So, yeah. I ran.

I didn’t save him. I didn’t save anyone. I didn’t spring out of the woods to help my friend; I didn’t scream or shout or try to scare those guys away.

Instead, I ran just as fast as I could, my feet pounding beaten earth. Panic and terror swelled in my chest. I sped for my truck, tearing down the trail full-tilt, and then my shoes hit asphalt and I was back in the empty parking lot, the glimmer of the spot above the ranger’s kiosk lighting my way. I didn’t know how much time had passed since those men burst from the woods. (Had they been men? I thought so, but I wasn’t sure.) I think I covered that half-mile or so in less than three minutes. The miracle of it was that no one came after me and I didn’t knock myself out running into a tree. Chances were, the noise they made beating Jimmy covered any sound I made. Lucky me.

I bounded for my truck, wrenched open the door, fell into the driver’s seat. I was shaking so badly that I had to hold the key in both hands to slot it into the ignition. The truck caught, the heater roared. Then I jammed the stick into reverse, twirled the wheel, and sent my truck screaming down the approach road. Thinking, They had to hear that.

My eyes kept darting to the rearview, but no headlights winked into view. Good. By the time I sped onto the main drag I was reasonably sure that whoever they were, they weren’t after me. But Jimmy .. .

“Oh my God, oh my God.” The words rode on thin sobs. I was shivering like I had the flu. My palms were wet with sweat and so were my cheeks. Or were those tears? I could smell the metallic stink of my fear. Every time I blinked, I saw the fuzzy black humps exploding from the woods and the peculiar flash of the hatchet and that spurt of stuff that looked like black ink but had to be Jimmy’s blood. I was gasping, white-knuckling the steering wheel, my foot like a hammer on the accelerator. The truck bulleted past clots of deer on the right and left, their startled eyes leaping like green meteors from the darkness. The road was an infinite tunnel through which I hurtled like a rocket, trying to reach escape velocity—and now I believe I must’ve thought about exactly that: getting away, and how it would feel to keep on going forever.

Looking back on all that, it was a miracle I didn’t crack up and no one pulled me over. But the road was deserted. I kept on until I saw the lights of Hopkins and then, four minutes later, the Kinko’s. There were three cars in the Kinko’s lot, all nosed in at the front where the light was. I could see a couple people at copiers inside. I slotted the truck in the farthest, darkest corner and killed the lights.

And then I hugged myself. I was bone-cold, my teeth chattering—and I heard myself sobbing, the sounds raw and ragged like something had broken in my chest: “Nonono . . .”

I don’t how long I shivered and moaned and wept, but it was a while, long enough for the warmth in the cab to bleed away. My thoughts were all tangled up. Every time I clutched at a thought and tried dragging it in, I hit a snag and then my brain jumbled and snarled.

I couldn’t tell anyone. Could I? My dad? What would I say?

No, Dad, you don’t understand; these two guys jumped out of the woods and they started hitting Jimmy. They had rocks and an axe, and I ran … No, I didn’t do anything, I was afraid so I … What do you mean, what was I doing there in the first place?

God. I couldn’t tell my dad that. I’d turned tail and run. I hadn’t tried to help a kid who thought I was his big brother. Worse, a kid who had a crush on me, who’d taken a picture and started rumors. A kid everyone saw me talking to in Cuppa Joy, right before they kicked me out because I was mad enough that, yes, I wanted to hurt that boy something fierce.

Yes, Detective, I was angry with Jimmy. Who wouldn’t … What? Well, I don’t care what people saw or thought they saw … Yes, okay, I grabbed his wrist and I was angry. No, I wasn’t following Jimmy. Well, okay, I was following him … Yes, I agreed to meet him in secret. Yes, I lied about where I was going and I didn’t think about the black scrubs and sweatshirt, not really, I wasn’t trying to sneak around and hide, it’s not what you think. No, I wasn’t involved with him. I worried that maybe he was in trouble … I don’t know what I thought I would do. I thought maybe if he needed my help … Yes, you’re right. When he needed my help the most, I ran.

God, that sounded awful, and I was supplying all the words. That started me thinking about what I’d really done, too. Not just a whole lot of nothing; I’d practically pushed Jimmy into this spot, hadn’t I? If I was that worried about him, why did I sneak around? Why hadn’t I said something in the parking lot? Oh God. Maybe I wanted something to happen to Jimmy. Parker’s mom, the psychiatrist, she was always talking about how our unconscious influences what we do, how we talk ourselves into believing one thing while we really mean something else.

So, what if I wanted Jimmy dead?

What if some deep, dark piece of me, the one that grabbed his wrist and thought about how easy it would be to snap his neck; the guy who would follow a kid and then spy and get pissed … what if that version of me ran because that’s what it hoped would happen?

No, that was crazy. I had to calm down, or I was going to make a mistake. None of this was my fault. I hadn’t started rumors or snapped pictures or taken advantage of a friend. If I was going to get out of this, I had to be cool, get myself under control.

Drawing in a shivery breath, I dragged my sleeve across my streaming eyes. One of the cars in the lot was gone. That made me sit up. Had they seen me? Heard me screaming and crying like a maniac? As I watched, a guy pushed out of the Kinko’s. I could tell from his walk that he had a cell phone at his ear. His face lifted; he glanced my way, but something about his walk made me think he hadn’t really seen me. But then, as he reached his car, I thought he glanced my way. Was he calling me in? Maybe someone had gone back into the store and told them there was some crazy kid in a truck bawling his eyes out. My dad always said how calls from ordinary folks on cell phones helped keep bad situations from getting out of hand.

I had to get away from here. I couldn’t be stopped by the police. What would I say? And what if someone had seen me, that evening, at Cuppa Joy? I’d been so intent on watching the Taurus that someone could’ve come out of the coffeehouse or been in a car, and I’d never have known.

I had to think. Snot coated my chin, and I smeared my face clean with the tail of my black sweatshirt—and then I really looked at it and what I was wearing and thought, Oh. Shit.

Yes, Officer. I could hear myself now. Yessir, I saw Jimmy with someone dressed all in black: black jeans, black sweatshirt … no, no, not like mine. Well, all right, maybe a little…

The person I saw with Jimmy—kissing Jimmy, touching Jimmy, grinding against Jimmy—wore a black hoodie.

And Pastor John wore black.

No, no, that was crazy; why did my head keep looping back to that; what was I thinking? A lot of girls, they wore black. That girl in the band, the Penitents, she had a black hoodie. It was a girl out there with Jimmy; it could’ve been a girl; yeah, of course, it could … and that was better? How? Because Jimmy was still …

“Stop.” I mashed the heels of my hands to my temples and squeezed. “Stop, stop stop.”

Pastor John.

Wore black.

Pastor John wore black, all the time.

The guys who’d burst out of the woods wore black hoodies.

And so what? I was in my Angel of Death sweats—and … oh, Jesus … if someone at Cuppa Joy had seen me, or Jimmy and that other person talking in the back lot, they’d assume …

No, no, Officer, it wasn’t me—

—kissing Jimmy, holding Jimmy, wanting Jimmy—

—it was someone else.

But that would be a lie.

Wait … what was a lie?

Being with Jimmy.

Kissing him.

Wanting...

“Shit.” The word rode on a gasp. No, I hadn’t wanted Jimmy. I’d never thought or even felt it until this second … “No, no, no.” My fingers twined in my hair and I was gulping air. Christ, but it was suffocating in here. “I don’t feel that, I don’t feel anything, I didn’t, I didn’t feel it, I didn’t, it was a suppose, it didn’t mean anything. . .”

But no matter what I said, even to myself … it would never stand up. Wait, why not? Think, think, think! My mind whirled. Yes, it would all come out. No, wait, what would come out? There was nothing to come out.

But there was. I’d followed Jimmy; I’d

—been obsessed—

spied on him. What kind of maniac did that? How could I explain—and just what was I trying to explain?

I would never be able to live any of it down. Yale wanted leaders. Georgetown looked for the innovators of tomorrow. If this came out, no college on Earth would want a person like me. I had turned tail. I had run.

Worse.

I had left Jimmy to fight for his life.

I had let Jimmy die alone.

The truck’s windows were turning steamy, and I cranked on the engine to get the defroster going. My eyes drifted to the dashboard clock. Only half past eight. It felt like a lifetime had passed.

I needed an alibi. I needed to be seen by people. I racked my addled brain, trying to think of what I could do that would explain why I wasn’t in the ER.

The ER manager: We were just talking about what kind of social life you could possibly have.

Brooke. Brooke was having a party, a bonfire after the game. Would the game be over by now? I hadn’t been to a football game in years, but maybe I could go now. The more people who saw me, the better. But … wait. I stopped with my hand on the ignition key. Wouldn’t that look suspicious? All of a sudden, out of the blue, I appear at a game? No, that was no good.

So, okay, bag the game. Maybe I should just show up at the ER. Say I changed my mind. They’d all laugh, and then one of the nurses would offer me a doughnut and tell me to clean up room seven.

Or was that the wrong thing to do? I’d already called in to cancel for the first time ever. Wouldn’t it be weird for me to suddenly show up? What could I say?

Nurse: Well, yes, Sheriff, we thought it was awfully strange when Ben just appeared and you know, he did seem a little upset … Mary, didn’t you say you thought Ben looked as if he’d been crying?

Okay, scratch the ER.

Except my parents thought I was there. Jesus, what if one of the other deputies talked to my dad? Oh yeah, there was this real bad wreck and I figured on maybe saying hi to your boy, only he wasn’t in the ER and the nurses said he’d taken the night off and I thought to myself, well, that’s not like Tom’s boy; Ben never takes time off.

Stick to Plan B. Go to Brooke’s house. At least that would square with the story I’d given the ER. If it came out, I could tell my parents that I’d lied because I thought they would freak out if I skipped a night of volunteering. Which was close to the truth, what with my mom obsessing and all.

Wait, wait … Flicking on the dome light, I patted my pockets and fished out pocket trash: coins; my pocketknife. Jesus, why was I carrying a knife? Crinkly balls of paper receipts.

Excellent. I’d driven around. Gone to a 7-Eleven, and I could prove it. I squinted at the blurry numerals: 6:28. Maybe too early … where was that Burger King … I spotted the grease-spotted bag in the passenger footwell. My half-eaten Whopper smelled like cold shoe leather. A long, rusty lick of catsup had dried on the wrapper, and I couldn’t help but think of the oily squirt of Jimmy’s blood as the rock connected.

Hold it together. Bile flooded the back of my throat and burned my tongue, and I tasted regurgitated fries. Take it easy. I swallowed down a mouthful of puke, closed my eyes, waited for my stomach to settle. After a couple seconds, I rummaged around again, found the Burger King receipt, uncrumpled it. The time stamp was 6:48. Okay, okay, that was a lot better. This would establish where I’d been. Jimmy said that he took out the trash at seven, which meant he’d left the kitchen right around then. I had a receipt that showed me almost fifteen miles away, getting a burger and fries. Should I save the burger? No, that was stupid; I should chuck it. Normal people didn’t leave food rotting in their cars. No, but wait … Wouldn’t it look better to actually have the burger in the truck? Like I’d balled it up and forgotten about it? There were stories about how people went through trash cans to find receipts and crap that would place them somewhere else. And if they tested the burger, they’d find my DNA.

Stop, stop. I gnawed on a gritty knuckle. Be cool. Stay calm. No one’s going to test your DNA. Toss the burger but keep the receipts and the bag. Just in case.

That’s when I noticed my hands. The heels were scraped raw and grimy with dirt. I looked at my scrubs. They were filthy, streaks of dirt and leaf trash, and one of the knees had a rip and there was blood. Shit. Angling down my rearview, I barely recognized the wild-eyed, white-faced stranger staring back. Snot crusted my upper lip. My black sweatshirt was a mess of mud and congealing mucus. Dirt flaked from the elbows.

I couldn’t go to Brooke’s like this. I had to find a place to clean up. But to use a bathroom would mean having to stop somewhere and buy something. You had to get a key for the john. You couldn’t just wander in.

I sat and thought about that a while but couldn’t figure a way around it. I didn’t know Hopkins as well as I did Cedar Ridge, but I figured there must be a gas station a little further on toward town. My only problem was that Brooke’s house was in the opposite direction, a good thirty miles away. No way I could say I’d just swung by Hopkins for a little gas. Well, that was okay. All I had to do was keep calm. Pump a little gas—only that would be too suspicious, wouldn’t it? Pumping only a gallon or so? An attendant would remember that. So maybe just get a quart of oil and put air in the tires, yeah … It would be risky because I’d have to show my face and there would be cameras. Maybe hide my face? Put up my hood? No, no, bad idea. Hoodies were suspicious. Leave the sweatshirt in the car. Better yet, ditch it, get rid of the scrubs after I got home, go out and buy another pair. That’s how you got rid of evidence.

But wait. I’d been out to the park. If the police looked at my truck, could they tell?

Dirt in the treads. I got the Lariat headed into Hopkins. Maybe find a car wash, scrub the tires. I kept to the speed limit and my eyes peeled for cruisers, but I saw none. Three miles on, I spotted a Mobil station with a do-it-yourself car wash. I decided on a Supreme Plus, the kind of wash that included an undercarriage spray, then eased the truck into the wash station. Sitting inside the cab, listening to the whir of machinery and the roar of power-spray sluicing away grime and grit, watching as the mechanical arm spewed multicolored foam that smelled of sharp disinfectant and too-sweet flowers, I felt a stillness finally settling in the center of my soul, as if the water and soap coating the windshield could hide me forever. Or maybe it was just all that white noise made me feel safe, gave me an excuse to sit and do nothing for a time.

Getting the oil took me a couple minutes, mainly to screw up my courage to get out of the truck. But I had to get clean. I peeled out of my sweatshirt, mopped snot and crud from my face then turned the sweatshirt inside out and wadded it in one hand.

The convenience store attached to the Mobil station was brightly lit. A chime dinged as I entered. There were no customers and only a single attendant behind a counter to the left of the door. The store reeked of stale cigarette smoke, engine oil, burnt coffee, and brake fluid. The guy manning the register looked up from a magazine. “Help you?” he asked.

“Just getting some oil,” I said.

“Last shelf on your right, at the back,” the guy said and went back to his reading.

“Thanks.” I walked down rows of freestanding shelves with snacks, boxes of doughnuts, razor blades, newspapers. I found the oil and grabbed a disposable paper cone. As I headed for the front, my eye fell on a traveler’s sewing kit. I took that and then a small squeeze bottle of Hibiclens, a tiny square of Dial, and a box of gauze.

“Going on a trip?” the guy asked as I dumped my purchases on the counter. He moved his magazine to one side: Guns & Ammo.

“Ah, no, I just like to, you know, be prepared.” So stupid. Too late, I remembered: surveillance cameras. All these stores had them. The urge to look around for the camera was powerful, but instead I grabbed a candy bar and added that to my pile. “Uh, you got a bathroom?”

“Sure. Around back.” The guy handed me a key. I thanked him, paid for my purchases, took the key and my change, went back to my truck, grabbed my sweatshirt, and then went around back to the men’s room.

The men’s room was cold and reeked of the sour ammonia tang of urine and old farts. A lone fixture in the ceiling bled thin yellow light, and I could see the black carcasses of dead flies trapped in the bowl. The floor was grimy yellow and white tile. The toilet seat was up, and a ring of brown stained the underside, rim, and bowl. There was something wrong with the plumbing because water continually hissed from beneath the rim. A roll of toilet paper perched on the lip of the sink. There was no hot water spigot, and the cold water was so icy beads of condensation clung to the metal. Of course, there was no soap, but there was a hot air dryer attached to the wall and a stack of paper towels.

I washed my hands and arms with the Dial soap and then my face and neck, using paper towels to dry off. My scrubs top looked pretty clean because I’d been wearing my sweatshirt, so I unrolled the sweatshirt, turning it right side out. I scrubbed away the dirt and dried snot and then held it under the dryer, but it was still clammy when I tugged it back on. Then I put down the toilet seat and cover and pushed down my scrubs, balancing on one foot as I tugged them over my sneakers. No way I was going barefoot here. The gash in my left knee wasn’t deep, but dried blood tracked from the wound down my calf. I used paper towels to wash away the blood and grit, then opened up the gauze and repeated the process with Hibiclens. After I spot-washed and dried my scrub bottoms, I cracked the traveling sewing kit, threaded a needle with black thread, and then repaired the rip over the knee.

The guy behind the counter cocked an eyebrow when I returned the key. “Thought you’d fallen in.”

“No. Stomach flu,” I said—and then thought, Moron, you just bought a candy bar.

“Nasty stuff,” the guy said, hanging up the key. “You take care now.”

“Thanks. Ah, you might want to check out the toilet. It keeps running.”

“I’ll tell the manager,” the guy said, but he was already flipping to another page in his magazine as I left.

I spent another ten minutes feeding coins into a power-vac next to the car wash and vacuuming out the truck’s footwells and seat. Then, as a precaution, I vacuumed my sweatshirt, which the vacuum promptly tried to eat. So incredibly stupid.

When I was done, I checked my watch: 9:42. A safe bet the game was over. Brooke and her friends ought to be at her place. Wait a second … where did she live? Then I remembered the night before in the parking lot and dug out my wallet. Yes. I exhaled in relief. Her address and phone number, scrawled on a scrap of paper. Still there.

As I drove toward Brooke’s house, it hit me: Jimmy had been dead for over an hour and a half.

Unless he hadn’t been. Or still wasn’t.

No, don’t be such a maniac; he’s dead. A chill finger crept down my spine. No one could survive something like that.

But what if he had? Hadn’t he been moaning? So what if, by some miracle, he was still alive, right now?

Then I could save him. I could make this right—

A flash of silver out of the corner of my right eye, and then a deer streaked across the road. I wrenched the steering wheel to the left, the absolute wrong thing to do. The truck slewed, its tires squalling over asphalt. The world whirled and blurred beyond my windshield. Panicked, I pumped the brake, but the truck kept spinning in a blistering, squealing one-eighty before finally jerking to a halt and stalling out.

Jesus. Gasping, I clutched the wheel. Kill yourself while you’re at it. My throat was raw, and I realized that I’d been screaming. Now, in the sudden silence, my ears rang. I could feel my heart thrashing against bone. That had been too close. If another car had been coming, I could’ve killed someone. Or myself. As it was, I was lucky not to have crashed or rolled over.

After another minute—when the shakes passed and I was sure I wasn’t going to vomit into my lap—I cranked the engine, got myself turned in the right direction, and headed off again for Brooke’s. I had to get hold of myself and focus. Concentrate. I couldn’t do more than I already had. This wasn’t a movie or comic book. I wasn’t a superhero, and I’d heard that solid thunk, the crash of rock against bone eventually give way to the hollow, wet sound of tires over a smashed pumpkin.

Jimmy was dead. He had to be, and that was all there was to it.

Hah. HAH.

I know what you’re thinking: Joke’s on you.

“It’s so nice to see you.” Brooke’s mom led me through the house. “It’s been what? Three years? Five?”

“I don’t remember, ma’am,” I said, myopically eyeing a row of photographs on either side of the front hall. The newest ones were closest to the front door; I recognized what must be Brooke’s graduation picture because we’d used the same photographer that very summer. Wandering past these photos was like walking back through time: Brooke at eighteen, Brooke at fifteen, Brooke in middle school. Brooke at the village pool, in a striped tank and one of those inflatable pink inner tubes snugged around her middle. A big goofy grin on her face, so I could see where she was missing a front tooth. “Been a while, I think. A long time.”

“Too long.” She saw me studying the pool picture. “I remember the day that was taken. When you were little, your mother would bring you to the village pool nearly every day of the summer. This was before she started working full-time again. We mothers would all loaf in the sun and gossip and watch you kids paddle around the baby pool. Only my little Brooke was afraid of the water. Lord knows why. No one could get her to go in, not me or her father or any of the other moms. Then, one day, you marched up and took her hand and walked her out to that pool.”

I had? I didn’t remember that at all. “And she let me do that?”

“Oh, not without some fuss. If it had been up to me, I’d have swooped down and rescued my baby, but your mother stopped me. She said it was good for children to take chances with one another. Well, she was right. You kept Brooke so busy she didn’t have time to be scared. You even brought her a popsicle, but you made her eat it by the pool. You were so cute—you were only, what? Four? You were such a determined boy, so sure of yourself. You just wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“I did? I was?” This was news to me. I mean, I knew that Brooke and I had hung around together when we were kids, but all I remembered was running in a pack. Until around fifth or sixth grade, I guess. Then the girls and boys started to split up into their respective camps. I wondered, too, what the hell had happened to that confident, take-charge kid, who knew what to do and how he thought. Because I was pretty sure that if I looked into the mirror right then, he wouldn’t be staring back.

“Oh yes,” she said. “There you are, with the ball, see? You kept throwing it into the pool for Brooke to chase.”

I did see now: a little potbellied mini-me, in a pair of orange trunks, clutching one of those big, multicolored blow-up balls. A leggy woman in a floppy hat and blue polka-dot two-piece was grinning and clapping.

My mother, of course: egging me on, even then.

Brooke looked a little taken aback as I eased through the sliding glass door onto the back porch. A fire pit was going, and there were knots of people talking. Maybe thirty kids altogether, and most of them seniors, though I spotted a couple juniors. There was music; I recognized “Some Boys.” Kids were shaking ice from cans of pop plucked from a Coleman cooler and scavenging chips and dip from big glass bowls. Marshmallows for s’mores spilled across the picnic table, and I watched as a kid—someone from Russian history—fed squares of Hershey’s chocolate to his giggly girlfriend, who squealed, “Stop, stop,” in that way which you knew meant don’t stop, don’t stop.

Stop, don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t… there, in the dark meat of my brain: Jimmy, under the lights, and they were kissing and they were touching and don’t stop, don’t stop … and then there was the rock and blood and Jimmy screaming.. .

“Ben?” Brooke’s mouth was crooked in a tentative half-smile. “Are you all right? What made you change your mind?”

“Oh.” I fished a can of Diet Coke out of the cooler, shook off ice-melt, and popped the top. “I thought about what you said. I decided you were right. I need to get out more. You’re only a senior once, right?”

“If you’re lucky.” Her gaze swept over my clothes. “So you came from work?”

“No. I mean, yeah,” I fumbled. “I was going to the ER, but then figured that, you know, coming here was a better idea.” Okay, so maybe not so much of a lie. At least half of that was the truth. Still, I’d have to watch how many lies I told and to whom, so I wouldn’t get myself all tangled up. They always hammered that home on cop shows and in books: keep it simple, stupid.

She cut me a strange look. “Are you okay? You’re kind of pale.”

“Hungry.” Another lie. But that gave me an excuse to break eye contact. Swear to God, it was like I suddenly worried she had x-ray vision, could see right through me. Turning, I practically sprinted to the picnic table—I know; she must’ve thought I was a maniac, and thank God she let me go because I don’t know what I’d have done or said—and started loading a paper plate with chips and dip and veggies. Then I hustled to a free lounge chair and plopped by the fire pit. I swirled a Dorito in drippy red salsa—and, Jesus, that wet, smashed-pumpkin sound ghosted through my mind. My stomach tried crawling up my throat. I set the plate aside.

Some kids were dancing. I tried watching them for a while, but I was restless, uneasy, skin all prickly and fizzy. I knew now that it had been a mistake to come over, but I couldn’t just bug out or duck back into the house. So I unfolded myself from my chair and wandered around. People were talking about other people and things I didn’t much care about. I hovered, though, trying to look like I was listening, but my mind kept bouncing to the woods: Jimmy and the other person at the shelter. Jimmy and that other person touching. Kissing. Then Jimmy watching death swoop out of the dark woods. Jimmy screaming, and that spume of black blood.

And, just like that, I started to cry. Not sob, but my eyes stung, my nose itched. My legs got all wobbly. I quick ducked my head and struck out for the yard, moving out of the glow of the porch spots and into shadow. At the far corner of the yard I spotted a wood playground set, the kind with a fort and slide and walking bridge to another platform and swings and one of those two-seated gliders. I veered toward it.

All of a sudden, someone slid up on my left, melting out of the night. Spooked, I ducked even as my brain finally caught up: You maniac, there’s nothing there. Of course, my Chucks went out from under me on the slick grass. I came down on my ass hard enough to send an electric jolt up my spine that squeezed the breath from my chest. What an idiot. Spooked by my own shadow. Just my eyes playing tricks. I kept waiting for people to come running, but I was too far away from the house and no one had been paying attention to me anyway.

After a few minutes, I dragged myself to my feet and staggered over to the swing set, settling gingerly onto the glider. My ass still hurt and my legs were tingly. The Coke I hadn’t wanted but drunk anyway sloshed as I swung, back and forth, back and forth, gurgle, gurgle, gurgle.

But the motion was soothing, and I started to feel a little better. We’d had a swing set in the backyard of our old house, the one we’d lived in when Dad had just made chief deputy. The swing set had been green metal with chain swings, and I’d gouged deep ruts out of red dirt from countless hours of swinging. Once, I’d swung so high the legs of the entire set lifted right out of the grass. Mom had been pushing Mal, just a baby back then, and I remembered how loudly my mother screamed. She must’ve thought the whole set would topple.

Thing is, I wasn’t scared, not all the way or straight through, if you know what I mean. I was freaked but also … exhilarated. Like, Wow, I’m strong enough to do that? Afterward, though, I think my mom made my dad set the legs in concrete, because I couldn’t remember coming close to tipping that set again. Come to think of it, my dad anchored that sucker so well it’ll probably be there when the world finally ends.

I swung awhile until my eyes stopped pooling and the shivers subsided. I was about to get off when something peeled out of the dark. This time, I didn’t try jumping out of my skin.

“Hey.” Brooke held out something wrapped in a napkin. “Brought you a s’more.”

“Thanks.” The napkin was still warm. The mingled aromas of melted chocolate and charred marshmallow spirited past. I’d thought I was hungry, I really did, but my stomach did another of those slow somersaults.

She dropped onto the glider seat opposite. “You don’t want it?”

“No, no. Thanks. I … it’s just. . .” Pulling in a breath, I set the napkin on the ground and tried again. “I think I’m coming down with something. You know, that I picked up in the ER.”

She kick-started the glider. I really was done swinging, but I thought it would be rude to hop off now, so I stayed put. “Do you like it? The ER?” she asked.

“Yeah.” Having her sitting right across from me was a little disconcerting. My eyes wanted to settle anywhere but on her face. “Sometimes it’s boring. Not a lot happening. But when they bring in a big accident, then it’s pretty exciting.”

“You must see a lot of blood.” Then she must’ve read my face because she said, “I’m sorry. Are you okay? Should we stop swinging?”

“No, it’s okay.” My forehead was suddenly beaded with sweat. I licked my upper lip and tasted salt. What had she asked? “I … uhm … I guess I don’t think about the blood. I try to think like a doctor, you know? Figure out the problem and how to fix it.”

Her nose wrinkled. “You make it sound like you can’t think of people as people then.”

“I guess. I don’t think you could worry about people as human beings every single second, or you’d never get anything done. One of the docs said that’s why they drape patients so a surgeon only sees the area he’s operating on. That’s why medical school anatomy labs have you start on the back, because that looks the least human.”

“I heard once that some guy was doing a dissection and then they flipped the cadaver over and it turned out to be someone he knew from, like, a million years ago,” Brooke said. “How freaky is that? All that time, he’d been cutting up the kid he used to play baseball with.”

“I have to stop now,” I said. I dug into the dirt hard enough to jerk us to a halt.

Brooke’s head snapped forward and almost slammed into the vertical swing bar. “Hey,” she said.

“Sorry.” But I’d already hopped off. My stomach was doing those damn flips again. I closed my eyes. “I’m just…” I cleared my throat and spat. God, my mouth tasted like a toilet. “I should go. I’m feeling a little sick again.”

“Do you want to go inside to lie down?” she asked. Her concern made my eyes go salty and hot. Brooke was so good, such a nice person, and Jimmy’s dad was right for all the wrong reasons. I was filth, but not because of what he thought I’d done. I was scum for what I hadn’t done, and Jimmy was out there, right now, in the cold …

“No.” I hawked up another pukey gob. “But I probably should go home. Wouldn’t want to make you sick.”

Brooke walked me to the house. The fire had died, and it was cold enough now that people were starting to drift inside. Brooke’s mom looked up from gathering smeary bowls of ranch dip and salsa. “Oh honey,” she said, “you look ill.”

“He thinks he’s got the stomach flu,” Brooke said.

“Well, stay away from me, dude,” said one of the juniors.

“Maybe you should lie down first,” Brooke’s mom said. She tried to convince me to use her older son’s room, but I begged off and said good night and thanks.

Brooke walked me to the front door. “I’m really sorry you don’t feel well. But it was still nice to see you. Maybe we could have coffee or something. Like … Monday?”

“Yeah,” I said, struggling for something approaching normal. “Sure. That would be great.” And then I blurted: “I never apologized. For making you cry. You were only trying to help. Brooke, I … I’m just so sorry.”

I don’t know why I said that then. It just happened. Like all the words had piled up behind my teeth and couldn’t wait to get out. That I had to say sorry to someone because I couldn’t to Jimmy. If you know what I mean.

Brooke’s face had gone very still. Except for her eyes, which were deep and dark, like bittersweet chocolate. We were close enough that she could’ve placed a hand on my chest. She could’ve touched me. She didn’t, but I think now that I wanted her to. What I finally understood was what it meant when someone tried looking behind the mask and into those hidden places. I wanted her to see into me—and yet, I didn’t.

“Thanks.” Then, after a pause, she said, “I take back what I said. You know, that day.”

I remembered that I hadn’t heard what she’d said. But I didn’t ask. Instead, I only said good night. But when I did … something flickered across her face. I think … she was disappointed. Yes, looking back, I really do think that.

I really do.

It was a little after midnight when I crept into the house. The lights were out downstairs except for the one above the stove, and no one was up. That was a surprise. I did a quick sweep of the kitchen, looking for the note I was positive must be there: Jimmy’s missing. Have you seen him? We called the ER. Where have you been? But there was nothing except a platter of brownies in plastic wrap. I love my mom’s brownies, but I turned out the light and went upstairs.

In the bathroom, I struggled out of my clothes. I would throw away everything, even the Chucks. Hopkins had its own police department, but Merit was too small, so the deputies handled evidence collection. But I bet that once someone found Jimmy, they’d get one of those fancy crime scene guys from Madison to come up. Those techs could analyze anything, even dirt. They might be able to tell I’d been in the park.

Yeah, bag the clothes in a black contractor’s bag, so no one can see inside. Sunday was bagel morning in our house. I could set my alarm, be sure I got up before anyone else. Hell, before the bagel place even opened. Then swing by the pizza place first. That’s on the other end of town. No one will be there. Stuff the bag into a dumpster, then head the other way, grab bagels, be back home in a half hour, tops.

Or maybe not. I could just wash the scrubs and sweatshirt. So what if I’d ripped the knee? The only blood was mine, and that wasn’t a crime. I could even throw the Chucks into the machine. Yeah, pitching them was stupid. What if someone found the bag? Then they’d wonder why I needed to get rid of my clothes, and how would I explain that?

Slow down. Hot water rained over my head. I raised my face to the sting. Don’t panic. One foot in front of the other.

I stood under the water until it started to run cold. Then I got out, dried off, and dug under my nails with a file. My nails were completely clean, but I really scraped the hell out of them before shearing them with a pair of very sharp nail scissors, right down to the pink quick.

When I scrubbed away steam from the mirror, I thought I looked better than I had at the gas station. Not as yellow. Or maybe that had just been because of the lights. I squeezed a worm of toothpaste onto my brush and was running the whirring brush over my teeth—when I heard something.

The phones, in my parents’ room and downstairs. Ringing.

I froze, toothbrush still spinning, green froth dribbling down my chin. The phones rang again. I jabbed off the brush at the same moment that the phones cut off in mid-ring. Someone—my dad, the phone was on my dad’s side of the bed, and any call in the middle of the night was always for him—had picked up. I strained to hear, but my heart was booming. Then I thought how suspicious it would be if I didn’t keep brushing, like I was worried about the call. So I finished washing my teeth, spat out goopy green glop, and rinsed. My mouth still tasted like garbage.

Okay, just be cool. Knotting a towel around my waist, I tucked my bundle of clothes under one arm and opened the bathroom door. My glasses fogged. My skin prickled with gooseflesh as I stepped into the chill hall. My room was all the way down on the left. Only five steps away. I took them fast, making it just in time to flick on my light and shut the door before I caught the telltale scree of my parents’ bedroom door. But that was okay. No reason I ought to be hanging around the hall after midnight, all chatty. Or should I have been curious? How many people got calls in the dead of night? No, no, I had to calm down; my dad was chief deputy … but had I ever asked before? I couldn’t remem—

A soft knock on my door. The hairs spiked all the way up and down my neck. “Uhm.” I cleared my throat. “Yeah?”

“It’s Dad.” His voice was low and muffled. “Can I come in?”

“Uhm, sure.” I backed up as the door open. My dad was buttoning his uniform shirt. Shit. I felt my heart try to seize up. “You going out?”

“Afraid so.” He tucked in the tails then cinched his belt. “Maybe nothing. Missing person. Nothing official yet. Hasn’t been long enough. Might be nothing more than a runaway, but…” He punctuated with a shrug. “Thought it might be good if I went on over, talked to the family.”

That was right. In my panic, I hadn’t considered that kids ran away all the time. Nobody mounted full-scale searches for at least, what? Twenty-four hours? Forty-eight? I’d have to look this up. But that meant no one had found Jimmy yet. The more time passed, the safer I was.

Yes, maybe. The voice was small, and this time I knew it was mine. But why is your dad telling you about this at all? Has he ever stopped by to explain anything like this before?

“You all right?” My dad was studying my face. “Look a little peaked.”

“Just … I might be coming down with something.” The paranoia started up again. Why was Dad asking? I tried to remember if we’d ever had a conversation like this. I couldn’t think of a single instance. So, was he watching for my reaction? I tried to think of what would be a normal thing to say in a situation like this. Yeah, I’d ask who it was, right? Except I already knew Dad wouldn’t tell. One of those law-enforcement confidentiality things. Just like he never brought up things until they were old news, things we’d have heard about already, and that was only rarely. I decided not to ask.

“Sorry to hear that,” Dad said. “How was the ER?”

“I … uh … I didn’t go,” I said, then pushed on as I read the surprise in his face. “Brooke was having a party and I … well, I decided to bag the ER and go do that instead.”

I waited for Dad to say something about college and responsibility. What I didn’t expect was for him to clap his hand on my shoulder and smile.

“Good for you,” he said. “You’ve been working hard, and you deserve a break. When I was your age, I did my share of partying. Young man like you, you got to cut loose now and again. This time of life is special. It’ll never come again. You have the rest of your life to work. Only I’m not especially happy that you lied about where you were going. I know you did that because you didn’t want to get into it with your mom, am I right?”

Among other things. I cut my eyes away, worried what he might glimpse there. “Yeah. It wouldn’t have gone over really well.”

“Then that’s partly my fault. You make a reasonable request, you ought to be able to count on your parents to be reasonable, too. Look, I got to get going, but we’ll talk more about this, okay? Only … no more lying. If, God forbid, something happened, your mother and I needed to know where to find you…”

“Right. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right. Get some sleep now. I’m just glad you’re home safe. Calls like I just got?” He squeezed my shoulder. “Make you realize how precious family is.”

God. I was an awful person. The longest conversation I’d had with my father in I couldn’t remember how long, one where he stuck up for me, and it was all a lie. I was definitely going to hell.

Come to think of it, maybe I was already there.

I crawled into bed, bone-weary, convinced I would never sleep. Yet somehow I dozed off. My dreams were confused and fragmentary: awful, jagged snippets of Jimmy; the shelter; the wink of that hatchet in yellow light.

I had a terrible nightmare, too. In the dream, I was immobile, and that was because I was dead. It was one of those nightmares where you’re in and out of yourself at the same time. There was me, floating above my body—and there was me, facedown: a cadaver on a cold steel dissection tray.

My parents were there, too, hunched over my body like green vultures in surgical caps and gowns. “Don’t worry,” my dad said. The keen blade of a heavy-duty scalpel glinted, wicked and sharp. “He’ll feel every second.”

All at once, I collapsed into myself. No more safe detachment for me. I was in my body, my nose mashed against icy metal. I felt the instant the blade plunged into my flesh. I gargled out a scream—my mouth worked—but my dad kept going, slicing through skin and meat along my spine. There was this wet ripping sound, like the kind I’d heard whenever my mom tore up old underwear for dust rags. But this time, she was tearing me apart, flaying skin from bones, and I was screaming, screaming .. .

“Ah!” Flailing, I jolted awake in a sweaty tangle of damp sheets. My heart was trying to blast out my chest. Gasping, I fell back, gulped, waited for my pulse to slow down.

When I was calmer, I checked the time: 7:15. Thin slants of gray slowed through my venetian blinds. The house was quiet. There was no warm smell of coffee, so Dad probably wasn’t home yet. I didn’t know if that was good or bad. I stumbled out of bed, dragged on some clothes. My mouth was rank as a sewer, so foul it was like something had crawled in and died. I washed my teeth again, only this time I used an old toothbrush I dug out of a drawer. The electric toothbrush would make too much noise, and I needed time alone.

Cranking up my computer, I did a search. Jimmy’s name popped up only in references to his photography prize and thumbnails of that stupid picture and a frigging website the magazine had put up just in case someone in Outer Mongolia didn’t know about the pictures yet. Google News had nothing about a dead Wisconsin kid. Neither did any of network affiliates’ websites or CNN or the Hopkins Press.

I wiped my search history, turned off the computer. Then I started worrying again. Couldn’t they load a program on your computer to figure out what web pages you’d looked at? I thought so. I had once used a recovery program for a paper I’d inadvertently zapped. Just downloaded it from the Web, and that thing pulled up documents I’d done in sixth grade. So I couldn’t use my computer to do any more searches like this, not now. I had to be smart. Thank God I didn’t have a cell phone. I might have been tempted to use mine last night, and then that would’ve placed me somewhere I couldn’t afford to have been. Come to think of it, if your phone was on, couldn’t they track you by GPS or something? Even if you didn’t call anyone?

Maybe the news hadn’t made the paper yet, but I just couldn’t believe the word wasn’t out already. Except how could I find out? I gnawed on the side of my thumb and thought about it. People—especially really old guys—loved to gossip. Dad always said the best way to pick up information was park your butt on a stool, drink a couple gallons of coffee, and keep your mouth shut.

And your ears open.

The most likely place this early on a Sunday was a diner on Main. Farmers and field hands and workers getting off third shift at the plastics plant over in Ely came in early for breakfast. I could grab some coffee and there would be a newspaper, sure, but more importantly, there would be people. And people liked to gossip.

The diner smelled of stale smoke, bacon, and coffee. This early, there were only about ten guys either hunched over the counter or sitting at a clutch of tables near the windows. I slid onto a red vinyl stool about three places in from one end—close enough to hear anything the guys said, but not so close as to put me into the conversation. The waitress splashed coffee into a heavy porcelain mug and asked if I wanted anything. The idea of eating made my stomach turn, but I thought that not ordering something would look suspicious. So I asked for a fried egg sandwich with sausage, and she went away. I dumped about ten of those little things of creamer into my coffee, but it still tasted like dirty dishwater. No one was talking much either, except for the kind of conversations where no one finishes a single sentence because these guys had known each other so long, it was like they were telepathic. A guy two stools down was methodically going through the Sunday paper, putting aside each section as he finished. He spied me looking and waved a hand—help yourself—so I swiped a section and flipped pages. Not like I was looking for something, even though I was, and not fast but, like, random. But there was nothing.

Halfway through the sports section—a stupid thing to look through, but guys were supposed to like sports, and I was supposed to be acting like a normal boy—the waitress brought my food and refilled my coffee cup the eighth of an ounce I’d managed to choke down. I figured it would look bad if I didn’t eat, so I took a bite of my sandwich. Mistake. The egg burst, squirting a gooey glop of runny yellow yolk-snot onto my tongue. I nearly heaved right then and there.

Someone said my name. I craned over my shoulder and recognized one of the farmers with whom I’d done milking for the Langes. I hadn’t spotted him when I came in, but I waved, said hey. He came over and held out his hand. “Long time. You going over to the Langes, too?”

A sudden whooshing roar in my ears: Going to the Langes… too?

“Uh.” I smeared a slick of egg yolk from my chin onto a napkin. “No, I just felt like going out for some breakfast. Why?”

“Harlan called this morning, early. About six. Said he was going to need an extra pair of hands. Didn’t say why. I guess I figured you were on your way out there.”

“No.” Then added, like an idiot, “Sorry.”

“Don’t know why you should be,” he said and then looked over my shoulder toward the front door. “Hey, here comes your dad.”

My whole body went cold. My chest wasn’t working right, like I was sucking air through a straw. I turned as my father and another deputy came through the front door. Of course, my dad spotted me right away. It was weird, knowing what I did, reading the expressions that sparrowed over his face: surprise, followed by an instant’s quick calculation—has Ben ever … —and then a flit of something darker. Not bemusement or confusion or, even, curiosity.

Suspicion. As in, This has never happened before.

“Son.” His tone was carefully neutral. “What are you doing out so early?”

“I … I just felt like getting out of the house. I thought maybe my stomach was better, but…” I gestured lamely at my sandwich in its puddle of oozy yolk. “I was just leaving. Uh … how did the night go?” Yes, that was okay to ask; he was my dad; he’d been out all night. Asking was normal—and, hell, I really needed to know what was going on. “Did, ah, did the kid come back?” Which I wanted to grab back just as soon as it was out of my mouth: You maniac, he never said kid; he said missing person. He said runaway.

“Mmm,” was all my dad said. Which didn’t sound noncommittal to me, and had his eyes narrowed in that cop-squint I knew meant he was replaying something in his head? But then he was turning, nodding at the waitress. “Just coffee, Kathy.” To the farmer: “You heading out?”

The farmer must’ve heard the same note in my dad’s voice, because he cocked his head, said, “Yeah. Harlan called.” Pause. “Something I should know before I go?”

At that, the diner went completely silent. It was the eeriest thing, like this dense blanket had come floating down to muffle all sound. Even the cook seemed to have paused.

My dad shot a quick glance around, then inclined his head. “Walk you to your truck,” he said to the farmer. To me: “Hold up a sec, be right back.”

Everyone in that diner watched as he and the farmer sauntered out, my dad gesturing with one hand as he spoke. Their conversation was short; the farmer gave a mournful shake of his head and looked at the ground; my father and he shook hands, and then the farmer was climbing into his truck.

I turned back in time to see at least a dozen eyes cut back to their plates, their neighbors, to empty space. I suddenly didn’t want to know what they were thinking or had heard, and I sure as hell didn’t want any of them listening to or thinking about me. I dug a five out of my wallet, threw it on the counter, got out of there before the waitress even opened her mouth. I probably looked suspicious as hell, but right then I didn’t care.

Outside, my dad was watching the farmer drive away. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“Nothing good.” Dad’s eyes ticked to mine. That cop-eye squint? Definitely not my imagination. “You heard from Jimmy lately?”

I had to play this just right. “Jimmy?” I tried to inject confusion into my reply and then started to worry that would sound too calculated. Be cool, stay calm; it’s just a question. “Uh, no. Not since, you know, the thing in the magazine.” Too late, I remembered that was a lie too easily exposed; ask anyone in Cuppa Joy and they’d tell my dad I’d been there. But I couldn’t take it back now. If—when—my dad found out, I’d say I was embarrassed about the whole thing. Yeah, that was good. “Why?”

“Well, it’s not official yet, but … Jimmy left where he was working last night. Cuppa Joy? Didn’t tell anyone where he was going.”

A pause. My cue to respond: “Oh. Wow. So … he’s the runaway?”

“Maybe.” Dad was telling the story, but I saw how carefully he was watching, gathering information, measuring my response. “Staff there says he went to take out the garbage roundabout seven and then, maybe an hour or two later, they realized no one had seen him around. There were two dishwashers on that night on account of it being Saturday, and the other guy thought Jimmy was out front and the front people thought Jimmy was in back. Now no one can find him, and he’s not answering his cell phone. Can’t locate him by it either, so he must’ve turned it off.”

Some mental alarm bell dinged. Wait a minute, what had my dad just said? Something really important … “Uh, wow,” I repeated. “You think he’s okay? Is there anything I can do to help?”

As soon as the corners of my dad’s eyes relaxed, I knew I’d said the right thing. “Hard to know,” my dad said, and sighed. “I sure as hell hope that boy hasn’t done something stupid. Tell you what, though. If you hear from him, if he gets in touch, you tell me, all right? This is one of those times when the best thing you could do would be to rat him out. Don’t get sucked into keeping secrets.”

“S-sure. O … okay,” I stammered, and I sounded so shocked that I was positive my dad thought my reaction was normal. Only he would’ve been wrong about why.

Because I had just figured out what, until that second, I had forgotten.

Jimmy had been waiting for me; he’d wanted to see me because he’d had a camera card full of pictures for me. More than that, Jimmy had said, “I’ll write it all down and then you can mail the package.”

So it was a really good bet that me, my name, would be there, on his body, somewhere. I was there, on a piece of paper or envelope. I was sure of it.

And Dad—my smart-cop dad with that tough squint—either misunderstood whatever was written on my face or hadn’t being looking in the first place because, what the hell, I was his son and who would believe such a thing of his boy?

“I know.” My dad reached over and cupped the back of my neck. His hand was rough and calloused, but cool. “I know. I’m sorry about all this, too. It’s not right when bad things happen to good people, and that poor kid’s had to deal with a lot. You’ve been a friend to him, but there’s only so much a person can do. You should go home now, son. You don’t look like you’re feeling so hot there.”

“My stomach,” I mumbled. I was so terrified and exhausted, all I wanted was to burst into tears and hug my dad and tell him everything. He was my dad; he could make things right; he’d tell me what to do. But how would he feel about me afterward? Would he still love me? Would he be so proud of his son then? I just didn’t want to find out.

So I went home, like the good boy he thought I was.

Sundays, I usually did a long run. If there was one day when I definitely didn’t feel it, that Sunday was it. Only I didn’t want to just sit, worry, and have flashbacks. Or start bawling again. Or tell somebody, let everything just come rushing out.

Besides, I had something new to worry about. Jimmy had that camera card. There was evidence on him, somewhere, that would tip off someone that Jimmy and I were supposed to meet. If my dad or one of the other deputies found all that first, I was dead.

“You have a nice run,” Mom said. She was still in her robe, drinking coffee with Dad, who’d come home an hour after me and was now pushing scrambled eggs around on a plate. He looked like an old rag doll with most of the stuffing gone. “Oh, have you sent in your Common Application and supplements yet?” she asked.

“Helen, leave him be,” Dad said shortly, then turned away from the astonished little o of my mother’s mouth to look at me. “You sure you ought to run with that stomach?”

“I’m a little better, thanks. I won’t push it, promise. See you.” I banged out before they could ask any other questions.

It seemed to take forever to drive to the park. It was still before noon, so most everyone else was in church. On the way out, I passed a couple cruisers, but no one seemed to be paying attention. One guy, though, raised his hand; probably recognized the Lariat. Shit. Well, nothing to be done. I kept to the speed limit and tried very hard not to think, but of course I did.

It occurred to me that Jimmy might not be there, not because he was alive or had stumbled off or was in some hospital—but because there were animals all over that park: coyotes, foxes, raccoons, martens. Birds always squabbled over roadkill. I knew that animals went after all the soft stuff first then dragged off whatever they could.

Jesus. A moan dribbled out of my mouth. What if Jimmy’s in pieces?

Something was different about the road going into the park, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. There were no other cars. I rolled up to the closed gate, killed the engine, sat a second. If there was anyone else around, I sure didn’t see them. There was no one in my rearview, no movement in the trees. I checked my watch. Half past eleven. I needed to move. How long before Jimmy was declared officially missing and then people started looking in earnest?

Go. You can’t afford to wait any longer. Go on, you coward, go.

The groan of metal as I shut the truck door was much too loud. Road grit squealed and popped under my running shoes. My heart pounded harder and harder as I retraced my steps into the woods. Now that it was daylight, I could see that the dirt in the center was softer. Worrying about leaving tracks, I eased off, skirting the edge of the trail, watching where I put my feet so as not to crush too much. If I did, and someone figured it out, they’d wonder why a runner wasn’t keeping to the path. Maybe I should use a branch to scour away any footprints—but then … wouldn’t that show up, too? Could you pull a fingerprint from wood? Every twig snap sounded like a gunshot. The woods were eerily silent with only the hoosh of the wind, the occasional scuttle of small animals in the underbrush, and the hollow thock-thock-thock of a woodpecker hammering a tree. No owls this time, but above the trees a crow cawed, and then a group rose in a black cloud. Shit, crows were scavengers.

Not good. My feet felt like they were plowing through quicksand. Not good, not good, not good.

The woods thinned. The trees pulled away, and the trail opened onto that picnic area like the parting of a dense, dark curtain. The field in which the shelter stood was empty.

But the shelter wasn’t.

Even from a distance of fifty feet, you’d have to be drunk or stoned out of your mind to believe that someone had decided the cold concrete was just the perfect spot for a nap. I wish I could say that if you didn’t know better, you’d think that someone had left behind a tumble of old laundry. I wish I could tell you anything but the truth.

I thought I was ready. Working the ER, I’d seen a lot. Guys who did headers off barns. Little kids run over by their dad’s lawnmower. Construction workers in the wrong place at the wrong time when that girder decided to uncouple and gravity did its thing. There was one motorcyclist crushed by a semi; everyone converged, doing CPR and stuff, until a doc peeked under this towel draped over the place where the guy’s face was then told everyone to stop. (The short version: no helmet.) Of course, I’d seen the mess that was Del.

So I thought I could take it. I thought that, when I saw Jimmy, I already knew what to expect.

Still, I stood there for a very long time, unable to move, scarcely able to breathe. There was blood, everywhere: a wide purple lake of it and more hosed onto the concrete, spray-painted onto the picnic table because, of course, Jimmy hadn’t died right away, and the heart is a powerful pump.

From a distance, Jimmy looked … strange. The air hummed. Someone had draped a black shirt—a hoodie?—over his torso to cover his face and chest. Jimmy was on his back, legs splayed, his left foot missing a shoe. For some stupid reason, I zeroed in on that naked foot, his toes, the shoe that wasn’t.

I forced myself to move, one foot in front of the other. That hum was so odd … and then Jimmy’s chest … lifted.

Stunned, I let out a shout. I couldn’t help it. Oh my God, he was alive? I watched, eyes bugging, as Jimmy drew another shuddering, squirming breath … that hoodie bunching and roiling as the air brrrred .. .

Flies. My own breath came out in a sudden whoosh. Not a hoodie at all, but a thick mat of noisy, hungry blowflies swarming over moist meat and jellied blood.

“Get away,” I choked. Somehow I’d waded into that awful red-black lake and begun swinging my arms, trying to drive them off. “Get away, leave him alone, go!”

The flies churned and lifted in a droning inky fog, and then I saw Jimmy’s face.

Or, rather, what was left.

Ever run over a Halloween pumpkin? For kicks? Come on, you know what I’m saying.

A skull’s like a pumpkin. It’s got seams, too, because it’s not one big piece but many floating plates, sheathed in skin and muscle, which eventually fuse together. Otherwise, we’d all be stupid pinheads because our brains wouldn’t have enough room to grow. Not that I have that kind of excuse.

Jimmy’s skull wasn’t squashed. Despite those rocks and the pounding he must’ve taken, Jimmy’s skull wasn’t mashed to pulp either. Given the divots, I thought they’d put that hatchet to good use, though, because Jimmy was broken: his skull fractured into a jigsaw of jagged slabs in the ruptured bag of skin and hair that had been his face and scalp. Dusky bluish and purple goo spumed over the concrete because fresh brains are as soft as warm butter.

Yet, as bad as that was—and it was terrible—this was worse: there were grains of rice speckling Jimmy’s eye sockets. More dribbled from the lumpy mess of both nostrils, dripped from his ears. Jimmy’s teeth were broken, but rice clogged his open mouth and was sprinkled over the blood bib on his chest. Looking at that, I couldn’t make sense of it.

And then I realized: flies.

This wasn’t rice. These were eggs. The flies were laying eggs in all that good moist pulp that was Jimmy’s face.

Vomit roared into the back of my throat. Gagging, I spun away, clapped a hand over my mouth. Don’t lose it, don’t lose it. I couldn’t puke; I couldn’t leave anything of myself behind. Come on, you can do this. I swallowed back a mess of stomach acid, bad coffee and undigested egg. You have to do this.

Then I looked at my hands. They were shaking. I hadn’t brought gloves. What an idiot. I stared down at my smeary sneakers. In my horror, I’d blundered through muck and gore. The concrete was stenciled with coppery prints, and I would leave more on the way to the truck. The deputies—my dad—would know someone had come back, and they’d wonder why?

One foot in front of the other. No help for what I’d already done, but I could be more careful from here on out. After thinking about it a few seconds, I untied my shoes, eased them from my feet, stripped off my running socks and then stuck a hand into each. Socks I could get rid of pretty easily. Bare feet could be washed.

Do what you came to do.

I balanced on my toes over Jimmy’s body because footprints are like fingerprints. I didn’t know about toe prints, but I wasn’t like I had tons of choices. My toes squelched. The flies were settling down to feed again, their drone a low, unending thrum like the purr of an engine. Jimmy didn’t smell yet, and he wasn’t bloated. He hadn’t been dead long enough. I saw, too, that the flies weren’t the only things to feast on fresh meat either.

Jimmy’s lips and tongue were gone. So were his eyes. His fingers had been chewed to the knuckles, and something had started in on his neck, ripping away flesh down to the sloppy pink, ribbed worm of his windpipe.

Jimmy’s jeans were saturated and stiff with gore, yet the fly was open, the waistband pulled away. His underwear had been pushed down into a rust-colored accordion fold as if he’d been caught trying to take a leak. A wash of coagulated blood, studded here and there with clumps of Jimmy’s hair, spewed over his thighs and down to his knees. Staring down, I just didn’t understand … and then I remembered how sharp that hand axe looked and understood that after they’d taken it to his skull, they hacked off something else.

Easy, easy. Sheathed in socks, my own fingers were clumsy. Wriggling my way into first the right and then the left front jeans pockets, I found nothing except a bank slip that I put back. I tried working my stockinged hands into his hip pockets but failed because, light as he’d been in life, Jimmy was only so much dead weight now. I would have to turn him onto his side. Moving a body was bad, I knew that, because it told the police that there was something someone didn’t want left on the body. No help for it, though. I stepped around to Jimmy’s left side, making sure to keep clear of the muck. I didn’t want to reach over and pull him toward me; I worried about getting smeared with gore. So I had to jam the heels of my hands into Jimmy’s side, right at his ribs, and push.

His body, stiff with rigor, came away from the concrete with a sucking sound, like Jell-O turned from a mold. His right hip pocket bulged. Steadying the body with my left hand, I squirmed my fingers into the pocket, felt them skim a hard edge, and realized that I’d found Jimmy’s cell phone. But there was nothing else.

I repeated the procedure, the drone of the flies fragmenting as I rolled Jimmy onto his right side. I remember that I hesitated, too, hand poised over his left hip pocket. If this was empty, I was out of luck. Or I still might be okay. Maybe Jimmy had changed his mind. But no, he’d been in back, waiting for me, right? Unless he’d only come out to dump the trash then gotten waylaid by that … guy? Girl? I didn’t know.

Then I had another thought: what if whoever killed him was after the same thing I was?

I eased my fingers into his pocket. My breath caught, and then I was tugging out a folded envelope, still sealed, the paper soupy and dark brown with clotted blood. Easing Jimmy back onto the concrete, I backed out on tiptoe, my overstressed thighs and calves beginning to cramp and complain. Dark splotches marked where my toes stenciled the concrete, and I used the side of my fist, still sheathed in a sock, to smear the prints. Then I rocked back on my heels and unfolded the envelope.

Holy shit. There was my name in big block capitals, plainly visible through the muck. Anyone could tell at a glance who the envelope was for.

Okay, I had what I’d come for. Now I had to get away from here. How much time had passed? Fifteen minutes since finding the body? A half hour? Yeah, but best to make sure there was nothing left behind that might make people look at me. Then, get out.

But I found nothing else, not even a wallet—and that was weird. Jimmy said he got paid every Wednesday. Hadn’t he decided to cash his check to cover my expenses? So where was the money? Had his killers taken it? Had this been all about a robbery?

As incredible as this may sound to you, that was the first time I’d actually slowed down long enough to wonder why Jimmy was murdered. For the money? Because they thought he was gay? Because he’d crossed them somehow? Who were these people? Why had he gone with that guy I’d seen in the back lot in the first place? And was it a guy? The more I thought about it, it could’ve been a girl. Way more likely than a guy, right? Right? Shit. I just didn’t know.

But whoever it was and whatever their motive, Jimmy had gone because he trusted the guy or the girl … because they were friends? No, from what I’d seen, either they were more than friends, or the guy wanted to take things further … only Jimmy had refused? Jimmy had said no. I’d heard him. But then Jimmy got in the car. So maybe no wasn’t really no. Maybe Jimmy changed his mind, gave in, and then …

“Jesus.” My voice was airy and thin and sick. “Stop 4:49 PM 11/10/2012>already.” My thoughts were scuttling around and around in the rat’s maze of my brain, and I had to find a way out, I had to leave. I was chilled and my ankles were cold, and there was nothing more I could do. Using the socks, I messed the prints left by my running shoes. Then, stripping off my stained socks, I turned them inside out the way I did with latex gloves in the ER.

I thought about saying good-bye or telling Jimmy I was sorry. I really did. But what good would that do? Looking down at him, though, I thought about how long it might take people to find him. The flies were bad, and I didn’t like that animals had already been at him. Maybe I could phone in a tip or something, anonymously. But it was daylight now, and if they traced the call to the phone, someone might remember the Lariat—

“Phone.” I wasn’t aware I’d spoken aloud until I heard my own whisper. Of course, if I turned on his phone, they’d find him faster and before too many more things got at him, which I really did want. It also meant that I had to separate my gluey socks, ease my naked toes into bloody jelly, and roll Jimmy again, but I did it.

Jimmy’s cell was a clamshell. I flipped the phone open—and then hesitated when I remembered something else: cameras. Cell phones had cameras, and Jimmy loved cameras. So, had he taken shots of me with this? Possibly—he’d managed with a digital camera, after all. Even so, that wasn’t necessarily incriminating. Everyone knew about the magazine pictures.

But what if there were other people on the camera, maybe even the people who’d killed him? I might recognize them—and if so, I could still make this right.

I could imagine myself clicking through pictures, enlarging one, recognizing the killers. Taking the pictures to my dad. Coming clean about what had happened. It would be hard, but I would’ve ID’ed the killers. They’d bring in suspects, line them up as I stood behind a one-way mirror with my dad and said, Yeah, that’s him. The blond guy with the black hoodie.

Then I’d be a hero. People would understand what had happened. Then I’d be good. Always. I’d been a good person before, but now I’d be better.

The problem was that I knew only the most rudimentary workings of cell phones. You flipped them open, you made phone calls. You could take pictures. There were other bells and whistles—surfing the Internet, text messaging—but I didn’t know much about that. But I did know enough to understand that pictures were saved to either the phone’s internal memory or a small memory card. But I couldn’t turn on the phone to check whatever was stored in memory. The moment the cell went live, I was dead. Which left only the memory card.

The socks made it impossible to open the tiny rubber cover over the card slot. So I shucked out of one sock and used the edge of my thumbnail to pry open the slot, hoping that fingerprint programs weren’t nearly as good as the ones on CSI. I spotted the navy blue of the card right away and pressed it with my fingernail. The tiny card popped out. I slipped it into the pocket of my sweatshirt and then closed the slot.

Then I turned on Jimmy’s phone, laid it on the concrete, and left.

Afterward, I drove in my bare feet to another park that had lake trails where I knew there would be people walking their dogs and stuff. I didn’t feel much like running, but I needed witnesses. By then, it was after noon, and the day had warmed up with the sun. My brain was foggy with fatigue and fear and my stomach was empty, so my form was crap. My whole body was shaky and shuddery. Every step shivered into the small of my back. I’d wiped down the shoes before starting out, but running without socks, which I’d chucked into a porta-potty, was bringing up blisters on my ankles. My gastrocs cramped up about five miles into it, and then I was hobbling off to a bench and cursing. I’d been so flustered I hadn’t remembered to bring any Gatorade or water, but there was a concession stand and I gimped over and bought an energy drink. Got it down without bringing it back up. Then I went home.

My mom was still at the table, only she’d changed out of her robe and into jeans, and the kitchen smelled like soup. She looked up from the Sunday crossword. “How was the run?”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to take a shower and then I got homework. Uh … did Dad … have they found…”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. He was taking a nap when the dispatcher called him back in. I guess something’s happened. He said he’d call when he knew.” She hooked her pencil over her shoulder. “I thawed some of that pumpkin soup you like so much. Might settle your stomach.”

My guts did a slow roll. “Pumpkin. Yeah,” I said. “That would be just great.”

Peeling out of my clothes that, this time, I knew I would have to get rid of. Another shower. Only this time I started crying. I thought I was done with that, but I apparently wasn’t. Muzzling myself with both hands, I slid down the stall and huddled there, weeping, until the water ran icy and my skin burned. By then I was empty as an old corn husk. One stiff breeze and I’d blow away. That actually might be okay, too.

Once I’d locked my door, I dug out a pair of thin glove liners and put them on. Then I laid out the envelope I’d found on Jimmy’s body and the micro-card from his cell phone on Kleenex. Stared at my name in block capitals. Fretted a couple minutes about how I was going to open the envelope and then thought about how stupid that was. So I ripped it open the envelope and shook.

A clear plastic case tumbled onto the Kleenex along with a piece of paper folded in a small square. Inside the case was a blue eight-gig CF card. Shit. I had no way of reading that. What an idiot. My mom had a little digital camera, but it took the other kind of memory cards.

I turned my attention to the paper. Dried blood had glued the folds together, and I wasn’t able to tease the paper apart without rips. The paper was blotchy with copper splatters, but I was able to make out enough: instructions to print JPEGs 2, 14, 26, 30, and 42, as well as a completed application that Jimmy had loaded onto the card, with an address to which I was to send the entire packet.

Below that, Jimmy had penned this:

I’m so sorry for everything. You’ve been my only friend. I never wanted you to get hurt. There may be something wrong with me, but I can’t believe it’s wrong to feel about you the way I do.

Jimmy

It took me a long time to figure where to hide the cards. I did think about mailing them to the sheriff’s office and letting them deal. But there were so many ways that could go wrong and blow back on me, and I still didn’t know what was on those cards either.

Besides, there would be no way to make this right if I did that. Because I still hadn’t given up on that idea. I could make this right; I could still do something right.

I thought of slipping them between the pages of a book, but then all the movies I’d ever seen had cops shaking out books by their spines. Walking around with the cards tucked in a pocket was out of the question. No way I was shoving them into the toe of a boot or shoe, either. It would be just my luck for my mom to decide that pair of boots deserved a trip to Goodwill. She was always doing crap like that.

Finally, I dug under the stack of Kleenex still in the dispenser box, slipped the cards underneath, then patted the Kleenex back into place. Maybe not the best hiding place, but it was the only thing I could think of to do.

And I flushed that goddamned note. My life had gone down the toilet. Somehow, it seemed appropriate to return the favor.

I had a lot of work, mainly for my university courses, and reading to do for English Honors. I opened my books, but I still couldn’t concentrate. When I’d reread the same paragraph about the Jacobian of a gradient three times over without it making a lick of sense, I gave up.

Booting up my computer, I went to the Common App site. Reread all the lies I’d told about myself. I didn’t recognize that person, the one who talked about how he’d discovered he wasn’t in the ER for himself but for the patient. I looked at what I’d been doing my entire stupid life to this point: getting good grades and acing the SATs and subject tests and doing Key Club and Big Brothers and all that shit designed to make me seem attractive, someone a college would want. The person in these pages was a model citizen, a great student, a stand-up guy.

That person was a complete lie.

In that moment, I saw the application for what it was: a marketing gimmick, a sales tool—like the trailer for a movie—a compilation of my greatest hits.

Now, I am one hundred percent sure I was not the first kid to have that thought. But I was ninety-nine-point-nine-ninenine percent sure that I was the only kid with that thought to run like hell when his friend got his brains bashed in with a rock and hacked to death.

But I didn’t push <send>. I didn’t close out the program either.

I don’t know what the hell I was waiting for.

My dad didn’t come home, and he didn’t call. After faking my way through dinner, I managed to slog through my calculus and chemistry, and then I decided to try to read. I’ve always liked books. I mean, math was cool because there were these pristine equations and only one right answer, nothing vague. They had a certain purity. Books are way different. When I was younger, I used to program in these study breaks when I’d give myself permission to read a chapter out of whatever book I was on that week. Books are like these trapdoors into other worlds and problems, like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole.

Now, if Alice in Wonderland were physics, you could calculate how fast Alice falls and when she’ll hit bottom; if the hole’s really bottomless, and assuming for infinite acceleration, could Alice ever reach a point where she was going so fast that she could break the speed of light? And as she gets closer to the speed of light, and because she’s still in Earth’s gravitational field, what happens to her? Does her head age faster than her feet? Unless she fell headfirst, in which case her feet would age faster.

Books aren’t like that, though. Right then, we were finishing up A Catcher in the Rye, which I’d read about two years ago, so rereading it was no problem at first. The class was still back where Holden’s just getting ready to call his old teacher, Mr. Antolini, but I’d reached the penultimate chapter, when Holden’s gone to say good-bye to his little sister, only to discover that she’s brought this big suitcase because she wants to go with him.

Well, so it turned out that reading was a bad move, too. I got this sick and fluttery feeling again because I couldn’t help but read about old Phoebe and think of little Jimmy. Holden’s sister was just a kid, and I’d always thought of Jimmy like that: really young, not very experienced, someone you had to protect. Even now, with everything that had gone on, I had a hard time thinking of him being just a year behind me in school. I could see Jimmy pulling a Phoebe. Showing up with a suitcase and wanting to run away with me.

Only … that wasn’t right, was it? Jimmy had been trying to leave town. He hadn’t talked about following me anywhere. I’d followed him. So whose fantasy was that, anyway? Why had I been thinking that Jimmy would want to go with me? God, did that mean I felt more for Jimmy than—

Jesus, stop it. I rubbed the naked space right above the bridge of my nose. I had to cut this out. Was it going to be like this for the rest of my life? I was driving myself crazy. Jimmy had made his own mistakes. They hadn’t concerned me at all. Oh, some of them were about me, but I wasn’t to blame. Jimmy had acted on his own all the way along. I was the one playing catch-up after the fact, trying to figure out what Jimmy had planned or intended.

Downstairs and in my parents’ bedroom, the phones shrilled once, twice. I heard Mom answer. Pause. Pause.

And then she said, very distinctly, “Oh no!”

Okay. I closed my eyes, forced myself to breathe. It’s okay. You knew this was coming. Just relax.

A couple moments later, I heard Mom hang up the phone and then her footsteps on the stairs. The floorboards creaked as she walked the hall toward my room.

And then she stopped.

But I could feel her, this presence, this pressure just beyond, out there, in that world. If I let myself, I could see her, too: a balled hand poised to knock, the other wrapped around her stomach because she thought she might be sick.

Then a quick double-rap. And: “Honey?”

As he watched his little sister, Holden Caulfield was positive there was no such thing as a nice, peaceful place on this earth. He was right about that, and in the end it broke him. Too bad for old Holden, he just couldn’t do the math.

But I could.

Alice could fall forever. But the math said that after she reached a certain speed, the universe would pile up below her feet. Beyond the far horizon toward which she plummeted, time must eventually stop—and that would be peace.

It was simply a question of falling far and fast enough.

This was it, my Wonderland moment. Everything that happened from here on out depended on what I did next. I might not be able to rocket to the far horizon, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t reach breakaway speed. I could—but only if I was very lucky and very, very careful.

My application, the one I’d delayed sending for so long, hummed on my screen.

One foot in front of the other, right up to the brink.

I reached for the mouse.

I clicked <send>.

And, just like that, the ground swooned open, and I was falling fast and then faster and ever faster …

Escape velocity.

Then I went to open the door so my mother could give me the bad news.