Rhett laughs beside him, but Max looks just as serious as ever.
This next part is why we really came out here.
This is what they’ve been waiting for.
I walk to the edge of the lake where they stand, snow blowing sideways through the trees. A storm is coming. The counselors warned us at dinner to add more logs to our woodstoves, to shut our doors tightly so the wind wouldn’t blow them inward.
But now we stand out in it, the mountains to the north obscured by black clouds.
“You have to walk out on the frozen lake,” Rhett says, his voice buoyant and light, enjoying this. The main event for the night. “All the way out to the center.”
“And then you have to twirl in a circle like a ballerina,” Jasper explains, grinning so wide the gap in his teeth seems broader than usual.
I don’t look at them—I stare out at the frozen surface of the lake. At the dark water still visible beneath.
“You’re getting off easy,” Rhett says. “We could make you sleep outside in the cold.”
I shake my head slowly. “The ice won’t hold me,” I say. I can see that it’s still too thin—not frozen solid. Only a month or so ago, I’m sure there was water splashing onto the pebbled shoreline.
“You don’t have a choice, newbie,” Rhett answers, his voice cold now, his mouth grinning with self-satisfaction. He enjoys this part of initiations—he enjoys the brief sense of power.
“I’m not doing it,” I say, refusing to look away from Rhett. I want him to know that I’m serious. Saying the name of a long-dead witch three times is one thing. But this is something else completely. I’d rather sleep out in the cold all night—I’d rather fight all of them—than risk walking out there.
“He could drown,” Lin offers—the only one who seems to recognize how dangerous it is. That someone could actually die. “No one’s ever had to go out on the ice before,” he argues. “We usually make them swim in the lake in the summer, and see if Willa Walker pulls them under.”
“He’s not going to drown,” Jasper interjects, scoffing and brushing a hand through his shaggy hair. “The ice will hold.”
“And if he does, it’s his own fault,” Max says, his eyes like two black orbs, as if something is boiling beneath the surface. The others might still be unsure whether they’re going to let me into their little group. But Max knows that he hates me. I stole his bunk when I first arrived. I didn’t want to, I would have preferred to go unnoticed, to be the boy whose parents died, who arrived late in the season but kept to himself and hardly took up any space at all.
But Max hates me for it all the same. Blames me for him having to sleep in a one-room hut near the counselors and the mess hall.
And now, standing on the shore, I know he won’t let me get out of this initiation. He wants me to suffer. To a pay a price for his eviction.
“If he knows how to swim, he won’t drown,” Max adds. In his hand, he holds something—a small silver pocket watch—turning it over between his fingers, the chain swinging like a pendulum. Each time I’ve seen him, he’s had the watch, always fidgeting with it. His dad gave it to him, the others told me. It was a birthday gift before he was sent here—so he could track the hours he was stuck in this shithole, they had joked. It seemed like a cruel gift, in a way. A reminder that time would continue on without him in the outside world. That he was losing time. We all were—trapped in these mountains.
Jasper laughs, a hearty, side-splitting laugh, and takes another long gulp from the bottle.
Still, I stand at the shore, refusing to move.
Then Max crosses the space between us, before I can brace myself, and he shoves me toward the lake. I take several steps back, then I spin around—my hands balled at my sides. Max and I stand only a foot from each other, both of us ready to make something of it—to not let it go. Bloody knuckles and broken jawbones and bruised flesh.
But then Lin says, “Come on, man, just walk out on the ice and get it over with.” My gaze flashes to him, and he shakes his head. “It’s fucking freezing out here. Do you guys really want to get in a fight and try to explain black eyes to the Brutes in the morning?”
I feel my fists relax, but Max keeps staring at me, willing me to make a move toward him. I’ve only been at the camp a week, and Lin is right—I really don’t want to start something that might not end. Always checking over my shoulder to see if Max is following me through the trees. Never able to sleep. And I have no idea what sort of punishment we’ll face with the Brutes. A punishment that might follow me for the rest of my time here.
So I turn away from Max, my arms rigid, snow blowing sideways in gusts now, and I take a step out onto the ice.
It creaks and settles, but doesn’t give way.
I move toward the center, each step a slow shuffle, until I feel the ice thinning beneath me—a layer of water soaking through my boots. I stop and look back at the shore.
“Keep going!” Jasper shouts out at me.
But I can’t; I know the ice will break. I shake my head.
“That’s not the center!” Jasper calls.
I turn and see that I still have several more yards to go. But I’ll never make it. The ice is way too thin. When I turn back to face them, Max has left the shore. He’s moving quickly out toward me—rage bottled up inside him, chest puffed, arms clenched.
I brace myself for whatever is about to happen next.
Max doesn’t speak when he reaches me, he just shoves me hard in the chest and pushes me backward on the ice. “We said you had to go to the center,” he spits, blood rushing into his face.
The ice moans beneath our feet, but Max won’t stop—he wants to go to the middle of the lake, where the ice is thinnest. To prove a point. To prove I’m afraid but he isn’t. He forces me farther onto the lake and the others on shore laugh—shouting things I can’t make out. Voices echoing up into the trees. Urging Max on.
But I know this won’t end well. For either of us.
We’re near the center when I hear the sound: the cracking of ice.
Max’s gaze swings up to mine and his shoulders drop. He looks frightened for the first time, and his head snaps back to shore, gauging how far away we are.
Too far.
“We have to run,” I say, out of breath. But Max seems frozen in place. The ice is too thin, and fractures weave along the surface, little spiderwebs expanding beneath Max’s boots. It pops and bends, starting to give way.
His eyes dip to his feet, going wide, and there is a low vibrating shudder that rises up from the ice.
I don’t know why I do it.
Maybe it’s just a reflex. Or maybe it’s the burst of memories that flare through me: of my parents the last time they said goodbye, my mom smiling as they strode out the front door, and then the image of their car, destroyed a few miles from our house. The memory of that day, of death so close I could feel it.
And it’s here again. Making fissures in the ice.
I bolt forward and push Max away, knocking him hard to the surface of the ice. Something slides out from his pocket: the silver watch with the long chain. We both eye it for a second, only a foot away, and then the ice breaks beneath me.
Whoosh. And the ground drops away.
The cold stabs its talons into my skin like a thousand little cuts with a serrated blade. My head sinks below the surface at the sudden impact, and it sucks the air straight from my lungs. Panic surges up into my brain. My arms reach for the surface, lungs tightening, and I fight to pull myself back above the waterline, drawing in a quick, cold breath of air. I try to yell but can’t. No air left. No function beyond staying above the surface.