The lights were off in the bathroom, but the door was ajar and sunlight had begun seeping into the room. The day came at Amber in a series of unpleasant sensations. Hard—she was lying on the floor. Cold—she had on only her strapless bra, the floor was tile, the air conditioning had been set low.

Sticky. That was the blood. So much blood. She didn’t know a body could lose this amount of blood without going into shock. Maybe she was in shock? She had taken a first aid course at the Y and remembered what to do for someone else in shock—get them to lie down, elevate the legs—but no one ever told you how to know if you yourself were in shock. Besides, she was already lying down.

“Joe? Joe?”

No answer. He wasn’t here, of course. Why hadn’t he tried to check on her? Was he so busy mooning over his ex-girlfriend that he couldn’t be bothered to see if Amber was going to rally and make it to the after-party? He must have gone without her—fair enough, given how she had demanded the only room key and bolted from the prom, never to return, but couldn’t he at least have pretended concern?

He doesn’t really like you, her mother had said when Amber had told her about the invitation. Not in that way. That’s okay, Amber had replied, and it had been okay, because she believed it was only a matter of time before he realized he did like her. She had thought it would happen last night.

Instead, she had rushed up to the room alone, assuming she was sick from the crab ravioli at dinner. The ravioli and the swigs of whatever had been in Zach’s flask, although she had tried to take only the tiniest swallows, what her stepfather called “nips.” No one could get drunk from those little sips, those nips, could they?

Her head was pounding with a cartoon frenzy and it was impossible to separate what had really happened last night from what she wanted to believe had happened. Her stomach had started cramping badly about twenty minutes into the dance, but she had ignored it until Joe danced with Kaitlyn “for old times’ sake.” Amber felt as if she was about to throw up, and that had to be done in privacy, always. “Give me the room key,” she had demanded, her fear and shyness making her sound rude, imperious, as if she was mad at Joe.

She was mad at Joe.

Back in the room, she had taken off her dress and laid it across the bed, fearful it would be stained. She then crouched by the toilet in her bra and underwear, waiting to vomit.

She was still by the toilet, but she had not vomited.

She struggled to a sitting position. There was so much she couldn’t remember, so much she couldn’t forget, and those opposing camps warred with each other until her thoughts were more jumbled than ever. Her situation would make more sense if this were a dream, because, as in a dream, nothing made sense. She should be waking up in the bed, next to Joe, not on this sticky bathroom floor. She shouldn’t be waking up at all, because the plan had been to stay up all night. When she had never come back downstairs, the others had probably gone on without her to the after-party. But why hadn’t Joe come back to change into the more casual clothes he had brought for the trip to the reservoir? How could he not have checked on her, even once?

She pressed her palms against her temples, then into her eyes, not wanting to see what the creeping daylight would reveal. She would have to take care of things, take care of herself. It wasn’t Joe’s fault Amber had gotten sick, even if it was watching him dancing with his ex, Kaitlyn, that had prompted her to keep bringing the flask back to her mouth. And it wasn’t Joe’s fault that the sudden pain had made her desperate to be alone. She didn’t want to throw up in the public ladies’ room adjacent to the ballroom. She could imagine nothing worse than other girls listening to her retch.

Now she could.

There was nothing left to do but drag herself to her feet and turn on the bathroom light.

Oh god, oh god, oh god.

You can do this.

The voice kicked in, the voice that had been with her all her life, telling her what to do when no one else had any advice for her. It was the voice that had told five-year-old Amber to wait quietly in the bookstore where her mother left her while she shopped. The voice that said, Say nothing, when she was accused of cheating on a test because her grade was so high. To pretend ignorance when a teacher asked who might have defaced her locker.

Clean first, then shower.

She worked quickly, using all but one of the bath towels, then took a shower. She changed into the clothes she had packed for the activities that had been planned for the morning. If the evening had gone as anticipated, she’d be at the Towson Diner right now, having eggs and hash browns and maybe a Diet Coke. Twenty-four hours earlier, her gravest worry had been that the others would tease her for not liking coffee.

Joe’s overnight bag was on the luggage rack, zippered. Why hadn’t he come back to the room? Kaitlyn, she thought miserably. Kaitlyn. He obviously still yearned for her, despite everything that had happened between Amber and him over the past year.

She left the prom dress behind, draped across the bed. She hated abandoning it, but it would be ruined if she tried to put it in her bag—crushed, maybe even stained—and she had too far to walk to carry it over her shoulder. Besides, it would look odd, walking down York Road on a Saturday morning, a party dress slung over her shoulder. Don’t draw attention to yourself, the voice told her. Just try to get through the day. Maybe it will be all right. You don’t really remember doing anything, so maybe you didn’t.

She wore rayon pants with a small floral print, elasticized at the waist, a loose-knit yellow T-shirt, and lace-up espadrilles, which were flat, but not particularly good for walking, and she already had blisters from the shoes she had worn the night before. How thoughtfully, how pridefully, she had assembled this outfit, stalking bargains at stores she seldom could afford. She had chosen the espadrilles because their pale green color uncannily matched the tiny pistils of the flowers on the pants and the laces made her feel dainty, like a ballerina. She had not expected to be walking far in them. What had she expected? The after-party downtown, then back to the hotel to change into this very outfit, sunrise at Loch Raven, breakfast at the Towson Diner. They had pledged not to sleep a single minute until they were home, reunited with their own beds.

Of course, that was before Joe had danced with his ex-girlfriend and Amber had started feeling those weird stomach pains and gone up to the room. She honestly couldn’t remember what had happened after that. There was no denying what she had seen in the room, but she had no memory of it. She was in shock. She should see a doctor. No, she should not see a doctor.

When she reached Regester Avenue, she lingered for a moment on the sidewalk, regarding her house as a stranger might see it. The small, treeless front yard was decorated for spring—the five plaster geese that marched in formation year-round, from biggest to smallest, wore gingham-checked sunbonnets; the second largest, presumably the mother, had a matching apron. A month ago, there had been Easter baskets and giant eggs, but those had since been replaced by flowers, real and fake. In early June, right before Flag Day, the yard would be transformed into a bower of patriotism, all red, white, and blue, which stayed up past the Fourth. August brought a back-to-school theme. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Winter Wonderland, Valentine’s Day, Spring. Amber knew that most people found her stepfather’s house tacky, even creepy, but she had always taken comfort in the way the calendar marched through their front yard, the constancy of the geese. Every season, every month, the geese were always there.

Her stepfather was in the kitchen, reading the paper. Rod asked if she had a good time at the prom. “It was fine,” she said. He had been her stepfather for ten years, but she never stopped feeling a little shy around him, a perpetual guest in his home. Her mother was always emphasizing how lucky Amber was that Rod treated her like his own daughter, and the consequence was that Amber didn’t feel she was worthy of his kindness and attention at all, much less his love.

She went straight to bed, which was to be expected, as her mother and Rod assumed she had been up all night. The hotel rooms were changing stations, really, or so the parents had been told. They also were told that the girls would be staying in one room, the boys in another. Had they believed it? Amber had almost believed it, until she saw the flat glare in the eyes of Susannah, Zach’s date. “Of course we’re not staying in the same room,” she said. She was smiling, there was no edge to her voice, but the look in her blue eyes unsettled Amber.

Amber put her bag in the room reserved and paid for by Joe’s parents, while Zach stowed his bag in the one that Susannah’s parents had...