At two in the morning Connor dresses in black and fills a backpack with the things that really matter to him. He still has room for three changes of clothes. He finds it amazing, when it comes down to it, how few things are worth taking. Memories, mostly. Reminders of a time before things went so wrong between him and his parents. Between him and the rest of the world.

Connor peeks in on his brother, thinks about waking him to say good-bye, then decides it’s not a good idea. He silently slips out into the night. He can’t take his bike, because he had installed an antitheft tracking device. Connor never considered that he might be the one stealing it. Ariana has bikes for both of them though.

Ariana’s house is a twenty-minute walk, if you take the conventional route. Suburban Ohio neighborhoods never have streets that go in straight lines, so instead he takes the more direct route, through the woods, and makes it there in ten.

The lights in Ariana’s house are off. He expected this. It would have been suspicious if she had stayed awake all night. Better to pretend she’s sleeping, so she won’t alert any suspicion. He keeps his distance from the house. Ariana’s yard and front porch are equipped with motion-sensor lights that come on whenever anything moves into range. They’re meant to scare off wild animals and criminals. Ariana’s parents are convinced that Connor is both.

He pulls out his phone and dials the familiar number. From where he stands in the shadows at the edge of the backyard he can hear it ring in her room upstairs. Connor disconnects quickly and ducks farther back into the shadows, for fear that Ariana’s parents might be looking out from their windows. What is she thinking? Ariana was supposed to leave her phone on vibrate.

He makes a wide arc around the edge of the backyard, wide enough not to set off the lights, and although a light comes on when he steps onto the front porch, only Ariana’s bedroom faces that way. She comes to the door a few moments later, opening it not quite wide enough for her to come out or for him to go in.

“Hi, are you ready?” asks Connor. Clearly she’s not; she wears a robe over satin pajamas. “You didn’t forget, did you?”

“No, no, I didn’t forget. . . .”

“So hurry up! The sooner we get out of here, the more of a lead we’ll get before anyone knows we’re gone.”

“Connor,” she says, “here’s the thing . . .”