“That doesn’t make sense,” Sam said. “Why would someone build a fake old schoolhouse, just to abandon it? If it’s for looks, why doesn’t someone cut the grass?”

“Because it’s not there to look good. It’s supposed to look real. A real schoolhouse would probably be just like that, abandoned and left to rot. It’s just one little part of the big illusion.”

“What illusion?”

She was silent a moment. Then she said, “The illusion that Ashland is a real town.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“What?” Sam said.

“It’s not real.”

Sam drew his elbows against his sides and pushed himself up to a sitting position. Dani did the same. Sam stared past her silhouette at the dimly lit streets of Ashland, down at the base of the slope.

“Of course it’s a real town,” he said. “It’s right there.”

“I know it exists. What I’m saying is that it’s fake.”

“How can a town be fake? If it has shops and restaurants, and all these houses … if people live here … doesn’t that automatically make it a town?”

“Does a cowboy hat automatically make someone a cowboy?”

Sam started to say more, but stopped. Maybe she was messing with him. Maybe this was a joke people around here played on new kids.

“Okay, forget how,” he said. “Why would someone build a fake town? Even if they could.”

“It’s camouflage,” Dani said. “It exists to hide what really goes on around here.”

“Which is?”

Dani didn’t answer. Sam saw her look away, and heard her tapping her fingertips lightly on the table.

“I don’t think I can make you believe it just by talking,” she said. “I thought I could, as long as you’d seen Echo House, and figured out the weird thing for yourself. I thought that would be a good enough starting point. But now that I think about it … everything I want to tell you is just going to sound stupid. I’ve never had to describe it for anyone. Lauren and I discovered all of it together; neither of us ever had to bring the other one up to speed.”

“What are you talking about?” Sam said.

Dani drummed her fingertips a moment longer. Her silhouette turned toward him in the darkness.

“I swear I’m not trying to get you in trouble,” she said, “but can you come and look at something with me? It’s a place. If you see it, then you’ll know I’m not kidding. We can be there and back in about two hours, on foot.”

“You mean right now?”

“Yeah. We have to go at night. In daylight someone would catch us.”