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with more horse heads. Mandy’s ice-blonde hair glowed in the darkness ahead. Fog swirled around my ankles. An owl hooted, and I smelled pines.
    As wind caught at my crazy hair, I took my first sip of wine. It was very bitter, and I tried not to make a face. I was tightly wound, very nervous. These people weren’t my people. I thought about the scene at the hedge that morning. They’d called Kiyoko Number Three; my guess was that Lara was Number Two, and Mandy, of course, was the One. I knew I shouldn’t be there, and that I had succumbed, yet again, to peer pressure. I quickened my pace to catch up with Mandy, who was rounding a large boulder and a stand of trees with brittle leaves that seemed to collapse off the branches as she passed.
    “So, what’s going on?” I asked loudly.
    “It’s for fun,” Mandy said, obviously amused. “Just trust us.”
    “Why should I?” I said. I thought I heard Kiyoko gasp.
    I turned my head to look back at Jessel, and I felt a little shock because I couldn’t see it anymore. All I could see were enormous granite boulders and tall pines rising up around us, seeming to suck up the sound of my high-tops, my breathing, my heartbeat. We were cut off, alone.
    I looked back at Mandy. “Just do,” she replied, raising her chin. She looked amused.
    “God, it’s cold.” Lara wrapped her arms around herself, her very pale, exposed legs shook a little under her bulky jacket. I jerked; her voice seemed so loud in the empty woods.
    “Wait until November,” Mandy said, also in a normal tone, as if she knew we were far enough away that we wouldn’t be heard. “I heard it snows up here.”
    “I have great snow boots,” Lara crowed.
    “I’m sure you bought them at some men’s store,” Mandy said, rolling her blue eyes. Blue, not black. Normal.
    Just then, we stepped out of the trees onto a cliff over the lake. Far below us, black dots and points of light skittered beneath the moon, clumping at the water’s edge.
    “Everyone finish your wine,” Mandy ordered. I had two choices: dump it out or chugalug it. I went with number two, and it hit me, hard. Then Lara gathered up our glasses, opened the backpack on Kiyoko’s back, and wrapped them in white linen napkins. She zipped the backpack and gave it a little pat.
    Mandy walked along the lip of the cliff and grabbed onto a leafy bush. She found a foothold and grabbed an outcropping of rock. Lara followed after, and it was obvious to me they’d gone down here many times before.
    “Here,” Kiyoko said, reaching into her pocket. “She told us to bring flashlights. I—I won’t be needing mine.”
    “Why not?” I asked her.
    She tried to smile, but she didn’t make it.
    “Because it’s . . . my turn.”
    A clatter of falling rock echoed through the blackness.
    “Careful,” Mandy called back to us, “it’s slippery. Let’s not have any sacrificial offerings tonight.”
    Kiyoko started down the cliff face, giving it her full attention. I followed after, the last of four, wondering why on earth I was doing this. We had a ten o’clock curfew, and before then we were allowed to go either to another dorm or the library. We sure weren’t allowed to go down to the lake.
    But I kept going. After all, I didn’t know how to get back.

    It took us a while to climb down, but we finally stepped onto grainy earth. There was a ripple through a milling crowd of maybe ten girls as we approached, Mandy first, like the Homecoming Queen, then we three, like her royal court.
    I saw Julie with two of my new dorm mates, Ida and Claire. Ida had great highlights, and at dinner she’d told me the movie star I’d seen in lit class was Chyna Loftis. Of course. Ida’s father had something to do with the San Francisco Opera but I wasn’t sure what. Ida wanted to go Harvard Law. Claire from Hawaii was bronzed all over, even her “area” and her “chi-chis,” Julie had informed me, rather scandalized.
    Julie had stuffed her hands in the