The Spanish counselor was definitely gone. Jeremiah had been with the other workers prepping the dining hall for dinner the better part of an hour, and the counselors had already come and gone; there'd been only four of them--three girls, one guy. They came and ate and left, always early enough to get back out and occupy the resort's children while the adults wandered in. This was Jeremiah's third shift since the Fourth--a dinner shift--and Crystal and Heather had been scheduled with him for the lunch shift yesterday as well as today's breakfast / dinner shift. The fact they'd all been together for two days was presumably a quirk of the schedule because when they'd perused the next two weeks' line-up, they'd found that while Heather had nearly all the lunches, Jeremiah and Crystal had breakfasts and dinners. The girls hadn't seemed particularly unsettled by the separation, unlike Jeremiah. Kevin had insisted, hadn't he? And Kevin was older, seemed like he had it together. In fact, Jeremiah felt like Kevin's plan was the only thing keeping him sane. Stay together, and look for evidence. It was what Jeremiah had been told to do, and so it was what he was going to do.

They weren't having luck with the evidence part, though. Jeremiah had no idea what to look for, and he certainly wasn't going to go snooping around. He'd been on eggshells the lunch and breakfast he'd already worked, and the thought of walking out of the dining hall in the dark, tonight--heading down that little stretch of resort road, even amongst a crowd of others--was eating away at him.

Jeremiah had at least had some outside party to talk to. Unlike Crystal, who didn't want to involve her sister, Jeremiah hadn't had any trouble telling Caroline about what he'd seen. He'd not given her all the specifics, not the freaky masks and the naked stuff, but he'd told her he'd witnessed a murder on the resort. Predictably, Caroline had told him to go to the police, but he'd explained, too, how that had turned out. She was invaluable--Caroline. It's why Jeremiah had told her. His other sisters were quite wrapped up in themselves, but Caroline (probably due to her solitary life indoors) read a ton, and she loved a good murder mystery. She'd seen Jeremiah's experience as an excitement, a chance to offer investigatory advice, play a little detective by proxy, and even though her brother soon began to feel she believed him less than he'd have liked her to, her exhilaration dulled the sharp edges of his fear. And she did offer some ideas, one of which was to speak with the other counselors. Unfortunately, Jeremiah was too afraid to do that.

The young people had filled the dining hall. The little ones didn't come to dinners; there was an age requirement. Something like twelve and up. So the preteens and teens came first, around six thirty, and then the adults arrived closer to seven thirty. And once there was work to do, Jeremiah's focus shifted from his own nerves to doing his job: filling pitchers and taking drink orders, bringing plates to and from, supplying spare silverware and cleaning up spills. It helped that he wasn't serving the tables of the two adults who'd talked to them that night. That Mr. Lawson, grinning and laughing with what appeared to be his family, and the woman, who sat with a group of adults who looked too serious to possibly be on vacation, were seated far enough away that he at least hadn't had any interactions with them. Everything felt so normal--the fat ruddy early-evening sunbeams pouring through the upper windows, the lively conversation and laughter of those sharing meals, the buzz of his peers as they went about their business--that he nearly forgot about the nightmare of a couple days before . . . nearly.

Every so often, Jeremiah experienced the sensation that eyes were on him, and he'd snap around with the certainty that someone was quickly looking away. He never quite caught anyone in the act, but he knew--he knew they were doing it. All of them were watching him; all of them remembered him. Hadn't they all been there, the adults? He didn't know about the children, but that casino had been filled with people, and those people knew that he knew. Was he next? Were they plotting against him, even as they sat there eating their shrimp scampi and rib-eye steak?

"Come here," Heather came out of nowhere and commanded, nodding toward the kitchen. "I need help with the desserts."

Dessert, already? How had the time passed so quickly? Jeremiah followed Heather through the swinging door into the kitchen, where the head chef was conversing with his sous chef and other kitchen attendants were moving about completing their various tasks. Rather than go anywhere near the desserts, Heather turned toward a hall that led to the back door, where the master schedule was posted across from a wall full of lockers and a set of restrooms. Jeremiah was confused, but he understood the minute he saw Heather's brother, Danny, standing there.

Jeremiah almost turned and walked back to the hall. He had nothing in common with Heather other than the freaky thing they'd recently experienced. She was not someone he'd ever normally be at a level to converse with, so he hadn't really considered, not even once, that she wouldn't be on board with Kevin's instructions.

"My sister tells me you're trying to change her schedule around."

The redhead's eyes shot to the board behind Danny. Yeah, he'd been surreptitiously chatting with the rest of the dining staff all evening, succeeding in changing four of Heather's lunch shifts to breakfast and dinner shifts. He'd altered the board to reflect those changes.

"What are you doing?"

Jeremiah's chin fell a bit; his mouth moved open and shut, though no sound came out.

"What are you, a fish? Stop dicking around with Heather, you get it? We share our shifts. I'm her ride."

Jeremiah finally found his voice. "She can get a ride from us! Or, or Kevin, really."

Danny narrowed his eyes. "Who the hell is Kevin?" He glanced from Jeremiah to his sister, then back to Jeremiah, who only shook his head at Heather and shrugged in a manner Danny seemed to think meant something.

"No one. No one!" Heather assured him. "He just works at that snack shack, you know? The one on the golf course. He . . . he said his friend could give me a ride if I needed it."

"You're trying to arrange rides with that guy?"

Heather huffed. "Danny, he offered. It's no big deal. I'll switch my shifts back, okay?"

Jeremiah watched Heather pick up a marker and begin to revert her shifts to their former times, writing the names of those she'd need to speak with on the front of her wrist, but Danny snatched the marker from her and slammed it back onto the tray. "No. He can explain it to them." He shoved Jeremiah hard in the chest before walking away.

Crystal had come into the kitchen, and even at her distance, she caught sight of Jeremiah and headed back to him, passing the siblings on the way. Her nose scrunched. "What's with them?"

Jeremiah rubbed the sore spot on his ribs, stared after Danny. "I hate that guy." Crystal didn't say anything, but she didn't have to. Everyone in the kitchens knew at that point that Danny was a hothead, that he got away with a lot just because of how he looked, and that he was weirdly overbearing toward his sister.

"Just forget about her," Crystal shrugged.

"What if she has information about the counselor?"

"So what if she does? I don't know what we're supposed to do about any of this. They--they were watching me, Jeremiah. I felt it."

The boy's expression was distant. "I know. Me too."

"It's like they know we can't do anything about what we saw. I don't know if I can stick around here like this. I . . . I'm kind of scared."

The boy met his friend's eyes. She'd never admitted to being scared of anything; not one of their horror films had caused her even to bat an eye. Jeremiah had sort of begun to think Crystal was invincible, and her admission of fear upset rather than assuaged him. He didn't have any words to comfort her and was almost certain that if they'd not been interrupted, he would've suggested they bolt out the backdoor and never look back.

"Hey! You two! What are you doing back there? Dessert's up."

Jeremiah startled at the voice of Joe, their manager. The guy didn't take kindly to loiterers. Rather than risk a scolding, Jeremiah nudged Crystal, and the two of them returned to the hubbub of the kitchens, approaching a long counter where desserts had been laid out in rows. A hundred or so glass tulip sundae dishes sat filled with layers of thick cream and bright golden-orange sliced peaches, tattered crimson where their pits had been removed. Jeremiah fought his way through the others to grab a serving tray, placed the obligatory paper doily on it, and then carefully selected eight of the desserts and arranged them so their weight was evenly distributed. Then, on a capricious whim, he turned his back toward everyone and everything, stepped near to the wall, and worked up enough saliva to spit into each one of the desserts.

"Jeremiah!"

The boy lapped up the thin thread hanging from his lip and spun just in time to see Joe standing over him. He was sure he'd been caught. "I--it wasn't--"

"Shut up. You're trading with Savannah. Someone at table one wants to talk to you."

Before Jeremiah could get a word in, Joe added two more desserts to his tray, which wobbled precariously, and hustled off to manage some other business. The boy had little choice but to follow orders. Holding his desserts with both hands, he left the kitchen, sure his legs were about to go numb beneath his suddenly awkward body. Someone wanted to talk to him? Who? Who wanted to talk to him? Table one was the board members' table. It was all the way at the end of the room, farthest from the entrance to the dining hall, and he'd never once had to serve it. The woman was there, the black woman with that same pearl necklace, and there were other adults he'd had yet to talk to. The closer he drew to the table, the more his knees began to shake, and by the time he reached it, he was literally forcing himself to inhale and exhale at a normal pace. His fingers held the edge of his tray so tightly his knuckles were whiter than normal.

"Ah, here's the young man," said the woman he recognized. "Jeremiah, isn't it?"

The boy nodded, absolutely certain his face betrayed his alarm but unsure how to change it.

"My name is Suzanne Kensington, dear. We've met, briefly. I've just been telling this gentleman here," she waved a refined hand at an older white man toward one end of their table, "about your interest in medicine."

Jeremiah's eyes must've popped round as golf balls. "M-my interest in med--"

"I've been learning a bit about you, myself," Suzanne continued. "Dr. Horvak is head of the Pediatric General Surgery Department at Boston Children's Hospital." The woman paused, watched the boy as her words took effect. "Why don't you serve our desserts, dear, while Dr. Horvak shares a little."

The Doctor, too tan and too colorfully dressed for his apparent age, clasped his hands under his chin. "I've heard you're incredibly bright," he said as Jeremiah unsteadily lowered dishes of peaches and cream without paying much attention to their placement. "We do have two internships for high school students--highly competitive, mind you, and much coveted. But I'd say a smart young man like yourself would be a shoo-in for it next summer, perhaps with a scholarship for room and board. What do you say--would you be interested?" Doctor Horvak leaned back and looked up at Jeremiah, who'd reached him with his dessert tray.

The boy couldn't believe anything he'd just heard. He sensed every person at that table was rabidly awaiting his answer, minds frothing in anticipation, and he was torn in too many ways to understand the words that fell from his mouth unbidden: "Of course, Doctor--Sir! I'd be--I'd be honored! That's just--it's amazing!"

Only afterward, when he had returned to the kitchen with his empty tray and a head full of disbelief, did Jeremiah remember he'd spit into the desserts, and some chasm of repugnance opened within him to think that those people were ingesting something that had come from inside of him.