The back door was unlocked. I tiptoed up the steps. In our room, Marie and Ellen were still awake. Sage and Ellen had gotten out of Wilson’s car at the top of our road and walked down to the house together. Marie had met them at the back door and taken Ellen inside, and Sage had gone back up to where Wilson was waiting. Marie had brought Ellen upstairs and put her into bed. I crawled onto my half of the trundle, and we all lay there in the dark.

“Does Mom know Ellen’s home?” I asked.

“She must have heard us, because after we’d turned off the light, like twenty minutes ago, she came in. She stood over Ellen’s bed, but she didn’t say anything.”

“She pulled my blanket farther up,” said Ellen.

I looked down at Ellen’s trundle. In the dark I could see the glow of her forehead, the shape of her face, but I couldn’t see that she was hurt. None of us spoke for a few minutes.

“What a fucking creep,” Marie said. “He should be castrated. Did you see any of the license plate, Ellen? Was it Pennsylvania?”

We never slept. I could sense us all awake in the dark, and every hour or so Marie or I would ask, “El, you still awake?” or “Does anything else hurt?” I thought about the art camp and the letter Miss LeBlanc had written.

“Ellen, why didn’t you tell Mom about Miss LeBlanc’s note? I don’t think she understands how good you are.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference. She wouldn’t have let me go anyway.”

In the Kingdom, all around me, the laurel was in bloom, the flowers like wide-open cups, and I pulled one from its cluster on a branch. The white petals were pink-tinged and speckled with deep burgundy dots. The flowers and pollen of laurel are poisonous, but the leaves can be medicinal. The Cherokee used the leaves on cuts for pain relief and rubbed them against skin for arthritis.

I heard a low whistle. Sage. Her silver bracelets jangled as she walked, and I watched her coming down the trail through a small gap at the top of the embankment. She turned at the crooked tree and came around the back and into the ring. Before she sat down, she pulled a ziplock bag with two cigarettes in it from her knapsack. She put a Kent in her mouth and lit it, then handed me the bag. I shook my head. Sage pulled the smoke into her mouth first, then breathed it in deeply, the way she always smoked. Charlotte smoked the same way.

“How is she?”

“Marie thinks she’s in shock but that she’ll be okay.”