Watching her.

I knew I had to go back.

I flew downstairs with my car keys. I was still wearing my pajama bottoms and T-shirt. It was now past one in the morning, and most of the fireworks outside had long since burned down to scorched black patches on the grass. I drove my Dad’s Opel Manta, and the streets were empty, so I went fast through the gray glow of the fog. It took me fifteen minutes to make my way back to the wilderness refuge near Tischer Creek. I didn’t recognize any of the cars in the matted weeds. The park was sprawling, and I was sure that there were kids hiding under the cover of darkness, doing what Jonny and I had done earlier.

I had no idea where to find her. I shouted, “Laura!”

I thought I heard whispering. I began to get scared and feel foolish and stupid for being here on my own. I pumped my arms and ran into the center of the muddy ground we used as a softball field and spun in circles, trying to see into the trees and trails through the mist. I heard thousands of crickets chirping madly. The grass underneath my feet was spongy and wet. I almost never wore shoes during the summer.

“Laura!”

The dark silhouette of a heron with its giant wingspan and odd, dangling legs flew lazily over my head. I had flushed it with my shouting. It swooped toward the cool water of the lake and disappeared. I headed the same way, searching for the break in the trees that led to the south beach, where Laura and I had waited for Jonny a few hours earlier.

I never made it that far. Thirty yards away, I came upon something in the grass.

Laura’s shoe. A pink PF Flyer.

I picked it up, looked around for the other shoe, and didn’t see it. I hunted in the field for anything else that belonged to her, but all I saw was cigarette butts and beer bottles. I knew I had to go into the woods to find her. Near where I was standing, holding her shoe, I saw a trail that tracked north along the lakeshore, in between the birches. Some kind of unspoken bond between sisters told me that was where she had gone.

When I followed it, the trail swallowed me up. The moon vanished. I took careful steps, not wanting to make noise when I didn’t know what was ahead of me. I didn’t shout Laura’s name anymore. The path was covered in a crackling bed of pine. Rain dripped down through the covering crowns of trees. Wind snickered through the trees and landed like a warm, wet breath on my neck.

Long minutes passed. I didn’t usually come this way, so the path was unfamiliar. My mind made up scary stories about what was in the woods near me. I had no idea how far I had gone or whether I should have taken one of the crisscrossing trails that led uphill away from the lake. If anyone was two feet away, I wouldn’t have known it. This was the kind of place where monsters felt real.