The girls kept going. After another ten minutes of stumble-walking down the steep slope, they finally arrived at the bottom of the ravine. It looked like a dried-out riverbed, the sides walled in by craggy black rock, the bottom smooth and sandy. The air was so calm that it felt like they were beneath a dome. Stars twinkled dimly in the sky. Muddy moonlight leached through gray clouds. They were absolutely hidden here. They could die and never be found.

Just like I had. In fact, this seemed like a perfect place to hide my body. I waited to feel a tingle of recognition, a cosmic message that it was here. . . .

“Gabs?” Madeline screamed. “Where are you?”

“She’s not here, guys.” Charlotte slumped to a rock on the other side of the riverbed. “We must be in the wrong spot.”

Emma blinked into the bluish darkness. As far as she could tell, there was nothing on the ground. Certainly not a body. A cold, clammy feeling overcame her, and she sank to her knees. All at once, she couldn’t breathe.

Madeline stood over her. “Are you okay?”

Emma nodded, then shook her head. “I . . .” But she couldn’t get the rest of the words out.

“She might be in shock,” Laurel said.

“Jesus,” Charlotte whispered, as if this was all they needed.

“We should split up to look for Gabby,” Laurel suggested. She gestured to her right. “I’ll go that way.”

“I’ll go left,” Charlotte said.

“I’m going back to the car,” Madeline said. “Or as far as I need to go to get cell service to call nine-one-one. Sutton, don’t move, all right? Just sit still. We’ll come back for you.”

Everyone headed off in opposite directions. Emma watched until their dim shapes disappeared in the distance. The air whipped quietly around her. Pebbles rained down the side of the mountain. Slowly, the crushing feeling on her chest began to abate. She gulped in air and rubbed her hands together. She couldn’t just sit here. She had to look for Gabby. “Hello?” she called out. Her voice echoed slightly.

Suddenly, Emma heard a thin, small sound to her right. She stood up straighter, alert. “Gabby?”

Next came a choppy inhalation of breath. And then, there it was again: a tiny moan.

“Gabby!” Emma’s body filled with hope. She spun around, trying to locate the direction of the noise.

Another moan. Emma walked toward a wall of rocks on the side of the ravine. “Gabby?” she called. “Is that you?”

“Help,” a hoarse, weak voice cried.

It was Gabby. Emma scanned the empty ground, shining Sutton’s phone on the rocks until she found a narrow opening a few feet up that she otherwise would’ve mistaken for an animal burrow. She peered inside the dim, black space and listened hard. Her heart simultaneously lifted and broke when she heard another faint, desperate cry from deep inside. “Help!”