He grabbed his backpack and ran out of the clearing before he even knew what he was doing, and ran another twenty paces along the narrow trail before fear of running into some other unknown danger brought him to a stop. His heart hammering in his chest, he scanned the ground around him, imagining snakes everywhere now.

Then he looked down and saw the two small tears in the leg of his cargo pants where the snake had struck. Instantly, he felt unsteady on his feet, a different fear taking hold of him now. But he needed to know if he’d been bitten, even if there was nothing he could do about it.

He dropped his backpack onto the ground and sat on top of it, then pulled his pant leg up to the knee and looked down. He looked at it for a second only before closing his eyes and taking a couple of deep breaths, dread flooding his body in thick waves.

He shook his head, not wanting to see it again but knowing he had to, and then opened his eyes. There were two neat puncture wounds on the side of his calf, his skin streaked with the blood that was running out of them.

“Stupid,” he said under his breath. “Stupid!”

He suddenly felt sorrow, not just for himself, but for Toby, a kid he hadn’t known, and yet Tom had been so quick to dismiss his death, to blame him for his carelessness. Tom had seen the reality now, the speed with which a snake could strike from a position of near invisibility. He thought of Toby falling, the viper lunging, and felt a surge of sadness for him, and shame that he had not felt it at the time.

At least Toby had been with other people, kids who’d tried to help him, who’d carried his dying body. It seemed fitting somehow, that if Tom was about to die it would be alone, and no one would ever know how or why. He didn’t want it to be true, but at the same time, he couldn’t help but think it was what he deserved. This was the end of his story, and he would end it on his own.

CHAPTER 30

Tom had thought about death a lot in the last eight years. And he’d often wondered if, when the time came, he might see his mom and dad—not in some afterlife, but in his final moments like he’d heard some people experienced, as if to reassure him that everything would be okay.