Then Gloria left, and I heard the splish of water going and the bubbly smell of flowers sneaking through the air. The water stopped. She was singing that song again. The same one she sang when Rowan ran away.

I didn’t know what story I should tell. Gloria’s favorite was about the wolves in the woods, but that was too scary. I looked down at my hot dog blanket. Not a corn dog. I only had a corn dog one time at Stafford’s. That was a good story. A true story, though Gloria said the wolves were true, too.

Telly was supposed to get me and Rowan from school, but he never came, and we stayed on the swings for a long time. All the lights in the school turned off. I think the teachers went home. The other kids and moms went home too. There were leaves on the ground and I was kicking them in the air and they stuck on the fuzzy orange scarf around my neck. It was cold, and it started to get dark, and Rowan took my hand and we walked and walked. We could’ve walked home, but Rowan said, “I got an idea.” So we went the wrong way. We went up by the road that turned into the highway. I hid behind Rowan and he stuck out his thumb like they did on television. A lady in a big brown car stopped and Rowan tugged open the door so I could climb in front. She had hair like gray string, and her enormous belly pressed into the wheel.

The car smelled like a pet store and hairspray, but it wasn’t bad. When we got in, she said, “Watch where you plunk your wee asses. Chimp’s tucked away in there.” That made me laugh. Chimp was her ferret. He was sleeping inside a ripped part of the seat. The pink tip of his nose was poking out, and that was all I got to see of him. This lady sang along to music from her radio. She never said nothing about why we weren’t home. Or why Rowan was sticking his thumb out. She just asked us where we were going, and she drove us all the way to the front doors of Stafford’s.

Me and Rowan looked in the windows and we could see Gloria pulling shirts out of a cardboard box and slipping hangers down the necks. Then we sneaked inside and hid right in the middle of a circle of sweaters. Some of them were falling off, but that wasn’t Gloria’s fault. They just had big necks. Gloria kicked the box of clothes near our hiding spot, and we burst out and rushed at her.