Waiting for Aunt Maureen to jog back to the car, it was like my brain changed channels and I registered what was in front of me for the first time. I’d been so busy looking back, I hadn’t been able to see what was right in front of me.

The wildlife crossing.

Invisible monsters breathed on my neck, whispering things I couldn’t hear. Fairies danced; my stomach pulled tight.

“I think it was a rabbit,” Aunt Maureen said as she got back in the driver’s seat.

“You couldn’t tell?” I asked, eyes on the animal bridge, watching for movement, for anything. As usual, nothing was there.

Aunt Maureen shook her head. “It was too . . .” She didn’t finish her sentence. My dark brain finished it for her.

Mangled.

Unrecognizable.

“It was so close to the animal bridge,” she said, glancing over her shoulder before pressing hard on the accelerator to get us up to highway speeds in a hurry. “It’s too bad it didn’t use it.”

“Yeah,” I said, holding my breath as we went under the crossing, the world blinking for just an instant. “Too bad.”

chapter 16

Thursday, I was late to camp; otherwise, things would have been different.

Uncle Bran would drop me at the library on his way to the Green River; he, Kennedy, and Kane were going fishing again. I was happy to have art camp as a reason not to go myself, because the idea of hooking a fish in the face made me feel like throwing up.

But getting four people in the car on time was a struggle. Kennedy overslept, then lost her lucky fly, whatever that was, then had an argument with Aunt Maureen about what the term “proper breakfast” meant.

Then, after Uncle Bran returned to the two-row rental truck for the third time, Kane’s lucky bear in hand, Kane announced that he had to go potty. I’ve always hated being late, so I wanted to scream; instead, I bit my tongue on purpose and stared angrily out the window, not saying anything.

Twenty minutes after camp had started, I rushed through the library stacks toward the meeting room with the labyrinth floor. I was between the kids’ and mystery sections when a mom with a baby stroller set off the front-door alarm. That’s why I turned. That’s how I saw.

I’d stopped looking, and there he was: the old man with the yellow scarf.

He was sitting at a round table near the wall of windows, a small pile of books in front of him, staring outside instead of reading or looking curiously at the front-desk person, who was now struggling to turn off the alarm. The man looked the same, with wispy white hair, sunken cheeks, and dark circles under his eyes. He wore ecru pants and a tawny sweater—plus the yellow scarf.

Billy.