“Avril, wake up. We’re gonna be late.”

Someone is shaking me. I open my eyes and blink a few times before Val’s green eyes and dark hair come into focus.

I push myself up and look around.

“What time is it?” I mumble. All the other bunks are already empty.

“Seven thirty,” Val says. “Meeting starts in fifteen minutes.”

Shit. I wonder why my alarm didn’t go off. Val heads out to the bathroom to brush her teeth, and I tell myself I need to get up and get dressed. A quick glance toward the window lets me know the fog is already gone. All I see is blue sky and sunshine.

I throw back the sheet and swing my feet to the floor. And that’s when I notice the dried mud. And the grass. On the bottom of my feet and in my bed. There’s not a lot of it, but for a few seconds I just stare, trying to make sense of it. I remember being out on the porch last night. I remember Lex. And the foghorn. But after my shower, I never left the gravel path and front steps. So where did the mud and grass come from?

And then I remember the whispering.

But that part doesn’t seem real now. It’s like a dream, maybe. Something I imagined.

I feel a little dizzy—slightly hungover, probably—but I shake it off and stumble into some clean shorts and a T-shirt. I brush off my sheets before I run a comb through my hair and shove my feet into my flip-flops, then grab my toothbrush and hurry to the bathroom. Val’s already on her way back, but she promises to wait for me. I get ready in record time, and we start across the field toward the farmhouse.

“Hey! Av! Wait up!”

I look over my shoulder to see Lex waving at me. He and Jude are jogging toward us, and we pause to let them catch up.

“Mornin’, boys,” Val says, and she bats her mascaraed eyelashes. “Ready to set the world on fire?”

“Ready for breakfast,” Jude says. “That’s for damn sure.”

“You sleep okay?” Lex asks me.

“Yeah,” I tell him. But that starts me thinking again about the grass in my bed. The mud on my feet. I brush it out of my mind, though, the way I brushed it out of my sheets. I must have picked it up on the path somehow.

The day is perfect. The sun is warm, but the breeze is crisp and it carries the kiss of salt. I stop for a second to take in the crumbling rock wall that surrounds the garden. The sloping green lawn and the brilliant sparkle of the sea beyond. It’s like something out of an impressionist painting.