And maybe they felt sorry for me. Dazed-looking white girl, with a (soiled) big square Band-Aid on her forehead, something wrong with her left knee that made her wince and limp.

In the facility last names didn’t matter. Family names, adults’ names did not apply.

Daddy had never liked it, the name Kerrigan called up associations with his politician uncle. In South Niagara people tended to either love Tom Kerrigan or hate Tom Kerrigan so there was the feeling you were being wrongly judged.

But now, with Jerome Jr. and Lionel arrested, their names, faces on the front page of the newspaper, Kerrigan would become yet more notorious.

And there was the blunt terrible headline:

12-YEAR-OLD SISTER OF SUSPECTS

Provides “Crucial Information” to South Niagara Police

Hadrian Johnson Investigation Continues

Fortunately there had been no picture of me in the paper. Not even my name. My brothers were not so lucky for their pictures would appear prominently many times, in many media outlets.

It had not been difficult to escape from the safe house. What the staff knew of me was that I was one of those pathetic children who’d had to be removed from her family, for safety; I did not impress them as being daring enough to run away back to that family, and risk further harm.

In the early morning before dawn. Before others were awake.

Skinny enough to push through a narrow space (window opened at the bottom, just a few inches) the way an animal would—one of those desperate creatures who, to be freed from a trap, would gnaw off a paw with their teeth.

Taking nothing with me. Just clothes I was wearing. The fleece-lined jacket with wadded, stiff old tissues in the pockets.

Making my way through underbrush outside the house. Avoiding the long cracked asphalt driveway.

Knowing then to run not on the shoulder of the highway but beside it. Through fields, vacant lots. Behind billboards and along a railroad track.

Some of the soil was marshy, muddy with a thin crust of ice on top. Much of it was littered with the debris of broken trees. Burrs clung to my jeans and thorns tore at my hands.

Thrilling to be outdoors, out of the safe house.

I would never return, I thought. They could not make me.

Wildly I thought—I will hide in our house. In the cellar. No one will know.

At the city limits the highway joined a major roadway called Denis Boulevard. Now there was traffic. Fields disappeared but there were vacant lots, alleys through which I could make my way. There began to be sidewalks. Swiftly I walked here, I did not dare to run. I did not wish to appear suspicious in the eyes of strangers. I did not wish to call attention to myself in any way and yet it seemed that vehicles slowed, their occupants stared at me.

A girl! Alone.

Why is that girl running, alone . . .