“We should climb it,” I say. “It’ll be a safer hiding place.”

“What if there’s no room up there?” Marcos asks, the flame shivering in his hand.

“Then we come back down and wait for everyone. I can check it out on my own…”

“You’re not going up there without me.” Soaked head to toe, he regards me through rain-spotted glasses, and a strangely comforting version of my anxious pins and needles fill my hands. We’re in the worst trouble imaginable, but this boy I just met refuses to let me out of his sight. Another difference between him and Ario.

Marcos leads with his lighter, and we ascend the incline until it plateaus. It doesn’t take long. Beneath us by only ten feet or so, the back of the waterfall remains visible. Up here, a low-ceilinged sanctum extends much farther back than I expected, like the roots of a tooth, ending in a naturally circular chamber. “Whoa,” Marcos says, spinning his flame around the space. The ground is flat and the walls are craggy but unobtrusive, so our sanctum resembles a small, bare bedroom. “When the storms get bad, the lake floods,” Marcos continues, alight with excitement. “But that ledge and this hill would keep this place totally dry. We could hide here forever.”

“That’d be nice,” I say hollowly. I’d love nothing more than to seal myself away in this sanctum with some snacks, my laptop, a good Wi-Fi signal…and Marcos. But the world won’t disappear that easily. People are trying to kill us, and Molly is still out there in the wild.

“Someone else has been here…”

More energized than alarmed, I spin around toward a flame that has grown suddenly larger. Marcos ignites a tiki torch—the same ones that stand guard outside Ambrose Chapel. The torch erupts against the cavern wall, spraying the chamber with a campfire glow. Boyishly proud of his discovery, Marcos beams, but where his heart has lifted, mine weighs heavier.

It’s another Winner’s Wall.

Instead of pictures, our sanctum’s black wall is covered with chalk-drawn hearts, and at the foot of the wall lies a pile of powdery-white limestone. “Have you ever seen this before?” I ask, approaching with the same awe and trepidation as when Marcos brought me to the Winner’s Wall. He doesn’t respond. His smile fallen, he presses his hand to one of the chalk hearts. Inside it are four letters: MK + CR. “Initials?”

Each batch of initials is different: TB + KW, KS + DA, MR + AS. On and on, they fill dozens of hearts, climbing the cave into darkened corners that even our tiki lamp can’t reach. “I think campers come here,” Marcos whispers. “They’ve come here for years. Where Nightlight can’t find them. They sneak off…Nobody needs to know what they do. They loved each other.”