“No,” Pix said quietly.

David was looking at Stevie. She saw him peeling away her blank expression and attempting to go through her thoughts.

“I’m heading for bed,” Stevie said, turning away.

David followed her with his eyes. Then she heard his phone chirp.

“Someone saw a helicopter,” he said to Pix.

“I thought I heard something weird,” Ellie said.

“Pix, is there a helicopter landing?” David asked.

“It’s fine,” Pix said.

Stevie hurried to her room and shut the door. She leaned against it, her head banging against the hook. A wave of nausea passed over her, and she moved to the trash can in preparation, but it passed. She climbed into bed fully dressed and pulled the comforter up around her.

Six had gone up the mountain, and then there were five.

Maybe she would go to sleep . . .

Shock. She was slipping into it. She sat up straight. Paper. She needed paper now. She went to her desk and snatched her anatomy notebook. She needed to write everything down, now, fresh. What had she seen? What did she know? Just write down everything, plain, without thinking about what any of it could have meant.

There was a knock at her door, and it creaked open before she could reply.

“Hey,” David said. There was no humor in his face now. “What’s going on?”

“I can’t,” Stevie said, bending over the notebook, her brow furrowed.

“What are you doing?”

“Can’t. Talk.”

“What?” he said.

“It messes with your memory,” she said impatiently.

“Something is going on,” he said. “There are only a few reasons they send a helicopter. You also look like you just had three pints of blood removed. What the hell is happening?”

“I can’t,” she said. “I need to write it down now. Stories can change accidentally once you start to talk so I can’t talk. Please, just shut the door.”

There was a faint tremble in her hand. She balled it into a fist to steady it and jammed it under the covers. David backed away slowly, closing the door behind him.

Stevie pressed on her mind. Just list it. What did you see, Stevie? She let herself write. It started Thursday.

• Moved ramp and supplies to the garden

• Set up fog machines

More granular, Stevie. Put it in order.

• A few nights before, we went into the tunnel. We

No.

• We I broke the lock to get in

There was noise outside and in. She heard the drone of the helicopter as it flew away, the sound of voices from the common room. She put on headphones to muffle them. The information was traveling and soon everything would be chaos. She had to get her thoughts together now. When she was sure she had recorded all she knew, she ripped out the page. Then she got up, removed her red coat from the closet, and put it on, taking refuge in the stiff vinyl. She put one Ativan in the left pocket and the folded list in the right. Then she sat on the edge of her bed, hands on her lap, until Larry came for her.

It was maybe an hour later. Stevie wasn’t sure. Time was slippery now. Stevie passed through the common room like a ghost, not looking at the others. Outside, there seemed to be red and blue lights everywhere, winking through the trees, echoing into the sky and throwing strange shadows all around. The temperature felt like it had dropped about ten degrees. Nate was waiting outside with Pix. He looked blank and gray.

Larry drove Stevie and Nate to the Great House. He and Stevie sat side by side behind Larry in the cart, taking a bit of warmth from each other. A state-police cruiser was parked under the portico and the officer inside was entering information into the computer. There were more officers inside. Several faculty members were crowded on the balcony, looking down. Maris and Dash were already in the hall, sitting by the massive fireplace. Maris was sobbing and Dash was glazed over, staring at his phone.

“I think I may throw up,” Nate said.

“Deep breaths,” Stevie said, taking his hand. “With me.”

She sat down with Nate on the bottom step of the grand staircase.

“The trick,” Stevie said, “is to make the exhale longer than the inhale. So we’re going to breathe in for four, hold for seven, out for eight. Do it with me. I’ll count. One, two, three, four . . .”

Nate breathed with Stevie, slowing the response, slowing the fear.

This was the funny thing about Stevie’s anxiety—when she encountered someone else who felt more anxious than she did, she leveled out. She’d first made this discovery a few years ago, when she got trapped on an elevator with another person in a hotel on one of the few Bell family vacations. The hotel was twenty stories high. Stevie and another woman got on at the eighteenth floor. The doors closed and the elevator went down, then the car dropped suddenly about a story, juddered, and stopped. Stevie’s heart almost flew out of her mouth, but when she saw the woman cry out and sink into the corner of the elevator in panic, something new set in. The woman spent the next half hour sitting on the floor in the corner, half in tears, shaking. Stevie talked her through it, and when they were rescued, the woman had nothing but good things to say about Stevie and bought her a giant cupcake and a coffee from the café in the lobby.

This might be her future—talking to people who had just witnessed traumatic events. She would have to work with them, calm them, get them to a place where they could talk.

“Nate,” Stevie said, taking his hand again, “what’s your favorite book?”

“What?”

“Just tell me your favorite book. Don’t think about it too hard. Just name a book you like.”

“The Hobbit.”

“What do you like about it?” Stevie asked.

“I like the whole thing.”

“But name one thing. Close your eyes and think about The Hobbit for one moment and tell me what you like.”

Nate closed his eyes. His face smoothed just a bit.

“The round door,” he said. “On Bilbo’s house. I read it when I was little and I always thought about the door.”

“That’s great,” Stevie said. “Keep that door in your mind. Keep Bilbo in there. Let’s breathe again. Four in. Seven hold. Eight out.”

After another moment, Stevie saw Nate settle a bit more. His shoulders relaxed a bit, and the strain of trying not to be sick let up. He exhaled one last time, opened his eyes, and looked at her.

“Okay,” he said, nodding. “Okay. What’s going to happen? What’s happening? Stevie, what the hell is happening?”

“They’ll ask us what we saw,” Stevie said.

“I didn’t see anything. I don’t even know what’s going on. They said Hayes is dead?”

“I mean how the day went,” Stevie said. “They need to establish the facts.”

“But what happened? How did Hayes die?”

“I don’t know,” Stevie said, though in her mind’s eye, she was looking at the hatch door again. She felt it in her hand, the weight of it as she balanced on the thin-runged rail of the ladder. “But it’s important we don’t try to make anything up. Just be clear. Just say what you know.”

“That’s good advice.” Larry was standing in front of them. He squatted down and looked Nate over, then looked to Stevie and nodded his approval. “This one here has a good head on her shoulders. The police need to go over the events.”