Ranger spat out a mouthful of blood. He all but shimmered with rage. He whispered something to Jason, and the smaller boy took off jogging. Already Joel was realizing the magnitude of his mistake.

In a soft voice, with something approaching tenderness, Ranger said, “You are going to regret that, you little fucking faggot.”

Joel didn’t weep—he remembered that much. He remembered the way his knuckles throbbed, the way the crowd of feet visible beneath the walls of his toilet stall had swollen throughout halftime, remembered the grumbles as people tugged at the stall’s locked door. He ignored them. He couldn’t face another soul.

All his hard work—the twang he’d wrestled onto his voice, the stiff gait he’d spent hours practicing in front of the mirror to keep his hips from betraying him—had it accomplished nothing? What sort of future could possibly await him?

Slowly, as the little crowd shuffled out of the restroom at the start of the second half, as the sun began its endless descent and the toilet began to swell with the hot last light of the summer day, Joel forced his fear down his throat. He would have to try harder. What choice did he have? This would be his life, he realized: trapdoors, tripwires. He would always be a little frightened and a little angry, would always be conscious of the eyes appraising his every move. The men at the Egg House, the women at church, his classmates at school: he had so many people to fool if he wanted to be safe in this town. If he wanted to retain a little dignity, a little decency. If he had any hope of being loved.

He didn’t think about Ranger’s promise of revenge. He thought only of Dylan and Clark and his mother, of the people he held dearest, and of the pain they would feel if they ever were to learn how extensive his lies had always been, how crooked his heart. How humiliated they would be to have wasted so much time believing in a boy so broken. Do you love me? Clark always asked on the phone, every night before bed. More and more every day.

He rubbed his knuckles. He would have to be more careful in the future. He couldn’t risk losing control like that again.

Though God in heaven, some days all Joel wanted was an excuse to lose control.

And then Joel opened the door of the stall and saw a man standing alone at the urinal, his profile trembling in the brassy light. It was none other than Troy Clark.

CLARK

Twelve hours later, Clark stifled a yawn in the hot cruiser and wondered what armless Dylan Whitley had tried to tell her last night when he’d led her to the edge of a black hole in the ground and showed her... What? The other details of the dream had evaporated when she awoke, leaving behind nothing but a cool dread in her chest.

What was it her crazy mother used to say? “Dreams are just our souls going for a swim at night.” Jesus, Mom. If that was true, what the hell had happened to the swimming hole this week?