“Really?” His head shot up, and he smiled a little, looking relieved. “Good.”

“You couldn’t tell?” Harper smirked.

“That’s the thing. Sometimes she’s pretty obviously into me. And then other times it’s like she’s not even there.” He looked over at Harper. “Do you know what I mean? She’s with you, but her mind is a million miles away.”

“Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.”

“And now all this stuff with those weird girls.” He shook his head. “She won’t tell me what she’s doing with them or why she keeps hanging out with them.”

“She won’t tell you?” Harper asked, not bothering to hide the disappointment in her voice.

“No.” He looked over at her. “She’s not telling you, either?”

“She’s not telling me anything, remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” Alex said. “And those girls are just so … creepy.”

“I know,” Harper agreed, remembering the way they’d left Gemma on the shore. “I swear, they’re evil.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it. And Gemma’s not evil. She really isn’t. So I don’t know what she’s doing.”

“I know! It doesn’t make any sense at all!” Harper was excited to have somebody to talk about this with, somebody who really knew and understood both her and Gemma. “I just wish this all wasn’t happening right now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m leaving at the end of August for school, and then it’ll just be Gemma and my dad. And she’s getting all wild and crazy now, and soon I won’t be around to deal with it.”

Alex didn’t say anything to that, probably because Harper had just reminded him that his time with Gemma was limited, too.

As the trail wound closer to the bay, the bugs got thicker, swarming around them. Harper waved her hand, trying to shoo them away.

“The bugs are ridiculous this year,” Alex commented, and Harper had to agree.

The trees had begun to buzz with the sound of them. Then Harper saw them. Big black flies were hovering in a cloud a ways off the trail, where ferns and weeds had overgrown a rocky area near the ocean.

“Ugh.” Alex groaned. “What’s that smell?”

“I don’t know.” She wrinkled her nose. “It’s like … rotten fish, but different.”

She’d actually started smelling something faintly as soon as they’d entered the trees, but she hadn’t thought much of it. On a hot day like today, it wasn’t uncommon to get the scent of bad fish wafting from the docks.

But now the stench was almost overpowering.

Harper stopped walking, but Alex took a few steps ahead of her before he stopped and turned back to her. The flies were getting thicker, and they both swatted at them with their hands.