I smiled a little wider. The last part is true. But better if he thinks it’s just a rumor.

Janos went on. “Does she worry when you’re out late? Alone?”

“No. And I’m not scared.”

He glanced toward the window. Beyond the glass the autumn sky was saturating with deep blue darkness. “Not scared of the dark, or of being by yourself?”

“Right,” I said.

Janos laughed. He turned away, carrying my cup. “Café au lait?”

“I don’t have—” I began, but he cut me off.

“We have to pour out the old coffee anyway. You can drink it while you wait for . . .” He nodded toward the stage again.

The band had just reappeared. Jezz and Patrick and Anders were starting the ritual of packing up.

So I stayed at my corner table. Janos set down the steaming cup, giving me a quick wink. I sipped the hot, foamy coffee as the band laughed and talked about the set and nestled instruments into cases, and I wrote the words “Thank you” with a handful of pennies, which was all I had in my pockets, and left them on the table beside my coffee cup. When the band moved outside, I slipped after them, keeping so far back in the leafy shadows around the Crow’s Nest that none of them even noticed I was there.

Now, in the abandoned playhouse, I take a breath. Scents of damp paper, wet earth, old wood. My foot has fallen asleep. The overturned bucket isn’t the most comfortable seat, but I will wait here for as long as I need to. As long as it takes.

They’re still working the rhythms of “Come Out and Play.” The music screams loud enough that I can shift my weight on the bucket without being heard, stretch my arms over my head. I point the leg with the sleeping foot, making a little circle with my ankle. The toe of my battered sneaker scuffs the dirt. Something glitters. I bend down and brush it with my fingertips.

A little girl’s necklace, its chain too small to close around an adult’s throat. Strung with pink beads and tiny gold stars. Lost, or maybe buried here, like treasure. Left behind. I rub the stars between my thumb and finger until the black dirt is gone and they can shine. Then I hang the necklace on the head of a nail that sticks out of the playhouse wall. It twinkles against a picture of a sea-sprayed white stallion.

The garage next door has gone quiet. I can hear Ellie Hammond and Lee Skiff arguing about something one of them said or didn’t say, and Patrick’s voice murmuring something over the muted, habitual roll of drumsticks against a rim.

Then Anders’s voice. Jezz’s. The voices get louder. They’re talking. Arguing.

I press myself against the playhouse’s clammy wooden wall. Ellie is giggling. The wheels of a skateboard clack on the cement. Jezz and Patrick are talking. I catch Anders once more.