Snow had started to fall by the time we got back to the cabin, small wet flakes that fell like dead weight from the sky. They melted into the earth on impact, but the ground was getting colder as the sun slipped away.  

Parker and Richard managed to get a fire going, and Abby and I started doing inventory on the alcohol reserves, pawing through the cooler from the back of Parker's SUV. The ice had melted down partway to slush, and we ended up propping the cooler on the cabin's porch to keep it cold while we huddled by the fireplace inside. Liza insisted we all put our phones in a basket, so nobody would look at them instead of talking -- We're here for each other, so live in the moment -- and we nested in chairs and pillows and blankets like a bunch of feral animals taking up residence in an abandoned house. 

We took it slow at first, awkward small talk and slowly nursing beers. We did the kind of catching up you do with people you know only from Facebook snippets, grasping at whatever relevant topics you can think of. 

Liza, how's acting going? 

Oh, you know, just some bit parts here and there. Community theater mostly. I got a role as an extra in this TV series about zombies...

Or else 

So Logan, you work at a hospital now right? What is it you're doing? 

Pharmacy technician. Yeah, I'm a drug dealer, ha ha, never heard that one before. 

Asking questions without caring about the answers, keeping it light, skirting around the hard things. I liked it that way, however much I usually despise small talk. Conversation kept me busy, so my thoughts couldn't turn sour, and none of it meant anything so I didn't have to feel anything. I heard about how Dawn was starting up some kind of business -- or maybe it was one of those pyramid schemes, some kind of Pampered Chef knockoff, I wasn't paying that much attention -- and how Abby had been dating some guy but he was an asshole (every guy was an asshole when Abby was tired of them, that had always been her way) -- and Richard had some car he was rebuilding that he was excited about. 

And Laurel. 

What would Laurel have been doing, if she were here? What would she have talked about? 

As much as I tried to keep from thinking about it, the topic kept sliding back to the forefront of my brain, and I could hear her voice 

(Logan I'm scared) 

so loud in my head it was like she was there with us, like she was standing behind me. 

"You know what we should do?" Richard said, suddenly. He stood in the doorway, smoking out the open door as cold air swirled around him, dragging the heat outside in a slipstream draft. "We should play a drinking game. Like old times. That's the idea, right?" 

Dawn wrinkled her nose in disapproval. 

"What sort of drinking game?" Liza asked, tilting her head. The firelight danced off the tight curls of her hair, which had been dyed a deep red. 

"One of the classics, if we're doing anything," Abby said. 

"Never have I ever," Richard suggested, and then, when everyone had groaned in disapproval, "Come on. It was Laurel's favorite." 

"Only because it gave her the chance to steal all of our life experiences and cannibalize them for stories," Parker said. 

He had a point. Laurel always had a tendency to steal things whole-cloth from other people's lives and weave them into her books. She got better at it later, by the time she was making a living at it, or maybe I just didn't know all the people who were showing up in her books by then. But you'd pick up one of her murder mysteries and realize, a few pages in, that the victim seemed suspiciously familiar, that some anecdote a character said was one of your childhood stories but twisted around a little. 

It was weird, because as far as I could tell, Laurel's experiences never got into her books the same way. They say that people write to immortalize themselves, so some part of them lives on forever -- but Laurel had immortalized everyone else in her life but herself. Like she was just the ghost between the words on the page, everywhere in spirit but impossible to see. 

Maybe Laurel had never wanted to live forever. Maybe that was the point. 

"All right. Never have I ever. We're doing this." Richard stamped out his cigarette and dug around in the cooler for a fresh round of beers, handing them off to people with the energy of a manic bartender. 

He pulled his seat around and and sat in it backwards, straddling the wooden chair and resting his arms over the seatback, staring at us all with grave concentration. 

"The rules," he said, in a voice injected with artificial gravity. "In case any of you have forgotten. A person says, 'Never have I ever,' and then says something they have done before. If you have also done it, you have to drink. If you've never done it, you don't drink. Got that?" 

He waited for the nods. 

"That doesn't make any sense," Liza said, frowning. "Why is it 'never have I ever' and not just 'I have...' if you're only saying things you've done..." 

"Because that's what the game is called." Richard cast a long-suffering look at the ceiling and heaved a dramatic sigh. "Anyway. Drink if you've done it. If you're the only person who's drinking, you've got to tell the story." 

"If you're the one who brought it up, too?" 

"Jesus Christ Liza haven't you ever played a drinking game before?" 

"No." 

Richard hesitated, frowning. "Actually I don't remember. Logan? Do you remember?" 

"Let's just say no," Parker said, before I had a chance to reply. "If you brought it up, you don't have to tell the story. Just the other person who drinks. But if you bring it up and nobody drinks, you tell the story. Sound fair?"

"Right. Yep. Good enough." Richard lifted his bottle like a toast. "And if anybody catches you lying, you have to finish your drink." 

"I don't think that's a rule."

"Shut up Abby, we're innovating." 

We laughed at that. 

"All right. So I'll ease us into it. Never have I ever played never-have-I-ever before." Richard lowered his beer and took a long swig. 

I drank. Parker and Abby drank. Dawn and Liza did not. 

"There. That was easy. Your turn." He nodded to Abby, who was sitting next to him. 

She frowned, thinking. "Okay. Um. Never have I ever...worn my pajamas to Wal-Mart." 

Something eased and loosened in my chest, like a breath I'd been holding too long. Maybe we'd keep it light. Maybe we'd play it easy. Maybe, like the small-talk, we'd keep it safe and gentle, asking silly questions. 

Laurel had never played gentle. 

She had a real mean streak, sometimes. She had this sadistic curiosity, like a kid who doesn't know or doesn't care about asking impertinent questions, about prodding in places that were sore. When we played with Laurel, we gave up a part of ourselves, and we knew each other intimately at the end, more intimately than maybe anyone has a right to know anyone else. 

Trauma-bonding. That's the word for it, I think. The thing that makes people fall in love after they've been through something terrible together. The reason all these babies get born the year after a natural disaster. The reason a bunch of college kids with nothing in common can all manage to grow together tight like a family, at least for a little while, at least until the magic wears off and everyone starts to drift apart. 

Never have I ever been friends with someone for more than 20 years. 

Parker had grown up with Laurel. They were childhood neighbors, the only two kids on the block, and they'd become friends out of necessity and just never stopped. He was the only person she'd known when she showed up at college, and maybe that's why we all accepted him into the group without challenge -- because he pre-dated us all, because he was just a fact of the universe. He deserved his place in our ranks even though he was kind of an asshole because he'd been part of Laurel's life forever, and Laurel was the glue that held us all together. 

Never have I ever read one of Laurel's books. 

We all drank. 

Never have I ever read ALL of Laurel's books. 

Only Liza and I drank. 

Never have I ever actually liked Laurel's books. 

Liza drank, long and deep.

There it was, just that hint of nastiness starting to creep back in at the edges, and my chest tightened like a premonition. 

"Never have I ever watched somebody die." 

I don't know why I said it. The words just came out, slippery and unpleasant as live eels, and I couldn't take them back. The compulsion to confess, the weight of a guilty conscience.

Nobody drank. Everyone looked at me, expectant. I had to tell them something.