Olympia opens the door, passes through, stands on the metal platform, feels the wind rush to meet her.

Dean’s out here, too, now. Telling her to be careful. Not to worry. This can’t be as bad as Olympia thinks it is.

But Olympia hears something else, buried beneath his voice.

A fluttering at her feet.

She kneels and discovers the source of the sound is a singular piece of fabric, flapping in a grate where the platform meets the door.

She’s touched this particular piece of cloth so many times that she doesn’t question what it is.

As the train carries her farther north, she rises and faces south.

“Mom,” she says.

Because if there’s one single item that Malorie Walsh would never lose, would not let off her person, if there’s one object in all this mad world that defines her more than any other, Olympia holds it now.

She knows the worst has come. Something has happened to Malorie.

The proof is not in Malorie’s absence…but in what Olympia holds, what flaps, black and angry, in her hand.

Her mother’s blindfold.

Safer Rooms

TWENTY-FIVE

Malorie hides in a cluster of trees at the far end of her home’s property. The pond is between her and the house where her parents and Shannon are, hopefully, desperately looking for her.

She’s upset.

Mom and Dad insist she read the kids’ book for class, the book the teacher assigned her, but she doesn’t want to read the kids’ book, she wants to read the adult book, the one Mom is reading, the book written by an adult woman with an adult brain. She doesn’t like the idea of what she calls a pretend book, a book geared for someone who’s supposedly not as developed, not as smart, as her parents. And isn’t she? Isn’t Malorie as smart as her parents? And what’s worse than them denying her is the fact that Mom and Dad are usually so encouraging. Yes, that’s what bothers Malorie most of all. It’s that they’re siding with Mrs. Cohn when it’s so obvious that Malorie is right.

It’s why she ran away. No, she didn’t get far, but it’s far enough to let them know that what they’re doing, what they’re saying, is wrong.

From where she hides, she can’t hear them anymore. Can’t see them at all.

That’s good. They can’t see or hear her, either.

She sits on the fallen needles and cones but discovers it’s too wet, so she gets up.

Does Mom know where she is? If she does, she’s going to have to walk out here and scold Malorie to her face. Malorie isn’t going back inside. Not for anything in the world.