Not long after, Hunter’s parents had begun to fight, and they seemed to operate at only two volumes: violent shouting or stony silence. Hunter spent more and more time hanging out at the tree house, and he suspected he wasn’t the only one. Sometimes, after one of his parents’ big arguments, he thought he could smell his dad’s spicy aftershave in the air, and he would find stubbed-out Marlboro reds near the tree house, a brand that he knew his father secretly smoked, because he’d stolen a few out of the glove box in his car. His dad never said anything about it, and neither did he. And then his mom had taken off, and the tree house had seemed childish, and was no longer a place to pretend, but rather a place to escape to.

Hunter flicked his cigarette ash off the edge of the platform. June and Rosie were with him, sitting on a log and laughing together at something on June’s phone. He’d brought June here plenty of times before, and he’d even brought Rosie once, before he started going out with June. He’d never said anything to June about it, and he got the feeling that Rosie hadn’t either. Rosie was always tagging along with the two of them, and sometimes he could feel her staring at him. He liked her attention. He even encouraged it, when he thought he could get away with it. He didn’t worry too much about June getting jealous—it would never occur to her that he could be interested in anyone other than her.

Hunter heard Will approaching through the woods. “Your dad finally let up?” he called out as Will climbed onto the platform and sat down.

“Oh, sure,” Will said. “You know my dad. He’s famous for taking things in stride. Actually, he’s just busy. They’re updating a lot of the equipment right now, and pulling out a bunch of old trees. Trip’s been helping him out, so he’s basically left me alone. What about you?”

“My dad wasn’t happy that I scratched up Lindsay’s car, but it was sort of hard to hear him over the chopper wings as he flew off to work,” Hunter smirked.

“Hey, Will,” June said, as she and Rosie climbed up the ladder to sit with them. “I heard that the police talked to you at school on Monday.”

“Yeah. You?”

June shook her head.

“It’s because I got that ticket on Friday night,” Will said. “They know I was at the house.”

“They know that you were on the road,” June corrected him. “But they can’t prove that you were at the party without some other evidence.”

“Does having a lawyer for a father make you one too?” Hunter asked, and June stuck her tongue out at him.

“Whose idea was it to party there, anyway?” Rosie asked.