Her only friend at Dixon was Myra Vullet, but even Myra stayed clear of her at school, watching her with a broad face smooth as river stone. Louise had no place here. At least at the Ursulines’ she could count on Baptiste. She was no longer a child. She had outgrown schoolboys and schoolgirls. She had outgrown geography, and home economics had nothing to do with her life. She felt more comfortable in the bar in Dixon than she felt in the classroom.

At the Dixon school she ran away three times. Each time was a simple decision. She had no stockings. Her only pair of shoes was worn so thin she could count the stones beneath their soles. She had three dresses and she had outgrown all of them. The buttonholes of her favorite dress strained so tight you could see skin. Ten days into the school year she could take almost anything but she had grown tired of being the only Indian in the all-white school at Dixon.

The Dixon school was so close to home Mr. Bradlock, the BIA social worker, decided it would be best to place her in Thompson Falls again, with a family that would watch her; that way she’d have to think twice about leaving. He drove her to Thompson Falls himself. It was a cool day in the early part of September, but it wasn’t cold, and Mr. Bradlock kept the car heater running so high she felt dizzy. She rested her wet palms on the nape of her neck. “Don’t get any ideas,” he told her. But she did have ideas. She wanted him to stop just once so she could get out of the car and run from him, run from his oily peanut-colored suit, run from his large and balding head. But he didn’t stop. He didn’t stop once.

When they passed her grandmother’s house she looked at the floorboard, hoping Mr. Bradlock would not see her face. She saw the rock hills rise above his car. She felt the shifting curves. The river was slow and green. She felt a flutter in her chest and she wondered if she would ever get back home again.

Lately Louise woke from dreams that Mr. Bradlock would send her away and she would never come back, like Dolores Pretty Feather. Dolores was dying. Louise knew because Baptiste had told her. Dolores had been sent to Portland. And whenever Louise had passed the class photograph in the Ursulines’ hall she thought Dolores’s face looked ghostly, locked forever behind the glass pane, her eyes glazed upward as if she was watching a bird passing.