“Ellen . . . Ellen!” I shouted, and Thomas did too. We stopped where the path ended at the steps leading down to our drive. “Ellen!” I glanced at Thomas, the expectant look on his face. Where was she?

“Here.”

A voice came from under the low dogwood on the little hill where we’d buried our cat and goldfish and toad and dead things we found, like birds or chipmunks. I could see her, trying to stand up inside the Star Wars sleeping bag under the sweeping branches.

Thomas reached her first. He lifted her in the sack and sidestepped down the embankment, holding her cocooned shape. He sat on the ground with her, hugging her swaddled body, and I sat with them and we waited there for the policemen to catch up.

Marie was waiting for us at the Phoenixville police station. As we walked up the sidewalk, she pushed through the double glass doors and came running out to us.

“How did you get here?” I asked, feeling for her number in my pocket. “I never gave them your number.”

“Sage called, and she and Grady came and got me. They’re still here.”

I looked at Marie and wondered what the police made of her, and if they believed she was even an adult. She had on Doc Martens, a black miniskirt, and a cropped T-shirt with rips. Ellen was still wearing her Fourth of July outfit; the heart flags she had painted on her face to match Peter’s were smeared across her cheeks like bruises. Her thin blond hair was tangled, and her white shirt was streaked with dirt. But it wasn’t Ellen that Marie was looking at with shock, it was me.

“Jesus, your hair.”

I lifted my hands either side of my head and felt the immense tangle. I looked down. My arms were covered in dried blood. There was dried blood in the cuticles of my fingernails. “Oh God. Marie, it’s not my blood. Please, get it off me.” I felt panic, like I might start clawing at my own skin. “I have to get it off.”

“I need to take her to the restroom,” Marie said to Officer Day. Sage and Grady Adams were sitting in plastic chairs in the waiting room, but they weren’t looking over at us. It was more than just giving us space; I had done some irreversible damage. I could see it in the way Sage sat, and the way Grady didn’t do his polite-southern-father routine. They were sitting in their own devastation, and I was the cause.

In the mirror of the police station bathroom, I looked even more horrifying. There was his blood on my face, or maybe some of it was mine. My hair was caught in clumps of burrs and sticks.