I wished I could tell him everything, how the weirdo in the car could be coming for us, what had happened to Ellen. But we were so far in, and I didn’t know how to undo not telling him in the first place.

“Mom will probably kill me if I take off for the shore without asking her first. I should call her at work.”

“Don’t. It’s not an emergency. Get Mrs. Griffith to call later. Swimming’s finally finished. You haven’t been anywhere. You should go.”

Marie said Thomas was one of those people who was funny when you got to know him. Smart-funny, Marie called it, which she said was wasted on people our age. He seemed lonely to me.

“It’ll mess up my study schedule.”

“What study schedule?”

“SATs.”

“Are you kidding? That’s what you’re doing up in your room? You hopeless geek.”

Thomas pushed me on the shoulder. He had achieved a near-perfect SAT score the fall of his junior year. He was insisting on taking them again. I thought how sensible both Marie and Thomas were, studying hard. We all worked hard at school. Sage was always messing up, not turning stuff in and missing tests. She was smart, smarter than me, but she didn’t care as much as we did. Marie said the difference between us and other people was that we didn’t have the same safety net. We couldn’t afford to fuck up.

“A few days isn’t going to blow your SAT scores.”

When we went inside, I walked through the house locking all the doors, then lay down on the couch in the rec room, where I would be able to hear any door or window open.

I must have drifted off, and I woke with a start. Thomas was standing over me with his school bag. For a moment I was confused, thinking I had overslept for school.

“What?”

“I’m leaving. Jack’s here, and we’re going to the shore.”

“What?” I rubbed my eyes. Jack Griffith was standing at the door of the rec room, looking at me. I sat up, wiped the sleep-drool from my cheek, and pushed my hair back. He must have rung the bell or knocked, and I hadn’t heard. I had fallen asleep when I was supposed to be on watch.

“Do we have a beach towel?” Thomas was talking to me. I was still half asleep.

“One of Sage’s is in the linen closet.”

Thomas dropped the bag and went upstairs. I looked down at my legs, streaked with dirt, grass blades stuck to them. I tucked them under me.

“You good?” asked Jack, looking around the room but not at me.

“Yeah. Good.” I would have loved to tell him how shit everything was.

“I saw Sage the other night.”

“Yeah?”

“She didn’t say?”