I let out a strangled laugh. “All that and more.”

The seconds ticked by at half the speed of my thoughts.

“Why weren’t you affected?” I wondered aloud. “He did try it on you, didn’t he?”

“He tried; I definitely felt it. Little did he know…” Chubs tapped his forehead. “Steel trap. Nothing gets out or in.”

I had a fleeting thought that what he was saying could very well be true, and that it might even explain why his was the only head I had managed to avoid slipping into, but we heard a loud shuffle of steps on the path, and everything else flew straight out of my head.

Olivia and another kid came stumbling in, one of Liam’s arms over each of their shoulders. His face was turned down, and I could see where mud had caked into his hair. The rain had started about an hour after we had left him.

“Lee,” Chubs was saying, trying to get him to rouse. “Lee, can you hear me?”

We helped them lay him out on the futon. It was dark enough in the room that I didn’t see the extent of his beating until Olivia set a flashlight lantern down on the floor beside him.

“Oh my God,” I said.

Liam’s face turned in my direction, and for the first time, I realized he was actually awake—his eyes were swollen shut. I let my hand fall on the arm hanging off the side of the futon, and moved it so it was across his chest. The breath escaped his lips in wheezing sighs. There was a thick layer of gummy, dried blood caked around his nose, his mouth, down to even his chin. Daylight would reveal the rest of the bruises.

“He needs antiseptic,” Chubs said, “bandages, something—”

“If you two come with me,” Olivia replied, “I’ll walk you to the supply room. No one will be out to bother us.”

“I’m not going to leave him,” I said, still crouched beside Liam on my knees.

“It’s all right.” I barely felt Chubs’s hand on my shoulder as he brushed by.

The screen door creaked open and shut behind us; I waited until I heard the shuffling footsteps of the other kid follow them out before I looked back down at Liam’s face. I moved my fingers, feather-light across his face, as gently as I could. When I came to his nose, he let out a sharp hiss, but he didn’t try to twist away until I brushed his swollen split lip.

I don’t know if I had ever cried as much as I had in the past month. I had never been like the other girls in my cabin at Thurmond, who cried every night, and then again every morning when they realized their nightmare had been real. I wasn’t even a crier as a kid. But there was no way to hold them back now.

“Do I…look as pretty as I feel?” His words were slurred. I tried to get him to open his mouth, to make sure all of his teeth were still there, but his jaw was too tender for me to touch it. I leaned forward to press my lips against where my hands had been.