Dad followed her lead and stood up too. “Well,” he said. “That was delicious, but it’s dart night, so I need to get moving.”

“Okeydokey,” called Mom in a false cheery voice. “Have fun!”

“Will do,” said Dad, and he turned to go.

But as he left the room, keys jangling, Dad gave me a long, careful stare, as though he was thinking about something, hard. It made me wonder. About how often my dad really played darts.

And sure enough, when I peeked outside, an hour later, I saw a very faint crack of light coming from under the garage door. The thinnest sliver, as if someone had shoved a blanket under the door, hoping they could hide from sight completely. If I hadn’t known to look for it, I might not have noticed at all.

That night in bed, I couldn’t sleep, or even lie still. I was all tangled up in thoughts and bedsheets. I thought about my father’s dart nights that he wasn’t going to, and the cornfield on the ceiling. I thought about my mom sitting in the living room with her glass of wine, alone and clueless. Then for some reason, I thought about Sam, throwing toilet paper into the air.

That thought made me want to curl up in a ball, so I pushed it away and tried to imagine what Jasper was doing, alone in the Vine Realm, soothed by the twinkle lights on the floor and the mural on the wall above her. I tried to imagine what it felt like to go to sleep in a house alone, without parents to tell you anything or expect anything from you. If you didn’t have to pretend you were a family when you didn’t feel like a family. If you didn’t have to constantly try to figure out what to say to the people who knew you best.

I knew Jasper’s situation would freak my parents out, that they’d be upset if they found out I’d spent my summer in an abandoned house. In some part of my brain, I knew there were words for what was happening to Jasper. Runaway. Homeless. But the more time I spent with her, the less crazy it seemed that she could take care of herself. Jasper was so wise, so smart. She seemed to know everything there was to know. She seemed to have things under control.

In five years, I’d be going away to college myself. That wasn’t very long. In five years, I’d be living alone too. In a room of my own, where I could paint on the wall and eat all the pickles in bed and stay up as late as I wanted, with no rules. Just like Jasper. Was this really so different from that? Five years wasn’t so much.