Joel’s eyes drifted to the TV screen, where the reporter with the perfect skin was talking to a man in a cowboy hat that shaded his face. The man was stationed near the football stands, a meat smoker belching beside him. Standing behind the smoker, staring at the camera with its glassy black eyes, was the stuffed bison Joel had seen on the highway last Friday as he’d made his way into town.

imissedyou.

Joel went very still when he looked at Ranger again. He was smiling, but there was no joy in it. Something had come loose inside the man. No light from the TV could penetrate the hole where his eye should be.

“Ranger—” Joel heard anxiety thrumming in his voice: he needed to get out of this house. “How does Dylan fit into all of this?”

“You really ain’t asking the right questions here, Whitley. Why ain’t you asking what broke me? Who killed that friend of Parter’s? Who invited Troy—”

“Parter?” Joel leaned back. “Coach Parter? A friend of his died?”

Ranger laughed. He sounded incredulous. “You mean you never heard of Corwin Broadlock? I thought all that business with him is what started you down this road in the first place. The boy was just like your brother.”

At the sound of Broadlock’s name, static began to creep through the TV’s muted speakers in a long, mad whisper, the radio-whisper, the dream-whisper—imissedyou—and it set to work inside Joel’s skull.

On the television the stuffed bison seemed to cock its head at him like a bird.

KIMBRA

Heading 2 uncle jarvis’s house early (store slow!!) will see you Sun

Kimbra was so surprised by her father’s message she forgot to slip her phone back into the top of her cheerleader’s uniform. She stood, stiff and silent, as the Bison team burst through a panel of painted paper spread across the cafeteria’s exit and the other cheerleaders screamed and the band played and the students lining the hallway shouted themselves hoarse. The Bison Stampede, another ancient ritual for the Perlin game, and Kimbra had forgotten how to cheer.

She, Dashandre and April had been stationed by the doors of the cafeteria, meaning that by the time the Bison’s starting line had reached the gym at the other end of the school the three of them were still stuck clapping for the backbenchers whose names people barely remembered. This would have bothered Kimbra enormously last year, back when she still cared about this school and this town, back before her boyfriend started keeping Real Secrets from her and she had Real Life Problems. Now she was too preoccupied. Her father’s message was just the latest strange turn in a day that had already made her tipsy with unease.

Even knowing that KT had been returned home, Kimbra had awoken this morning desperate to know what it was the boy had been hiding from her all this time. She had been eager to help Joel Whitley, certain—for reasons she couldn’t quite define—that these Bright Lands he’d asked about were the key to the great mystery that had grown up around her.