Olympia sits on her bed; she reads out loud. Whoever wrote the notes, the writing is messy. Olympia thinks that’s because many copies were made and who knows how deep into that chore the person was by the time they wrote this particular draft. The pile of pages is huge. Bigger than any book in the camp library. She tries to pace her reading, to slow down, but she recognizes in her own voice the excitement she’s read about in numerous characters in numerous books. Authors used words like breathless and eager to describe how she feels. In part, it’s the thrill of keeping a secret. Malorie doesn’t know the man left the literature. And she definitely doesn’t know Olympia reads it to her brother now.

“Go on,” Tom says.

Tom can read on his own, of course, but he’s lazy. And he can’t sit still for long. Tom, Olympia knows, needs to move. He needs to be in motion. He needs to be doing something.

“A man in Texas attempted to look at one under water,” Olympia reads. “Seventeen people were present for this. The group believed a creature to be wading in the lake behind the campsite where they stayed. The man volunteered to go under, to look. He went mad down there and never came up again for air.”

“Someone held him down,” Tom says. “Nobody could just…stay under water till they died. Not if they could get up. Impossible.”

Olympia nods. But she isn’t so sure. The stories Malorie has told them, coupled with the memories of the entire school for the blind going mad at once, mean anything is possible.

“But what is madness,” Olympia asks, “if not something out of the ordinary?”

“Okay,” Tom says, pacing, “but this is different. The body would take over. Right? Even if you wanted to drown yourself by sitting on the bottom of a lake…the body would swim to the top.”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t either. But that one feels fishy to me.”

“Are you listening?”

He looks to her, gravity in his eyes.

“Of course I’m listening,” he says. “Always.”

Listening for Malorie. Neither wants to be caught doing this.

“A woman in Wisconsin attempted to look at one through an eclipse viewer,” Olympia reads. Tom looks considerably more attentive now. “After many discussions with her peers in which they attempted to dissuade her, she tried it alone at dawn on a clear, spring morning. She went mad immediately.”

“Okay,” Tom says, “but how do we know she only looked through the viewfinder?”

“I think that’s implied.”

Tom laughs.

“Well, if there’s one thing Mom has taught us, it’s that ‘implied’ isn’t good enough.”

At the mention of Malorie: “Are you listening?”

“Olympia. Go on.”