—Kaycee leaning against a fence, smoking a cigarette, the dazzle of floodlights in the football stadium turning her to silhouette. The smoke, the way it curled, like it had questions to ask.

—God doesn’t exist, people made him up. It flew out of Kaycee’s mouth in the middle of senior year. History. Her fingernails were filed sharp, painted with Wite-Out. When I turned around to stare, I hardly recognized her.

—Kaycee alone in the art studio, after the final bell, working on an enormous canvas, slashing in broad strokes of red and black, painting like she was cutting, like the color was bleeding out.

—And finally: Kaycee, bent over a toilet in the fourth-floor bathroom. The stall door swinging open. A sour smell hanging heavy in the air. Go away, she said, when I reached for her. She turned; streaks of bright red blood ringed her mouth. Then I saw it: blood on her fingers, blood in the toilet. Vomit tangling her hair. Leave me alone, you freak! But instead I just stood there. She retched again, almost missing the toilet. This time when she looked at me, her eyes were wide and desperate, like open sores. What’s happening? she whispered. Please. What’s happening to me?

Chapter Eight

If there are chemical contaminants in the water now—blistering Cooper Dawes’s skin, leaching bad smells from the taps—there might have been chemical contaminants in the water ten years ago, when Kaycee Mitchell first started collapsing in class. I return to the idea that maybe Kaycee Mitchell really was sick. That there was truth buried deep inside the lies.

If so, I could use Kaycee’s testimony, especially now that the Davies and the Ioccos are backpedaling. A little thrill moves through me at the idea of finally having an excuse to reach out—but I have no idea where she is.

And for the first time in a decade, the full force of the question returns to me: Why did she run away? Misha didn’t. None of the other girls did. Was Kaycee simply looking for an excuse to disappear?

I’ve looked for her before. How could I not? I found hundreds of Kaycee Mitchells on Facebook but never the real one. Once, late at night, my then roommate banged through the door, drunk, and caught me combing through pictures of strange blond girls. Who’s the hottie you’re creeping? she asked. I slammed the computer shut so hard I nearly snapped her nails off. After that she never walked around in a towel in front of me again; she brought her clothes into the bathroom and changed right after leaving the shower.

How could I explain it to her? I couldn’t even explain it to myself. All I know is that Barrens broke something inside of me. It warped the needles on my compass and turned the south to north and lies to truth and vice versa. And what happened to Kaycee senior year—what happened to all her friends as they began falling, fainting, and forgetting—is the central magnet. If I have any hope of finding my way again, I have to figure out which way the truth was pointing all along.