“Okay,” said Ben, leaving. He left the door open. Caddie listened to him walk down the hall. When the footsteps stopped, she went to the door and shut it. There was no lock.

Unpacking her two bags took little time. She hung a few things in the closet, surprised to find that her father had actually remembered to put hangers in there, and threw the rest of her clothes in the dresser drawers. The half-dozen books she’d brought were piled on the shelf of the bedside table.

Going to the window, she looked outside. Her room faced the street. Not that there was anything to look at. Across the street was another house almost identical to her father’s. A couple of little kids played on the small lawn, throwing a ball around and yelling at one another. She considered shutting the window, but the room was already hot enough. She hoped she’d be able to sleep with it open. Probably she’d have to take yet another Valium.

That reminded her, and she went to her backpack and took out the bottle of pills. Opening it, she poured them into her hand and counted. She had thirty. Not nearly enough. But they would have to do. Taking one, she returned the others and capped the bottle.

She put the backpack on the floor and stretched out on the bed. Lifting her hips, she brought her butt down on the mattress and heard it let out a complaining squeak. She did it again. Imagine what it would sound like if I was having sex on it, she mused.

That just made her even more depressed, because it made her think about Sam. He wasn’t her boyfriend, exactly, but they slept together sometimes. Then again, he also slept with Bree. And there was that one time when ...

She didn’t want to think about Sam and Bree. It just made her homesick. She kicked off her shoes and let them drop to the floor, where they made a dull thud like apples falling from a tree. Christ, you could hear every sound someone made in this house. She was going to have absolutely no privacy. She hated her mother for making her stay; she hated her father for saying she could.

In the mirror on the dresser was reflected the picture over the bed. The mirror glass, like everything else in the room, was old. The reflection was distorted, almost grainy. She squinted her eyes and tried to make out the image. It wasn’t mountains after all. But what was it?

She stood up, ignoring the bed’s protests, and turned to look at the picture full-on. It was a picture of a whale. More precisely, it was a picture of men hunting a whale. The men were in a small boat. They stood, harpoons in their hands, as the whale glared at them with its large, baleful eye. The whale’s mouth was open, showing its small, white teeth, and several harpoons stuck out from its sides. It was spouting water.