With a laugh, I took another pickle. Then we munched for a minute and stared at the newly cleaned kitchen. It was still old and small, but now it was ours, mine and Jasper’s. It felt like there was nobody else in the entire world beyond this room. Just us, in this secret place. We could hide here forever, and nobody would know. There would be no weird silences here, or funny glances. No shadows or ghosts. I took a deep breath of the hot, musty air and smiled.

When the pickles were all gone and Jasper had poured the juice down the sink drain, I had one final thought. I went outside and picked a big bouquet of roses from the old bush beyond the door. I got pricked a bunch, but I didn’t mind. The dark red petals smelled wonderful, heavy and rich and sweet. I went back inside and set them in the empty pickle jar.

“There,” I said. “Is there water in the sink?”

“Nope.”

“What have you been doing for showers and tooth brushing and stuff like that? What have you been doing when you need to use the bathroom?”

I guess Jasper could read my face, because she shook her head and laughed. “Don’t worry, it’s not that bad. I haven’t been pooping in the creek or anything. There’s a hose at the farm, and I fill a jug once a day. I keep it in the bathroom. If you just pour it into the toilet after you go, the toilet sort of flushes itself. I’m not exactly sure how. Something to do with gravity, I guess.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow, how’d you learn that? You just guessed?”

Jasper shook her head. “Someone must have shown me when I was little. I guess the fact that you didn’t know it means you’ve never had your water cut off before.”

“No,” I said. “I guess I haven’t.”

“Stick with me and I’ll teach you all kinds of useful things,” she said. Then she walked off toward the bathroom and returned with the plastic jug full of water. She poured some of it into the pickle jar of roses and set the bouquet on the table.

After that, there was nothing more to do, really, inside the kitchen. As much as I loved the new room, we were both sweating pretty hard, so Jasper and I grabbed two root beers, stepped back outside, and walked around to the front of the house, to the little overgrown porch. The front door was padlocked, and parts of the wooden floor in front of it had fallen away, but the steps were made of concrete, and it was nice and shady there on the stoop, beneath the kudzu hanging off the roof.