He listens.

Malorie grips his wrist harder, and he thinks it’s because he’s breathing heavy. He imagines a woman tied to a tree in Indian River. He imagines her pretending not to be mad. He can see the town feeding her soup as she feigns sanity, as she waits for the day when they will inevitably cut the ropes that bind her.

“There’s nothing in here,” Olympia says.

As if she knows. As if she could see Tom’s head, turning this way and that, trying so hard to get a lock on a sound, anything, here in the barn.

Malorie doesn’t ask her if they’re still outside because, Tom knows, even his mom can hear that much.

The grass flattens. The barn creaks.

“Just wait,” Malorie says.

And her voice is a solid object in Tom’s dismay.

It’s not hard to imagine himself choking her, cracking Olympia’s skull, had he opened his eyes another sliver when facing the one by the side of the barn.

What was he thinking? What was he doing?

Olympia said there isn’t one in the barn, Olympia said there isn’t one in the barn, Olympia said—

“They’re not moving,” Olympia says.

“They’re not trying to get in?” Malorie asks.

“No. But they’re not leaving, either.”

Tom can’t stop thinking about his arm. He brushes at it again. He imagines something traveling into him, into his blood, pumping toward his mind. Something strong enough to make him want to hurt the two people he loves. Strong enough to drive him mad.

Yet nothing is happening.

Is it?

Malorie has scared the teens deeply with her descriptions of what real madness could be. Like how the madman doesn’t know his mind is cracked, how that’s what makes him mad. And how, maybe, just maybe, when they touch you, you go mad slowly instead.

Did he see one outside? Were his eyes open wider than he thought they were?

Is he mad without knowing he’s mad?

Tom is having trouble breathing. He has to stop feeling this way. This scared. He’s so tired of being told he’s supposed to be scared. He thinks of the people of Indian River. Are they afraid? Do they live in fear? When they hear quiet steps in the dark, when they hear something on the roof of the barn…do they fall to pieces the way Tom does now?

He digs deep, into himself, searching for strength. He’s looking for the part that was thrilled by the pages he read outside. He tries to relate to the teen he just was, standing near the barn, eyes partially open, a creature so close. Where has that teen gone? And how did he vanish so fast?

“I count thirteen,” Olympia says.