The Kingdom was an enclosure about four feet above the trail and set back in a natural ring formed by a stand of red oak and thick mountain laurel. Inside, deep-green moss provided a natural carpet. Sage and I had dug a deep trench to bury a large suitcase filled with supplies: flashlights, batteries, canned food, sleeping bags, and pillows—our own nuclear bunker. The hole had taken us a month, slicing through and around the network of roots. We’d told no one but Ellen, and even then only because I was in charge of her the day we hauled the suitcase. I had one of Dad’s tarps that he used for raking leaves, which had a waterproof side and punched holes. We’d hammered hooks in the oaks around us so we could give ourselves a roof should we ever need it. We’d covered the suitcase bunker with a board, leaves, and moss. It hadn’t been opened for several summers, and roots had started to track across it. We had other stashes, shallow holes for cigarettes and matches or beer. In the Kingdom we talked, smoked Charlotte’s Kent menthol cigarettes, and on a few occasions drank lukewarm bottles of Yuengling or Rolling Rock, stolen from Grady’s refrigerator in his downstairs den. This far down the trail, neighbors didn’t pass, just hikers, and from within the Kingdom we could see them coming first and duck to stay hidden. If we ever had to run, no one would catch us—we knew every root and ridge. I could run the trail barefoot at night.

Inside the Kingdom, I sat down against the trunk of a large red oak and pulled my knees into my chest and waited, peeling thick moss off the earth in sections and rearranging it in patterns. It was strange how it could grow without roots. I brushed my hand across its gentle purple spores on their threadlike stalks.

It was Sage who had brought Ellen home. I’d called her and asked her to come up and bring a change of clothes. When she arrived at the Bouchers’, it was nearly midnight. She was wearing her cutoffs and a faded Rolling Stones T-shirt with the tongue on the front—the Stones were her favorite band. Sage had long wavy gold-blond hair cut in layers and a spatter of freckles across her nose. Her two front teeth turned in slightly, an imperfection somebody else would have fixed with braces. She liked her teeth. “It’s character,” she said.

With Sage there, I’d felt safe. We told her what had happened, and she listened, the whole time holding Ellen’s hand. She knew what to do. She had Ellen move all her limbs to make sure they weren’t broken. Then she asked her questions I would never have asked.

“Ellen, I know this is hard, but did the man touch you inside your underwear?”

Ellen shook her head no.