“Smart,” Harrison said. He turned his flashlight onto the wall. “You didn’t love me like I asked of you,” he read. “Still I love you back.”

“Whoa,” Aidy said, nearly breathless.

“Do you think that’s a clue?” Harrison asked.

“Well, yeah. And a pretty obvious one,” she answered, smug as ever.

I could feel her trying to shift the conversation toward whether or not Marley meant to die, so I took a risk. I reached into Harrison’s back pocket and yanked out his Marley letter. “Sorry, what was it your letter said again?”

“Hey! Give that back!” He snatched the paper from me. But my strategy worked. He started reading. “My clue says: The tunnel goes farther than we know. Walk until the dead man’s eyes see you leave.” He returned his letter to his back pocket, tucking it in with his wallet.

“Oh my God,” Ruby whispered to herself. “That guy they found dead down here. Remember that? He was holding his eyes in his hands.”

There was a collective shudder.

“The eyes were looking up,” I said.

The group was trained on me, waiting for more. I raised my eyebrows to coax the answer out of someone’s mouth.

Aidy read me. “You think we need to find an exit that goes back up,” she said.

“Ooooooh.” Ruby nodded her head. “Of course. His hands were reaching up. That’s good, Olivia.”

My answer was a nod to farther down the tunnels. Leaders didn’t always explain. They taught. Didn’t see Nick doing much of that.

Harrison took my cue and started walking. When we reached a crossroads, he stopped to examine the three tunnels that lay ahead. “Which way?” he asked.

He’d backpedaled, leaving me at the front of our pack. Various cell phones cast weak streaks of light in all directions. Not much could be made out from where we stood, loosely huddled like Scooby-Doo characters.

“I know this is like Horror Movie No-No 101, but I think we have to split up,” Aidy said. Everyone waited for her elaboration. “We’ll do it once, and find whatever we’re looking for, instead of coming back over and over. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not doing this again.”

It was three tunnels for five people. Everyone in this group had a set companion, and though mine sometimes fluctuated, it would end up Nick and me, I knew. The story wrote itself. Ruby would think we needed a moment alone, so she’d volunteer to go on her own. Harrison and Aidy would be paired up without acknowledgment. If Bigs and Teeny were here, they’d go together. It was the way things went.

To be more unique, I had to not only surprise Nick, but myself. No one could know what I would do next. Nick might’ve been a When, but I was a What If.