“Yeah, no, that’s right.” But hearing Brendan say it out loud made Will realize that if they hadn’t found it yet, they would. Everyone must be talking about it, and it’s not like they’d cleaned up before they left. Like it would have even mattered. The anxiety that he’d felt all weekend sharpened and intensified. Once again Will wondered if he should come forward and admit what had happened. Wasn’t it better to be honest instead of waiting to get caught? But it was impossible. Trip had warned him not to discuss what happened at the party with anyone, even Hunter. You never know, he’d said. And his father had scared him by reminding him that his scholarship, awarded by the Hart County Union Club, might be on the line if he got into legal trouble.

The bell rang. “I’ve gotta get to class,” Will mumbled. He walked down the hall, searching the faces of the other students as he passed. Was it his imagination, or was everyone looking at him? Any one of them might have been there, and any one of them might tell.

Maddie pulled up the hood of her sweatshirt and slipped into school just before the bell rang. She was also wondering if everyone was staring at her, but in her case, it seemed to be true. Well, maybe not everyone, but she was getting some curious looks. Even worse were the kids who saw her and then quickly looked away. Like Will had in the parking lot.

She focused on breathing, and on getting to her locker. Breathe in, breathe out. One foot in front of the other. It’s not a big deal, she told herself for the thousandth time since she’d woken up on Saturday morning. There’d been plenty of drunken hookups at parties over the last few years. How was this any different?

But it felt different. The problem was, she didn’t know exactly what had happened. This was hard to admit, even to herself. She’d stayed in bed all weekend, telling her parents that she was sick, and tried to put the pieces together.

The last thing she could remember clearly was sitting with June and Rosie on the stone steps by the river. The other girls were playing with each other’s hair, buzzed from the pills that Hunter gave them. Maddie’s heart was racing, but otherwise she wasn’t really feeling the ecstasy. And then, all at once, it hit her so hard that her eyes nearly rolled back into her head. “Oh my God,” she breathed, and the world around her suddenly slid into focus. She felt everything: her hair against her neck, the air filling her lungs, and the stone steps beneath her, still radiating heat from the afternoon sun.