The frozen lake cracked beneath his feet.


Reilly thought he should be panicking, screaming, or any other emotion that the eerie calm he was feeling. It seemed to him that he’d seen a reel about that somewhere - that ADHD people tend to be most calm during moments of crisis. A superpower, the video had called it.


What else had he learned via social media that might help him in his current situation? He hadn’t fallen through the ice yet. He scanned his brain frantically. There must be something!


He wished he hadn’t forgotten his phone at home on the charger. Home. Probably only a few football fields away, backyard touching the lake. Safe, warm, and not cracking underfoot. No matter how much trouble he would be in, if he’d had his phone right now, he would have called his father for help.


Help. HELP. There it was! A memory triggered of a 60-second short video.


“If you’re ever stranded on the ice without help and you hear it start to crack, drop down slowly and stretch out your body flat against the ice. You’re trying to distribute the pressure.”


Reilly dropped. Hands first, splaying out his fingers, then lowering down to knees and elbow, trying to keep the pressure even amidst all points touching the ice. Just as he flattened his stomach down onto the lake, he heard a gunshot and a bullet whizzed across where he has just been standing. 


No, not a gunshot. Not a bullet. A firework. It exploded into bright green sparks just before hitting the bank on the other side of the lake. His side of the lake. There was only one place that the firework could have come from.


Darrin’s house. 


More specifically, the lake dock extending from Darrin’s backyard on the opposite side of the lake from Reilly’s house.


Suddenly, it all made sense. Maybe it was that ADHD thing making a pattern out of chaos, but all of the pieces quickly fell into place. Darrin’s plan, the grin showing a few too many teeth, the involuntary grimace. It all wove together from vague wisps into a solid yarn that he could scarcely believe.


Darrin was trying to kill him.