“I can?” This surprised me. It made me feel warm on the inside. “You don’t mind?”

“You don’t mind?” He had this habit of repeating what I said, but I don’t think he was mocking me. “You’re one of them, I know,” he said. Soda dripped off the hairs of his beard. “But you’re not like the others. You’re not a Worker. It’s nice to see you out here, urh. I like that. I do.”

I had no idea what he meant, but I liked it, too. Having a secret place to go. Even though he was peculiar, I had the feeling he was also kind and dependable. People could be more than one thing at the same time.

MAISY

Since school was done, Rowan’s been keeping a secret. I could tell because lots of days he was sneaking off into the woods and never asked me to come along. Not once. Last summer he always let me go with him. Well, mostly. But now when I asked him where he went he just said, “Nowhere, Turtle. I’m right here.” That was a big lie. He was playing at something, and he wasn’t letting me join his game. I didn’t like it. Not one bit.

I thought he was gone again that afternoon, but then a bird smacked the window and I heard him yelp. He ran right down the stairs and out into the yard. I ran after him. Together we hunted in the grass until we found a robin. When Rowan picked it up its head wobbled around like a marble.

“Why did it make itself dead?” I asked him.

“Because it didn’t see the glass. Just its reflection. And trees and leaves and outdoor stuff.”

“Bad,” I said.

I got a shovel from the shed and I dug a hole near the side of the house. There was a broken plastic thing on the wall above where I was digging. Rowan said it was a vent that “snakes right down into the basement bathroom.” I didn’t know much about our basement, only that it had guns. Lots of guns. Telly took most of them when he left, but there were still a bunch, Gloria said. We weren’t ever allowed to go down there.

“Should we say something?”

“Like what?”

“That we hope it likes heaven? That it gets better?” I imagined the bird with a little white collar around its neck. Gloria had one of those last year because a man bumped into the side of Telly’s truck. Not a big bump, but Gloria got really, really hurt. Sometimes she still limped when we were outside. That man had to give her money.

Rowan squinted his eyes in the sunlight. “Won’t make any difference, Turtle.” Then he said, “No one’s listening.”

I didn’t like that. How did he know?