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thought—”
    â€œIt’s okay,” Scarlett said, and I believe it truly was despite her tears. Because the prettiest girl in Crow Holler had come looking for her , and I guess that made Scarlett feel . . . I don’t know, seen . “I heard something in the woods. Just scared me.”
    â€œJust me, you big doofus. Traipsing all the way out here to make sure you’re not doing something you swore to me you’d stop, all because of some redneck Rambo. Now come on. I don’t like being here without Hays, and we have to figure out a way to have fun without any moonshine.”
    â€œI’m so sorry,” Scarlett said.
    â€œSave it for John David. He’s the one’s gonna be snoring in a bed all alone tonight.”
    They laughed then—laughed as much as the mountain allowed—and left hand in hand, working their way back to the bonfire and listening for the sound of something following. Neither heard more than a hoot owl and the wind through the trees.
    I’d like to tell you more about Scarlett Bickford’s eighteenth birthday, how her and her friends somehow managed to salvage things and have the night they’d all wanted. But I can’t do that, friend, because that’s not how it went. Cordy and Scarlett come back to find nothing but sullenness on the part of Naomi and Hays—Naomi because she’d managed to carve an even wider gulf between her and her brother, Hays because now there’d be nothing to do but listen to Cordelia until she fell asleep and then stare at the fire all night. He wouldn’t sleep, not now. And they all knew the truth—John David had scared him.
    Know what it’s like, coming up in a town like this? Where everywhere you turn is mountains hemming you in, but you don’t care because you know there’s no use trying to get away? You grow up thinking the best you’ll ever do’s slide into a job with Hays’s daddy and Cordy’s momma down at the grocery, or at the dump like Cordy’s daddy, or maybe take up with Chessie and Briar Hodge like John David done. That’s all you got to choose from here, less you manage a way to suck off the government teat.
    That’s the future waiting for all those kids come June graduation. That’s why they all wanted to party with some a Chessie Hodge’s shine. For one night they could forget their troubles. But now all that hope lay in the half dozen mason jars John David had never brought, and with it went the promise of any fun at all.
    Hays found his knife sometime between Scarlett running off and Cordelia running off after her. He sat with Cordy on top of her sleeping bag, flicking open that lighter he always carried, snapping it shut. He wanted to try out one of the condoms he’d bought for Scarlett. Cordy answered with a stiff no. Seemed a fine time for that boy to get all conscientious about what they’d been taught of male and female relations in school, now that it was too late.
    Scarlett sat alone. Naomi got lost in her smartphone, letting the others know of the crowd still waiting down in Harper’s Field. And in time their silence yielded to memories of the years that had already passed between them and years they hoped would pass between them still, all those long ones on the other side of high school. Naomi laughed. Cordy cried. Scarlett’s arms itched. They trailed off one by one that night, even Hays, though he would find the satisfaction that his knife remained tight in his hand as he slept. No one saw what moved about them in the deep woods. No one heard the soft scrape of wood over stone.

III
    The tracks. The cabin. Alvaretta’s curse.
    -1-
    What woke Cordelia the next morning wasn’t the cold leaking into her sleeping bag but that the bag felt so empty. Sometime in the night Hays had left her to sleep alone, farther from the fire. He’d made a mat of pine boughs as long as he was tall and was now curled in