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Pranks are stupid. She knows they are.

She’s going to be twenty-seven next week, and she’s been obsessing over where the threshold is when she’s no longer in her midtwenties, but in her late twenties with nothing to show for any of it. She spends all of her free time watching teenagers on social media so she can mimic their movements, their mannerisms, their speech. Sometimes she’s terrified the FBI will look at her viewing history and ask why she has such an intense interest in underage girls. Now she’s in a room with women her age and she has no idea how to talk to any of them, how to have an actual conversation without a script.

God, she hates herself so much. It’s too quiet in here. She can’t take it for another second. She stands and smiles. “So fun!” she chirps, before the attendant leads her to the next room.



* * *



—

LeGrand refuses to take off his clothes, or be in a room where anyone else does. He sits out in the lobby and waits. Beneath the portrait is a white couch—so obviously untouched by any child ever that it makes him miss Almera with a physical pain. The world is huge and scary and confusing, and he doesn’t understand how he got here. He wants to go home, to load Almera in the wheelbarrow, to push her as fast as he can until she squeals with laughter.

The rest of the men are in a sauna. It’s miserable, but each pretends to relish it. Except Brandon. Brandon really does love it. He leans back, breathing deeply, letting his body relax. He’s in a sauna! Last week he had to clean up after someone was sick—both ends—all over the gas station bathroom at three a.m. And today, he’s in a fancy-pants spa. “Isn’t this amazing?” he asks.

Atrius’s fingernails are black, painted to hide the spray paint that’s always under them. He picks at the chipping polish idly. This is boring.

Jaden and Logan talk sports. It’s a relief, having common ground. No one talks about the game awaiting them.

Christian, like Isabella, still hopes they’ll meet the organizers. Linda has dropped a few hints—this is going to be an annual event—and he wants in. He can imagine living in this beautiful town. Marrying someone. Rosiee pops briefly into his mind, a fantasy of backyard BBQs and anonymously adorable children filling itself in around her. Someone once told him that mixed-race kids are the cutest and he’s never been able to stop thinking about it. He’s not sure if that makes him racist. But he’ll be a good dad, a good husband. He’ll take Linda’s job. And he’ll never have to go door to door again. He’ll burn a clipboard in that BBQ, ceremoniously.

Ian breaks first. He rushes out, taking grateful gasps of cool air. He tells himself this whole thing is an experience. A study. He’ll use it all in his writing. His head swims as an older woman gently guides him into the next room.

Cold showers are offered. Hot showers are offered. Decadent platters of food. Salt scrubs. Massages. LeGrand stays on the couch. Mack stays in the pool until everyone else has moved on. As she walks to the showers through a cloud of perfume left in Rebecca’s wake, she has an idea.

She scrubs but uses no products. Refuses the massage—after so many years of being untouched, she worries she might freak out or cry—and the accompanying scented oils. Her deodorant is unscented. She smiles to herself as she sits alone, separate, in her robe. She’s going to be invisible in every way possible.

In the end, twelve contestants get massages. They wear beaded masks, so they can’t see that the older woman massaging them cries silently the whole time. She wishes the other two had allowed her to perform this kindness. It’s the only thing she can offer them, the final gift of gratitude for what they’re going to do.



* * *



—

“Holy shit,” the prank girl says, accurately summing up how they all feel as the bus pulls to a stop in front of giant wrought iron gates. The last rays of daylight are streaming nearly horizontal through the trees to suffuse the whole scene with verdant intensity.

Above the gates, a faded and chipped sign bids them WELCOME TO THE AMAZEMENT PARK. Rusted circles that once held bulbs surround each word, with streaks of dark red trailing down like tears. But the old sign doesn’t go at all with the gate. Where the sign is amusement-park garish, left to rot, the gate itself feels older but perfectly maintained. There are symbols worked into scrolling metalwork, a pattern. Mack can almost make sense of it, can almost—but no. Her eyes glance off the points of the gate, unable to focus on what’s there. It’s like they want to look anywhere else.

She’s tired, though.

Everyone is pressed against the windows, trying to pierce the dense wall of trees surrounding them. Almost lost in the green is a ten-foot-tall fence made of metal cables, complete with razor wire at the top. It screams Keep out. But it doesn’t bother Mack, who breathes a sigh of relief. The game isn’t inside. Doubtless there will be buildings, but she doesn’t have to hide inside. Her fear—not her worst fear, because after what happened to her family she doesn’t have one of those anymore—was that they’d be in a house. This? This is different. She’ll be okay. She can handle this.

She has to.

Linda keeps her back to the park. She doesn’t look out the windows. “We’ll go directly into your base camp. Please remember that it is only for use from sundown to sunup. There are no free spaces, no time-outs. If the sun is up, the game is on.”