need to settle down.” He sips, smiles. “Hugo Baker is who he is, I know. But you can’t let your bias stop those kids from being kids. That’s what they came here to do.”

  “He forced her to touch him.” The drink, or the exhaustion, or the sheer ridiculous of it all, has done something for Sam’s courage. She sits forward on the leather chair. “That’s not kids being kids. That’s boys learning how to rape girls and get away with it.”

  Richard Byron nods. He watches her, patient and humored, a grown-up sitting through a child’s performance. Sam drains her glass. He leans over the arm of his seat to refill it for her, then settles back again. “Do you know why I hired you?”

  This is the second time he’s asked it. Sam spins her full glass on the desk. “It has to be college kids. Young people. For the summer to be realistic.”

  “Yes. Specifically, though—Do you know why I hired you?”

  “I guess not.”

  “It’s because you’re pretty,” Byron says, without pause. “Gus doesn’t do the hiring. I do. I have my staff reach out to hundreds of profiles every summer, then I sift through the applications myself. You caught my eye last year. Not because of your college credits, Sam; not because you’re smart. Because you’re pretty. You’ve got that classic look, that girl-next-door look. I knew how much the boys at Camp would like you.”

  His glass is empty. He sits upright to place it back on his desk, where it clangs against the bottle. A cold ache settles into the pit of Sam’s stomach.

  “I was right, wasn’t I? Look at what you’ve done to Nicky.” He laughs, cups his chin in his hand, his elbow propped against the arm of the chair. “That boy—God, I love him—he thinks the sun shines out your ass. Imagine the two of you coming back to Camp together, year after year. Managing it together. A family business.” His laughter rises, manic, unchecked. “Wouldn’t that be lovely? All because I liked you first.”

  The liquor sits like a rock in Sam’s gut. Fear like frost creeps from her chest to her fingertips. It’s a fear she knows all too well, the kind that shows up late at night, brought on by eyes lingering too long across the train or footsteps coming closer in a dark alley. The fear of a scream loaded in her throat, keys clenched between her knuckles, legs at the ready to run. She struggles to meet Richard Byron’s bloodshot eyes evenly.

  “Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”

  “Not really.” She wills herself to sound cold and confident. He wants spite from her, and she is in no position not to give it.

  “I’m telling you that you’re overstepping your role here. What are you, nineteen? Twenty? I like you, and I want you to stick around, but I’m going to need you to grow up and accept reality. You need to understand your place here. You need to understand that you are living in a fucking simulation.” He nods toward the bottle on the desk. “This!” He waves at it. “Did you like this?”

  Sam nods. Byron sits forward and grabs the bottle, fills his glass to the rim, then pinches the neck and swirls the amber dregs over his eyes.

  “This is mine,” he says. “I paid for it. I had it trucked in from a hundred miles away. I can do this . . .” He stands up, cocks his arm back, and hurls the bottle across his desk. It hits the wall and shatters spectacularly, rattling bookshelves, shards skittering across the floor. Sam jumps. “. . . And it doesn’t make a difference. No one cares. My bottle, my wall. My staff will clean it up.”

  When he sits again, a cool haze has come over his features. He slicks a steady palm over his hair. “You drove over the bridge to get here, right? Old Hatchery Bridge? You know why we call it that?”

  “Because of the old fish hatchery.”

  “No!” He huffs. “There is no old fish hatchery. Do you know what a fish hatchery even looks like? Because I don’t!” Byron leans closer toward her, close enough that she can smell bourbon and stale coffee on his breath. “That building under the dam—that’s where the campers go when the clients are done with them. They get packed in there, harvested, dissolved. Flushed downstream. That’s the reality. The fish hatchery is just another part of the story.”

  Poppy, a voice in Sam’s head wails. She closes her eyes. Poppy, gone. Empty. Slowly sinking into black water. Dissolving into pieces. In a way, she always knew.

  “He hasn’t told you that, has he?”

  “I . . .”

  “Good.” He smiles and shifts to the edge of his seat. One hand reaches out and pats her thigh, lingers there deliberately. His lips twitch beneath groomed whiskers. “I don’t mean to scare you, Sam. I just want you to remember where you are. This is not the real world. That girl—What’s her name? Brandon?”

  “Logan.”

  “Logan.” He nods. He knew that, Sam thinks. “She came here to escape. She came for the story, and that’s what she’s getting. A little drama, a little shame. The bad guy, the love triangle, nice kid gets the girl . . . She wakes up younger, and happier. That’s what she paid for. Your job is to give her that. Play your part. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  He squeezes her leg. “Trust me, sweetheart. This is my world. Nothing has happened this summer that I didn’t decide on.” He flashes his teeth at her, brilliantly white. “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He leans in closer. Sam’s fists clench in her lap. She hears the door creak open and whips her head around to see—of all people—Taps, standing hesitantly in the doorway.

  Byron straightens his shoulders. His hand lifts delicately from Sam’s thigh. “Oh, hello.” He laughs and toes a shard of glass beneath his desk. “Come on in, buddy. You’ll have to excuse the mess.”

  As they pass each other in the light of the window, Sam and Taps lock eyes. He is disheveled, puffy, as if he has been crying. His teeth are gritted.

  Outside, the sky has gotten smokier. Sam sits in the driver’s seat of the pickup and gazes upward. She wonders what they are going to do if the fire gets any closer. Evacuation from Camp Phoenix cannot be possible.

  Nick has taken her off the schedule for the evening, so she spends the activity period sprawled on a couch in the Nest, listening to the hum between her ears. Impulse wins over and she swigs from the vodka bottle again. By the time the bell rings for campfire, she is honestly drunk. Not so drunk she can’t hold her composure, but drunk enough to be careless. Daria, squirming on her lap, whines that she smells funny. Skits and songs and bedtime stories go by in a rush, and then she walks down the trail with Rosie back to the Nest. Back to the bottle. Everything is normal, everything is fine. Sam gulps and giggles and lets herself stagger off.

  She fades into awareness sometime in the middle of the night. It’s dark. She is standing in the center of the dam, looking down over the rushing spillway. Someone is shouting at her. The sky spins, stars cartwheeling overhead.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Rosie has her by the arm.

  Sam tries to remember what she is doing. She had a purpose, she could swear. Her hands clasp a wiggly, rusted railing. The night is so warm; her hair under her wool cap is slick with sweat. “The hatchery,” she tries to explain.

  Elias steps behind her on the walkway and holds her by the shoulders. They drag her off the dam, onto the dirt. The rush of the water quiets. Not so far away, the light of their campfire shimmers through the trees, shouts and laughter dancing on the smoke. “Are you trying to kill yourself?” Elias shakes her, furious. “Honestly, are you?”

  Sam sputters. When she looks back down from the stars, Rosie is shaking her head, explaining quietly to him that she is just drunk. She stumbles her way along the trail behind them, back to Lobster Point. In the light of the fire, she squints to focus. Faces swim.

  “We found her. She was out on the dam.”

  “Christ, Red. Get it together.”

  Sam snorts, depositing herself onto the dirt. She thinks of something rude to say. Whether or not she says it out loud, she isn’t sure. A lanky shadow rises from its seat and strides toward her. There it is —the ghost!—she has finally managed to pin it down! It crouches over her. Anxious, gangly arms wrap around her. Indignant, she shoves at his chest.

  Everyone sees. In the lengthening silence, the fire crackles and the blood pounds in Sam’s head.

  Rosie and Elias escort her back to Camp. Refusing to let her climb the ladder into the Nest, they sit her on a hay bale inside the barn. Rosie sends Elias running for water. Fading in and out, Sam barely catches her question.

  “It . . . wasn’t Taps in the air rifle shed, was it?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Why would you lie about that? To me?” Rosie’s hands snap from her hips, to her chest, to a broad questioning gesture at the barn air. “Also.” She drops to a whisper. “Ew, Sam! Since when?”

  “Pretty much all summer.” Sam hiccups. The truth is going to come out eventually. This is as good a moment as any. “Since last summer, actually.”

  Rosie’s jaw sets tight. “So that’s why you got to shadow him this year, right? And now you’re an AD.” She shakes her head. “Honestly, I had my suspicions. I just thought you’d at least tell me.”

  Sam’s head lolls between her shoulders. Elias returns with his water bottle in hand. He forces it into her fist, uncapped. Looking between the two of them, Sam is overcome with nastiness. “You know what? At least I have someone,” she says to Rosie. A gulp of water strikes her stomach uneasily. She gasps and belches. “You got so desperate this summer, you went and . . .” She trips over her tongue, shoving an empty palm at Elias to indicate the end of her sentence.

  Elias looks rueful, then confused. “Wait, what?”

  Rosie has on a mean, sharp glare, a look Sam knows well. She has never been its victim before. “I’m gonna tell him.”

  Sam’s stomach lurches. “Go ahead. I’m gonna throw up.”

  She doesn’t make it far. She is crouched in the mud just outside the barn doors, heaving, when she hears a voice call out behind her. “Hey!” Elias barks. His shadow, long and haunting in the yellow light, cuts across her back.

  Sam doesn’t turn. “Yeah?”

  “You’re a shitty person.”

  She retches and spits. “Yeah.”

  The shadow lingers. “You okay?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Go to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “See you tomorrow,” Sam says weakly.

  She bumbles her way back to the Hummingbirds’ cabin with the creeping sensation that someone is watching her, just over her shoulder. Each time she turns to look, she finds herself entirely alone.

  Logan

  The Hawks put on a skit about the life and death of Danny McGee at campfire. It’s silly. Their counselor, Taps, stars as Danny, and the Hawks play the bullies. At the part of the story when he is supposed to jump off the dam, they all start singing to the tune of Old Lady Leary:

  Late last night, while we were all in bed,

  Danny McGee took a fall and now he’s dead . . .

  Taps hovers worriedly at the edge of the stage. On either side of him, the boys chant.

  Fire, fire, fire!

  Water, water, water!

  Jump, Danny, jump!

  Aaaah, splat!

  Danny McGee leaps and lands on his face in the dirt to the cheers of his crowd. Logan can hear Milly on the other end of their log murmuring that the whole thing is pretty morbid. For the rest of the skit, Taps runs around draped in a sheet, picking the boys up and carrying them off stage one by one.

  “It was all my idea,” Max says proudly the following day. “I wrote the song, too.”

  “You didn’t write it. You just changed the words to Old Lady Leary.”

  It’s morning activity period. The Ravens and Eagles are playing a soccer game against the Falcons and Hawks. Logan has felt sick and sludgy all morning; she can’t stop worrying about the smoke in the air, imagining the insides of her lungs lined in black tar. She sits on the sidelines next to Max, watching the game.

  Hugo sprints up and down the length of the lawn with his shirt off. He stares right at Logan as he runs by. Since his performance at the talent show, he never seems to stop staring at her, like he is constantly waiting for her to say something.

  “Do you still like him?” Max prods her.

  Logan rolls her eyes. She slides away from him on the grass. Hugo, she notices, sees this. He slows down to a sideways saunter as he passes them.

  After the game, she stands in a clump with the other Ravens, debating whether or not they have enough time to dash back to the cabin and change out of their sweaty clothes before lunch. Logan is laughing at something Mei said when her attention is drawn to the middle of the lawn. Hugo and Max are supposed to be helping the other boys collapse the foldable goal posts. They stand close to one another with their arms folded over their chests. Logan hears her own name. “. . . none of your business,” she hears Max say. Then Hugo catches her eye and waves her over to them. She crosses the lawn, and Max’s face grows panicked. “No, wait!”

  Hugo looks cocky as Logan approaches. He still has his shirt off; it’s wrapped like a towel around his neck. His hair is slicked back from his forehead with sweat. He looks like a greased-up gangster, like someone from a movie. “So, you guys are going out?” He waves a hand between her and Max.

  “What? No!”

  Max’s eyes are cast down at the grass. He refuses to look at her.

  “Well, that’s what he just told me.” Hugo scoffs. “See, I knew you were lying, dude.”

  “That’s not what I said!” Max raises his head, ignoring Logan. “I didn’t say we were going out yet.”

  “Yet?” Logan repeats. Still, they both ignore her. The boys have eyes only for each other. She spins and sees that the lawn is emptying. The other Ravens have started off toward the cabin to change. She wonders if she should sprint to catch up with them.

  “You’re a liar.” Hugo’s jaw twitches meanly. “Why would she even want to go out with you?”

  “Because, I’m the good guy. I’m the nice guy.” Max glances swiftly sideways as he says this, like he wants to be sure Logan is listening. “You’re just an asshole.”