Nate checked his cell phone: 9:14 p.m.

He sat up, put on his headlamp, and climbed to his stocking feet. He shivered and fed the woodstove. Then he stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up into the deeper darkness, where there was no glow from the fire to lend it any warmth. It had been one thing to venture up to the landing for blankets; had he ever really thought he could sleep up there — sleep in Dodge’s old room? Then again, could he imagine actually trying to sleep without having a look around? Not now. He was wide awake and possessed.

There was Dodge’s mitt on the chest of drawers across from the bunk beds. The old scuffed hardball still sat in the pocket, yellowed with age. Dodge had told him he’d caught it at a Cubs game — a loud foul ball by Ramírez, back in 2010. Nate had never cared much whether it was true or not. With Dodge, you took everything with a pinch of salt. Beside the mitt was the V303 Seeker, sleek and white. Nate picked up the drone. The GoPro video cam was still mounted in the frame on the bottom. He sat on the edge of the lower bunk, the copter in his hands. Dodge had bought it only last spring, brought it up with him for the summer. They’d taken it to the jumping rock on the eastern flank of Picnic Island and taken turns filming each other aerially. There was one piece of footage where Dodge had brought the drone in so close over Nate’s head, he could almost grab it out of the air as he plummeted toward the lake.

One day they’d taken the Seeker out in the boat and flown it up high over the eagle’s nest on the tallest tree on Garbage Island to see if there were any eggs. They made the mistake of telling Burl, who put a kibosh on any further attempts. “You don’t want to scramble those eggs, boys,” he’d said.

They’d flown the quadcopter out to hover over Art Hoebeek when he was fishing until he stood up in the boat and shook his fist at the thing. He was yelling; Nate could see that through his binoculars. Luckily, he was too far out for Nate to hear what he was saying.

“The darn thing’s worse than a squadron of mosquitoes,” Mr. H. said when he returned to shore. “Scared the damned fish away.”

“C’mon, Dad. It’s no noisier than a power drill.”

“More like a leaf blower,” his father argued. “And anyway, I didn’t drive seven hundred miles to have a power tool hovering over my head.”

“How many kilometers would that be, Dad?”

Dodge loved to tease his father, mostly because it didn’t take much. He was a man with a good enough sense of humor and a laugh as big as he was, but with a low tolerance for pranks.

Nate clutched the quadcopter more tightly. Too bad Mr. H. hadn’t had a lower tolerance for tragic and idiotic stunts.

Nate swallowed hard, grabbing hold of a good memory: he and Dodge on the beach, operating the Seeker, taking it higher and higher up into the August sky until there was no sound from it at all.

“Hey, the green light came on,” says Nate. His neck is craned, watching through his binoculars. Dodge is at the controls. It’s the first time Nate’s seen the thing fly. Dodge smiles, his eyes fixed on the flight of the drone.

“Contact,” he says. “We’ve got a GPS signal. Now watch this.” And with that he flips a toggle on the right shoulder of the transmitter.

“What’s RTH?” says Nate.

“Return to home.”

And just like that the copter returns, all by itself. Lands on the sand six feet away.

Nate put the drone back on the chest of drawers. He picked up the transmitter with its twin throttles. He held it in his hands, pulled both the throttles down at the same time to power up, and was shocked — amazed — when the four rotor blades started turning. He let go of the throttles. Caught his breath. Let the silence close in on him again. A silence filled with the skittering of mice and the bad mood of the wind.

The RTH toggle: you pushed that and the Seeker flew right back to where it started without the pilot doing anything at all. You just stood and watched. It would land as close as could be and then turn off its motor, just like that.

Return to home. “You hear that, Dodge Hoebeek?” he muttered. But there had never been such a toggle on Dodge.

Nate wished he had one himself right now.

He put down the transmitter, looked around, the LED light on his head picking out features of a room he knew every bit as well as his own tiny room over at the Crow camp. The bunk bed was for a visitor — himself more often than not. He’d be over there late, get up to go, and Dodge would say “Stay.” And he’d say “I’m not your dog,” and Dodge would say “Woof” and pant a bit until Nate laughed. Then he’d say “Stay” again, and, of course, he’d stay. And they’d talk until Fern came to the door. “Save it ’til the morning, boys,” she’d whisper. Then when she’d gone back downstairs, they’d talk some more but in whispers until one or the other fell asleep.

“I don’t like being alone,” Dodge said to him. Only once. Nate remembered thinking how much it would have taken him to say that — to show the slightest sign of vulnerability.

“I’m here,” he’d said back to the invisible figure in the bunk above. Then he’d waited for Dodge to say something more, but all he heard was the steady breathing of sleep.

“I’m here,” he whispered again.

There was nothing much special about the room — no posters, only a handful of paperbacks and a stack of comics. When they were at Ghost Lake, they spent as little time as possible indoors. They were out fishing or jumping off cliff faces or bodysurfing down at Ginger Ale — the name they’d given the rapids over by the dam. They’d make stuff in the workshop over at Nate’s camp or sail or swim. Even when it rained, they were as likely to be outside as in.

They.

It was hard to believe there was no more “they.”

There would never be another “us,” another “we,” as in “We’re going up to the miner’s cabin,” or “We’re going to find our way to Spider; if we’re not back by nightfall, call search and rescue,” or “We were wondering whether we could take the boat down to Sanctuary Cove to do some serious girl watching . . .”

He remembered flying the Seeker from a canoe on mysterious Spider Lake, the drone hovering between high walls of stone, looking for petroglyphs.

Nate fought down the raw feeling in his throat. He should never have come up here. Up to this room. Up to Ghost Lake. Not alone anyway.

He stood, looked at the empty top bunk, patted the mattress. I’m here, he thought, but there was no point to it if Dodge wasn’t. He left the room, closed the door behind him softly. He stood at the top of the stairs and turned off his headlamp. Let the darkness settle, with all its creaks and mouse wanderings and low moans. Then he made his way in the dark down to the first floor, guided only by the small starlight drifting in the one exposed window over the sink. Leaning over the sink, he looked up into the night. Might be northern lights out there when it was this crystal clear. But the two camps were backed up against the hill. The only way you’d see the aurora borealis would be to go out onto the lake. He’d seen them a few times dancing on the ridge of the hills. He wasn’t going to risk it tonight. He was drained. Besides, he couldn’t take the chance of leaving any tracks out there. He felt kind of like a ghost himself.

He stoked the fire and lay his aching body down, pulled the scratchy blankets up around him. The sooner he slept, the sooner morning would come and he could get the hell out of here. He wrestled the headlamp off his head and lay there in the busy darkness. Then there was a metallic scraping sound. He grabbed the headlamp and switched it on. The pop can on the mousetrap was twirling but empty.

The dream again: Dodge under the ice, writhing in the black void. And then suddenly it morphed into Dodge at the window, scrabbling against the glass, making it chatter in its frame. His eyes full of moonlight, his mouth gaping but no sound coming out.

Nate sat up, disoriented, his heart pounding, his breath ragged. He focused on the rectangle of lesser darkness beyond the counter, across the room, the only window in this mausoleum. There was no face there. Just a memory. He lay back down again. Beside him the stove ticked. It would need feeding soon. It was voracious. The night was voracious, threatening to eat him up. This place wasn’t really insulated for winter, and he was not insulated against this invasion of memories. He concentrated on getting his breathing back to normal again. He listened. There was something different. The wind. The wind had stopped. Nate’s heart was racing, but the night at least was still.

And that brought to memory another night, well after midnight. Dodge standing outside Nate’s open window over at the Crow camp, his eyes full of moonlight and mischief.

“What?”

“Down to the beach. Now!”

Nate’s parents’ bedroom is right next door, through walls as thin as paper. But gazing into their room as he tiptoes past, he can see they are sound asleep.

Dodge is waiting on the sand. He has the quadcopter with him. “Night flight,” he says.

Oh, the Seeker soars! Up and up and out over the moon-bright lake. Dodge makes it pitch and roll, do a 360, filming the whole time.

“We have ourselves a satellite,” he says. In the summer darkness, it’s easier to see the light on the drone’s belly turn from red to green. And with GPS in place, Dodge can take his fingers off the controls. They watch the drone hover, staying in one place in the sweet summer air, their own small star. Hovering, waiting for its next command.

“You’re leaving it here?”

Dodge is packing up. He turns and looks at Nate, holding the drone. He shrugs. “Back home there are all these regulations. FAA.”

“What’s that?”

“Federal Aviation Administration. You can’t go higher than four hundred feet, blah, blah, blah. Here, the sky’s the limit.”

“Yeah, but —”

“And,” Dodge interrupts, “Dad says if I want to fly it, I have to join an airplane club.”

“Oh.”

“I know. A bunch of drone geeks.”

“Isn’t that what we are?” Nate asks him.

“And take classes,” says Dodge, ignoring Nate’s remark. “Can you imagine: drone classes?”

“That sucks.”

Dodge pats the drone on its bald white head. “I’ll leave it here until close-up, anyway. Maybe I’ll take it back with me then.”

Meaning Canadian Thanksgiving in October. “Cool,” says Nate. “We can strap a turkey leg on it and deliver it to the eagles — so they can have a little Thanksgiving celebration up in their nest.”

Dodge shakes his head, exasperated. “Wrong! Those are American eagles, stupid.”

“So?”

“So their Thanksgiving isn’t until November.”

The memories came to Nate sharp and clear, tumbling one over the other, unsettling him and then suddenly unsettling him even more — unsettling him with an idea that made his heart start pounding hard.

He didn’t stir. He made himself lie there, thinking it through. It was insane. He was insane. But it might work; it could. He could feel the cold gathering force again. He’d have to get up and feed the fire. And if he had to get up anyway . . .