‘In the woods? Please, I don’t want to go to the woods –’

‘Yes. Lots of wood.’

‘Please, Celeste. I don’t want to go.’

Two go in. One comes out.

I’m back and I’m seventeen and somehow the beam from my flashlight is smaller than it was before. Or is the light just dimmer? Doesn’t matter. Can’t see. Can’t hear. The roar of the rain and the trees and the ocean is unbearable.

Then a scream.

‘Mona!’

I whip my shoulders round so fast they jerk from their sockets and the rain is so heavy on my back that I can’t even stand up straight and it makes my temples ache but I need to get out so I run.

I run. I can’t see. My arms are stretched out in front of me as far as they go and I’m crashing through what’s breakable and it feels like there are fingernails or claws or knives from everywhere and soon the flashlight is battered out of my hands.

I stop, don’t move a muscle, try to slow my breathing, but the rain is so damn loud that just the noise of it is startling. Fine, here I am, disgusting and punished – I can solve a mystery but I still can’t even tell anyone the truth about –

My flashlight’s gone. I have no idea in what direction I’ve run.

I go back towards where I think I came from and there’s something oddly shaped moving around, battered by the rain – it’s a tag. But it’s on the ground, not attached to anything, and a gust of wind sends it careening across the forest floor.

If I hadn’t already resigned myself to my fate, this is the moment that I do.

I carry on walking, numb now.

‘Ellis.’

I walk.

‘Ellis.’

My voice is so quiet he wouldn’t be able to hear it if he’d been two feet in front of me, without the thundering rain.

Nothing.

I’m shivering.

I didn’t know a person could be this cold and still live.

My feet, pressed against the wet of my shoes, feel like they’ve been shredded to ribbons, a red siren blaring with each step. I think of trench foot, of the images from history class of the skin of soldiers’ feet purple and sloughed. With the adrenaline faded now, here’s everything: the terrible weakness of my skin. The glitch of my brain.