“You want to go home smelling like alcohol?” She finishes the bottle, flips it into the bushes, her face angled away from me. “He’s an adult, isn’t he? I think he can cook his own frozen pizza.” Feels my look, relaxes her tone a bit. “I mean, right?”

I make the call, the boy in front of me giving me this dirty look, like I’m the only one here with parents who expect them to check in sometimes. Dad’s voice mail saves me, his message crackly and distant, barely reaching me out here, like I’m launching off in a lunar probe or something. I keep my voice as low as I can, hoping he won’t pick up on my buzz. “So, I’ll be home by nine . . . hope that’s okay”—pause, feel Bree listening—“love you, see ya.” End call. We always say I love you—on the phone, before bed; Ma’s really big on that. I don’t care how babyish Mr. Staring Problem thinks it is.

Bree looks straight ahead as I tuck my phone away, holding our jack-o’-lantern in my other arm. My hands still radiate that gone-over-pumpkin stink, no matter how many times I wipe them on the grass. “Do you know how to make GIFs?” Maybe not the best icebreaker ever, but I need to say something to melt whatever’s frozen into the space between us just now. “Because we need one of Kincaid’s smile. The eye-crinkle thing? So we can watch it on repeat.”

The corner of her mouth moves. We’re okay. I think.

Our group passes through the marsh, where the sky opens up to our right, the horizon streaked with lavender and flame. The giant Mumbler mural—Fear Him—lies in wait, fingers lashing across the rock, face a maddening blank. The path slopes down, growing wetter, muckier, shoulder-high cattails everywhere, flower spikes gone to seed like heavy lumps of brownish wool.

It takes fifteen minutes of following the footpath along the circumference of the marsh, hopping puddles, skirting places where the salt tide rises over the trail, until we’re hiking, up, up, into the trees, people complaining about tired legs and sore feet, spitting out their cigarettes or Juicy Fruit.

Then the bridge is there, three arches in silhouette against the vibrant sky.

I follow the rest of them over the rusty railroad tracks leading to it, where the ties have crumbled into loose chunks. The bridge is made of stone—I didn’t expect that—big granite blocks spanning a seventy-foot space between landmasses, where water streams through the dark arch tunnels, churning yellow foam.

There’s a steel guardrail along either side, a small concession to anybody crossing on foot. The gaps between posts are so wide anybody but maybe Trace would tumble right through if they lost their footing.