“You did well tonight,” his father said, haltingly, when it was clear that Luke wasn’t going to start a conversation.

“I know.”

“You were tough out there, I mean. Strong.”

“I always have been.”

A beat. Clearly, the man was realizing the same thing that Luke was—this was the most he had spoken to his son since all that business in Rockdale over the summer. Mr. Evers smiled wider, and Luke saw on his fifty-year-old father’s face a teenager’s nervous desire to please someone they cared for, the fear that it would be rejected.

“You should go out tonight with the other boys, I think. Enjoy yourself. I’ll take the heat with your mother. You’ve earned it.”

Luke only shrugged to his dad, reached out to open his truck’s tailgate, tossed his bag inside. He didn’t care—he had a life of his own now, better obligations than his parents.

“Let her get mad—I already made plans.”

“That’s good, that’s good, that’s...you know, Luke, I always wanted to say—”

His father was interrupted by the sudden appearance of red-faced Mr. Tanner, the big man waving his arms, spraying spittle and demanding to know where Bethany was.

Luke left the two men where they stood. He’d wasted enough time—what if the others left without him?

He hurried up the side of his truck, never glancing into the camper shell, and swung up into the cab. He eased over the grass edge of the lot. He gunned the motor and took off up the darkened highway.

CLARK

Fifteen minutes later, Clark’s truck roared to a stop outside the darkened windows of Lott’s Hardware. She jogged to Joel’s ruined convertible, parked just where Browder had told her it would be, and found it empty. She had a pretty clear idea of what had brought Joel here in the first place—she too had seen tiny little Mr. Lott in the photograph with Corwin Broadlock and her mother—but in searching the seats of the convertible Clark found no sign of where Joel might have gone.

Gone. Or been taken.

Reaching for the trunk-pull, she spotted something in the window pocket of the driver’s door: Dylan Whitley’s knife, still in its sheath. She took the knife with her as she dug her fingers in the corners of the empty trunk, ran her hand over the rug for anything someone might have dropped or left behind. Nothing.

Slamming the trunk lid, she stared at the warning carved in the paint. GET OUT NOW FAG.

There were no lights on in the hardware store. The back door down the alleyway was locked. She had never seen the town this empty. Wind moaned through the fiberglass chicken above the door to the Egg House. The gutted bank sat unguarded. No cops would miss the game, of course. She doubted any robbers would, either.

She heard the faint pop of firecrackers to the north. She headed to the Bison field.

The crowd in the parking lot buzzed with the lethal, giddy energy of a riot. Sparklers and cherry bombs burst against the pavement. She saw a shirtless man covered in green paint bash in the window of his own truck with a camping chair and let out a roar for a cheering crowd. There were no deputies in sight. These people would go on like this all night, Clark thought. The town’s memories of a weary, terrified week were being demolished before her eyes, one bottle at a time.