I opened my eyes and Gloria was sitting on my bed with her face wrinkled up. She smoothed my blanket. Her eyes were pink. She had a ball of tissue scrunched in her hand. She’d been crying, and my insides dropped down.

“I was so worried,” she said. “Can you fathom coming home from work and having no idea where you were?”

I shook my head.

“I looked everywhere, Bids. Frantic. I was about to call the police.”

My throat went small. I couldn’t swallow.

“You can’t keep doing that to me. Going in the woods and then, and then hiding in the shed. Very last place I looked. Sleeping like a baby. Chicken trapped in there with you. Whimpering up a storm.”

“Chicken?”

“Licking your face so hard I’m surprised you don’t got a welt.”

“In the shed?”

“Yes, oh yes. In the shed. Pinched right between a muddy shovel and a basket of old rags. A bucket of nails just about fell on your beautiful head.”

It was a bad, bad dream. She ruffled my hair.

“Can you imagine my shock?” She pushed the tissues into her nose. “Why on earth would you leave Erma’s?”

I sat up and the sparkles came again. They zoomed all around Gloria’s head like tiny fireflies.

“You can tell me, I won’t be mad.”

“I had to leave.”

“What?”

“Shar told me to. To go home.”

“You listening to Shar again?” Gloria made her teeth clang. “How can she be ten years old and such a little bitch already?”

Then I remembered what Pearl said. About watching Rowan. My mouth turned dry and my head fell back a bit. I couldn’t tell Gloria about me and Shar trying to talk to him.

Gloria put her hand on my chest. “You got to take in more air, Bids. You got lungs for a reason.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just tell me what happened.”

I was in the shed, not the basement. Dreaming and dreaming of milk crates and Chicken’s ruffly fur and no surprise and dirty finger worms under a door. So strange and scary. They wanted to touch me.

“The door was locked so I went in the shed. Chicken got in there, too. He was after Rowan’s ball.”

“Yes, and?”

“He got the ball and I didn’t want him to explode it. I chased him all around the grass and into the hou—”

“The house was locked up, sweetheart. I must have left Chicken outside without a drop of water. I don’t know where my mind is these days. And then to find the two of you in the shed. You don’t know my relief.”

I closed my eyes for a second. “I fell asleep in there.”

“That’s quite a bump you got on your head.”