Chubs unbuckled his seat belt with an aggravated sigh. “I told him this was a waste of time. They said Virginia, not West Virginia.” He turned his gaze back toward me. “By the way,” he added, “that SUV was tan. That’s some photographic memory you have.”

An excuse leaped to my throat, but he cut me off with a knowing look, and slammed the door behind him.

I jumped out of the van and followed Zu. As my feet sunk into the mud and sad, yellowed grass, I had my first good look around.

A large wooden sign, leaning back like someone had nearly run it over, said EAST RIVER CAMPING GROUNDS, but there was no river, and it certainly wasn’t your typical camping ground. If anything, it was—or once was—an old trailer and RV park.

The farther we walked from the minivan, the more nervous I felt. It wasn’t raining, but my skin felt clammy and cold to the touch. All around us, as far as my eyes could see, were the burned-out silver and white husks of former homes and vehicles. Several of the larger, more permanent trailers had entire walls ripped or charred away, revealing kitchens and living rooms with their insides still intact, if not waterlogged and infested with animals and slowly rotting leaves from the nearby trees. It was like a mass grave of past lives.

Even though screen doors had been ripped off or warped, even though some RVs knelt on whatever tires had been slashed, there were still signs of life all around. Walls were decorated with pictures of happy and smiling families, a grandfather clock was still counting time, pots were still on stoves, a small swing set remained undisturbed and lonely on the far end of the grounds.

Zu and I navigated around an RV that was now on its side, following a path of deep footsteps in the mud. I took one look at the RV’s rusted bones and immediately turned away, my hand tightening around Zu’s gloves. She looked up at me with a questioning look, but I only shook my head and said, “Spooky.”

When the rain came, it hammered against the metal bodies around us, rattling a few of the weaker roofs and screens. I jumped back with a yelp when a trailer’s door fell into our path. Zu only jumped over it and pointed ahead, to where Chubs and Liam were locked in conversation.

It had taken me a second to recognize Liam. Under his jacket, he wore a blue sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over what looked like a Redskins hat. I had no idea where he managed to find them, but a pair of aviator sunglasses obscured a good portion of his face from view.

“—isn’t it,” Chubs said. “I told you.”

“They said it was at the east edge of the state,” Liam insisted. “And they could have meant West Virginia—”

“Or they could have been screwing with us,” Chubs finished for him. He must have heard us approaching, because he jumped and turned around. The moment he locked eyes with me, he scowled.