Peering up the road, I watched for the bus. Its engine growled as it slowed at the Hulls’. The Hulls were one of a handful of families along our road who hadn’t bolted after the accident.

Muncie dropped her head to one side. “Do you like somebody, Nyle?” she asked.

I thought about Ezra, staring at the ceiling last night. I thought about his curly hair in the darkness. I thought about him being in the back bedroom, in the dying room.

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

Five

I got through school that day, and evening chores, too. Heading straight up to my room, I turned on the radio. The newsman went on and on, reporting the problems faced by emergency units at the nuclear plant.

As I listened, I slowly inspected my room, touching all the treasures on my shelves, treasures I would lose if we evacuated. I had river rocks, acorns, birds’ nests and feathers, amber glass, a tarnished belt buckle, a box of old watch faces: all kinds of stuff crowded on my shelves. If the wind turned this way, radiation would contaminate every bit of it.

On the shelf of my nightstand I kept the handful of books I’d chosen in R.I.F. distributions over the years. I read the titles on the slim spines.

The back bedroom and Ezra made me real uneasy, but somehow I’d have to go down there. I couldn’t see myself talking much to that boy, but I guessed I could read to him.

Swaggering across the floor, Bayley climbed my jeans leg with his front claws.

“You want to come see Ezra?” I asked, lifting the cat up and rubbing the short hair under his chin with my index finger.

Bayley purred and stretched his neck out, giving my fingers a longer path to travel.

“Bayley, you lucky old cat, you don’t ever have to do anything you’d rather not.”

I could read to Ezra from M. C. Higgins, the Great, but I’d just finished reading that for school. I really didn’t care to read it again so soon. Plus there were some embarrassing parts for a girl to read to a boy.

My hand stopped on Slake’s Limbo, my choice at the R.I.F. distribution two years ago, when I was in sixth grade. I never had much time for reading, but I sure read that book. At least four times. Slake was all alone in his world. I knew how he felt, just how he felt. But it was so much worse for him, never going outside the train station. Never seeing daylight. What would it be like, never seeing the light of day?

I pulled the book off my shelf and thought about the boy downstairs, about the drawn curtain in the back bedroom. This was the right book. There couldn’t be a more right book.

Coming down the steps, I ran my fingers through my hair, trying to make myself presentable. The kitchen smelled of yeast. Bread rising. When Gran came in from chopping wood, the aroma of baking loaves would fill the house.