The air felt sharp, sparking with tension. Gabriel reached out and flicked on the radio, keeping the volume low. One of those guitar ballads rolled through the car, something that felt like it should have been a slow song, but really wasn’t.

Finally, her arms loosened, just a little. “I’m such an idiot. I should have known.”

Her voice had lost the wild emotion and now carried that core of strength he knew lived inside her.

“It’s not your fault,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “Believe me, I’ve seen all the after-school specials. That girl who helped me she kept telling me, too.”

“Becca. She’s my little brother’s girlfriend.”

Layne swiped at her eyes, looking more angry than tragic now. “Yeah, well, that guy can’t take all the blame. I was the moron who showed up.”

“What were you doing there, anyway?” he said. “I thought you hated Taylor and Heather and all those girls.”

“Oh, I do. Don’t worry.” She paused, biting at her lip. “They tricked me into going.”

“They tricked you? How?”

She looked out the window again. “It’s not important.”

Gabriel let the car drift to a stop at a red light on Ritchie Highway. He turned to look at her.

Layne very obviously did not want to look at him.

“You want a coffee?” he said.

She didn’t answer for a moment. “Sure.”

So he left her in the car in front of Starbucks, coming back with two steaming cups, a wad of napkins, and a few wet packs the barista had fished from behind the counter at his request.

Layne took them in surprise, ripping one open to wipe at her cheeks. “Thanks.”

He drove down to the end of Fort Smallwood Road, to where the pavement turned to crap and a sign announced a county park though the county seemed to have forgotten about this one long ago. The parking lot wasn’t maintained, and the entrance, once gated, was always open. A shame, really, because the property sported a long stretch of beach, though this pas-sageway to the Chesapeake Bay wasn’t anywhere you’d want to swim. Sometimes, during the day, there’d be kids on the old swing set, but there were newer ones in nicer parts of the county, so that was rare.

He and Nick came out here to set things on fire all the time.

Gabriel parked the SUV. As usual, the lot was deserted.

“There are chairs in the back,” he said, “if you want to go sit by the water. Or we can open up the back and sit on the tailgate.”

She licked her lips, staring out the window. “Won’t we get in trouble for being here?”

“This whole peninsula is a public park, but no one comes down this way anymore.” Then he figured out her tone. “We don’t have to stay here,” he said. “But it’s quiet, and no one will bother us.”

Layne took a sip of her coffee, wrapping both hands around the cup like a little girl. “Okay.” She paused. “The tailgate.”

He killed the engine, but left the radio on, the speakers pouring music into the night. The only light came from the dome in the center of the car and the distant industrial plants across the water. Sitting on the tailgate left her face shadowed, almost a sil-houette. Crickets and tree frogs sang in the distance, and if he listened carefully, he could pick up the water smacking the rocky breakers.

She perched on the edge of the tailgate, pulling her skirt against her thighs, though there wasn’t enough material to cover much at all.

It made him think of Ryan Stacey again, and Gabriel felt his grip tightening on the coffee cup. He gritted his teeth and looked out at the darkness. “I didn’t know it was you,” he said.

“I was sitting like fifteen feet away, and I saw two people making out ”

“We were not making out.”

“But I could have stopped him ”

“You did. I let him kiss me.”

She let him she let that guy she

Layne glanced over. “You stopped him before he could get much farther than that.” She picked at the lid of her coffee cup, her voice bitter. No, rueful. “I should have known better.”

Gabriel needed to get a handle on his thoughts before the car caught on fire. “What on earth made you go to that party?”

“It’s stupid.” She pushed a curled strand of hair back from her face. “My mother has always wanted me to be like those girls. She became friends with all their moms and begged me to spend time with their daughters. She used to buy me expensive clothes. Every other day, she’d come home from the mall with another bag from some hot new store. I never wore them. Some I threw in the charity bin behind the school. Some I shoved in the back of my closet. I hated them. I hated her.”

He remembered the tentative conversation in her bedroom.

“You didn’t want to be perfect.”

“Sort of.” She hesitated. “No, I could never be perfect, and she knew it. I think that was the point. It was all this big cover-up. The clothes, the horses, it was all one big sham. Her perfect, im perfect daughter.”

Gabriel remembered Ryan’s little comment before he’d punched the shit out of him. She’s all deformed under there.

It made him think of that moment in the woods, when he would have kissed her. His hands on her ribs, and she’d pulled away.

Had he misread that entirely?

Layne turned and looked at him, her eyes piercing and sharp.

“How much did you see? When he was . . . you know. How much did you see?”