So although I was deathly afraid of Mrs. Patterson and her skinny, swift-moving hands, I sought her approval, and I wanted to fit in. I crafted the standard benign animals out of modeling clay and rainbow scenery from felts, and I usually got gold foil star stickers or smiley faces on these uniform endeavors. But anytime we had free-thought art projects things got iffy. Any time I had to delve too deeply into my imagination I found myself confused and unnerved. The “someplace special” project was no exception.

When I was finally done, Mrs. Patterson dutifully tacked it up on our bulletin board with the rest, though she discreetly sent it to the lower left corner.

When the classroom emptied for gym or for recess, I don’t remember which, I lingered behind and stared at my creation with a morbid intrigue. My elderly teacher sent the class ahead with one of her colleagues and she stayed behind, letting the door quietly close us into privacy.

“Who are they?” she asked. “Who are the three gray ghosts looking through the trees? You didn’t give them any faces.”

I concentrated—tried hard to focus. I could hear their voices, singsong and sad, but sometimes fierce. Sometimes demanding. Always close.

“Do you know who they are?” she asked again, the same non-threatening tone she always used on me, like I was a stray cat on the verge of fleeing before she could slip me some cream.

“They’re . . .” The memory flitted fast, and was gone. “They’re sisters who died. He killed them.”

“That’s very sad.”

“No, it’s very angry—they’re angry he did that to them. They loved him and he killed them.” The words fell across my lips, dropping down into a pile at my feet and accumulating there before I could make sense of them. “Now they stay in the swamp, because he cut them up and threw them into the water for the gators and the birds to pick apart. And their blood turned the green water black, but I didn’t do that part because I don’t like licorice.”

“You don’t like . . . oh. I see. The markers.”

“Yes. The markers.” My whisper trailed away to something less audible, and I realized how foolish I sounded. With a flash of paranoia I turned to her and almost took one of her scary bird hands, then changed my mind at the last moment and folded mine together, praying to her instead. “But you can’t say anything to anyone. If you do, they’ll send me to the pine trees, like they sent my mother, and you won’t let them do that to me, will you, Mrs. Patterson?”

“No, Eden,” she assured me after a perplexed pause. A quick light brightened her face for a moment, but then her forehead wrinkled again. “No one’s going to send you to the pine trees. No one’s going to send you away.”