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waved at them to say it was okay. Slow down, she told herself. Stay in control. Isabel was okay.
    â€œHe didn’t want anything.” Isabel stuck out her lower lip, fighting back tears.
    â€œHow many times do you have to be told to come right home? Not to talk to strangers.”
    â€œBut I didn’t ,” Isabel said, and stalked off toward the house, dragging her book bag behind her.
    Oh God, Tinker thought too late. Isabel would see Andrew sleeping in the living room. She’d want to know why. Tinker would have to explain about Pony. What would she say? She should have thought this through earlier. She hadn’t thought it out at all. She had never felt so afraid.

Chapter 3
William
    It took William and Ruth two and a half hours to reach the summit of North Dome, and the blackflies were thick around their faces. Before they could head back down, they needed to find the true summit. In the Catskills, mountaintops were wide and flat, the actual summit points only slightly more elevated than the rest. They had to find the canister, open it, sign the register, and put it back. Someone from the Catskill 3500 Club collected the signatures and entered them. It was how you proved you’d done the peak. If you didn’t sign the register, you’d have to come up again some other time and find it then.
    The truth was that in spite of the blackflies, William felt great. At peace. Since leaving Fond du Lac the evening before, he’d mulled over the experience with Pony. He’d put himself first for once by leaving. She could be reckless as hell sometimes. She could think something was funny when it wasn’t. It wasn’t funny to attack somebody in the water. She knew that from lifesaving. From their whole lives up there. There was no excuse for what she’d done. The blinding terror of that moment had gone to the core of him. And she knew it. He’d been right to leave. Whatever she had to tell him could wait.
    He watched Ruth’s small compact shape thrashing through the brush. Ruth would never pull a stunt like that. Ruth had respect for things. That being said, she reminded him of Pony. They shared a quality—energy, zest, something. But Ruth was smaller and had that very cool white crew cut. She had to roll up the bottoms of her pants because she was too short for regular sizes. William saw blackfly welts on the back of her neck. “Put on some more bug stuff,” he said. “Here.” He sprayed deet into his hand and wiped it along the back of her neck. She wore a bandana over her face to protect her nose and cheeks. He wiped some more on her forehead. She hated the stuff. It was toxic. It was carcinogenic. But she let him do it anyway, because otherwise she’d lose her mind.
    â€œThere!” she shouted. He looked, and sure enough, the canister was nailed at eye level to a tree not twenty feet from where they stood. They signed it quickly and immediately headed back down, stopping at an overlook for a few minutes to drink some water and look at the view from the southeast corner of the summit plateau. They kept going, Ruth in the lead to set the pace because William was too fast. He’d wait for her to climb down the steep parts until she was clear, and then he’d go quickly, scrambling over the stone like a mountain goat.
    He’d met Ruth the autumn before on a group hike along a section of the Appalachian Trail in Salisbury, Connecticut. There had been nine of them that day. William noticed Ruth right away. All the guys had. She was cute, small, with a world-class smile.
    The leader was a lanky guy named Chris. He gathered them into a circle and explained a little about the hike. They’d all introduced themselves. Ruth said she was from West Hartford, same as William. Chris asked for a volunteer to be the sweep, and a heavyset older guy raised his hand. Then Chris took off up the trail at a near run, and by the time William had zipped his pack