Something wild was happening: Tracy could feel it. Yes, T.J. was just up the hill, but she was making good on her promise of invisibility. The children were in charge, then: all of them, but Barbara the most. In the absence of adults, they came into themselves in a way that made Tracy proud.

•   •   •

The tarp tents were assigned by Barbara. Tracy and Barbara would be in the first; Lowell and Walter would be in the second; the four youngest boys would be in the third—when they briefly protested the injustice of this, Barbara stared at them until they quieted—and the four youngest girls would be in the fourth.

At ten in the evening, it was chilly away from the fire.

That morning, following Barbara’s instructions, Tracy had put on sweatpants, a long-sleeved shirt, and a heavy sweater over her uniform before running to the flagpole. Most of the campers had also gotten that message from counselors and friends who’d tipped them off, but Christopher, the youngest, was shivering in his shorts and T-shirt.

Spying him, Barbara stripped off her sweatshirt and tossed it to him.

“Put it on,” she commanded.

It looked like a gown on tiny Christopher, but he grinned inside it, comforted.

There would be no sleeping bags on this trip; not a single camper had received one. Part of their job was to survive with a certain amount of discomfort.

“Listen up,” said Barbara. “If you wake up in the night and see that the fire’s getting low, it’s your job to stoke it, or load it with new fuel.” She paused to demonstrate, to point out where the makeshift woodpile was. She’d wrapped it in the one remaining tarp, in case of rain. “But don’t go wandering,” she said. “If you get lost in the dark, that’s bad for everyone.”

She paused, thinking.

“Another thing,” said Barbara. “Stick together. I mean keep your bodies touching overnight. You’ll be a lot warmer if you do.”

A few of the younger boys groaned.

“Fine,” said Barbara. “Freeze if you want. I don’t care.”

Someone giggled, and they all looked in the direction of her extended arm.

Christopher, the youngest, had curled up into a ball on the ground, his knees inside Barbara’s sweatshirt. He was fast asleep.

Barbara clapped. “Everyone who’s not me, Tracy, Walter, or Lowell,” she said. “Go to your tents. Bedtime.”

•   •   •

The camp settled. Even T.J., up on her crest, seemed to have retired: she’d let her campfire dwindle, apparently warm enough inside the sleeping bag she’d packed.

When the four oldest campers had finished tidying the site, Walter waved them toward him, toward the tent that had been designated his and Lowell’s.

“I brought something with me,” he whispered. In the dim light of the fire, Tracy could see the glint of his braces as he grinned.

Inside the tent, they sat up in a small circle, shaking with cold. Tracy’s teeth chattered anytime they were not clenched. She could only imagine how Barbara was feeling, down one layer, having donated it to Christopher.

Walter, a wiry, young-looking fourteen, apparently noticed too, for he removed the sweatshirt he was wearing and handed it to Barbara.

“No,” said Barbara.

“Take it,” said Walter. “I’ve still got this shirt on.” He pointed to the long-sleeved shirt he was wearing underneath.

“Besides,” he said, “I can just cuddle with Lowell tonight.”

And he slung an arm over Lowell, who grinned and shoved him off.

“What did you want to show us?” said Barbara.

Walter removed his arm from Lowell’s shoulders and lifted his remaining shirt. Underneath it was a flask he had strapped to his flank.

Tracy recognized what it was immediately. Her own father had a flask that he brought with him to the track. He kept it in an inner pocket of his jacket, nipped from it occasionally with no self-consciousness. Once, after a horse of his had won a race, he had offered it to Tracy, and she had been curious enough to take a sip. She still remembered the burn of it as it went down her throat.

“Impressive,” said Barbara.

“Thanks,” said Walter. He unscrewed the top of it and swigged.

“What’s in it?” asked Barbara.

“Crème de menthe,” said Walter. “It’s the only booze my dad doesn’t keep track of.”

He passed it. All of them drank. Tracy took a small sip at first, and then a larger one. It was sweeter than what her father drank, and also more disgusting.

She coughed.

“Shhhhh,” said Barbara. She grabbed the flask from Tracy and took a long draught, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

Within minutes, the tent had become warmer. Tracy grinned in the dark. All the worries she had ever had suddenly seemed several yards farther away.

Barbara was to her right; Lowell was opposite her; Walter was next to him. Tracy inched her foot, inside its sneaker, in what she suspected was the direction of Lowell’s, though she could not see. She was picturing what it would be like to feel his mouth on hers. When her sneaker reached his, she left it there, and it felt like putting a plug inside a socket.

“I’m bored. Let’s play a game,” said Walter.

“It’s pitch black in here,” said Tracy. She was thinking of cards, or checkers, or the pick-up sticks she had created for Christopher.

“Not like that. Truth or dare,” said Walter.

Barbara laughed softly.

Tracy knew what this was only from books and shows. She understood it to be a game that people her age played at things like sleepovers, but the only sleepovers she had had were with her cousins on her mother’s side, or with Debbie Finley, a neighbor girl whose mother worked nights. Those sleepovers hadn’t felt anything like this one.

Part of the feeling came from danger: all of them, Tracy felt certain, had at the back of their mind the image of Jacob Sluiter at the edge of the campsite, recently escaped, hungry and angry. But none of them would say his name: to say it felt disrespectful to Barbara. To the memory of her brother, the rumors that Sluiter was somehow involved in his disappearance.

“I’ll go first,” said Tracy, feeling reckless. She put her hand out for the disgusting crème de menthe.

“Truth or dare?” said Walter. The words felt like an incantation.

“Truth,” said Tracy, drinking.

“Who do you like?” said Walter.

And she understood immediately that she would lie. She thought about all the boys in her grade at her school in Hempstead.