Bam! That wood got a snoutful of bear, knocking the animal off the tree and back onto the path on the other side of the fence. It landed with a squeal and an ummph.

CHAPTER 3

Maggie

NERF WAS THE sweetest golden retriever ever. He didn’t walk so much as hop on his paws. His ears would prick up, his brown eyes would brighten, and he’d let out a gentle “Aarf! Aarf!”

Now Nerf was slamming his face against his kennel cage, lunging, barking, and trying to gnaw through the plastic bars. He had murder in his eyes, and those eyes were aimed at me.

“What is wrong with him?” I asked my mom again, crouched on the floor of her veterinary office.

“I gave him a sedative,” she said. “He should be calming down soon.”

“He should’ve calmed down already.”

Mom let out a dramatic sigh. On the drive back from camp, the McAlisters rear-ended the Mitchells about twenty-five miles from town. There must’ve been fifty soldiers on the scene within thirty seconds.

“Could this be a reaction to the radiation?” I asked from the floor. “It’s like he got infected the moment we were back in town.”

“No,” Mom said, stepping into the entryway to pick up a suitcase. “Radiation doesn’t work like that. And that’s all gone, anyway, remember?” She lugged the bag upstairs.

I looked back at Nerf.

“Hey, boy!” I said in my sweetest voice.

He smashed his face into the bars, jolting me backward again. The collision didn’t faze him at all as he growled and reared back on his haunches. I worried he was going to concuss himself. He barked savagely.

“Mom, Nerf is freaking me out!” I grabbed my two duffels and joined Mom upstairs.

I tossed my bag onto my bed and looked around. Our living space was basically a studio apartment, the attic of the vet practice. Any money we had went for what Mom, Dr. Renee Gooding, called “infrastructure improvements,” most recently, twenty thousand dollars into an X-ray machine.

I pulled out my phone and looked for a text. Jordan and I had emailed about getting together when we both arrived in town, but the phone was showing no bars.

“Did the accident do something to the cell towers?” I asked.

“The phone companies probably haven’t reactivated the towers yet. Bureaucracy.”

Emails came through, though. Most of my friends were in the camp, so we didn’t email much, but from the moment I sent a message to Jordan, way over in the “sick” camp, I started checking my in-box compulsively. And when “Jordan Conners” popped up in my in-box, I smiled.

I felt even closer to him many miles apart than I did growing up with him in Mount Hope.

I also missed him.

After his injuries, how would he look now?

I checked my phone again. No signal.

Ring. Ring. Ring.

I turned from Mom to hide the smile breaking across my face, and I scrambled down the stairs. I ducked into the office to check myself in the mirror.