The morning sun was high and directly in her eyes, so it wasn’t until she was practically on top of the pit that she saw the male figure sitting beside it, round-backed and sort of hunched down. As she slowed to a halt, her first thought was that it was Jude, finally roused from his drunken-druggie stupor, hanging his head because it hurt so much. Then she blinked and saw that it wasn’t Jude at all. It was Tommy, and he wasn’t hanging his head, he was looking down at something in the sand, in between his legs. Squinting, she saw that it was a book of some kind, a notebook maybe. He stopped reading it to flip to a fresh page, then pulled a pencil out of his pocket, began scribbling furiously. He was still wearing his clothes from yesterday, and his hair was flat in spots, spiky in others. Obviously, he’d spent the night on the beach. Guess he hadn’t gotten into one of the cars in the club parking lot, after all.

Alice got the feeling that he was doing something private, something he wouldn’t wish to be observed doing. She was about to turn around, head back in the direction she came from, when he suddenly lifted his face. They locked gazes. Alice, embarrassed, feeling as if she’d been caught spying, just stood there until he raised his hand in a tentative wave. She waved back, began walking toward him.

As she approached, she saw him slip his pencil back in his pocket, slide the notebook under his thigh and out of sight. “Hi,” she said, when she was a foot or two away.

“You’re the new girl, right?”

Even though it was more statement than question, she answered it: “Yes.”

As they stared at each other, she wondered if he thought she looked like Camilla, too. Then she wondered if that’s why she’d loaded up on the sunblock, to keep her skin a milky, Camilla-like white. Or if that’s why she’d worn her ponytail high on her head, the way Camilla did in that photograph, not at the nape of her neck, the way she did normally—to heighten the chance resemblance, cause him to associate her with his dead girlfriend. After all, if she did remind him of Camilla, the girl he loved, it would be that much easier to make him fall in love with her.

That she could be that low-down manipulative, even unconsciously, was a disturbing thought, and she did her best to push it out of her mind.

“Doesn’t it get cold?” she said.

“What?”

“Out here, at night.” Up close, she noticed that the stubble on his jaw was a shade darker than his hair. His face was so handsome. But there was something sad about it, too. It was his eyes, a beautiful soft brown, but the beauty shot through with melancholy.