"There are photographs," they told her. "Recordings. Do as you're told, and no one will ever see them."

Heather was seventeen. She was bewildered. She was frightened.

So she listened.

"You'll come back Wednesday night. August 4th. All of you. No questions, no exceptions. You can continue working or not until then."

She wanted to vomit, unsure as she was what exactly had happened and how she'd let it. They called her house, and then someone drove her in a golf cart to the end of the road. He tried to talk to her, but she wasn't able to listen. Everything in her head was a jumble. What had happened last night? She couldn't remember most of it! They'd gone inside that casino, and everything had been fine; it'd been fun, even, in spite of her and the others' hope to find evil in it. Everyone had been talking to her, and she'd had a drink but not much, and then she'd woken with a sour taste in her mouth, naked and covered in dew on a deck chair by the pool, three grown women gawking at her in anger. Anger? Why had they been angry? What'd she done? One of them had thrown a towel at her, thankfully, and another had brought her clothing--but not her clothing--and she'd awkwardly dressed while the woman with white-blonde hair and a high, nasal voice had lectured her about her behavior without actually specifying what she'd done.

"Hey," the person in the driver's seat of the golf cart said as he parked at the public lot.

Heather turned to look at him for the first time.

"You were really hot, last night."

She stared at the boy. He was probably near her age, maybe a little older, and he was classically attractive, like a Ken doll. A chill prickled from the base of her head down her neck and back. There was no malice in his expression, and yet . . . he knew things she didn't. What had she done?

"Go on. Get out," he ordered abruptly.

In no position to argue, Heather stepped off the golf cart onto the pavement. It was already warm from the morning sunshine and felt pleasant against her bare feet.

"Someone's coming to get you," the boy said behind her. "And Heather--"

Her name caused her to turn.

"It's David. I mean, I'm David." He placed a hand on his chest as if there were anyone else around to confuse him with. "You won't remember it, but I'm looking forward to seeing you again." Without waiting for a reaction, he grinned, put the cart in drive, and maneuvered it through a U-turn before heading back into the resort.

Whatever the time was, it was early. Left in the empty lot, Heather felt everything inside her was at odds with the shimmer of a perfect summer morning on the lake. From where she stood, she was within a stone's throw of the grassy expanse where the playground was, the slide atop which she'd had her first kiss bright in its orange and yellow plastic. The beach was visible beyond, the sand like crumbled sugar cookie until it met the sheen of blue water. The pier was distant, but Heather made out what she thought were a few early-morning fishers situated on its side platforms. Otherwise, she was alone, within and without.

Absently, the girl ambled toward the grass to get off the hard pavement. Her thoughts spun, a carousel of confusion. They'd done something to her, she was sure of it. Put something in her drink. She'd heard of such things--date rape drugs, they were casually called. It would've been so easy for these people to fool her because (Heather felt a sob rise in her) she was so, so easy to fool.

All of everything was her fault. Everything horrible happened because of her. Tears began to flow freely; her nose ran. At least there was no one nearby to see her cry.

Heather went to the playground and rested atop a plastic duck on a giant spring. The coil of metal was so thick the thing didn't bob back and forth much. She sat and sobbed about everything, her poor choices and what had happened to Ryan and Amanda and Ignacio. And then there was what had happened with Danny, which was different and yet somehow part of all of it. What could she do? How could she fix everything? If she told anyone, wouldn't someone else get hurt? And what could she even say? Her parents would be ashamed of her. If what those women said was true--there were videos or pictures of her behavior, whatever it'd been . . . Heather groaned in submission and self-loathing. It was blackmail, and she knew it was, but she didn't have the capacity to manage it. If only she could remember!

A sudden movement nearby caught Heather's attention. She immediately tensed, straightened, rubbed a hand childishly at her nose and eyes and looked toward the merry-go-round. The metal disc with its whorl of grip bars was slowly, slowly turning, inch by inch, squealing in irritation at the movement. But there was no one nearby that Heather could see, and the air itself was still and heavy, not even a slight breeze to move her hair let alone a piece of playground equipment. Her attention momentarily diverted from her present thoughts, Heather furrowed her brow and stared hard at the merry-go-round, but then another movement caught her, twisted her toward the slide. The bottom of it held large plastic panels shaping a small three-walled alcove; the movement had come from near that, and from her position, she noticed suddenly that there were two little feet visible in the four-inch space beneath the plastic wall nearest her. A child stood behind it.

Heather was not at first perturbed. There was nothing odd about a kid at a playground. However, she recalled the time of day and the absence of adults, and a compulsion to check on it caused her to stand.

Snuffling away the leftovers of her tears, Heather stepped gingerly across the gravel, wishing she wore shoes and wondering for the first time where her own clothes were. The thought nearly caused her to begin crying again, but she forced it aside as she approached the partition. The feet hadn't moved. Not wanting to startle the small person that must certainly be on the opposite side, Heather gently warned of her presence, asking whether the child were alone as her hand reached out and her fingers curled around a nearby metal pole.

Rounding the wall, though, Heather was disconcerted to find nothing at all behind it, not even anything she could have mistaken for shoes or feet. She stepped in and out of the shadow of the slide above, glancing at both sides of the partition, and wondered how she could have seen something where there was nothing--she'd been so certain--and yet another movement drew her head up. This one was above, on the rubber-coated metal mesh of the slide's topmost platform, and this time, Heather was certain of the child's presence. Looking up from where she stood, she could see him, his long, dark, unseasonal coat, his dirty shoeless feet.

"You!" she called to him. "I see you!" She was relieved, really, but she realized her assertiveness might frighten him. Sweetly, she added, "Don't be afraid, all right? I just want to talk to you. Can you stay still for a minute?"

As she spoke, Heather moved out from beneath the equipment and toward the stairway leading to the top of it. The child seemed to have stopped inside the plastic turret at the height of the twisty slide. His body was pressed against the wall she couldn't quite see as she ascended. But she continued to talk to him cajolingly, as if he were a puppy and she had a treat, though even as she claimed to be concerned for him she appreciated more this excuse to move outside of her own horrible thoughts.

"What's your name?" Heather offered, nearly at the top, stepping deliberately, no sudden movements. "You want to talk to me?" She had him in her view, this time--he wasn't going to sneak away.

Arriving at last, Heather peeked into the turret, noticing first what she'd expected to see: a boy in black overcoat, up against the wall of the very turret in which she'd made out with Ryan all those months ago. The unwelcome memory flared like a firework inside her head, but a closer examination of the boy put it out at once. The upper half of his face was obscured by a black mask, and his eyes--it was eyes that caused her to stumble backward, trip halfway down the stairs before catching herself on the handrailing. Heather managed to fumble to her feet again, rubbed her elbow and one of her shins, and, glancing back at the boy, realized he'd come out from the inside of the turret and was staring at her.

Heather froze, unable to look away from those eyes, their milky white absence of iris and pupil, and as she watched in suspended time, one of them--the right--swelled like a mist-filled balloon, burst with a pop, and began to run in a thick, pearly rivulet down his cheek.

That did it. Heather practically fell out of the gap in the railing where the fireman pole was and just barely grabbed it in enough time to break the fall. Still, she landed hard on her back, knocking the breath out of her lungs.

Before she could get up, hands were under her arms, and she would've screamed if she weren't wheezing so much. But then she recognized the voice behind her as her step-brother's, who pulled her up and turned her about. Heather had never been happier to see him. She tried to tell Danny about the boy up above, but when she pointed to the child, he was no longer there. In fact, a quick spin told her nobody was anywhere at all. The two of them were alone.

"What's going on?" Danny frowned. "Why are you dressed like--and where are your shoes? Do you have any idea what time it is?"

Heather was still coming down off her adrenaline rush and was beginning to feel stifled by the variations of perplexity layering themselves upon her. She wanted to cry again, but she couldn't do it in front of Danny. She wouldn't let him see that.

"Heather, hey," he was saying. He put his hands on her shoulders, and the girl met his deep mellow gaze. His hair was getting long, curling around his ears in a charmingly boyish nanner. Puberty had been ridiculously kind to Danny. "I get it," he said, once he knew he had her attention. Heather wasn't sure what he "got" until he smiled, added, "Must have been a pretty wild party, all those rich assholes."

"No, that's not--"

"I'm just disappointed," he interrupted, dropping the smile, "because you didn't invite me. Next time, all right? You'd better."

There was no sense in arguing. She couldn't tell him what had really happened, anyway; she herself didn't know! As a matter of fact, the last thing she recalled had been a party, and it certainly had turned wild for her, though she wasn't exactly sure she wanted to know how.

Heather allowed her brother to take her hand and guide her away from the playground. "Danny," she found herself asking him as she trembled in her steps.

"Yeah?"

"Do you . . ."

They reached his car in the lot. He looked expectantly at his sister. "What?"

The girl swallowed, tasted that sourness in the back of her throat and feared she might actually throw up. "Do you ever feel like--like something out there is against you?" Her voice sounded so small, so far away, as if she were losing herself somewhere out over the lake.

When Danny responded with a vague, strained, "Yes," Heather was too lost in her own inner collapse to really hear him.