I scrambled to my knees and checked the pocket of my rain jacket to make sure my flashlight hadn’t tumbled out. Shakily, I pushed myself to my feet and took baby steps all the way to the bottom of the hill. When I could finally see the sand, I unclenched my jaw and jumped the last few feet. The ground squished beneath the soles of my sneakers, bubbling up around the rubber treads with the consistency of oatmeal.

I could just make out the shadowy humps of the tents in the distance. Not surprisingly, they were dark and still. I flicked on my flashlight and ran it along the rock wall to my left, inching forward until I finally found the opening of the cave. It looked smaller somehow, as I stood there in front of it alone. Threatening. For one brief moment I thought I saw something flicker deep inside, and I almost turned around and ran.

No one’s here, I told myself, listening to the rain as it thwapped against the vinyl cover of my hood. They’d have to be crazy to come out in this.

Of course, I was crazy just for being here. And after seeing the Lifers storm-surfing last week and the cliff-diving the other night, I already knew that some of the others weren’t exactly on the right side of sane. But this place was mine now, as much as it was theirs. If someone was inside, they were just going to have to deal.

I took a deep breath and slipped into the cave. The narrow opening was clogged with smoke, the heady, ashy kind that billows up after dousing a fire. As I came around the corner, I covered my mouth with my sleeve and ran the flashlight’s beam along the floor. Sure enough, the fire pit was smoldering. A few small embers still glowed bright orange in the darkness, and thick gray smoke snaked up from the center of the charred logs, disappearing near the high ceiling of the cave.

“Anyone here?” I called.

No response. Somewhere in the deepest depths of the cavern, water dripped at a steady rhythm.

This made no sense. If someone had been in here just before me, I would have bumped into them coming out, either on the beach or on the rocks. Unless there was a back entrance to the cave, or some other way out to the cove that they hadn’t shown me.

Forget it, I told myself. You came here for a reason.

I tried to ignore my trembling hands as I aimed the flashlight beam at the wall to my right. I found Krista’s name again, the bubbly flowery lettering proclaiming her arrival. A few feet away, Nadia had written her name in slanted, sophisticated script: NADIA LINKOVA (NASH) 1982. Right under hers, Cori had added her name: CORI HERTZ (MORRISON) 1982. No wonder they were so close. They’d shown up here around the same time. Another reason why Krista probably expected the two of us to become BFFs. I moved on, illuminating unfamiliar names like Corina Briggance (Horrance) from 1993 and Wallace Brooks (Garretson) from 1979. I paused when I found Kevin’s name, huge and jagged, near the top of the wall, an intricate fire-breathing dragon painted above it, the tail curling around his year, which was 1965. Kevin had come here the year my father was born.

Slowly, I made my way along the wall, reading name after name after name. Toward the back of the cave the years got older and older. 1921, 1915, 1906, 1899. Some looked hastily painted, in thick white paint. Others seemed to be written in chalk, probably the only instrument they could find in those days. I couldn’t imagine that some of the people I’d seen on the street had been here for almost two hundred years. How was that even possible? How was that survivable?

I squinted in the darkness, trying to make out the words that had faded with time, holding my breath as I waited for my light to find the name I was looking for. When it finally did, I was at the innermost point of the cave. And there, etched into the stone at eye-level, was Tristan’s name.

TRISTAN SEVARDES (PARRISH) 1766.

I inhaled sharply. He’d been alive before the U.S. was even a country. Had, in fact, died before the Revolutionary War. He was over two hundred years old.

There was a noise, like a scraping, near the mouth of the cave, and I dropped my flashlight. When I grabbed for it, it slipped through my fingers and hit my toe. Cursing under my breath, I picked it up again and shone the light near the opening. The fire still smoldered.

“Hello?” I said, my voice sounding weak and scared. My toe throbbed angrily. I cleared my throat, tried to sound more authoritative. “Who’s there?”

No reply. I took two tentative steps forward.

“Come on, you guys. This isn’t funny,” I said.

I listened hard for the sound to come again, but it didn’t. All I could hear was the deafening rasp of my own breathing, and the faint echo of the surf crashing outside.

I looked at Tristan’s name again. 1766.

Suddenly, my whole body started to shake. The manic scribble on the walls closed in. I tried to take a breath, but my throat squeezed shut. I had to get out. I had to breathe. I pressed one hand against the cold wall and lurched for the exit. That was when a crackling sound stopped me cold.

“Hello?” I called again.

I took a tentative step forward. Another crackle. Something in the corner of my vision flashed. There was a piece of white paper stuck to the bottom of my sneaker.

Nice. Way to be paranoid, Rory. I reached down and plucked the page from my sole, then kept moving.

Outside, the rain had reduced to a light drizzle. I took a deep breath of the cool night air and tipped my face toward the sky, letting the rain soothe my face. After a while, the rhythm of my breath returned to normal. I leaned back against the rock wall and trained my light on the paper. It was a small, rectangular sheet torn from a standard notepad, the kind reporters scrawled on in old movies. Someone had drawn a line down the center and made hash marks on either side, each set of four slashed through with a long mark—the old method of counting by fives. In one column there were thirteen slashes. In the other, only nine.

Someone was keeping score, but of what?

“What’ve you got there?”

I was so startled by the voice, I staggered backward and tripped, slamming my head into the sharp rock wall. Suddenly three flashlights flicked on, and Nadia, Pete, and Cori appeared as if from nowhere, dark hoods pulled over their hair. Before I had time to move, Pete stepped forward and snatched the page from my fingers.

“Wait!” I yelled.

Nadia shone her light on the paper. Her black eyes widened. “Holy crap. Is that what I think it is?” She turned the light on my face, effectively blinding me. I threw up my arms and squinted, but all I could see were a dozen purple dots and three looming shadows. “Are you actually keeping a log of all the people you damn to hell?”

“What? No! I just found that in the cave!” I protested. “It got stuck to my sneaker. Look, you can see the tread marks.”

I lunged forward to grab it back, but Pete pulled it up and out of my reach.

“Nice try,” he said with a sneer. “You think I’m gonna let you destroy the evidence?”

The three of them stared me down. Even Cori’s normally friendly face had gone taut and tense. I glanced back at the solid wall behind me. There was nowhere to go. Nowhere to run.

“We know it’s you,” Nadia sneered. “It all started when you got here.”

“It’s the only explanation,” Cori said coldly, crossing her arms over her chest as Pete stared down his nose at me.

“It’s not,” I told them, trying to keep my voice from quavering. The skies opened up again, heavy raindrops pelting me. “I swear to you. It’s not me.”

“Yeah? Well, we’ll see what the mayor has to say about that,” Nadia spat, grasping my wrist, pinching the skin between her thumb and fingers.

Suddenly someone jumped down from the slope and squatted right next to me. I dropped my flashlight. Cori screamed, but Nadia’s grip only tightened.