“Where are the drivers?” Ruth stammered, looking around frantically. We both knew Dad had let them all go early that Saturday, a rare moment of generosity because it was so hot, so easy just to go home. “We have to empty the truck!” She started fumbling her hands along the sides of the huge vehicle, looking for a lever there, something to tip the container upward and free Pim.

“We need to get help!” I said, following Ruth as she banged on the metal siding. “We have to call nine-one-one!”

“That will take too long! We need to tip the truck!” She ran to the driver’s door and tried to open it, but it was locked. The window was partway down. She slithered in, scraping her knees, all the while her breath coming out in rakes.

“There are no keys!” she shouted, as if I were holding them, as if I could just pass them to her and solve the problem. The next second she crumpled over the steering wheel, great sobs racking her as I watched from outside the driver’s door.

“Look at our clothes,” I said. “Mom’s gonna be mad.” My voice had dulled somehow, gone flat. I rubbed at my arms and legs, which were all I knew, as I smeared dirt and dust and the tang of metal from them. Nothing else in the world felt real.

Ruth got out of the truck, stumbled toward me, and we collapsed into stalky grass.

“What are we going to do?” she cried, her lack of solutions all the more terrifying. “We need Mom and Dad.”

“I chased him,” I said, my hands shaking as I grabbed at her. “I didn’t mean to! I chased him, Ruth, up the ladder.”

She hugged me until I stopped wriggling and we sat interlocked, all of our limbs shuddering like it had suddenly turned to winter.

Fat tears rolled down my grimy cheeks, and Ruth smothered me, rocked me, our ribs knocking. The truck loomed behind us, cold and silent, a hideous catacomb. Far away on the unbending grid road, we heard the diesel roar of my father’s truck coming back from town. They’d been gone only about a half hour. Ruth stood. She looked down out me, her face dirty and streaked with tears. She held out her hand for mine, and together we staggered back to the porch, through the razor blades of grass that poked and scraped at our ankles.

“I love you,” she kept saying. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“Will Pim be okay?” I asked, my voice catching in my throat.

“Just keep walking,” she said. “We need Mom and Dad.”