On the ground, I saw some old squished-up sandwiches with bugs on them. Me and Shar had long skinny shadows. Mine was longer and skinnier than Shar’s because Shar’s mouth was always full of junk and trash. That was what Gloria said.

I tried not to think about it because Shar was going extra fast. Her broken shoe was flopping. Then she disappeared behind some bushes, and I ran to catch up. Inside the woods things were humming and buzzing and croaking. Twigs cracked under Shar’s big sloppy feet. She was way up ahead. I didn’t like being in the woods without Rowan. Everything was trampled down. I kept hurrying, but I couldn’t see Shar no more.

“I’m going back!” I yelled.

Then her head popped out from behind a tree. “Scaredy cat!” she yelled back. She called me that a lot.

She stopped and waited. When I got where she was I saw the ground was kicked up and strings of soft green moss were yanked off the trees. Someone had ripped new leaves right from the branches and thrown them down. Maybe it was the searchers looking for Rowan, or some strangers just messing up the woods.

“I bet the bad guy did this,” Shar said real loud. She sounded like that helicopter. “What if murderers are still in here?”

“In the woods? I don’t think so.”

“There could be, Maisy. You don’t know everything. A whole bunch of them might be watching us right now.”

Me and Shar walked together then. Shar kept slapping my back or my cheek or my arm saying there was a fly on me. I wondered how she saw flies because it was getting harder and harder to see anything. The trees were going gray and fuzzy. And finally we got to the bridge. “Found it,” Shar said, like the bridge was something lost. I heard the creek trickling along near us. It was giggling. That sound made me mad. The creek should’ve shut itself up.

“Come on,” Shar said, and she stomped through the bushes.

“Wait,” I said, and then gravel crunched behind me. There was a loud crack. A branch whizzed through the air and shook. My heart tried to burst out of my throat and I ran behind Shar. Branches scritched at my legs.

“I heard something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I think it was…” A wolf. I think it was a wolf.

I couldn’t tell Shar that. She’d just laugh.

“The bad guy?”

“I want to go home,” I said. It was darker under the bridge than when I came with Rowan. It smelled like pee and there was garbage all over. It wasn’t like that when Carl was there.

Shar picked up a stone and threw it in the creek. A frog hopped off a rock and swam underneath some bubbly green scum.

“Do you think he kidnapped him when he was sleeping?”