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"I’m scared," I whispered, and I heard the surprise in h my blood with each heartbeat

"We could call for help," Jacey said

"Wake everyone up?" I wasn’t that scared "Jacey, they’d make fun of us all over ca outside stoppedsounds, softly at first, then louder I can’t describe what they sounded like--iher, and finally so high that it threatened to shatter your eardrule in her throat

Fear wasn’t fun anyrabbedwe stayed that rapped in our sleeping bags, clutching each other, listening to the keening that caht I heard words in the howling Once I thought I heard it speak , And tomorrow they’ll find our dead bodies in the tent I wondered what she’d think if she knew she was holding the hand of a va outside eventually went away, but we knew it could co, I unzipped the tent flap and saw only grass and trees and sky I chided one outside to see what made the noise?

The scariest things are the ones that visit us in darkness, the ones we never see And the fear that kept us paralyzed in the tent that night left a funny residue, a bitter taste in my throat, a reminder that, after all, in some ways I was vulnerable as any s differently than ani objects Animals’ nervous systems have evolved to detect movement, since motioncan’t even see a stationary object because of neural adaptation; its visual neurons don’t respond to uny

Theoretically, hu stationary objects because their eyes are alwaysneural adaptation But sometimes they fail to see objects in their field of vision because their attention is directed elsewhere Skilled icians kno to induce and manipulate states of inattentional blindness That’s why tricks work

Notvampires’ vision, but based on the little I’ve read on the Internet and on my own observations, it tends to be more acute than humans’ A vampire’s retina hasit ht and color Yet even with that enhanced vision, the vampire eye may be susceptible to inattentional blindness Like huonflies, we soht in front of us

Jacey and I avoided each other for the rest of our time in the swamp Each of us rean as fun and progressed to sonant

Bernadette--who said she’d slept like a baby--did the paddling that noring the alligators slu the banks, half-asleep

Professor Hoffave us an impromptu lecture that drifted back to ators’ vision--how their eyes have layers of reflecting tissue behind the retinas that act like mirrors "We call the tissue tapetum luciduht carpet," but I felt too sleepy to volunteer Hoffman said the tissue acts like a ators to hunt in the dark And it’s also responsible for the way alligators’ eyes look at night if you shine a flashlight on the coals

Bernadette said, "Creepy"

The whole trip had been a little too creepy for ht on a wooden platform, surrounded by who knehat Vampires need sleep even more than humans do, to keep our i called succession--the natural process of change that occurs in a habitat If the peat in the swamp built up, the sould become a shrub, and later a hardwood, habitat "What keeps the swamp a swamp is the natural occurrence of wildfires," he said "As fires burn away peat, open lakes are left Without the fires, this place would be a forest"

Oneto the lecture, feeling ht lay ahead The next, ere all fully awake, thanks to Jacey’s screaolden club plants, so

Jacey said, "What? What?" She screaain, and then someone else screaht But as we drifted, I had an open view of the shape in the water--dark clothes billowing out and a head of dark hair The shape looked terribly out of place It looked wrong

The professors took out their cell phones Neither had a signal Then they pulled outto identify our location and find the best route to a place where the phones would work

"Jacey, you okay?" Professor Riley said

She’d hunched forward, panting Later she told irl in Jacey’s canoe to do the rowing "The rest of you--everybody paddle"

We turned the canoes around and Hoff where we’d launched the ice as fast as it had been on the trip out

Frolanced over at Jacey to see if she was okay, but all I saas the back of her jacket She still bent forward, head inclined so that she couldn’t see anything beyond the canoe’s interior

Bernadette kept looking at Jacey, too, and I heard her say so indistinct "What did you say?" I said

She turned her head sideways "Jacey looks like the Six of Swords"

I re forward in a punt, a ferry pole to propel the her in place Bernadette had said the card signified escape

We felt exhausted by the ti Professor Hoffed for the van to pick us up We’d had enough wilderness to last us a long time

The other students were uncharacteristically quiet No one wanted to talk about e’d seen until we knee’d actually seen, yet no one could think of anything else Once the van came and ere headed back to ca at a fast food place, but no one atelooked and sly fas of supplies and sleeping bags into the rooht on But I couldn’t find my lamp

"Turn on the overhead," I told Bernadette

When she switched on the bare bulb, the room’s details ju on the floor, and across and around it, the remains of my lithophane lalass and porcelain glittered in a wide arc across the floor Autumn wasn’t there

I felt too shocked and tired to say what I was thinking: Why did Autumn have to break my lamp?