Mia retreats from the rain. There’s no room to pace under the tarp, but she does the best she can, as if she’s ranging around a courtroom, addressing judge and jury. “We charge that it’s your fault Tony died. If you hadn’t told him to steal the backpack, he’d still be alive.”

I’ve never seen a person look more miserable than Deacon Bailey. Every word from Mia seems to hit him like a punch to the gut.

“What do you say to that?” Mia demands. “Do you deny it?”

He shakes his head. “No, it’s true. What happened to Tony is my fault.”

“All he wanted to do was be your friend!”

“I know.”

“Friends look out for friends! Friends protect friends! They don’t let them die showing off! He was trying to impress you, and what did you do to protect him? Nothing!”

“It happened so fast.”

“We should have been working together, helping each other. All of us! We were stronger together!”

“I was hungry. It made me stupid.”

Mia comes charging out from under the tarp. “Are you serious? This isn’t about food. That was just the excuse you needed to be a bully! You enjoyed it, lording it over Tony. You enjoyed trying to scare us because you’re the biggest and the strongest. You loved it! Admit it!”

Deke shakes his head, his face glistening.

“Admit it!” Mia shouts.

“Okay. You’re right,” he says. “I don’t know why, but it was fun. Stupid, stupid fun.”

Mia frowns. “Stupid fun, that’s your excuse?”

Deke slumps against the rope. I get the impression he thinks that staging a trial in the middle of the wilderness is a game Mia made up to torment him. But he’s wrong. Mia is trying to do the right thing, the best way she knows how.

“What will you do if we untie you? Steal the food? Throw more rocks? We could have been killed!”

That makes him sit up straight and look directly at Mia. “No way! We missed on purpose.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“If I wanted to hurt you, I would have. Maybe I should have. You had all the food!”

“We left a package for you,” Mia reminds him. “Six portions. Plus, a pot to boil the water.”

“That blew my mind,” Deke admits. “Why’d you do it?”

“Because it was the right thing to do. Like this is the right thing to do, giving you a chance to defend yourself.”

Deke might be crying, or maybe not. Hard to know in the rain.

I feel bad for him, but not so bad I want to see him untied. Because nobody changes that fast. One minute dangerous and violent, the next all sorry for all the rotten things he did. A person like Deacon Bailey can’t ever be trusted, can he? Bullies can’t change, can they?