“He could drown,” Lin offers—the only one who seems to recognize how dangerous it is. That someone could actually die. “No one’s ever had to go out on the ice before,” he argues. “We usually make them swim in the lake in the summer, and see if Willa Walker pulls them under.”

“He’s not going to drown,” Jasper interjects, scoffing and brushing a hand through his shaggy hair. “The ice will hold.”

“And if he does, it’s his own fault,” Max says, his eyes like two black orbs, as if something is boiling beneath the surface. The others might still be unsure whether they’re going to let me into their little group. But Max knows that he hates me. I stole his bunk when I first arrived. I didn’t want to, I would have preferred to go unnoticed, to be the boy whose parents died, who arrived late in the season but kept to himself and hardly took up any space at all.

But Max hates me for it all the same. Blames me for him having to sleep in a one-room hut near the counselors and the mess hall.

And now, standing on the shore, I know he won’t let me get out of this initiation. He wants me to suffer. To a pay a price for his eviction.

“If he knows how to swim, he won’t drown,” Max adds. In his hand, he holds something—a small silver pocket watch—turning it over between his fingers, the chain swinging like a pendulum. Each time I’ve seen him, he’s had the watch, always fidgeting with it. His dad gave it to him, the others told me. It was a birthday gift before he was sent here—so he could track the hours he was stuck in this shithole, they had joked. It seemed like a cruel gift, in a way. A reminder that time would continue on without him in the outside world. That he was losing time. We all were—trapped in these mountains.

Jasper laughs, a hearty, side-splitting laugh, and takes another long gulp from the bottle.

Still, I stand at the shore, refusing to move.

Then Max crosses the space between us, before I can brace myself, and he shoves me toward the lake. I take several steps back, then I spin around—my hands balled at my sides. Max and I stand only a foot from each other, both of us ready to make something of it—to not let it go. Bloody knuckles and broken jawbones and bruised flesh.

But then Lin says, “Come on, man, just walk out on the ice and get it over with.” My gaze flashes to him, and he shakes his head. “It’s fucking freezing out here. Do you guys really want to get in a fight and try to explain black eyes to the Brutes in the morning?”