There was nothing like being on the water, zipping along at the bow of a boat, sun warming bare skin while the water sprayed refreshment in a fine mist. Under any other circumstances, Heather would've been in some kind of heaven, but as things were, she was moody and quiet, something her peers noted and commented on more than once. It wasn't that she was ungrateful for them, for Ashley's cousin who owned the amazing bowrider that had taken them out, for the conviviality the others encouraged, for the absolutely immaculate weather or the sapphire lake and sky. No, she wasn't ungrateful, and she wasn't selfish. She just literally couldn't figure out how to dissemble delight when everything was so, so wrong.

She'd not told anyone about what she'd seen on the resort, especially Danny. Her feelings toward him were an uncomfortable mangle of germinating resentment and complex affection. She felt at once no loyalty and complete loyalty to him, and her inner contention had been only exacerbated by what she'd seen on the Fourth, not lessened. She was wary of trusting him with any information, felt sure he'd laugh at her, wouldn't believe her. And her mother? Well, Heather hadn't had a proper talk with her mother in years. Like many mothers and daughters traversing the latter's adolescence, they'd grown apart. Tthough there'd been moments when Heather had wanted to open up, to seek advice, to question the right and wrong of her inconstant world, she'd needed a push, and for whatever reasons, her mother had never thought it necessary to provide one. Perhaps it'd been lethargy or a blindness to her daughter's needs, or maybe it'd been only that the distractions of the woman's own life had been as much as she'd been able to handle--wherever the neglect originated, Heather, in her impressionable manner, had interpreted it as a general lack of interest and had responded accordingly by distancing herself further.

But the tension of knowing what had happened to Ignacio, of the terror of that night and the fear of what it might mean and what might come--it was building in her. She didn't want to talk to the other three: Kevin and Jeremiah and Crystal. She hardly knew them, first of all, and even worse, speaking with them in all their solemnity made it too real. They brought that night back to her in all its horrifying colors.

Still, if she kept it all in, she'd surely lose her mind!

"Hey." One of the girls with whom Heather had spent much time the past school year approached.

The engine had been shut off; the boat now floated atop the exquisitely calm water. Ashley and her cousin and a few of the others who'd come along for the ride were socializing in the spacious cockpit. Someone started playing music. Coolers were opened. Voices picked up, audible now that they weren't in motion.

Heather remained at the bow, long bare legs up on the otherwise empty bench, toes pointed toward the prow. "Hi, Amanda."

"I like that color," the girl said, sitting across from Heather and pointing at her feet.

Wiggling her toes, Heather thanked her friend. In an effort to keep herself distracted, she'd painted her nails a periwinkle blue the night before. They complemented her celestial-patterned tank, which she'd tied in a knot above her belly button, and her white cut-off shorts. She'd worn her hair in a long, shimmering ponytail, stud earrings the same color as her eyes sparking in her lobes. Her skin was smooth and glowing, tanned to perfection without any striving on her part. Heather knew she looked flawless even if she didn't feel it. At least she held that confidence. She always had.

Amanda, petite and curvy and cute, in general possessed an amiable though relatively dull character. The two had never been more than surface friends, near one another though never close to one another, yet there Amanda was, handing Heather some sort of fruity bubbly definitely-alcoholic beverage in an apparent attempt to check in on her. "Why are you all alone? Is everything ok?"

Heather absently took the offering, turned to the blue horizon, sighed. She knew the answer to the question, but she didn't know how to say it aloud. And yet . . . she suddenly turned and looked hard at Amanda, who smiled meekly from across the way. Strangely enough, for reasons she couldn't guess, Heather found herself wanting to tell this girl the truth, if for no other reason than she needed to tell somebody. Perhaps telling this girl would be easy--they hardly knew one another!--and would be the opening of a floodgate. If she could only talk to someone . . .

"No," Heather blurted somewhat abruptly. "Everything is horrible."

Like any good gossip, Amanda immediately leaned in, eyes wide, all ears. "Oh no! What's going on?"

Heather told her. She told Amanda about sneaking into the resort with Ignacio, about being split up, about trying to leave but running into the others. She told her about the weird light and how they'd been drawn to it, and she told her about how they'd crept up to the windows and peeked in. She even told Amanda what they'd seen inside, that they'd run, that the police didn't believe them. And by the time she was done saying what she'd been wanting to say, her listener sat rapt, mouth slightly open, fingers curled into a fist under her chin, body tense.

"That is all so absolutely insane! What are you going to do?"

A newfound sense of importance swelled inside Heather's chest. How nice it was to be believed! And if this was how Amanda received the information, surely everyone else would want to hear what she had to say, as well. Talking about what she'd seen at the resort was different than talking about what'd happened with Ryan, wasn't it? Ryan--well, people had seemed to think she'd been involved. Even if most of them hadn't said anything to her once Ryan's family had moved out of Port Killdeer, she knew they'd continued to in some way blame her, even if they didn't hate her for it. She'd dared him to go, people thought. Or she hadn't tried enough to stop him. Or she should've gone with him. But Ignacio's death certainly couldn't be misconstrued as any fault of her own. Unless--well, unless someone saw her as abandoning the counselor in the woods the way she'd abandoned Ryan. Would they say she was some sort of black widow? Anyone who showed interest in her wound up dead?

Oh! She was overthinking all of it. "I don't know what to do," she told Amanda. "I'm still going to work there, with my brother."

"You can't do that! Oh my God, Heather! If they're murdering people, you can't just walk back in there."

"Danny doesn't know, though, and what if I stay home? They'd think I looked suspicious."

"Just say you're sick. Maybe actually make yourself sick. Then no one can blame you, right? They wouldn't want you there if you were puking or running a fever."

Heather hadn't thought of that. Could she make herself vomit? She'd never done that before, thought it sounded miserable. But if she had to . . .

"Why are you losers over here all alone?" Ashley accused, stumbling toward them. "Come on and get over here with us."

Amanda took one of Heather's hands. "Hey, I'll help you, all right? Let's go enjoy ourselves right now. When we get back to shore, I'll go home with you, and we'll see what we can do."

The girl's offer was beyond anything Heather had expected (how had she never noticed Amanda's amazingness?); she practically radiated gratitude. With a new resolve and something like hope, she glanced toward the cockpit, where the other ten or twelve people were gathered. It really was a nice boat, and it really was a perfect day--she had every right to enjoy it, to forget about the hell on shore for a little while. They were young and carefree and it was summer and Danny wasn't there so she could be herself and everything else could wait. Time to have fun, to revel in her own existence and the exhilaration and intrigue of the others around her. Ashley's cousin was from Flint. He was twenty, and he'd brought some friends. They weren't anything like Ignacio but they were cute enough. Heather knew they'd been watching her since she'd stepped onto the boat but had stayed away due to her standoffishness; maybe it was time to engage with them a bit.

Taking hold of the hand Amanda extended, Heather rose and cautiously stepped toward the others, where she lost herself in flirtation and banter, the warm buzz of whatever she was drinking and the velvety looks and attention of others. Heather excelled in the sphere of socialization. She knew how to charm, and she knew how to shimmer under a spotlight. Everything was going to be just fine.

They were on the boat until well past dark, moving it about, back to the marina once to refill the cooler. They did stupid things people shouldn't do when drinking, like swim and tube and push one another off the boat. They even went out to the breaker wall, to the locked-up lighthouse, where they climbed up onto the concrete platform as high as possible, stepped over the thick chains, and jumped out over the rocks to the lake below. Most of them knew they weren't supposed to do it, as did every other resident of Port Killdeer, but it was just one of those things young people did anyway--to hell with rules!--because nothing bad could possibly happen, not today, not tonight, not to us. And perhaps Heather, even in her state of bliss, chanced more than once to look toward the resort, barely visible and yet so solid and present in its metaphysical way. In some subdued moments, she wondered what was happening over there, across the placid water, and even once she thought of Ryan and Ignacio specifically, pictured whatever parts of them remained drifting somewhere in the waters below--the image felt so real she had to back away from the side of the boat and place herself in the midst of others. In those moments, Heather recognized a terrible familiar fear blossoming within, one she was desperate to stifle, and she'd shake herself free of panic's tendrils by interrupting a conversation or touching a boy's arm.

She wanted to forget it all in those forever-moments, those surely, hopefully neverending hours she prayed were suspended in time like insects in amber.

But the end came at last. The boat had to be returned. The evidence of underage debauchery had to be disposed of. The humans had to leave the lake and return to land. So return they did, and yet, the thick summery darkness, the afterglow of a quintessential July day on Lake Huron felt somehow off as they stepped in their bare feet and sandals onto the dock, as they talked of who was to drive home with whom. Heather wasn't the first to notice the prickling sensation that something was amiss, and in fact she'd likely not have noticed it at all had not her ears caught the name someone called:

"Anyone seen Amanda?"

Because the girl wasn't there. She just . . . wasn't. No one could remember the last time she'd been seen. Someone was sure she'd been at the lighthouse--maybe . . . had she been the one in the purple one-piece? Another person wondered whether Amanda were the person she'd tubed with, who'd fallen off and hurt her ankle. A guy, Ashley's cousin, thought he might have handed her a Mike's Hard Lemonade an hour ago, but Ashley herself couldn't recall having seen Amanda after that seagull had pooped on Jeff's arm way back before the sun had begun to set. Essentially, nobody recounted anything coherent enough for an explanation, and though Heather didn't know which of them called the police or how they'd found a phone, within half an hour, the marina was swarming with colored lights, and each of them were being questioned in turn while boats puttered out in search of Amanda.

Though Heather had quickly begun to spiral--had even allowed her brother (who'd shown up with her parents) to put his arms around her--and was sure that the past was repeating itself, her torture lasted little more than an hour. Because this time, it wasn't like Ryan. This time, they found the lost, and she was in one piece. She was even, beyond pessimistic expectation, close to alive.

The Port Killdeer rumor wheel spun again, and the paper ran it like this: "Local Teen on Life Support after Near-Drowning--Police Chief Gordon comments on dangers of underage drinking on the lake."