We passed Chick-fil-A, where Marie had her first job, filleting chickens and squeezing lemons for the homemade lemonade, and past a men’s suit store. Next was Space Port. Ellen had her head down, afraid to see or be seen. As we passed the arcade, I glanced in. A black hole in the middle of a sunny day. The video players looked like black silhouettes against the dark. At the back, just one person stood out. His arm in the sling was extended like a webbed bat wing, glowing purple in the ultraviolet light. I took Beatrice’s hand. Ellen was still looking at the floor.

“Sage.” I nearly sputtered her name. “That’s him.”

Sage looked over into Space Port and then at me.

“Run,” she said. Not even Beatrice asked why. We just sprinted through the mall, all the way down the concourse, past fake oases, into Wanamaker’s, past perfume counters, ladies’ lingerie and bathing suits, all of us running as if for our lives, out the back entrance and into blinding light.

16

Lightning bugs were out. Thomas told me once that lightning bugs—what some other states called fireflies—were Pennsylvania’s official state insect, and that it had been a bunch of schoolkids near us who’d campaigned to have them picked. It made me oddly proud. A faint smudge of gold was just visible against the clouds to the west as I went up our street. I still had to walk to the Bouchers’ despite seeing Barbie Man at the mall a few hours ago and knowing that he could very possibly turn up on the mountain. Going past the Manson House, I decided to trigger its lights in case there was someone behind me. I had on my new Converse and sprinted. I couldn’t stop looking over my shoulder. If I saw headlights from a car, I would step into the woods and hide.

When we’d sat down on the bus earlier, Beatrice at the window, me on the aisle, and Ellen on the seat across from me, Ellen had said one word.

“Wilson?”

“Yeah.”

She had puzzled it out. We listened as Beatrice pointed to things out the window, but we couldn’t talk about it in front of her. We got off the bus at the bottom of the mountain and walked straight up the hill, not wasting any time on the main road.