This wasn’t a real forest, not so close to all the roads and buildings. You couldn’t call it a forest unless the treetops occluded the sky and every direction looked the same. But if she could reach the lake and cross the ice without freeze-drowning, she would reach some real density. Nobody would ever find her.

Halfway across the lake, she thought in a vertiginous stumble: I can never go home or see my family again. The ice was caving in. She leapt to a stable patch, kept leaping, landing on her toes each time. The ice groaned and cracks opened everywhere. She hit the opposite bank just as the people searching for her reached the lake, and then she was running deeper into the tree line. Instinct steered her away from the shopping malls and bypass roads and McMansions and golf courses, and she kept widening the radius of tree cover around her.

Low branches and shrubs tore her skirt, making her fall on her hands a few times, and she sweated so hard she froze all the way through. She grew short of breath, and at last she had to stop running and suck in sharp air. She was glad to breathe again after a day of terrible smells, even if she was going to catch pneumonia.

Patricia climbed a tree and made herself as compact as possible inside the cradle of its uppermost branches. She turned off her phone and yanked out the battery.

What if Laurence was really dead? He was the only crummy person she could stand to talk to, pretty much ever. At the thought of Laurence’s death, she felt a sucking anxiety in her core and a nugget of guilt, like she’d killed him herself.

But she hadn’t. And everything Mr. Rose had ever said to her was full of shit.

Okay. So if Laurence was alive, then he was in trouble. She had to help him somehow.

The sun folded. The air froze, and Patricia kept shivering. She had to make a conscious effort not to let her teeth chatter, in case someone was close enough to hear.

Voices grew louder and quieter. A few times, she spotted a flashlight in the darkness. Once, she heard a dog grumbling, keen to avenge its fallen cousin. She was pretty sure that had been a dog in Mr. Rose’s office. The bastard had probably put it in the crawl space the night before, just to give it time to get good and ripe.

Roberta’s voice startled Patricia out of a half dream. “Hey, Trish. I know you can hear me, so stop screwing around. We all want to go home, and you’re being selfish as usual. I had to blow off Grease practice for this. You’re killing Mom and Dad here.”

Patricia held her breath. She willed herself to give off no body heat, to shrink, to disappear into her tree.