Neal, mocking, shaking his head with impatient disapproval as he watched Ethan attempting to get dressed, in a sarcastic and fake California accent, said, “Oh. Right on, dude.”

I pushed Conner out into the hall, away from the door, and whispered, “Is this it? Is this really it?”

He nodded, smirked. “Mind the gap, Jack.”

I threw my arms around him and grabbed on to him, cursing myself that I was not going to cry.

“There is no fucking gap,” I said.

Conner held me back at arm’s length and slapped the top of my head, rubbing his fingers in my wet hair.

“When did you get back?”

“Just now. Half an hour ago. You?”

Conner laughed. “I was in here getting fucked up with you guys last night.”

I heard Neal inside the room. He was chewing out Ethan for making him wait while Ethan stuffed random articles of clothing into an overnight bag.

“I better get my shit together before he blows up at me, too,” I said.

Conner shook his head. “You? Shit together? You are Jack Whitmore, right?”

And just before we went inside my room, Conner grabbed my shoulder and whispered, “Where is it, Jack?”

I knew what he meant.

Of course I knew what he meant.

thirty-three

On the train to the city, Conner phoned our girlfriends, Nickie and Rachel.

He made lame excuses about Jack being sick, how we couldn’t come to London for the weekend.

Ethan eyed me suspiciously. He listened to Conner’s smooth and convincing sincerity about poor Jack sleeping in bed, laid up with chills and a fever.

“He looks terrible, Nickie.”

Then he winked at me and said, “I’ll tell him you said that, babe.”

Conner was such a slick and practiced liar.

Ethan watched me, one eyebrow raised questioningly.

I shrugged and smiled crookedly. “Boys’ night out, Ethan. I guess that vow of temperance I swore isn’t going to last the day.”

Ethan slapped my knee and gave me an I-told-you-so look.

And Neal said, “Lad’s got to fucking play around sometimes, eh, Conner? One of these days, if you ever get a girlfriend, Ethan, you’ll see. Ha! If. Aren’t I right, Jackie?”

What could I say?

Neal Genovese and Ethan Robson went their own ways once the four of us arrived at Charing Cross.

Conner and I had other things to do now, and I didn’t know where to start.

But I did read through the listings on my phone while we sat on the train.

I found Ben Miller’s and Griffin Goodrich’s numbers there.

At first, I was terrified to even look for them. I convinced myself that the only way I’d be brave enough to do it was if I was sitting there with three other boys. I kept imagining that goddamned barrel in some other Freddie’s garage, in some other Glenbrook. If I closed my eyes, I saw images of the photographs of the boys, spread out on a tabletop in some fucking interrogation room, or I’d remember following Seth through an alleyway near Green Park, when I’d peered down into the mouth of the blue plastic drum and saw their bodies.

While London fell to pieces around me.

But this was it.

It had to be.

I even rechecked their names at least ten times before we’d gotten off the train and said good-bye to our roommates. I ignored the sympathetic text messages I received from Nickie and Rachel.

But there were changes, too.

I figured some things had to be different after an unobserved month slipped by.

Ander’s cell number was saved on my phone, like it had been when Henry and I popped back into his crumbling flat that last time. And I’d even made a number of calls to Ander that I couldn’t clearly remember.

My clothes were all different, too. They fit me strangely, and I couldn’t remember having any of this stuff before the end of the summer. Maybe I grew or my tastes changed, I thought, but when I woke up in bed that morning, I was wearing briefs. Jack never owned or wore briefs one day in his life. The only way I could explain it was that I must have lost or run out of my regular clothes somehow, or maybe Nickie had taken me shopping.

It wasn’t a big deal.

I wouldn’t let myself make it a big deal.

Because this was it.

This was going to be it.

And, mostly, things seemed as normal as they probably should be. All my recent calls were between me and Conner, Nickie, her brother, Henry Hewitt, my grandmother, and at least a dozen calls in the last few days had come from Ben and Griffin in California.

So once Conner and I found a relatively quiet part of the station, I dropped the bag I’d been carrying and pulled the phone out of my pocket.

I hadn’t been thinking about the lens, or the other glasses. I didn’t care about them. And I knew I had them with me, somewhere.

Same old Jack, no matter how fucked up his universe gets.

Always keeping one foot in the door.

But I needed to hear Ben’s and Griffin’s voices, just so I could begin to feel more certain that we all really did make it back from Marbury.

Conner knew what I was doing.

“It’s going to be after midnight,” he said.

“They’ll be up. If they’re…”

I didn’t need to say it; Conner knew what I meant.

If they’re the same.

If they’re alive.

If they’re here.

I called.

Ben answered, in a whisper.

“Jack?”

I held my phone in front of my chin, so Conner could hear, and I watched his eyes to see if he gave a sign confirming that things were really okay.

“Hey. I’m here. With Conner.”

Conner was staring at me, too, looking for the same thing.

“Glenbrook?”

“We’re in London.”

There was a rustling, the sound of motion, like Ben dropped the phone.

“Hang on. I’m in bed. I’m going in Griffin’s room.”

I took a long breath. I was so relieved. “Are you okay?”

I could hear a door opening, shutting. Then Griffin said, “It’s Jack? Jack? Are you here?”

“We’re back. When did you guys—”

“Three days ago. We been calling you and Conner for three days,” Ben said. “You didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about.”

“Well, it’s us now,” Conner said. I could see the relief on his face, too.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

Ben said, “Yeah. It was weird at first. We were scared. We were gone such a long time, Jack. We couldn’t remember some shit. My stepdad thought we were smoking pot or something. They fucking piss-tested both of us this morning.”

“Yeah. Screw that,” Griffin said.

Conner smiled and nodded.

“But you’re both okay?” I said.

“We don’t fucking smoke pot, if that’s what you mean,” Ben answered.

“Do you remember what happened to us out in the desert?” I watched Conner. He shook his head.

Ben’s voice lowered. “After the fight. The horses ran off. We came after you. Me, Griffin, that kid named Frankie, and Ethan.”

“Ethan’s a kid at school here.”

“When we found you, there was a Hunter standing next to you, coming for you.”

I watched Conner’s eyes while Ben said it. He didn’t show anything.

“Frankie took a bow from one of the dead bugs, and he was going to shoot the Hunter, but as soon as he did, it was like the sky opened up and you got to your feet, right in the way of the arrow.”

“Frankie shot you,” Griffin said. “He shot you with the arrow, Jack. It went completely through you and then it just fell down in the dirt like you weren’t even there.”

Ben continued, “And when it happened, both you and the Hunter disappeared. Then everything went blank, like it did when we were in the garage. That was all I knew. Next thing I knew, I was sitting on a bench in the locker room at Glenbrook, getting dressed for PE, and Griff was at his school sleeping through a test. I was so fucking scared. And then I forgot my fucking locker combination and had to spend the rest of the day in my gym clothes. I didn’t see Griff till we got home from school. We both looked like shit. We’ve been trying to call you ever since. But whenever I did, you were, like, ‘What are you talking about?’”