“I’m Bray,” the black-haired girl sitting by Camryn says. “And this is my fiancé, Elias.”

Camryn sits up fully and dusts the sand away from her hands by brushing them together. “Cool to meet you,” she says. “I’m Camryn and this is my fiancé, Andrew.”

Elias reaches out to shake my hand.

Tate, the guy with the tattoo says, “We’re heading to a private spot on a beach about thirty minutes from here. It’s a great party spot. Pretty secluded. You’re both welcome to join us.”

Camryn twists her body a little at the waist to see me behind her. We talk to each other with our eyes for a moment. At first, I wasn’t really up to it, but she seems to want to go. I stand up, helping her up with me.

I turn to Tate. “Sure. We can follow you out.”

“Kick ass,” Tate says.

Camryn and I grab our beach towels and the bag we brought packed with beef jerky, bottled water, and sunscreen, and we follow Tate and his friends off the beach and to the parking lot.

And now we’re back in the car being spontaneous again. I’m not so sure about this shit, maybe because it’s been so long since I’ve partied with anyone other than Camryn, but they seem harmless enough.

The so-called thirty-minute drive ends up being more like forty-five.

“I have no idea where the hell we are anymore.”

We’ve been on a dark highway and off the main freeway for the past twenty minutes at least, their Jeep Sahara coasting over the road in front of us at seventy-five miles an hour. I’ve got no problem keeping up, but I don’t usually speed like this in unfamiliar territory at night where I can’t spot the cops hiding on the side of road out ahead. If I get a ticket it’ll be my own damn fault, but I might still bust that Tate guy’s head for it just on principle.

“At least we have a full tank of gas,” she says. Then she laughs and hangs her foot out the window and says, “Maybe they’re leading us to a creepy cabin in the woods somewhere and plan to kill us.”

“Hey, that thought did cross my mind,” I laugh back at her.

“Well, I trust you to keep me safe,” she jokes. “Don’t let any of them cut me up into little pieces or force me to watch Honey Boo Boo.”

“You got it,” I say. “Which brings to mind number four on our list of promises: if I’m ever lost or missing, promise you’ll never stop looking for me until it’s been exactly three hundred sixty-five days. On day three sixty-six, accept that if I was alive I would’ve already found my way back to you, and that I’m long dead. I want you to go on with your life.”

She lifts away from the seat, bringing her foot back inside the car. “I don’t like that. Some people go missing and are found years later, alive and well.”

“Yeah, but that won’t be me,” I say. “Trust me, if it’s been a year, I’m dead.”

“OK, fine,” she says, slipping out of her seat belt and scooting over next to me. She lays her head on my shoulder. “Only if you agree to do the same for me. One year. Not a day more.”

“I promise,” I say, though I’m lying through my teeth. I would look for her until the day I died.

Camryn

23

It’s OK to lie about some things. This “promise” just happens to be one of them. There’s no way I could stop looking for him after one year. Truthfully, I’d never stop looking for him. This pact full of promises that we swore to keep is important to both of us, but I guess when it comes to some things, I’ll just have to openly agree and deal with things however I want if it ever comes to that.

Besides, I get the feeling he’s lying, too.

Andrew doesn’t know it, but that black-haired girl, Bray, I saw a couple of hours earlier in the restrooms not far from the beach. She ended up using my stall after me. We didn’t actually talk to one another, just passed each other with a friendly smile and that was it. I’m guessing that’s what motivated her to have her friends invite us to party with them.

I think it’ll be fun. Andrew and I spend one hundred percent of our time alone with each other, and I think it’ll be good for both of us to step out for a while and associate with others more. And he didn’t have any objections, so I’m guessing he probably thinks it couldn’t hurt, either.

The drive to this “private” spot feels more like an hour.

Their Jeep turns left onto a partially paved road and the farther we follow, the bumpier the drive. Their headlights bounce through the darkness in front of us until finally the tree-enveloped road opens up into a wide area of rocks and sand. Andrew pulls up beside them and shuts off the engine.

“Well, it’s definitely secluded,” I say as I get out of the car.

Andrew comes up next to me, gazing out at the deserted beach. He takes my hand. “We can turn back now, there’s still time,” he taunts me. “Once they get us away from the car, it might be the last time we ever see each other.” He squeezes my hand and pulls me closer to him playfully.

“I think we’ll manage,” I say just as the last of them pile out of the Jeep and meet us at the back of the vehicles.

Tate opens the back of the Jeep and lifts out a giant ice chest and drops it in the sand. “We’ve got plenty of beer,” he says, lifting the lid and reaching inside.

He tosses a bottle of Corona to Andrew. Not Andrew’s first choice of beer, I know, but he won’t turn one down, either.

Bray and her fiancé, I can’t even remember his name, step up together beside me while Tate pops the cap on another bottle of Corona and hands it out to me.

I take it. “Thanks.”

Andrew pops the cap on his with the bottle opener he keeps on his key ring.

“If you’ve got any blankets to lie on, might want to bring one,” Tate says. His girlfriend joins him, passing me a smile as she walks in between us wearing her skimpy white bikini. “And I’ve got a kickass system in this baby,” he adds, patting the back of the Jeep with his hand, “so I’ve also got the music covered.”

Andrew pops the trunk and grabs the blanket he always keeps back there, the same one we used the night we tried to sleep in that field last July. Only now, thanks to me, it has been washed and doesn’t stink like oil and car funk.

“Where are my shorts?” I ask, rummaging around in the backseat.

“There right here,” Andrew says from the trunk. When I lean out of the car, he throws them toward me, and I catch them in midair.

“I don’t plan on swimming in that abyss at night,” I say, slipping them on over my red bikini bottoms.

Overhearing, Bray says, “I’m glad I’m not the only one!”

I smile over the roof of the Chevelle at her and then shut the door. “Have you been out here before with them?”

Tate and the others are walking toward the beach now carrying the ice chest, beach bags, and other random items. They leave the doors open on the Jeep with the speakers blasting rock music.

“We did last night,” Bray says, “but Elias got drunk way too early and started puking up his insides, so I drove us back to our hotel pretty early.”

Elias, yeah, that’s her fiancé’s name. He shakes his head and gives her the sarcastic yeah-thanks-for-telling-everybody look.

Andrew and I walk alongside Bray and Elias, hand in hand toward everybody else already setting up camp not too far out, closer to the water. As we step up and lay our blanket out on the sand, Tate lights a match and tosses it onto a pile of tree branches. The flame ignites the lighter fluid he had already squirted all over the pile. A tall, searing rod of fire curls up over the top of the pile and illuminates the darkness all around us with a dancing orange glow. Already the heat from the flames are making me hot, so I slide our blanket a few feet farther away from the bonfire before Andrew and I sit down on it. Bray and Elias follow suit with two giant beach towels. Tate, his brother, and the other three girls all share a large quilt. I dig the bottom of my beer bottle into the sand beside me so that it sits upright.