“I talked to him too,” Laurel said, following me. “I tried to tell him. Maybe she saw me, and that’s why—” I heard her inhale. That night on the ledge still scared her. “But he’s so caught up in himself, in his own holy fucking ego trip, that he didn’t even think it was wrong.”

I said nothing. We kept walking.

“How did you even know?” she asked. “I can’t imagine he told you, despite your hot little make-out session.”

“I saw them,” I said.

“And you ran right off and told Serena? What made you think you should do that? Don’t you realize what she’s capable of?”

“Yes,” I said, and we were silent for a while.

It was late. Those small hours, between three and five: the hour of the wolf. As the legends and Ingmar Bergman would have it, it is in this liminal time, this uneasy transition between dark and dawn, that most people die, and that most babies are born, and that the demons have their best access to your heart. (It’s not true, you know: most people die at 11 a.m. Eleven! It surprises me that such a sweet hour can claim so many. Babies actually tend to arrive between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., at least in America. The demon thing, though, could well be true.)

We arrived once again, for what would be the last time, at the rock palm, and they were there, all three of them; it was as though they had been waiting for us. I remember even then having the impression of theater. Serena and Luke were in a spot of moonlight, center stage. Janet stood separate, holding a lantern that gave her a ghostly affect, her hair glowing at the edges. Even their clothes, the same clothes they had worn all summer, seemed like costuming now: one girl in long white, one in cropped black. I can’t remember what Luke was wearing. Gray, maybe. Gray would be appropriate here. They stopped talking as we approached.

“I thought you might find us,” Serena said. “You two can never get enough.” She reminded me of Puck at the end of the play. If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended—

“What’s going on?” I said.

“Serena said she wanted to show me something,” said Janet. “But now I don’t think that’s true.” I was surprised at the tenor of her voice. She sounded angry, defiant. I had been expecting something else: shame, maybe. She had been caught, after all. She had been confronted. She had broken the rules. But she was standing straight as a pike, downstage, her hands on her hips.

“I don’t understand,” Serena said, turning back to Janet. “We had a plan.”

“I’m sorry,” Janet said. “It wasn’t about you. Shocking as that may seem.”

“We are what we think,” Serena said, almost to herself.