Felicia stumbled again, but her voice never lost its standard chirpiness. Brandon wished he were in the mood for chirping today.

Felicia had just been accepted as a student ambassador, and she wouldn’t shut up about all the random school history stuff from her training. At least her chirping broke the silence. It was quiet outside this morning. Brandon ran the lake path as often as he could drag himself out of bed, and usually the air was full of noisy birds and crickets and mosquitoes that nipped at his ankles. Today they must’ve all still been asleep. The only sounds were the leaves crunching under their feet.

Brandon couldn’t blame the birds and the crickets for leaving them alone. It was chilly out by the lake. For once, though, the constant thunderstorms had stopped. Instead a light, misty rain had coated them both before they’d even gotten to the lake path.

Felicia had seen Brandon on his way down the first-floor hallway and come trotting outside after him, her sneakers already in hand. She swore she’d been planning to go running anyway, but Brandon knew a tagalong when he saw one. He’d been tagging along his whole life.

He liked Felicia, though. She was funny, and she always looked at Brandon with these wide eyes that made him feel smart and important. She was short with a little baby fat, like him, and a few weeks ago she’d told him that she thought she was bisexual. She had all the same freshman-year self-consciousness about that fact that Brandon remembered well. You could tell Felicia was going to be pretty in a couple of years, but right now she just looked awkward, with eyes that were too big for her face and brown hair that never stayed brushed. The other girls he knew, like Delilah and Emily and sometimes even Maria, looked right through Felicia when they passed her in the halls, but seeing her always made Brandon smile.

He’d told Felicia once that she was the little sister he’d never had. Felicia had smiled and bitten her lip and hugged him fiercely.

He had a feeling Felicia’s actual brother, Austin, hadn’t been much fun to grow up with.

“But then the whole Lennox family died in this fire that started in the church.” Felicia’s chirps were coming a little slower now, with pauses between words as she panted, trying to keep up with him. “Did you know that’s what the jump rope rhymes are about, the ones we learn in elementary school? They’re about that fire. It’s crazy. Anyway, the Siwards bought the place after the fire. They got it on the cheap, because almost everything was burned.”

“Uh-huh.” Brandon wanted to speed up, but he didn’t want to make Felicia feel bad. “Cool.”

“Hey, do you smell something cooking? It smells really good out here all of a sudden.”

Brandon didn’t smell anything, but he saw something ahead, under the massive oak that dominated the far end of the lake. He couldn’t tell what it was. All he saw was a big, dark shape.