Anyone who says they’re not afraid of the dark is probably lying. Anyone who says they’re not afraid of standing in an abandoned amusement park in the middle of the woods—in the dark—is definitely lying.

It’s hard to tell where Golden Apple Amusement Park stops and the forest starts. The whole scene is a kind of mangled-theme-park-versus-tree showdown, with branches protruding from carousel animals and vines curling around the ruins of concession stands and prize booths. Enough moonlight splashes down on the clearing to keep me from tripping over structures, but my shirt keeps snagging on spokes and gears, the exposed insides of the machinery that ran this place.

No one’s supposed to see that part, I think to myself.

People get uncomfortable when they realize all that’s holding together their cars and appliances are gears and wires. One missing bolt, and the whole thing collapses, and that’s assuming the engineering was sound in the first place.

That’s assuming the engineer wasn’t crazy.

I check my watch and see that I’m ten minutes early.

“What am I doing here?”

I say it aloud, so I’m forced to hear what a stupid idea this was. Am I seriously so desperate for a friend that I’m willing to sneak out in the middle of the night to meet Aaron just one day after the last time I snuck out of the house to go to the factory?

I pull the crumpled scrap of paper from my pocket and read it for the hundredth time.

“Who am I gonna tell?” I ask the note.

Each time I read the note, the pit in my stomach widens. There’s so much I need to know, especially now that I’ve seen that video. I can only guess Aaron’s ready to tell me everything, which is why he left the note in the trellis, but now that I’m here, waiting in the dark and the nighttime chill that’s begun to creep in with the approach of fall, I’m suddenly less eager for answers.

I hold my flashlight to see where I’m going. My sweater keeps snagging on the leafless branches, and the more I think about it, the more annoyed I am with myself for showing up here. The guy goes dark on me for three weeks, and all of a sudden, I need to meet him in the one place he hates more than anything—the place I practically had to beg him to tell me about, and even then, I barely got anything out of him.

I’m not really mad, though. I’m scared. Scared like a little baby.

“Get a grip, Nicky,” I tell myself.

The peeling paint of the prize booths and the skeleton of the Ferris wheel hanging overhead clash with the gleaming pictures those early newspaper features printed. Smiling parents and wide-eyed kids crowded the park on opening day. It’s hard to believe this place was so alive three short years ago.

It’s hard to believe how much can die in that amount of time.

My flashlight clicks and blinks, and I practically drop it, fumbling to recover it before it lands on a warped picnic table.

The batteries must be low.

“Oh, that’s just fantastic.” I’ve used it to read Aaron’s stupid note so many times, I must have drained what little battery it had left.

A twig snaps somewhere behind me, and I whip around with my dying light, but all I can make out is a small square of forest. Some clouds have begun moving over the moon, and now even the bigger structures in the park are hard to see. Everything looks like dark blobs against a darker backdrop.

Another snap, and this time I think it’s coming from one of the shapes in front of me, though I’m having a hard time determining distance.

“Aaron?” I try to call out, but my voice is hoarse.

Get it together. It’s just a bunch of trees and metal.

But as I open my mouth to try and call out again, the squeal of rusted machinery tears through the air. Gears grind and crunch as they break away from their vines, and with a roar, the forest comes to life with the unmistakable sound of carousel music. The blob closest to me begins to take shape, and I see the rise and fall of glittering poles.

I grab my knees to keep them from buckling as the shock finally wears off.

“Seriously, Aaron?” I want so much to laugh it off, but I can’t get my heart to stop racing.

“If you’re trying to get me to pee my pants, it’s not gonna happen, dude. I’m like a camel. One time I went almost two days before—”

There’s someone sitting on one of the horses. At first I thought it was my imagination, but then the carousel revolved, and revolved again, and the outline is definitely a person. A person smaller than Aaron.

Just as I’m trying to decide whether to walk forward or run in the opposite direction, the music that seemed to propel the carousel around begins to slow. The high-pitched organ notes lower to a groaning echo until the spinning animals find their stop, the metal crunching to a halt as the music gives out.

I take a step forward, then another, telling myself there’s nothing to be afraid of because even the remotest possibility—that some kid is playing out here in the middle of the night—is not exactly a threat. Who’s afraid of a little kid?

I am. Because there’s no way there’s actually a little kid out here playing by himself in the middle of an abandoned amusement park. I don’t care how much you like carousels.

“Um, shouldn’t you be, like, at home asleep? I mean, you could get hurt out here,” I say, reasoning with the dark, and why can’t I get my heart to stop thudding like that?

“I’m, uh, I’m not gonna rat you out or anything, but you could get in a ton of trouble,” I say, and now I’m standing right in front of the carousel.

Nothing but silence answers me. I take a deep breath and step onto the carousel, slowly convincing myself it was Aaron after all. Besides, it’s way too dark to be sure of anything I saw, and the trees and the shadows distort everything.

I take one step, then another, and with the third I run straight into a metal bunny, its haunches planted on the floor of the carousel as it rears up. Its eyes glint red under the dim moonlight.

From the corner of my eye, something moves, but I realize it’s just the mirror at the center of the carousel.

The shadow I saw was myself. I didn’t see a kid on the horse.

“You saw your own reflection.”

I shake my head, grateful no one was there to see me talking to nothing. This town really has me losing it. Maybe there’s nothing weird about Aaron or his family. They’re just people who have stumbled into some really crummy luck. If any family should understand that, it’s mine. And maybe all that bad made Mr. Peterson go a little nuts. And maybe Aaron doesn’t feel like hanging out right now. Maybe he actually feels bad about the whole fart-synthesizer incident.

I’ve just about convinced myself that I’ve fabricated the entire bizarre story of Aaron, when I remember that the carousel didn’t just turn itself on.

A metal grate shakes behind me, and I hear a small thud hit the ground, twigs and leaves crunching underneath pounding feet.

I’m chasing after the sound before I know what I’m doing. If this is Aaron, he’s not going to get the satisfaction of seeing me run away like a scared toddler.

After my lungs start to burn, though, I slow to a stop and realize I don’t even know if I’ve been running in the right direction. I put my hands on my knees again, this time to quell the fire in my chest, and when I look up, I see the twisted tracks of a melted roller coaster reaching higher than the highest tree that surrounds it. Branches protrude through the rails and jut skyward, defiant against the fire that burned half the trees that once stood nearby. At the top of the track sits a single car, perched precariously on the rail but refusing to let go. I can barely make out the string of peeling golden apples painted across the car, grotesquely cheerful beside the mangled track.

I follow the track as it drops to its lowest dip, a height just above my head, and I squeeze my eyes tight against the image of the car that detached from its fellow cars, like a bead of water off the end of a cracking whip, tearing through the nearest circus tent and crashing into the trees.

They thought she landed on the ground somewhere. Wasn’t that what someone had said in one of the news stories? They finally figured out she was still in the tree.

I walk slowly toward the tree line, stepping carefully through the overgrowth of vines and shrubs that have cropped out of the ash. I don’t want to, but I look up. I can’t help myself. I half expect to see a car painted with apples, wedged between a fork in the branches, a little girl quietly bunched up on its bench, seat belt still secured.

The guy who found her said she looked like she was sleeping. She looked so peaceful.

I hear crying.

I don’t believe it at first. I’ve gotten myself all messed up over the note from Aaron, the stories about the park, the trouble I’ve gotten into … the trouble I’m going to get into when my parents find out I’m not in bed right now.

The crying isn’t in my head, though. It’s faint, but I hear it.

“Hey!” I call.

I’m starting to get tired. This night has been one mistake after the next, and I’m completely over it. All I want is my bed and a dreamless sleep for once.

“Hey! Either quit crying or tell me where you are. Otherwise, I’m out of here.”

The crying stops.

I wait, but not even a sniffle wafts over the air.

“Good,” I say, even though I don’t really mean it because if I turn around and head home now, all I’m going to do is lie in bed and wonder what I heard and saw and why this entire night happened.

“Okay, last chance. Aaron, if it’s you, screw you. I mean that. If it’s not Aaron, whoever you are …” I struggle with what to say next. “It’s okay if you’re scared.”

Because I’m scared, too. I’ve been scared from the second we moved to Raven Brooks, just like I’m scared every time we move. I’m afraid I won’t know where to sit at lunch or what to wear. I’m afraid of saying something dumb or laughing at the wrong time or not laughing at the right time. I’m afraid I smell weird even after I take two showers because our houses always smell like other people and no matter how many air fresheners you plug in, it still seeps into your clothes. I’m afraid that if I do finally make a friend worth keeping, he’ll decide I’m not worth keeping. Maybe some people are just too weird to have friends.

“What makes you think I’m scared?”

It’s a girl’s voice, and I feel dizzy because all I can think of is Lucy Yi. I look up in the tree, and for a second, I swear I see a little pink car, an arm dangling from the opening on the side.

I feel a hand close around my wrist.

I leap backward, jerking my arm away from the cold grasp of fingers that leave a fine scratch along my hand.

When I look into the small beam of silver light that creeps through the tree branches, I see the illuminated face of Aaron’s sister.

“Mya, what the—? Why are you here?” I sputter.

“I left you a message,” she says, looking betrayed, like I should have known it was her writing me a note and hiding it in the secret place only her brother should know about.

“Okaaaay,” I say, trying to process Mya writing me to meet her in the middle of the night.

“It’s Dad,” she says, wasting no time. “He’s getting worse.”

My heart drops into my stomach. The note from last month, the golden apple bracelet. It was Mya who left them.

“Ever since …” She looks around, and we both look up at the roller coaster above us. Then she says, “He’s getting worse. Way worse.”

I rub my head, which has suddenly begun to pound. I wasn’t sure the night could get any more bizarre, but Mya is proving me wrong.

“I know,” I say, aware that’s the understatement of the century. Mya isn’t the one I was expecting to see tonight, but maybe she could still help me figure out what to do next. “Is Aaron okay? I saw some things—and heard some things—about your dad. If you guys aren’t safe, we can call the police—”

“No,” Mya says firmly. “Dad was in a lot of trouble before … with the other parks. If the police knew—”

“Mya, whatever happens to your dad, you and your mom and Aaron … you need to be safe.”

“Nicky, you’re not listening,” Mya pleads.

“I am listening, but …” I’m starting to get desperate, too. “I just don’t know what you want me to do!”

I’ve never understood what people meant when they described someone’s face as “falling.” It seemed like an impossible feat for all the muscles in someone’s cheeks and mouth and eyes to just slacken and sink. But that’s exactly what Mya’s face does now. Except her mouth doesn’t just slacken. It shuts. Tight.

And just like that, all the tension leaves her small frame, and she takes a step away from me.

“You’re the same as everyone else. You don’t understand, either, do you?” she says, and she must be right because I don’t even know what is so wrong about what I said to her. I’m still so confused over the Mrs. Tillman thing and the video and that night in Mr. Peterson’s study, but none of that matters now. It’s too late to erase what I said.

Mya backs away three more steps, turns, and disappears into the surrounding woods.

“Mya!” I call after her. This is the last place either of us should be wandering around alone at night, but I know it’s no use. I can’t even hear her footsteps anymore. If that’s a shortcut home, I don’t know it.

It takes me nearly an hour to make my way back to the trellis in my front yard. I climb the slats carefully, conscious of every rattle and creak the frame makes as my weight pushes it against the side of the house. Then I slide my window open, replace the screen, and secure the latch. I sit there on the window seat with my head against the glass, watching for any sign of movement in the house across the street, worried about whether Mya made it home safely.

I watch the house until my eyes ache and finally close.

That night, I have the dream again about the grocery store. Only this time, I’m sitting in the front of the cart, feet dangling from a hundred yards up. I’m in a tree, branches crisscrossed over my chest, pinning me to the basket. Below me, my parents are as small as ants, scattering over the ground with dozens of others who call my name.

But I can’t answer. I can’t say a word. And soon, I can’t hear them at all.

*  *  *

When I wake up, my head is still pounding, and I have the feeling for just a moment that I never actually went to sleep at all. My shirt and boxers are plastered to my body, and the way my bones ache, I wonder if somehow I was running all night. Is there such a thing as sleep running?

Then I remember the night before—with Mya and the carousel and the endless walk home.

My tailbone screams out in pain, and I realize it’s because I slept on the hard window seat, slumped against the glass, my breath clouding the pane.

Suddenly, a loud smack against the window launches me from my morning lull. I groan and wipe the fog from the glass to find the Raven Brooks Banner resting at the top of trellis. The paper boy, we’ve noticed, has a powerful but inaccurate throwing arm.

Usually the Raven Brooks news is full of local announcements (Catch of the Day at Dan’s: Chilean Sea Bass!), celebrity sightings (Local Tile Maker Takes Third Place in Poetry Competition!), and tragedies (Lost!: Lovely Border Collie Answers to the Name Noodle).

This time, though, the news is graver than a lost dog. This is how I find out about the accident.

After a long time, Mom calls from the kitchen, “Narf, can you come out for a minute?”

I drag myself off the window seat and down the hallway. I slouch in a chair as my father sets down his editor’s copy of the paper and my mom puts a plate of waffles in front of me.

She sits down and puts a hand on my forearm. “We’ve got something to tell you. It’s going to be hard to hear.”

I methodically pour syrup into every square of my waffle, avoiding the eye contact Mom is desperate to make with me while she creeps up on the news.

“The paper landed in the trellis this morning,” I say, taking a bite of the waffle I don’t even want. “I already read it.”

“Oh!” Mom says, then looks at Dad like, What now?

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” I say.

“It’s just that, I think we ought to talk about it,” Dad tries.

“I’m good,” I say.

“Honey, you don’t need to be good,” says Mom.

“I know.”

Now it’s Dad’s turn to look at Mom. They’re stuck again.

So am I, but I don’t know how to tell them that Aaron’s mom died last night and I haven’t figured out how to cross the street to see if he’s okay and I’ve felt like I’m going to puke ever since I read the front page.

“They’re having a service on Saturday. Your dad and I are going to go. Do you want to come, too? Either way, it’s okay.”

No.

“Okay,” I say.