Ellen shook her head. “I don’t know. I just kept running in the woods. I was going up the side of the mountain, and I knew that he would never find me in there. I tried to just keep going. And finally I saw lights. Someone’s house at the back of Hamilton Drive.”

“You were almost home. Why didn’t you go home?”

Ellen shrugged. “I remembered you’re here on Fridays. Mom would kill me if she found out I hitchhiked.” Ellen wiped her nose with the back of her wrist on her good hand. “And plus I still hate her.”

4

It was early morning, and in the shadow of the trees the air was still cool. I paused and breathed in the smell of loam and damp earth. In the distance a chain saw hummed a discordant scale, pitching high and low, and somewhere a lawn mower started. It was Saturday, the first day of summer break from school, and the familiar woods and the routine of work in the world seemed reassuring, even if just for a moment. I hadn’t slept. Shafts of light fell diagonally through the trees, and dust glittered and floated in front of me. I walked through them, deeper into the woods.

I’d told Sage to meet me in the Kingdom as soon as she could, and told her what Marie said we needed: antibiotics and Valium. Sage would need time to sneak it from her dad’s clinic without being seen. Grady Adams was a physician and ran a practice next to the house. Sage’s mother, Charlotte, worked as his secretary. They were both southern. Sage referred to them by their first names when she spoke about them. “Grady and Charlotte had a dinner party last night, and Mrs. Nelson was drunk and trying to play footsie with Grady while Charlotte and I were right there in plain view.” Sage spoke like this, recounting little dramas that always made her family seem interesting. She spoke about them like they were characters that she was friends with. I envied it. When I thought about them, Grady, Charlotte, Sage, and her brothers, it was always through a haze of happiness, their bright lives, even when Sage said differently.