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HOW OLD MUST YOU BE before you learn to hide yourself completely and thus protect yourself? When Mrs. Gross stated that she was going to ask Mr. Willard personally if Marcia couldn’t share David’s French lessons next fall, Marcia was bursting to say, “But I won’t be here this fall. I’ll be working some place far off, because the first chance I get I’m going to run away.” But she dared not even trust Mrs. Gross. Mrs. Gross might say that nice children didn’t run away, and think how it would hurt her parents’ feelings; then Marcia might blurt out something about Her and being whipped and all the things that no one should know or they would feel sorry for her, and the worst thing that could happen to anybody was public pity. Mrs. Gross was likely to report her plan to Papa “for the best,” and Grandma might tell “for the best,” too. Either people spoiled your plans because they were downright mean or because they meant it “for the best.” When Marcia felt her secret unbearably near her lips, she started talking giddily about a riddle, a book she had read, or something that happened a long time ago. Her stepmother declared she never heard so much nonsense in all her life, and there wasn’t a truthful bone in Marcia’s whole body. Marcia did not shake inside with rage at this the way she used to do, because she had ten dollars pinned in a sachet bag to her undershirt, and ten dollars was better than the Holy Bible to make you feel calm and safe from wounds. She woke up often in the night with a shock of fear, remembering that she was going to do something tremendous, something was going to happen to her, to her alone, not to Florrie and Lena. This wasn’t pretend either. It was as if she was bewitched by that other person inside her making her do something instead of pretending. She didn’t know how or when she was going to do this, but every day seemed the last. Every moment sharpened her sensations. This is the last time I will pass the burned Holy Roller Church, she would think every day; this is the last time I’ll wait by the Gross barn for the wind to shake down crab apples; this is the last time I’ll start numbing myself coming in the back door in case She’s laying for me with a switch or scolding; this is the last time I’ll walk past Mary Evelyn’s front porch hoping she and Lena will wave and ask me to come and play with them. It was funny knowing you were gone, but not knowing where, and having other people treat you as if you were still present. It was funny having that other person inside you, strong and invincible like Lena, when outside you were resigned to whatever came up. The very wind, heady with dying lilacs and the constant smell of train smoke, apples rotting in roadside ditches, the heavy sweetness of preserve kettles boiling over in hot kitchens bore a solemn warning to Marcia that this is the last summer, this is the last time, the very last. She saw each familiar face and spot with the desperate clarity of farewell and this time she knew it was not pretending. She tried to remember when she found out pretending was no good. Was it when she gave up waiting for Aunt Lois or Grandma or Cousin Isobel to come rescue them, or was it the day she met the Putneys and discovered that reality could be as good or better than pretending?