Drew Schreiber swings hypnotically like the pendulum on a grandfather clock as the record ends on a dreamy note that echoes over the high-canopied trees. When his body pulled against the noose, it battered the watchtower ladder, catapulting a flurry of nesting birds from their roosts. Beneath the body, people are sobbing—guttural, animal moans. I can’t tell if they’re campers or staff, but I’m not among the screams. I’m as silent as a void.

I don’t turn my head. I refuse to make eye contact with Briggs. I can’t fathom the wrath about to explode from him.

Beside me, Lacrishia clutches two Beginners to her chest: Owen, the tiny one, and Alan, the taller, strawberry blond kid who checked me out in the cabin. Both boys shiver against her, ten levels deep into an anxiety attack. Lacrishia brushes their hair and lets them wail, Nightlight’s no-crying rules be damned. I don’t think they’re crying because they particularly loved Drew—his suicide is simply one wretched thing too many.

Regardless, despair emanates from Drew’s body. A great sadness hits the air like a siren, into the ground like rain, and into my lungs like smoke. His death is a gas bomb of pain that, within seconds of detonating, fills every available inch of space.

I didn’t mean to make you feel bad about your aunt, Drew.

Everything unfolds like a movie, floating separately—two-dimensionally—apart from me. When Drew slammed into the ladder, he left stress cracks so big that the wood gives way under Briggs as he attempts to climb. Briggs yelps, dropping ten feet back to the Coral Road, but he cannot be stopped. Muttering “no, no, no, no, no,” he scurries up the ladder and around the broken rungs like a muscular cat. Inside the bird’s nest in under a minute, he maneuvers around the speakers that played that haunting song only a moment ago; now, only a low hiss rumbles out, spitting dissonant, deeply bad vibes into the air. After slapping the needle off the record, Briggs leans from the nest and pulls the boy’s rope closer, a switchblade outstretched in his other arm. “Come on, come on,” Briggs hyperventilates as he slices. “Keep breathing, Blondie, just breathe, big deep breaths, baby, please, come on, come ON!”

Of course, no breaths come. We all heard his neck snap. I’ll be hearing his neck snap for the rest of my life. Drew’s half-open eyes stare downward, our last conversation running on a loop in my head:

“Your aunt will never stop searching for you.”

My jaw locks as it holds back a maelstrom. Drew’s aunt will never get the chance to make him feel okay and loved again. She’ll always worry if she tried hard enough. And it’s my fault. My mouth has finally killed someone.