“I’m going to change my shirt, okay? In my room. I’ll be right back. There’s stuff to drink in the fridge. Go ahead.”

He closed the door to his room behind him.

He hated his room. The window opened onto an alley and the glass was that translucent kind you couldn’t really see out of. The room was gloomy even on a sunny day. At night it was so dark.

Sam hated the dark.

His mom made him lock up the house at night when she was at work. “You’re the man of the house now,” she would say, “but still, I’d feel better if I knew you had the door locked.”

He didn’t like it when she said that, about him being the man of the house. The man of the house now.

Now.

Maybe she didn’t really mean anything by it. But how could she not? It was eight months since his stepfather had fled their old house. Six months since Sam and his mother had moved to this shabby bungalow in this decrepit neighborhood and his mother had been forced to take the low-paying job with the lousy hours.

Two nights ago there had been a thunderstorm and the lights had gone out for a while. He’d been in total darkness, except for faint flashes of lightning that turned the familiar things in his room eerie.

He’d managed to fall asleep for a while, but a huge crack of thunder had awakened him. He’d come out of a terrifying nightmare to total darkness in an empty house.

The combination had been too much. He’d cried out for his mother. A big, tough kid like him, fourteen, almost fifteen, yelling “Mom” in the darkness. He had reached out his hand, pushing at the darkness.

And then…light.

It had appeared not quite all the way inside his closet. He could kind of hide it by closing the closet door. But when he’d tried to close the door all the way, the light had simply passed right through it. Like the door wasn’t even there. So the door was kind of closed, not all the way. He had hung some shirts casually over the top of the door to block most of the light, but that lame deception wasn’t going to last long. Eventually his mom would see…well, when she came back, she would.

He pulled the closet door open. The camouflage fell away.

It was still there.

The light was small, but piercing. And it hovered there, unmoving, unattached to anything, no strings. Not a lamp or a lightbulb, just a tiny ball of pure light.

It was impossible. It was something that could not exist. And yet there it was. The light that had simply appeared when Sam had needed it, and had not gone away.

He touched it, but not really. His fingers just went through it, feeling only a warm glow, no hotter than bathwater.

“Yes, Sam,” he whispered to himself, “still there.”

Astrid and Quinn thought today was the beginning, but Sam knew better. Normal life had started coming apart eight months ago. Then, normalcy again. And then, this light.

Fourteen years of normal for Sam. Then normal had started to slip off its track.

Today, normal had crashed and burned.

“Sam?”

It was Astrid calling from the living room. He glanced at the doorway, anxious lest she come in and see. He did his hurried best to hide the light again, and went back to his companions.

“Your mom was writing on her laptop,” Astrid said.

“Probably checking email.” But when he sat down at the table and looked at the screen, it was open to a Word document, not a browser.

It was a diary. Just three paragraphs on the page.

It happened again last night. I wish I could take this to G. But she’ll think I’m crazy. I could lose my job. She’ll think I’m on drugs. If I had a way to put cameras all over, I could get some proof. But I have no proof, and C’s “mother” is rich and generous to CA. I’d be out the door. Even if I tell someone the whole truth, they’ll just put me down as an overwrought mother.

Sooner or later, C or one of the others will do something serious. Someone will get hurt. Just like S with T.

Maybe I’ll confront C. I don’t think he’ll confess. Would it make any difference if he knew everything?

Sam stared at the page. It hadn’t been saved. Sam hunted around on the computer’s desktop and found the folder labeled “Journal.” He clicked on it. It was password protected. If his mother had saved this final page, it too would have been under a password.

“CA” was easy. Coates Academy. And “G” was probably the head of the school, Grace. “S,” too, was easy: Sam. But who was “C”?

One line seemed to vibrate as he stared at it: “Just like S with T.”

Astrid was reading over his shoulder. She was trying to be subtle, but she was definitely peeking. He closed the laptop.

“Let’s go.”

“Where?” Quinn asked.

“Anywhere but here,” Sam said.

FOUR

297 HOURS, 40 MINUTES

“LET’S HEAD FOR the plaza,” Sam said. He closed the door of his home behind him, locked it, and stuck the key in his jeans.

“Why?” Quinn asked.

“It’s where people will probably go,” Astrid said. “There’s nowhere else, is there? Unless they go back to the school. If anyone knows anything, or if there are any adults, that’s where they’d be.”

Perdido Beach occupied a headland southwest of the coastal highway. On the north side of the highway the hills rose sharply, dry brown and patchy green, and formed a series of ridges that ran into the sea northwest and southeast of town, limiting the town to just this space, confining it to just this bulge.