Lin says something back, but I’ve stopped listening. I’m walking away from them, toward the trees, where I can see movement in the shadows—limbs writhing, coiling. Something isn’t right.

“We have to get out of here,” I say aloud. But no one is listening.

Rhett and Jasper and Lin are arguing. About the woods, about being lost, about whose idea it was to come in here in the first place.

“I’m not going to fucking die in here!” Jasper shouts.

“Maybe if you weren’t so wasted, you wouldn’t have led us deeper into this screwed-up forest,” Rhett says.

“It was your idea to come looking for Oliver,” Jasper barks back, shoving Rhett in the chest.

“Stop it!” Suzy yells.

But Rhett shoves Jasper back and their faces are twisted in anger, hands curled into fists.

“Cut it out,” Lin says, and he ducks between them, pushing them apart. “You guys can bloody yourselves up when we get out of here.”

“If we ever get out here,” Rhett snaps.

Jasper’s face twists into an odd shape—eyebrows peaked sharply into his forehead—like he’s thinking something wicked and dark. Something we couldn’t possibly imagine. “I’ll fucking get us out of here,” he says suddenly, lip curling upward.

The next few motions happen quickly.

Jasper pushes his hand into his pocket, reaching for something—the lighter. “We’ll burn our way out,” he says defiantly, chin raised, eyes so huge he looks half-crazed. “We’ll burn this whole fucking forest to the ground.”

He holds the silver lighter out in front of him, and Lin exclaims, “What the hell are you doing!” But Jasper flicks the lighter and it sparks to life in his hands.

I can feel the trees inching closer; the ground shudders, roots pushing upward. “What’s happening?” Suzy asks, glancing back at me. A tendril of spiky roots has begun to circle around her ankles, slithering up her calves.

I’ve never seen the forest like this—violent and angry. Awake.

Suzy hasn’t yet noticed the root rising up from the soil—she’s staring at me, pleading for me to do something. And in the next second, Jasper drops the lighter onto a nest of leaves and pine needles near the base of a tree.

“No!” I shriek, stepping toward Jasper, as if I could stop him. But it’s too late.

“You idiot,” Lin cries out. “You’ll burn us alive with it!”

I don’t expect the flame to catch, to ignite. The woods are too damp, too cold—but the fire licks through the pine needles quickly and expands to a nearby bearberry bush, the sudden burst of light illuminating the forest for the first time. And I see what I couldn’t before. The Wicker Woods have lowered over us, forming a cage of branches and limbs and roots. A web to ensnare us.