“What do you think?” he asked.

She responded by belching and bursting into laughter.

“There we go,” he said. “That’s what I like to hear. See? Everything’s not so bad.”

Things weren’t so bad; they were inexplicably hilarious. She felt her muscles ease and she settled back into the gentle puffs of the sleeping bag.

“This is . . . stoned?” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “Take it easy, listen to the music. Nowhere to be, and nothing to do. I’m going to take a leak. Back in a second.”

He pushed himself up off the ground and headed toward the trees. As he walked off, he tripped dramatically over a log and did a staggered almost-fall—it was clearly a fake-out for her amusement, and she burst into laughter again. Then he stepped into the trees.

Sabrina leaned back, her head against the log. She was surrounded by the long shadows, the veil of smoke that oozed along with the music like honey. If she closed her eyes, she knew everything would spin and the world would cease to make sense. It barely made sense as it was.

The bass drumbeat on this song was like a heartbeat. Thump. Thump. Thump.

Break the silence, damn the dark, damn the light

It sounded so serious, being a member of Fleetwood Mac. She loved them. This album had given her so much solace this year, through all the terrible things that had happened. Things she was not, she reminded herself, going to think about now. She tried to focus her eyes over the corona of the campfire. Somewhere behind her, Diane and Todd were making a lot of noise, really getting into whatever they were up to.

Thump, thump, thump.

She stared at the tray full of little flecks of leaves and buds, at the bag of chips and the fire and the hook of a moon. So many things had been troubling her recently. Why had she let herself get so stressed? This was Barlow Corners, and the whole point of Barlow Corners was that nothing ever happened here. Right?

She realized the song had changed. Wait, this was “Gold Dust Woman.” That was four songs into the second side of the album. She hadn’t even noticed the songs or the time go by. How long had it been? Ten minutes? Something like that? Why was she still alone?

“Eric?” she called.

No reply.

“Eric!” she called again, louder this time.

There was nothing aside from Stevie Nicks singing about the black widow and the pale shadow and the dragon, the song increasing in intensity. Sabrina’s body was heavy and the shadows were long, and when she tried to move, everything had a slow, syrupy quality. She elbowed her way over to the tape player and turned down the volume.

All around her was silence.

“Diane! Todd? Eric?”

No one replied.

One part of her mind tried to say that this was fine. Maybe Eric had gone back to the hunting blind. Diane and Todd were busy. The other, louder part of her mind told her that something was wrong, wrong, wrong.