Heather shouldn't be going in--she knew that. But what was a summer without a little romantic intrigue? And God only knew she needed some fun.

The last few days had been depressing. Or not exactly depressing but something else, something she couldn't exactly describe. It was almost as if she'd walked through the hours in a general malaise, feeling just sort of . . . off, as if she needed to stretch out or stop eating or swim in some chlorinated water--as if she didn't fit into her body quite properly and needed to slough it. There weren't any particular reasons beyond the one she wouldn't quite allow herself to think about: work was fine, Ignacio had smiled at her in his shy and playful manner when they'd met eyes in the dining hall, the weather was gorgeous, and the Maritime Festival promised to be memorable for once. In spite of all of that, though, she suffered a palpable detachment and wasn't sure how to restore her former contentment.

The morning after the beach party with Ashley and her brother and the counselors, Heather had found herself in her backyard. Her mother wasn't any sort of gardener, but somehow a gorgeous swathe of wildflowers grew along the side fence, where just the right amount of shade and sunlight dappled the earth. They'd grown there in the summers for as long as Heather could remember, requiring minimum care to return year after year, continuously reseeding themselves. Black-eyed susans, and purple asters, butterfly weed and daisies and Queen Anne's lace--they exuded a jubilance toward life that Heather was sure she'd been able to relate to--could still relate to, if only she could shake the melancholy clouding her.

She'd wandered outside with a purpose, though, and it hadn't been to look at the foliage. The doll her grandmother had given her in her hand, Heather had passed the flowerbeds and approached the shed where her step-father kept yard equipment and tools. She'd opened it up, easily located a hammer, and without much thought, smashed in the doll's face. One of the glass eyes had blinked at her from a fragment of porcelain, but unamused, Heather had picked up the pieces and tossed them into the wildflowers, flinging the body after them. It'd been at that point that she'd noticed, rather peculiarly, a single poppy hovering over the tops of all the white, yellow, and purple--scarlet red with a black velvet core. She'd not seen it at first, and it reminded her of a strange story she'd heard once, about a woman who always wore a velvet ribbon around her neck, a red flower at its center. The woman never took it off, no matter how many people asked. Even when she got married, she never told her husband why she wore it. But she always promised she'd tell him one day. It was on her deathbed, Heather recollected, that the woman did at last permit her love to remove the ribbon, and when he did, the woman's head fell off.

Heather had pondered the weirdness of that story on a few occasions, and yet both that tale and the poppy that had recalled it to mind held her for only a single laden moment before she'd turned back into the house with a slightly lighter heart.

Well, that had been a few days ago. Why she thought of it now was irrelevant. She was misbehaving, and she felt zero shame for it. They'd been at the Maritime Festival, on the beach, she and Ashley and Amanda and Lindsey. Danny had seen someone else he'd known, gone off with them, and his absence thinned the atmosphere enough that Heather had begun to enjoy herself. There'd been people everywhere. The bands consisted of once-aspiring musicians with no reservations and the food was all fried and greasy; there were drunk twenty-somethings playing and hanging around the volleyball nets and tossing horseshoes; children ran sugared-up and parentless through the manageable crowds with glow-sticks and sodas and ice cream; young people found one another and discovered ways to acquire alcoholic beverages from their tipsy parents, then split and coalesced into peer groups new and old. And even though for many a teenager the festivities were deemed "lame" by their communital nature, few could resist attending them if only to flirt and bend rules somewhere other than a basement or a backyard or a porch. The shore was ablaze with life and energy, with warm evening air and the promise of things memorable.

The resort was the only place that seemed quiet that night, the Fourth. From the pier, from the beach, the long stretch of private property was largely dark. No one worked the dining hall that evening; everyone had the night off. The resorters were left to fend for themselves, to barbecue or actually use the kitchens in their cottages. Perhaps some of them went in town to Biggie's or the few fast food joints. Maybe some even dressed like normal humans and mingled with the Maritime Festival crowds. Heather didn't care what they did, but when she'd run into Ignacio near a snow-cone stand and he'd invited her to return to the counselors' cabin on the resort, said he and the other counselors were going to get drunk and skip the fireworks (it wasn't their holiday, after all!), she hadn't been able to resist.

Heather knew she was too young to hang with college students. And she knew, too, that she wasn't ready for potential consequences that might come of sneaking onto the resort with Ignacio, but her incongruent mood and her peers' jealous admonitions gave her the determination and nonchalance necessary for following the Spaniard past the lights and sound and toward the plumose stillness, the emerald black tunnel that opened off the public lot. Heather listened to Ignacio talk without really knowing what he said, even as she relished his swoon-worthy accent. The peculiarity of the quiet and the lack of people were disconcerting. As Ignacio took her hand, Heather couldn't help but think of the night she'd seen Ryan disappear--the way the deep had swallowed him--and a tremor ran through her.

But she also had little willpower. The allure of what might be was stronger than the fear of it, and surely her worries were unfounded. This wasn't off-season fall; the resort was full of people . . . somewhere. They were probably having a huge party at one or two of the houses somewhere far down into the resort. Or maybe they turned lights off in order to better see the fireworks. There had to be a logical explanation for all of it. And she wasn't alone--she had this beautiful person next to her. He would protect her should anything occur.

They moved through the forest opening, passed the empty guard booth, and enveloped themselves in the pregnant shadow and silence. Ignacio seemed entirely at ease, which did somewhat mollify Heather, and yet she couldn't help sensing something was amiss. She asked him about the people, and he told her they were in and around the pool and casino, liked to be over the water to watch the fireworks display, which began in half an hour. That should've settled Heather's mind, and yet as they walked the road toward the dining hall and counselors' cabin, her anxiety only thickened. The pool wasn't lit, and the expected sounds of conversation and laughter were absent. No one was in the water, there; Heather wasn't sure anyone was even around the deck. But Ignacio could've been wrong--maybe they weren't at the casino.

They were certainly not in the dining hall, either, though; that building, massive and looming in the night, appeared almost at one with the forest beyond it. Everything looked so different, so ominous this way, with only moonlight in its irregular patches to offer definition to the immersive surroundings. When Heather had first stepped foot on resort property, she'd felt in all the cool green and speckling sunshine as if she'd been underwater; that watery sensation occurred again, and yet this time she was drifting into a murky sinkhole, floating helplessly toward some abyss she couldn't as yet identify. It was what Ryan had seen--what he'd wandered in. Had he been frightened?

No. Ryan had been too cocksure to be frightened. And yet . . .

Though Heather had managed over the past months to bury thoughts of Ryan and what might've happened to him, evil conjecture rushed back at her in full force, and she might have turned and run back out had not the counselors' cabin come in sight with its golden light shining from two rectangular upper level windows.

A simultaneous relief and misgiving coursed through Heather. The stupidity of her choice was clear, now that the more immediate concerns about her surroundings had been assuaged, and when a woman unexpectedly emerged from the obscured vicinity of the dining hall to ask Ignacio to hurry to the casino with a first-aid kit to look at one of the children (apparently some slight sparkler injury), Heather's mental alarms flashed. The young man glanced awkwardly from the woman to Heather, shrugged in apology, and went into his cabin to retrieve the requested supplies.

"You shouldn't be here, dear," the woman addressed Heather when Ignacio had left them.

She was unfamiliar, wore a crisp pair of navy shorts and a red blouse with tiny white polka dots. Many women had moved in and around the dining hall over the weeks Heather had worked there, but the girl was sure she hadn't seen this one. She was black, first of all, and while there were resorters of various color and ethnicity, there were fewer enough that they were more memorable than the white people. Additionally, this petite woman, while she looked to be perhaps somewhere in her fifties (though Heather was admittedly a weak judge of adults' ages), was gorgeous--cat eyes, short stylish waves with a hint of gray, cheekbones so pronounced they could cut glass. She wore black pearl studs at her ears and a necklace of the same, though Heather caught sight of a glittering pendant--something like rough garnet--slipped in between the pearls at her collarbone. The warm gold from the counselors' windows, cutting through the solid murk, cast the woman in a spectral glow, and Heather was overcome by a sudden, intense dread, a sensation she could only equate to what a person crushed beneath rubble or an avalanche of snow might feel when they know they will not be found before their excruciating end plays out.

The woman's mouth tipped up at the corners and yet she didn't quite smile. A profound hostility emanated from her. "Go back," she added with finality, just as Ignacio stepped out of the cabin. The woman pointed toward the road, toward the exit, and then she disappeared with an apologetic Ignacio into the darkness, heading in the direction of the pool.

Heather stood staring after them for a moment, then became awkwardly aware of her own breathing. What had just happened? In a matter of minutes, her promise of flirtation and fun with a hot foreign college boy had permuted into a scene out of a scary movie. She couldn't go into the cabin, as tempting as its light and the presence of others were, but the thought of walking back out of the resort on that dark road, all alone . . . Why, even just standing there in the false security of the only brightness, as if she were stuck on a boat on the lake with only a lantern to cut through the surrounding fog, was unsettling enough. Heather's skin began to prickle; her stomach hollowed. But there was nothing for it; she'd have to leave. The counselors wouldn't want her there, not without Ignacio, and the fact that he'd strolled off without any sort of inclination to assist her was discouraging in itself.

So, sucking in the largest breath she could muster, Heather attempted to garner her courage--she'd gone in, hadn't she? she could go out, as easily--and she crossed the gravel toward the paved road. Her feet crunched against the small stones. Creatures rustled unseen in the forest, and the girl's anxiety increased with each step in alarming concordance with the sounds of movement amongst the trees and undergrowth. When Heather reached the path and the surroundings gained definition away from the artificial light, she found herself too frightened not to run, but just as she made the split-second decision to do so, an amalgamation of shadow burst from the forest and shoved her to the ground.