“Well, that was a lovely day trip,” Pete said as they left the marina behind. “Where to now? Any natural disasters you want to visit? Prison camps? Political riots?”

Gemma spotted a vacant parking lot behind a long line of low-ceilinged storage units. “Pull over here,” she said.

Pete turned to stare at her. “Are you serious?”

“Please. Just do it.” It felt good to give orders, to have a plan, to be out on her own, to do what she wanted without having to beg for permission. Something leapt to life in her chest, a force beyond the guilt and the fear. It was like she’d been living in a cartoon, in two dimensions, her whole life, and had just fought free of the page.

He did, barely making the turn, and rolled to a stop. “Most people think of spring break, they think bikinis, virgin piña coladas, spray tans . . .”

“Not me,” Gemma said, trying to make a joke of it. “I’m allergic to coconut. And I don’t even own a bikini.”

“Why not?” His eyes were very clear when he turned to look at her. “You’d look great in a bikini.”

Once again, she couldn’t tell whether he was making fun of her. There was an awkward second when Gemma was acutely aware that she was imagining Pete imagining her in a bikini, fat rolls and thighs that rubbed together and everything. She wanted to die of embarrassment. Her cheeks felt like someone had put a torch to them. She could hardly stand to look at him, but she had to know whether he was smirking.

He wasn’t. He was fiddling nervously with the radio, even though he’d shut off the car ignition. It occurred to Gemma that he was nervous—actually nervous. Because of her.

Germ Ives. The Frankenstein monster.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, and opened the car door. She didn’t know where all the tension had come from, but she was desperate to escape it. Her whole body was torch-hot now. Immediately, the faint scent of burning reached her, and beneath it, the smell of swampland—sunbaked mud and belly-up fish and microorganisms wiggling deep in the earth. “Thanks for the ride. Really.”

“You are serious,” he said, as though he couldn’t believe it. He raised his hands. “All right. Whatever gets your goat.”

“Whatever gets your goat?” She shook her head, amazed.

“Yeah. You know. Whatever wets your whistle, gets your rocks off, brings you to your happy place—”

“Pete?” she said. But she couldn’t help but smile. “Know when to stop. Seriously.”

She got out of the car, half expecting him to call her back. But he popped the trunk when she rapped on it and she slung her backpack over her shoulder, still with that weird sense of guilt and fear arm-wrestling with excitement in her stomach. Pete rolled down the window and called out to her before she could walk away.

“You’ll call me, right? If you need anything?”

“Is this your fancy way of getting my number?” Gemma asked. Immediately she wanted to chew her own lips off. She sounded like such a dork. And she hated herself for caring, too. He’d given her a ride and that was it. It wasn’t like they’d been on a date.

“Technically,” he said, “it’s my fancy way of making you ask for my number.” He smiled at her all crookedly, with his hair standing up as if it was happy, too. She took his number down and he took hers. “Promise you’ll call, all right? So I know you didn’t end up, you know, eaten by a crocodile or something?”

She promised she would, although she knew she wouldn’t—besides, he was just being polite. She stood there and waved good-bye, feeling a quick squeeze of regret as Pete bumped off onto the road in his ridiculous van. If she was honest, she had to admit she hadn’t hated hanging out with him. He was annoying, obviously. She didn’t like the way that he looked at her sometimes, as if his eyes were lasers boring straight into her brain. But he was funny, and he was company, and he was, okay, maybe-kind-of cute. She’d never even been alone with a boy before today.

Now she was definitely alone.

She turned back toward the marina. As soon as she began walking, she regretted telling Pete to drop her off so far away. She couldn’t approach the marina head on. She had no desire for face time with RoboCop and his buddy. But she figured if she could find a different route onto the beach, she could make her way back along the water to the place where everyone had gathered. Then, she hoped, she’d be able to figure out what had happened at Haven—what Haven was, even.

When she could hear the noise of the protest, she turned left and cut through a rutted, salt-worn alley between two boat shops, and then right on a street parallel to the one that led to the marina. Beach grass grew between cracks of the asphalt and a fine layer of sand coated the sidewalks. The houses here were interspersed with smoke shops and dingy bodegas, each of them painted a different pastel but also dusty and dim-looking, like old photographs leached of their luster. After another minute, the buildings fell back and she saw the water flashing behind saw grass the color of spun caramel. A chain-link fence blocked passage down to the beach, and beyond it she saw rusted kayaks piled in the grass and a scattering of broken beer bottles and cigarettes. She looked behind her: no movement in any of the houses, no signs of life at all except for a skinny cat slinking out from underneath an old Toyota Corolla. Several more helicopters motored by overhead.

She removed her backpack and heaved it over the fence, and then, checking once again to make sure no one was looking, interlaced her fingers in the chain-link and began to climb. The fence swayed dangerously and she had a momentary vision of toppling backward and pulling the whole fence with her. She maneuvered clumsily over the top of the fence and then dropped to the sand, breathing hard now and sweating under the strange smoky sun. She picked up her backpack, realizing as she did that she could now see Spruce Island in the distance—or at least, what she thought must be Spruce Island. About a mile up the coast she could make out a range of heavy dark growth above the horizon. The rest of the island, and whatever Haven was or had been, was blurred by a scrim of smoke and heat.