He remembered a family he’d seen during boarding, probably Costa Rican, with two daughters. One had been about his own age and Tom had noticed her first because of how pretty she was. Her sister had been much younger, maybe only eight or nine, clutching a soft toy.

He wasn’t sure why, but the thought of those two girls being down there among the dead was hard to accept. He hadn’t known them, would probably never have seen them again, yet in some way it was harder to comprehend they were dead than it was Miss Graham or the others.

A seed planted, that maybe they weren’t dead at all, that they were trapped down there hoping to be rescued. Maybe that was why he’d thought of them, why he’d climbed this ridge in the first place, because this was what he was meant to do, he was meant to find them.

The feeling was so strong and filled him with such urgency that he took a step forward without meaning to, then another, down the slope, sensing there was no time left to lose. He glanced quickly at the distant wreckage, meaning only to remind himself of the direction he was heading in, but the sight of it stopped him short and brought him back to his senses.

The wreckage. Nobody was alive down there, not the two sisters, not Miss Graham, nobody. That truth hit him harder the second time, seemed more shocking somehow—how could all those people simply be gone?

He thought of Miss Graham and the way she smiled encouragingly when someone was making a point in class. He thought of others, kids he’d only known as faces around school. All of them were gone.

He didn’t want to think about them at all, didn’t want to imagine the final terrifying moments that had left the wreckage pancaked against the valley floor like that. So he turned away from it, staring blankly at the trees off to his left instead, staring for some time before he realized he could see a body.

It was wedged in the branches of a tree a short way below where he stood, checked blue shirt, blond hair. Having spotted one body, Tom scanned the trees for more, but there weren’t any others that he could see.

He set off toward the boy but the descent was trickier on this side and the trees had not been flattened. By the time he got to the tree he was aiming for he was lost in the dappled half-light of the jungle and the body was almost out of sight above him. He recognized him—Charlie Stafford, a kid Tom had known a little, looking unhurt but too much at peace.