That night Aria found an open entryway to an office building on a side street, a few blocks away from the museum. All the lights inside the building were off, so she felt reasonably sure that she wouldn’t be detected there. The russet of the bricks made it feel warmer inside than it really was. Once she was out of the elements, her skin relished the lull of the air there. She sat down and pulled her blankie out of her backpack. She let Clifford wander in the tiny area. He sniffed around for a time before relieving himself on the floor. Aria initially jerked up to try to stop him, but realized it was no use. She erupted into tears. Tears because she had no way to clean it up. Tears for fear of getting in trouble. Tears at the tragedy of the situation she had found herself in. Even though she didn’t have the luxury of wondering why she, specifically, was the unlucky one who had wound up with this life, she cried tears as if she was attending her own funeral.

Aria stayed in the entryway that she had planned to sleep in for less than an hour until the fear of being found out, and the desire to distance herself from the potential trouble of the mess that Clifford had made, got the better of her. She decided to find another place to stay for the night. But the city was too cold. The universe seemed to watch her with an ocean of indifferent stars. Cars passed her, their engines babbling of destinations unwilling to wait. Any place she tried to settle into quickly became unbearable. Her body would not let her sleep. So instead, she spent the night walking and stopping, walking and stopping. It was hard to walk with one shoe missing its laces. It was hard to walk with the foggy, weak discomfort of hunger. But it was harder not to walk.

At first, the Johnsons thought they owed Aria’s absence to her characteristic delinquency. They assumed that she would eventually come home with some excuse for her absence and that she would deliver that excuse so as to imply they were “in the wrong” for even asking where she was. But by dinnertime, Mrs Johnson gave in to the nagging uneasiness in the background of their routine. After checking Aria’s room and finding no clues to her whereabouts, she called the police just after sundown. Now, two nights had come and gone.

“When did you last see her?”

“Did you have any worries about the state of her mental health or any other cause for concern when you saw her last?”

“Has she ever run away like this before?”