A Darker Act

1

Jasmine is the last of us to arrive. She emerges from the taxi with feline grace, regarding the five of us with evident distaste as we stand in an awkward, line by the bus stop, the frigid winter wind shoving us impudently about.

"Okay, so this has to be a setup," she finally says. "How are all five of you here as well? Guess we all really needed that extra credit."

As the first of us to show up, I had a similar reaction as I watched each of the core members of the Edgemoor Players arrive at the bus station, one after the other. Tunde first, always politely punctual, quickly followed by Maja, a broad grin on her sharp features, camera swinging around her neck, then Callum, fixing us all with cold suspicion, and finally Roman, his dark stare flashing with some unreadable emotion the moment he caught sight of me.

This excursion across the moor was sold to me as a much-needed opportunity to earn extra credit-an activity my academic adviser essentially strong-armed me into. Like the others, I missed some vital classes after the fallout from our notorious summer performance last year, which was not a good look for Hazel Fletcher, Edgemoor High's head girl, perpetual A-plus student, debate team leader, and honor roll candidate. So here I was, signed up for a four-day hiking trip across the dark, shaley slopes and mossy hollows of Edgemoor, using nothing but an old-fashioned map and compass to navigate. No phones. No adult supervision-all we had to rely on were our navigation skills and good old teamwork.

Problem is, these days we are about as far from a team as it's possible to get.

With a dramatic sigh, Jasmine hitches her backpack up onto her shoulders and opens the low wooden gate onto the moor.

"Come on, then!" she calls, the impatience clear in her voice. "Sooner this is over with, the better."

Nobody can disagree with this, so, wordlessly, we follow her.

An hour later, we stand at the top of a bleak brown slope its edges crisp with yellowing winter slush. Dense woods crouch at the bottom of the hillside like a dark predator, a sharp crescent of bare black branches. Overhead, the sky is that particular shade of heavy woolen gray that threatens snow, and our breath fogs out in front of us in the chill air.

"I'm not convinced any amount of extra credit is worth this," announces Tunde resentfully from beside me, removing a cloth from his pocket and pausing to wipe the drizzle from his gold-rimmed glasses. "I should be on vacation right now."

"Well, good for you," says Callum, falling into step with us. "Unfortunately, some of us lost sports scholarships following that shit show of a performance and have no choice but to be here." His gaze flicks accusatorially to mine, his blue eyes pure ice.

Whatever Callum might think, I also have no choice, because if I did I certainly wouldn't be traipsing across a frozen field in the middle of January with this specific group. The drama from the school play last semester seeped into my studies like a stain, and I lost focus-to put it mildly.

But he's right. We all lost something back then . . . some of us more than others.

"Are you sure we're on the right path?" calls Roman in his broad Northern accent, from where he was lurking at the back of the group. "I'd say the first marker was more to the east?"

It's the first time Roman and I have seen each other since June, and it feels like entire years have passed between us, rather than months. We appear to have made some unspoken pact to act normally around each other, burying the history we once had deep beneath the scrubby loam of the moors. Both of us smart enough to appreciate that this isn't really the ideal place to have an accusatory heart-to-heart. But his proximity, the familiar sound of his voice, deep and mellow like a church bell, is jarring, and I'm finding it difficult to look at him.

"Yes, I'm sure," I say, disguising the hurt in my voice as irritation. "Do you want to read the map?"

Brushing damp strands of hair away from my face, I squint resentfully at his retreating form through the curtain of drizzle. Even for the trip, he's kept to his usual style of "off-duty farmer" in an expensive-looking waxed jacket and black lace-up boots. Truly, if I'd known Roman Cavalero was coming along for this hike through Dante's largely forgotten tenth circle of hell (also known as the moors in January), I would have faked some virulent disease to get out of it. And I really should have known. Due to the accident, not to mention what happened to his dad, he disappeared off the face of the earth immediately after the performance, his number disconnected, his house sold. His prolonged absence from school means he probably needs this extra credit more than any of us.

But I've been deliberately not thinking about him; it's far easier to push it all down than examine the bruising, thorny morass his presence evokes.

Still, Roman's words compel me to stop and double-check our route. According to the help sheet the school has given us, the first checkpoint we need to navigate to is a campsite on the outskirts of Alderly, a village that, from what I can work out, is around eight miles away from our starting location. From there, we'll continue on, hopping from campsite to campsite until we reach the end of our trail. Simple, as Mr. Phillips, our assigned contact and point person for this trip, said back when I signed up. As if this whole expedition is nothing but a little stroll through the woods.

But the vast map isn't easy to read at the best of times, flapping wildly in the wind, and the rain being whipped into my eyes causes it to merge into an untrustworthy cobweb of lines. Trails and contour lines interact and overlap-it's like trying to follow one of those squiggly maze puzzles I liked as a kid. I suspect part of the reason everyone was so keen to delegate me as map reader was to defer all responsibility if we got lost. Easy to put all the responsibility on the head girl. Easier still to blame her when things go wrong.

Tracing an unsteady finger along the line of the public footpath that takes us across the vast expanse of Edgemoor, I notice a small black circle topped with a cross a little less than a mile away.

"Guys, there's a church close by," I call out to the others, who are still trudging belligerently ahead. "Might be worth stopping there for lunch? It'll get us out of this bloody rain, at least."

"Why did they arrange this hiking trip for January?" complains Maja from deep within the goose-down padding of her black jacket, long strands of her white-blond hair plastered to her face like damp spaghetti. "I'm all for seeing the bright side, but someone back at school needs sacking for this."

"Come on . . . it's not that bad!" I say, so half-heartedly that Callum snorts with derision. I don't know why I'm bothering to be positive; old habits die hard, I guess. Not even the events of the past five months can beat the ex-Girl Scout out of me. I catch up to where the others wait for me expectantly.

"At least Maja isn't in charge of the map," snipes Callum. "We'd probably be back where we started."

"Ideal," replies Maja.

"Look." I gesture vaguely at the map and then to the dark spread of woodland awaiting us at the bottom of the slope we're walking down. "All we need to do is follow the path through the woods. Once we're out of this rain, we can pick up toward Alderly again." I wrench up the sleeve of my raincoat and check my watch, stark silver against my pale, goose-bumped skin. It's already half past two. Given the time of year, we don't have many hours of daylight left, and the sun has been hiding all afternoon, smothered behind that dense bank of clouds. If the weather gets any worse, and we don't make it to the campsite, we're going to need to find somewhere sheltered to settle down for the night. Whatever the forecast might say, I don't trust that sky.

"Let's all follow our exalted leader," says Roman, gesturing ahead. "Dum spiro, spero."

Instead of saying Huh, I forgot what a pretentious asshole you can be, I ask, "Do you happen to have a better idea? 'Cause I'm all ears."

Callum, casual in gray joggers and a lightweight Adidas waterproof jacket, nods at my backpack. "Yeah, I do. Break out the phones. Screw this 'no devices, live in the moment' bullshit. None of us want to be here, least of all with each other, and it's only been a couple of hours. No chance we're getting through four whole days in this company without ending up as headline news. Let's call an Uber and be done with it. I'm starving."

"Unfortunately, Cal, I don't believe Uber has multi-terrain vehicles on their roster," says Tunde with his usual wry diplomacy.

"Y'know, those woods look kinda spooky," says Jasmine, eyeing them with distaste as she smooths back a strand of hair from her face.

Roman chuckles, and I'm surprised that the warmth in it stings a little. "Really? I think we'll be fine, so long as we don't stray from the path and ignore any wolves."

With a sigh, I roll the plastic map holder back up and yank my hood down farther over my auburn braids, wondering if we shouldn't just turn around and sack it off like Callum suggests. Ignoring the fact that none of us talk anymore, the weather is miserably bleak, with that thick roll of clouds above hinting ever more at a snowstorm. The weather changes with merciless swiftness up here on the moor-from dappled sunshine to chill, driving rain in mere minutes.

As if to confirm my fears, a biting wind picks up around us, shunting us around and flapping at our coats, making it almost impossible to hear each other over the noise. But it does have the added effect of forcing us to pick up our pace. Callum starts lightly jogging ahead, and we follow suit, breaking into a run as the trees get closer, the bare branches of the woods ushering us all in like concerned guardians.

Breathing hard, we huddle in a ragged circle beneath the quiet cover of the trees. Okay, yes. This was a good idea. Above us, the umbrellalike spread of fir branches is dense, and their heavy canopy of pine needles blocks out almost all of the wind and rain, aside from the occasional heavy drip. Maja places her hands on her knees, white-blond hair slipping from her hood, a worrying wheeze lacing her breathing.

"Need your inhaler?" Tunde asks, concern clear in his eyes.

She shakes her head. "Nah, thanks. Think I'm okay."

"So what now? Should we set up camp here for the night?" asks Callum, looking back out of the woods at the glowering sky above the horizon.

Tunde, who has maintained his air of quiet authority even though he isn't class president anymore, shakes his head. "No, we can't stay here. The ground's uneven, and there's not enough room between the trees to pitch the tents. We should keep moving-find that church Hazel mentioned, then on to the village checkpoint tomorrow. But let's take a minute first. Let Maja get her breath back."

The straps on my backpack have been digging into my shoulders like hellish claws, and I'm desperate to shake the thing off and collapse onto the pine-needled ground for the rest of the evening, but as usual, Tunde is right.

"Fine. Just for a short while, though," says Roman. He looks uncharacteristically nervous. "I don't like it here . . . It feels off somehow-too quiet, you know?"

Just like that, I'm back in Roman's library at Winterson Hall, soft jazz spinning at all times from an antique gramophone, It's not the silence I don't like, he told me, more the anticipation of noise. He paused, his dark eyes searching mine, looking for reassurance. The howing . . .

Tunde shrugs off his backpack, and it falls to the leafy ground with a dull thump. "Yeah-a quick break, then we'll press on."

I follow his lead, groaning with relief as I shrug off my sodden backpack, letting it thunk to the forest floor before collapsing on a mossy log.

Jasmine remains standing. "Anyone else need to pee?"

Maja gets up to join her. A shadow of apprehension flickers over me as I watch them disappear into the thick embrace of the woods together.

"I still say we should call it quits," insists Callum. "No offense, but I've got better things to do than hang out with my toxic past."

"Oh, knock it off, Callum," says Roman with clear exasperation.

"Or what?" he fires back. "You gonna do a disappearing act on us all again?"

Roman doesn't reply, only glowers.

"If there's a church, there should be a pastor around, right?" I force myself to sound upbeat and confident as I unfold the map again. "We can ask them for help with directions. Maybe they can even give us a lift back to town if the weather worsens." I offer Callum a tentative smile. "And if there isn't, we'll break out the phones. Pretty sure no one at school anticipated the conditions being this bad."

"It's the moors in January, Hazel . . . what exactly do you think they anticipated? Swaying fields of wheat ripening in the midday sun?" says Roman, sitting on the other end of the log with his long legs splayed before him and fiddling with his pack of cigarettes. He says it lightly, but it rattles me. His whole demeanor rattles me. He's always had this measured distance about him, like whatever goes on in his head is so much more interesting than the inanities of the outside world, but once upon a time, I was allowed in, burrowed under his carapace of nonchalance and saw the gentleness and sincerity there.

And now here I am, right back on the outside.

"I'm trying to keep things positive," I say, overly polite.

It's hard to look at him. His eyes, the same wide gray eyes I once found so entrancing, are bleak and cold, like a rough winter sea. There's no trace of warmth in them anymore. His black curls are plastered to his pale skin, his windburned cheeks the only color in his face, Previously, I said there was no wind in the woods. He doesn't reply, only turns his head and stares into the darkening shadows of the forest.