“Sucks,” Berry finished. “Okay. Look. I’m going in to use the bathroom and then we’re getting the heck out of here and go someplace way less horrible. Okay?”

I nodded. “I’m sorry I—”

“Never mind.” She grabbed my sleeve, “But you have to come with me.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You’re not going in Tanner Spencer’s house alone.”

There was a strange gray emptiness to the Spencer house, and not just because everyone was outside. The walls were all white and covered in posed photos of the family in various stiff positions. All the flowers in vases were dried, calcified stiff. It smelled like vanilla the way a house that’s forced to smell like vanilla smells like vanilla.

Scented candles, probably, I thought, making my way through the hallways as carefully as possible.

“This place makes me nervous,” I said, looking around.

“Imagine coming here when you were six.”

“Yikes.”

“At least it means I know where the guest bathroom is,” Berry mumbled. “I think.”

She found the bathroom.

“Okay.” Berry ducked through a door. “Don’t leave.”

I stared at gray furniture accented with pops of bright red that reminded me of blood.

“I won’t leave.”

Outside the shouting rose and fell like waves. The girl who was screaming earlier was still screaming, and now there were other shouts. Not happy shouts.

Other shouts.

I craned to see out the window at the end of the hall. The yelling was getting louder.

“Berry!” I pressed my face against the door.

“GAH! You scared the shit out of me!”

“Something is happening! Outside.”

There was the sudden slap of a screen door being thrown open and footsteps rumbling through the halls.

“There’s a fire!” someone shouted. “We can’t get it out. Yeah. ­Spencer place. Yeah. Quick!”

“Tell them to stop pouring booze on it,” someone else shouted.

“Berry.” I hammered not calmly on the door. “Berr y ! It’s a fire.”

Berry burst out of the door like a superhero about to take flight. “Come on!”

We bolted through the hallways. Outside there was a thick curl of smoke in the air. One of the firepits had tipped over and the flames were starting to spread across the grass. There was a group scattered around the fire. But, like, not necessarily doing anything.

A little ways away, I could see Tanner on his hands and knees, puking. Sarah was patting his back and looked like she was crying. I sprinted to catch up with Berry, who had cut across the green and slipped into a small shed at the edge of the property.

“Take this,” she hollered, tossing me a shovel. It was about the same size as me.

Berry grabbed another shovel and then tore back through the grass toward the fire. A few boys were flapping at the flames with their jackets, an act that looked like it was mostly making the fire bigger. Gilly was nowhere to be seen.