It’s lighter going, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Dawn is worn out and sweating through her shirt within ten minutes of leaving the campsite. The ground is slippery with loose rock and dewy lichen, and she can’t find her footing and nearly twists her ankle a few times. Besides, her muscles are burning from just hiking to the base of this stupid mountain; she’s not sure she has enough in the tank to make it up to the summit, and it’s starting to scare her.

Lucas and Alex fall in beside her. “Crazy morning, huh?” Lucas says, panting for breath. “Christian’s such a weirdo.”

I guess it’s friends-on again, Dawn thinks. “Did you see what happened?” she asks the boys. “I was peeing.”

“I guess he touched that girl Kyla’s ass, just like she said.” Alex pulls himself over a boulder the size of a fridge. “It could have been an accident, but I don’t really know.”

Lucas helps Dawn over the same boulder. “Nah,” he says. “I see no reason to doubt Kyla; Christian’s done it before.”

“He’s a creep,” Dawn agrees. She cranes her head toward the front of the Pack, high above, where Warden and Brandon and Evan are leading the way, climbing fast and steady with long, powerful strides.

Dawn has to tear herself away from watching how Warden’s muscles ripple through his shirt, the way his triceps flex when he reaches to pull himself, the definition in his calves.

Down, girl.

“I think those guys are sick of it,” she tells Lucas and Alex. “Like, if Amber hadn’t stepped in, I don’t know what would have happened.”

Lucas and Alex follow her eyes to the boys at the front. Lucas frowns. “Those guys are bad news,” he says. “Don’t you think?”

Dawn shrugs. “We’re all bad news, dude,” she replies. “That’s why we’re here.”

Alex laughs. “You guys don’t seem so bad to me,” he says. “All things considered. But that counselor—Christian? He’s fucked.”

Lucas makes to answer. Loses his footing on a patch of loose shale and slips and slides down about five or ten feet, ripping his pants, his palms coming up bloody. “Shit,” he says, the conversation forgotten. “I freaking hate Fart Mountain.”

When they reach the spine it’s like the sky opens up and they’re standing on top of the world.

“You can almost see the ocean,” Amber tells them, pointing in a direction that must be west. Dawn follows her gaze, but she can only see mountaintops and vast forest, same as always except more of it, miles and miles of unbroken wilderness.