Will raced back downstairs. He rummaged through the tools in the kitchen, looking for a screwdriver. He couldn’t find one, so he grabbed a hammer instead. He climbed the stairs again, and the boys standing by the window backed off, watching him and waiting to see what he was going to do.

Will looked at the hammer in his hand and then at the glass door. He had to get Maddie out of there.

Everything that followed seemed to happen very slowly, the night stretching out into the early morning, the music and the drugs coming in and out of focus, carrying them along. But later they would remember it happening too quickly to stop, like a pileup on the freeway. Nothing to do but brace yourself for impact.

Will took a deep breath, drew his arm back, and let the hammer fly. The glass door shattered into pebbles, cracks spreading from the point of impact and then shards falling quickly with a sound like rain.

For a moment the roar of the party stopped, and the only sound was the dissonant music, echoing from the bare walls and floors of the house. Then someone gave a loud whoop. The shrill explosion of a beer bottle breaking was greeted by cheers, and then there was more breaking glass as people began to rocket bottles from the upstairs windows and decks. Someone turned up the music, drunken conversations resumed, and the party lurched forward into the night.

2

The pounding was in his head, not on the door. No, scratch that, it was both. Hunter rolled over and pushed his palms against his eyes. “What is it?” he called out.

The door opened and his dad walked in. Dominic Finch was big: linebacker shoulders in an expensive suit. He leaned against the doorframe, filling the space, and checked his watch, also expensive. “Are you going to stay in bed all day?”

“Maybe.” Hunter yawned.

“It’s almost noon. And what about the two girls asleep on my sofa?”

Hunter closed his eyes, trying to conjure the memory of what he’d done last night. The nights tended to run together, even when he hadn’t drunk to the point of blackout, and at first he drew a worrying blank. Then he remembered the party, pushing his way through the dark and crowded house, music echoing against the bare walls and floors. And then, as he stepped outside for a cigarette, the sound of police sirens, distant but getting closer. The next thing he remembered was weaving home in the BMW, not quite able to see straight, with June and Rosie passed out in the back seat.

“Your mom is pretty upset,” his father was saying. “There’s a scratch all the way down the driver’s side door of her car. And there was mud in the back. How did that happen?”