Sam helps herself to a fourth or fifth cup of coffee from the pot in the back of the room and settles at Campbell’s desk. His teenage children smile emptily at her from their framed portraits. She wonders, abstractly, where in the world they are. Gus Campbell has a cabin in Smith’s Ridge for the summers, but he has never mentioned where his real home is—maybe he isn’t supposed to. It’s strange to think that he has a life somewhere else. Somewhere he watches movies and cooks dinner, maybe even wears a coat and tie.

  Nick comes down from his bunk room to sit at the other desk. They talk lightly behind their coffees. As he draws up the schedule for the week, he narrates his steps out loud to her, distractedly, bare thoughts popping out of him as they come to mind. He isn’t much of a mentor. The space between them is comfortable enough, though, and Sam doesn’t mind the quiet mornings with him as much as she thought she might.

  Around ten thirty a.m., a shrill ring shatters the dull, sleepy air. It’s coming from the compact radio in Nick’s pocket. He picks it up, still eyeing the dry-erase schedule board on his desk.

  “Yeah?”

  Amy’s voice comes crackling through the static. “Hey, Nick. You at the office?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you come down to ropes? We’ve got a hurt camper here.”

  Sam looks up from Campbell’s monitor, blinking away the haze from the sudden change of light.

  “Okay, on my way.” Nick releases the receiver. Amy buzzes back.

  “Nick?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I, uh . . . don’t know how bad it is. You should bring your keys.”

  Nick stands in a rush and stuffs the little radio back into his pocket. He frowns. A hand flies to his chest, grasping at something beneath his T-shirt. “Come on, Sam.”

  “What?” Sam pushes her chair back hesitantly.

  “Come on!”

  They take off running. The ropes course isn’t far from the office, but Sam is in worse shape than she’d like to admit. She falls behind him, huffing. Curious heads turn as they pass on the trail.

  When they round the corner onto the ropes course, she is surprised to see the Camp horses, standing calmly in line with campers still mounted. Trail rides don’t normally come this way, as a rule. The campers who are supposed to be climbing are gathered in a nervous bunch, still in their harnesses and helmets, their faces blanched and frightened. Elias, Phoebe, and Amy crouch over someone on the ground. Amy wears a belaying harness; Elias and Phoebe are in riding boots and jeans. Sam takes in the scene, panting, as Nick rushes to the counselors.

  “Is he conscious?”

  Elias has blood on his arms, Sam realizes. Her heart pounds in her throat. She lifts her hands, not quite sure what to do with them.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t want to move him. The nurse is coming.”

  “Get the kids off their horses. Keep them all together, talk to them. Sam—come here.”

  She approaches on heavy feet, head spinning. The edge in his voice is all wrong. As she steps up behind Nick’s crouched back, she sees a boy on the ground, an older camper, splayed over the rocky dirt where he fell. His face and shirt are splattered with blood. His chest heaves, eyes closed. Not far away, between the pines that support the high tightrope, a rider-less mare watches them placidly.

  “What happened?” Sam whispers.

  Phoebe’s face is pale. Her voice trembles with choked tears. “His horse . . . It got scared by the ropes, I guess.”

  “There’s a reason we don’t take the rides through here,” says Nick swiftly. He looks up at Amy and again reaches for something at his chest. He nods. With an anxious glance at Sam, Amy grasps Phoebe by the shoulders and tugs her away.

  “Come here, Sam. Hold his head.”

  Sam does as she is told. She kneels over the camper and braces his head between her hands. She recognizes him: a quiet, stout boy, heavy-browed and solemn. His left arm sits across his stomach at a funny, crooked angle. The blood streaming from his nose and brow strikes her as unrealistically red, vivid, as if it has leached the color from everything else around them.

  Nick tugs something over his head: a long, looped black lanyard with a keyring on the end. Hanging among the keys is a little black tube about the size of a thumb. This he clasps between his fingers. He holds it to his side, his arm stiff. The keys jangle.

  “What is that?” Sam asks him. Behind Nick’s back, Elias and Amy help campers off their horses, talking to them in loud, blanketing tones. The kids’ faces strain toward the excitement. The boy’s head jerks between Sam’s hands; she looks down to see his eyelids flutter.

  “Stay still, stay still,” she whispers frantically to him.

  Nick is crouched, poised with the black tube in his hand. It might be a roll of lip balm, or a laser pointer. He holds it like a weapon.

  “Nick, what is that?”

  Then, all at once, the splayed body on the ground regains life. He twists and sputters, spraying the blood that has trickled between his lips. “Ow,” he gasps, blinking up at Sam.

  “It’s okay!” She lifts a hand to his forehead. “It’s okay, you’re okay.”

  Nick sighs. His eyes fall closed for a moment. “You’re okay, buddy. Nurse May’s coming. Look at me, look at me. How many fingers?” With one hand he holds up three steady fingers. With the other, he hangs the lanyard back over his head, tucking it away beneath the neck of his T-shirt.

  The nurse arrives in a rickety, open-top cart. She takes Sam’s place over the boy’s head, and Sam helps the others gather campers and horses out of the way. Phoebe has grown inconsolable, sobbing, scaring the kids. Amy leads her away with an arm around her shoulders. In the middle of the bustle, a doe-eyed girl in large, red-framed glasses tugs at Sam’s arm. “It was my fault,” she tells her. “I shouted. I scared his horse.”

  Sam hugs the girl and tells her it was no one’s fault, that accidents happen. Even as she does, she looks over her head at the panic in Elias’s face, the resignation in Nick’s. Accidents should not happen. Not like this.

  The injured camper’s name is Max. He is twelve, in the Hawks’ cabin. Sam helps Nick lift him and carry him to the cart with a good deal of difficulty. “Shock,” Nurse May mutters, shaking her head, as they lay him down in the back seat. The blood on his face smudges against Sam’s shirt. “He’ll be fine. Just shock and a bump on the head.”

  Max grips his arm and moans. He does look shocked, Sam thinks. Shocked, afraid, and entirely childlike.

  When the cart rattles away, a heavy hush falls over the clearing. The whispers from the campers are muted, smothered by the thick silence of the forest around them. Sam turns to Nick. “What now? Should I help Elias?”

  “No.” His focus is on the campers, eyeing them calculatedly. “You should change your shirt, then go meet Campbell at the office. I’ll call him.” He pats the radio in his pocket. Then he frowns hesitantly at her. “You okay?”

  Sam’s eyes fall to the center of his chest. She can see the outline of the lanyard through his T-shirt, the lump of the keyring at his sternum. Her question dies in her throat.

  Nick shakes his head. “It could have been worse,” he says by way of answering, then turns to help his brother with the campers.

  Logan

  Spark is Logan’s favorite horse. She’s a gorgeous four-year-old Appalachian mare with a speckled coat and a wild streak—that’s what Sadie says. Logan loves her. Unfortunately, Elias is leading the trail ride today, and he never lets her ride Spark.

  “But I know how to handle her,” she begs, stomping across the hay and muck of the stables behind him.

  “Logan, I already told you. The biggest kids get the biggest horses. That’s just how it works.” The counselor shakes her off. He has his sunglasses on and his T-shirt sleeves cuffed over his shoulders. He humphs as he messes up his hair. The other Ravens have crushes on him, but Logan knows better. Only an idiot would refuse to understand the bond between a girl and her horse.

  When the ride finally starts, Logan is riding a fat old mare named Daisy—she can hardly do anything but pull up weeds and follow the butt in front of her—and Spark is saddled with the chubby, tan-skinned boy who offered Logan his lip balm at the creek. She can never seem to get away from that boy. Every time the other girls see him, they make a point of teasing her about it.

  “Logan, your boyfriend’s here,” Liz says. It’s a mean joke because of who he is. If he were a different boy—the kind of boy who wore his Camp Phoenix ball cap backwards and sat on the announcement benches before meals, the kind of boy girls made bracelets for—it would be a different joke. He isn’t, though.

  There aren’t enough horses for all of the Ravens and Hawks, so they split into two groups for the ride. Logan’s group goes first. They strap into sweaty helmets and riding boots and the counselors boost them up into the saddles. The horses line up single file. Daisy is behind Spark. Logan simmers, watching the boy in front of her. He tilts awkwardly sideways on Spark’s back, her reins loose and lifeless in his hands. A few minutes into the ride, he turns fully around and stares at Logan.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey,” she says unsurely.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t get my horse.” He has a low voice. Frog-ish.

  “It’s fine.” Logan glances over her shoulder. The scene she made over Spark in the stables was enough embarrassment for one day; she doesn’t want the other Ravens to see her talking to him. “You should really look where you’re going.”

  “Oh, right.” The boy swivels in his saddle to face forward. A moment or two later, as their line sways along the trail toward the girls’ cabins, he looks back at her again. His helmet is too loose, slipping back on his forehead. “My name’s Max,” he says.

  “My name’s Logan.”

  “Really? Isn’t that a boy’s name?”

  “No,” Logan huffs, “it’s my name. And you should really look where you’re going.”

  “Oh. Right.” He turns forward again.

  They ride on through Camp, up and around the mess hall, past the ranges and back down, toward the ropes course. From the back of the line, Elias calls: “Phoebe, stick right!” The other counselor doesn’t say anything back. Soon, Logan can hear shouts and the zipping sound of carabiner clips on steel cables. The tops of the trees bounce with the weight of climbing campers. The horses lumber along, and every minute or so Max glances over his shoulder at Logan. He has wide eyes, like he’s confused, like he can’t quite figure out what she is doing on Daisy’s back behind him. Each time he turns around, she grows more irritated.

  Their trail takes them right through the center of the ropes course. The Falcons are there with the Blackbirds, climbing the plank walk: a single high board suspended between two trees. The challenge is to climb up a ladder of iron staples in one tree, cross the plank, and then jump from the top, floating back down on a belay rope. Logan watches the boy in the treetops queasily. He has nearly made it all the way across. The space between his feet and the ground is infinite and blurry. Logan’s stomach turns and she has to look away—when she does, she sees Max staring back at her again.

  “Hey, Logan?”

  Logan snaps. “What?”

  She didn’t mean to shout so loud. Her voice startles Spark, who tosses her head with a whinny of alarm. Max drops the reins in a panic. At that exact moment, the boy on the plank walk jumps.

  It happens so fast. Spark rears back and takes off at a full, flying gallop. She bolts from the line and runs straight across the clearing, straight for a squat pine with a low-hanging bough. Max screams. The branch hits him square in the face. The loose helmet goes flying. He slumps in the saddle and then Spark bucks—Max flops and falls like a rag doll, lands hard on his front, rolls to his back, and lies still.

  With the boy off her back, Spark settles down. She trots calmly back to them, nickers, and shakes out her mane, proud of herself. Logan is stunned.

  It’s only after the counselors have helped them off their horses, after Nurse May has arrived and crouched at Max’s side, that she realizes what really happened. It was all her fault. She shouted loud enough to scare Spark. She set her on edge and made Max drop his reins. A strangling fear grabs ahold of her throat as she watches Elias tug the horse back into line. Logan has read enough books; she knows what happens to horses who become too dangerous for their jobs. She has to tell someone—before it’s too late—that it was her fault, not Spark’s.

  “It was my fault. I shouted too loud. It was my fault!”

  None of the adults at the scene will listen to her. Spark should have just kept running.

  The riders crowd into a huddle with the boys from the climbing activity, who still have harnesses strapped like diapers around their hips. Whispers start. Logan hears them growing, rising in a chorus all around her.

  “Did you see him?”

  “. . . the horse stomped on him . . .”

  “. . . all that blood . . .”

  “. . . cracked his skull . . .”

  “. . . he had a hole in his neck, I saw it . . .”

  Logan squeezes her eyes shut. She wants to throw her hands over her ears. My fault, my fault, my fault . . . Now Max the Hawk has a cracked skull and a hole in his neck and Spark will surely be executed. She hates Camp. Everything is going wrong. Hot tears pool behind her eyelids and spill through, dribbling down her cheeks. She gulps down a shaky breath.

  “Hey!” A clear shout breaks through all the whispers as Logan struggles to get a grip on herself. “Shut up, you guys! Look, you’re freaking her out.”

  Logan opens her eyes. Through her fogging lenses, she sees a boy. One of the Falcons. He steps closer and puts an arm around her shoulders.

  “Hey.” For a boy so tall, his voice is high and soft. “Don’t cry. He’s gonna be all right.”

  “Yeah, don’t cry!”

  Suddenly, everyone’s hands are on her. They pat her shoulders and back and head. Even Donna is hugging her. To Logan’s utter embarrassment, she chokes, and a ragged sob comes tearing from her throat. She had no idea she was capable of producing such a sound.

  Amy leads them all away from the ropes course to the lawn. The Falcon keeps his arm around her while they walk. He doesn’t say anything, just presses her into his side and carries on talking to the other boys, like this is all normal; like they’re old friends and everything is okay. As Logan’s eyes clear, she looks cautiously up at him. His arms are long and skinny, his T-shirt sleeves cuffed, like Elias’s. His hair is dark blond and swooping and curls over the tips of big, protruding ears. When he smiles at her, his cheeks flush pink. There is something funnily familiar about him, Logan thinks.

  Milly was with the other half of the group, not on the ride. When the bell rings for lunch, she comes sprinting across the lawn to ask Logan about the accident—apparently, they got to help Elias wrangle the horses back to the stables. Logan has calmed down some. She tells her the story and is about to admit her fears about Spark being put down when she sees the tall Falcon loping back across the grass toward them. He has finally taken off his climbing harness. He carries it like a heavy sack across his shoulder.

  “Hey.” He stretches one of his long arms out, like he’s going to touch her, but doesn’t quite reach her. “I forgot to ask. What’s your name?”

  A squishy weight squirms in Logan’s stomach. There is something about him—she could swear she has seen him before, somewhere. “Logan,” she says.

  “Logan,” he repeats. “Huh. I think I know a boy named Logan.”

  “Well, I’m a girl named Logan.”

  She watches the muscles in his face work, his pink cheeks twitching up and down. She wants him to go away. At the same time, she would very much like to touch his hair, to push it back behind his ears and measure exactly how far they stick out from his head. Milly smirks sideways at her.

  “Logan,” he says again, like he is examining her name, studying it, holding it up to the light and peering through it. He nods. “That’s a cool name.” Again, his arm twitches toward her. “Anyway, I hope you’re feeling better. I’ll see you around. Oh”—he swivels on his heel as he turns away, back toward his friends—“I’m Hugo, by the way.”

  Logan smiles. His name is even funnier than hers. “See you, Hugo,” she mumbles as he runs off. She looks at Milly, and they both start laughing. She can’t really say what is so funny.

  Sam

  Sam stands at the entrance to a long hallway stretching out in front of her to a gray dead end. The ceiling is low and curved. The floor is grayish-white tile, tinted yellow in the fluorescent overhead lighting. Bitter chemical cleaner coats her throat, stings her eyes. On either side of the hall are closed doors, uniform in pale blue. Each door bears a tidy copper nameplate.

  Martin. McHenry. Meyer. Noonan. Owens. Sam reads over the doors, her eyes pinging back and forth from one side of the hallway to the other, until she gets near the end: Warbler.

  The whole place is silent and ominous. There are no buzzing flies, no beeping machines. Nothing but her own tired breath. Sam shudders, shakes her head, and tears herself away. Her footsteps echo across the concrete ceiling as she pads down another hall, turns right, then left, and dashes up a staircase, landing in a wood-paneled waiting area. Nick sits on a low bench against the wall. He leans forward with his forearms flat on his knees and looks up at her.

  “You shouldn’t be wandering.”

  “I was curious.”

  Counselors usually aren’t allowed to come into the facility. Sam has never been inside the building. They came here to pick up Max, the Hawk, who is having his broken wrist cast. He comes out of the examination room heavily sedated, his eyes half open, head lolling on his shoulders like a drunk. A facility worker in pale scrubs pushes his wheelchair.