“Um, hi—” a deep voice echoed in the trees, forcing from me a scream so shrill I wasn’t sure it had actually come out of my mouth.

I spun around, out of breath and shaking, as a man appeared from behind a thick tree that was white and peeling and leafless. His eyes were wide and his hands up—I’m innocent. He was here first, I guess.

He was tall and lanky, his saggy brown hair highlighting his long face and drooping features, like gravity had an extra-hard hold on him. He was wearing jeans and a plaid button-down and as sure as I was that I’d never seen him before, he looked familiar in that way everyone on campus could—like we’d probably passed each other on the grounds one hundred times without noticing.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. I didn’t respond. I tried to slow my breathing, not make it known how scared I was, but the air was so cold going into my nose and down to my lungs that it made me cough. He backed up a few steps. “There’s never anyone back here, so we, um...” He trailed off as four people appeared behind him, static, like they weren’t sure they could trust me. I didn’t recognize the two guys—dressed in jeans and button-downs just like every other man in this school. But the girls I knew. I’d seen them before, but I didn’t know where. Or why.

From behind his back, the guy closest to me pulled a lit cigarette. “We come here to smoke,” he said, sticking it between his lips, breathing in deeply, waiting a moment before the smoke started waterfalling from his mouth, dense and white. The others stepped two feet closer to me, their eyes squinting, skeptical, like if I turned to run, they’d attack and pin me to the ground until I promised to keep my mouth shut.

He reached his hand toward me, the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. “You want some?”

I’d never smoked in my life—I was never offered the opportunity, and then vowed I would never after Seventeen magazine partnered with the American Cancer Society to sell Kiss Me, I Don’t Smoke T-shirts. I’d never seen a cigarette until I saw a pile of orange butts in the dirt next to the sugarhouse. I picked one up, felt the damp paper shred in my fingers, then dropped it when William appeared behind me and said, “Tell and you’re dead,” in a kind of whisper that gave me chills even thinking about it ten years later.

But this cigarette didn’t smell the way my brother smelled that day, his breath burning against my ear with the threat. This smelled like skunk, familiar but I couldn’t place why.