Brandon half dozes, tucked into a car in the middle of a dim, musty fake tunnel. Shiny material drifts from wooden hearts. A menacing swan with one broken wing guards him, and cherubs—somehow still garishly painted after all these years—hang overhead. There were two choices this morning: Lovers’ Hideaway or Underworld Inferno, but the other building had a big scary devil hanging over the entrance so he picked the hideaway, which also fits nicely for the game.
He can’t decide which he likes best: the hiding, which is exciting even if it is kind of boring, or hanging out with everyone after. He hopes they’ll keep in touch when the game is over. Maybe even come visit him. Or he could visit them! He really likes Ava, even if her buzzed hair intimidates him. He suspects she’s a lesbian, which is super cool. He’s never been friends with a lesbian before. He doesn’t think they have any in Idaho. And Mack is quiet but he likes her, and he’s sure she likes him. Jaden and Christian seem too much like the big-city kids in Boise who have dads and summer cabins on the Snake River and steal things from the gas station even though they have money. But the other Ava, well, he can barely talk to her, she’s so pretty. Rebecca, too. And Rosiee. He likes them all. Except Jaden and Christian. But that’s unfair of him, because he doesn’t even know them.
Tonight he’ll try to talk to them, too. Poor sunburned Sydney—hopefully she feels better—and the sullen guy, Ian, and the cheater guy, Atrius. Depending on who’s out. Maybe he can get everyone playing a game or something now that they’ve had a couple of days to settle in. He beams back at the grinning cherubs. God, this is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to him.
* * *
—
Jaden was careful. He’d have to be even more careful if he was going to pull this off. He wanted it to be someone else—the creepy quiet girl with the blanket, or the stupid gay chick who thinks she’s so tough, or Atrius, preferably. But he found Sydney, so Sydney it is.
He watches from the shelter of a building that once served as a restroom and now serves as a breeding ground for spiders. Sydney climbs up a service ladder and crawls out across one of the arms into a miniature airplane suspended in the air. She has more guts than he expected. She sprays herself copiously with sunscreen, and then tucks herself into the airplane, invisible.
He settles in to give the seekers enough time to get this deep into the park.
* * *
—
Sometime after the sun has hit its zenith and is creeping toward the western horizon, Mack hears it again.
She slowly pulls the blanket off her face, careful not to disturb Ava. She can’t afford Ava startling and making the roof creak.
Close by, the snuffling. A wet, hungry breath. A sound like something pawing at the ground. Mack can’t be sure, but it seems like it’s coming from where she peed behind the clown shack yesterday. Her skin prickles with relief that she didn’t pee right by her own building.
The noise—a huff, then soft padding around and around—makes her want to scream with terror and tension. She’s being hunted.
She can tell herself otherwise, but she knows how it feels to be stalked as prey. He’s dead, he’s dead, he can never find her. Something else has taken up his task.
It brushes up against the side of her building, sending a tremor through the whole thing straight up to the roof. Straight through her bones. She opens her mouth to whimper, to cry, to release this terrible tension and let it find her, let it be over.
A hand closes around her own, tight, anchoring her there. The blanket is drawn back over her face, centimeter by centimeter, sealing her in the hot dark with Ava. Ava, who woke up without a sound. Ava, who is with her.
Come out, come out, wherever you are, he croons in her memory. She squeezes Ava’s hand hard, too hard, but Ava doesn’t move. A single rubber duck on the ground beneath them makes an agonized, slow death squeak.
And then a distant scream of rusted metal sounds through the air like a siren. Great bounding steps take off in the direction of the noise.
Mack lets out a shuddering breath of relief. Ava shifts, slowly, carefully, and Mack puts her head on the other woman’s shoulder. It’s stifling beneath the blanket, but she has no doubt Ava still feels the tears that leak from Mack’s eyes onto her shirt.
“It’s just a game,” Mack whispers. But she knows it wasn’t the idea of losing that filled her with existential terror. It was the idea of being found.
And then dying.
* * *
—
“You son of a bitch!” Sydney shouts as she watches Jaden run into the trees, away from the noise he’d made to draw the seekers to her. If she gets out, she’s taking that prick with her. She scrambles out of her airplane, almost breaks her neck climbing down. Racing after him, she shoves through the branches. Her sunscreen falls out of her pocket with a clang.
She screams as her hair catches on a branch, yanking her backward. The trees around her go silent. And then she hears a heavy footstep. And another. Something about the slow, deliberate pace drains all her anger and replaces it with fear. She sinks down into a crouch, closing her eyes, reduced to a child’s logic. If she can’t see them, they can’t see her.
She’s wrong, of course.
* * *
—
Mack and Ava stay on the roof for a few minutes after the spotlight announces an end to the day. Their hands tremble as they down water and shove granola bars in their mouths.
Ava nudges Mack with her shoulder. “Thanks. I’m sore and starving and afraid I’m gonna get a kidney infection, but I’m not tired anymore.”
Mack can’t say the truth—that without Ava’s hand anchoring her, she would have lost it. So she pretends it was a normal day, as normal as a day spent hiding in an abandoned theme park can be. “No biggie.”
They help each other down. Mack goes straight to the piano clown’s building. She wants—needs—to see footprints. Normal, boring shoe prints. Even animal prints. The ground seems disturbed, but she can’t really remember what state it was in the day before. And in the dim moonlight, she can only be sure there are no obvious shoe prints.
“We should hide somewhere new tomorrow,” Ava says. Just like that, she’s paired them. They’re a team. Mack should argue—should say no, but…
“Any ideas?”
Ava nods and they walk back toward camp. “I think climbing is our best bet again. There’s an old bumper car area. The trellis above it looks steady enough to hold us. It’s totally overgrown with ivy, so if we lie flat, we should be invisible from the ground.” She pauses. “And we could peek through if we heard something again.”
“See what it is,” Mack whispers.
“Who it is,” Ava corrects. But she doesn’t sound as confident as Mack wants her to. They stop on the edge of camp. “Hey, Linda!” Ava waves the woman down. She’s setting the last of her supply refills on the table.
“Yes, dear?” Linda looks exhausted. Even her lipstick has bled out into the fine wrinkles around her lips, making them look blurry and indistinct.
“Are there wild animals in here?”
Linda blinks several times. “There is some local fauna that might have made it past the fence. But nothing large or dangerous.”
“Maybe like wild pigs?”
Linda lets out a surprised laugh. “I’ve never seen a wild pig. But in a park this size, who can say?”