“Why are you here?”

Robin was quiet for a moment. “It’s a long story. I needed a change of scene, and I’ve never been here, so...”

“If you don’t mind,” Amber interrupted, “that’s not why you’re here. No. You’re here for them, aren’t you?”

“Them?”

“Them.” She gestured toward the fireplace and the framed photo above it. “The Standedge Five, as they’re called.”

“I don’t know what...”

“Please,” Amber said, “you’ve already got people talking about you. You’re bad at this. And if you don’t want to get run out of town, you have to get better.”

Robin opened his mouth then closed it. She was right, after all.

Amber smiled, but it was friendly. “I think the ‘grown-ups’ in town started labeling them the Standedge Five because they couldn’t bear to call them by their names,” Amber continued. “I guess it’s easier for them that way.”

“Did you know them?” Robin said, dropping any pretense that remained.

“I was a year behind them in school. Knew them a bit. Well, I guess you could say that. I had a bit of a thing for Tim, truth be told. Just a silly little thing, but... We had one sort of...date, but...” She trailed off, fiddling with one of her sweatbands, absentmindedly.

“What were they like?” Robin said, leaning forward. “What were the Standedge Five like at school?”

“Well,” Amber said, “it was the six of them at that point. Matthew McConnell too. They used to hang around together all the time, in and out of school. Thick as thieves. And the community liked them. A gang of kids who weren’t going around kicking in shop windows or smoking pot—just hanging, being with each other. They used to come down here quite a lot, before I got my job here.” She got up, took the photo off the wall and sat back down, placing it in the center of the table. She looked at it with something like longing. “All us kids looked up to them. I think we desperately wanted to be one of them. But there were never tryouts, no auditions, no open spots. It was always the six of them, and the six of them it would always be. Until death they did part, I guess.”

Robin looked down at the photo. “Do you know what brought them together?”

Amber looked up. “I think it was the tunnel.”

Robin looked confused. “What?”