June and Rosie had tied their floats together. Despite everything that had happened, they’d stayed friends. Everyone knew June had come forward to the police, but she’d managed to spin it to her advantage, in the way that only she could. The story that went around was that she’d been dragged in by her father and had no choice. “I did my best to protect all of you,” she’d said, and everyone agreed it had only been a matter of time anyway. And by that time, Rosie had—for once—stolen the spotlight from June with her confession to the District Attorney’s office. In the end, there’d been no official punishment for what she’d done. The DA’s office had seemed as eager as she was to put the whole thing behind them. But her father had insisted she stay at home this fall. Instead of Penn State, she’d be taking classes at Hart County Community College and living at home, where her father could keep an eye on her.

Trip brought up the rear of the flotilla in a green kayak. He’d brought a fishing rod, and he had it gripped between his knees, the line trailing out behind them, while he carefully rolled a cigarette. “You got a fishing license?” someone called out to him, and Trip said sure, right here, and reached into his pocket, pulling out his middle finger. Everyone laughed, and Will laughed too.

Will downed another beer. If you’d asked him two months ago if he’d ever be out on the river with his friends like this again, he wouldn’t have bet money on it. Everything had seemed to be doomed, his friends guarded and suspicious of each other, and his mother crying in her room at night, and in the shower, and any other time she thought no one was watching.

It wasn’t like nothing had changed. There was the thing that Will spent a lot of time trying not to think about: Trip was going to jail for a year. When Will left for Princeton in a week, Trip would check into Hart County Correctional. The thought terrified Will, but Trip seemed strangely nonchalant about it. Probably he was just putting on a brave face, but Will needed that, and he didn’t want to dig too deeply. Send me books to read from school, Trip said, and Will promised he would, and then they didn’t talk about it again.