Kane walked faster. He had the urge to run, but people were still out and about in the town center. The sun was still setting.

“I haven’t read them yet. What happened?”

“You tell me. I don’t get it. I got home and Mom and Dad pulled in twenty minutes later, saying the meeting was canceled and that you were meeting a counselor for your evaluation, or something. I told them I’d pick you up, but that was two hours ago! So then I told them we were grabbing Froyo. I think I bought us some time to talk.”

Kane was not comforted by this. He suspected his meeting with Dr. Poesy was unofficial, somehow. No paperwork. Nothing to document what they’d talked about. A blank yawn in his life. Just like the accident.

“What happened, Kane? Where are you?”

Kane bit into the flesh of his cheek, trying to decide if he should lie or not. Sophia was already overinvolved in this.

“Nothing bad happened. I just met with a counselor, like they said. I had to write out some answers for a report and talk about my feelings. It was dumb.” The lie left him feeling more alone than ever.

“Where are you? I’ve just been reading at Roost. I’ll come get you.”

“I want to walk home.”

“You’re not supposed to be alone. Mom said I should—”

“Lie for me again, will you?”

Kane hung up and turned off the phone. He had the urge to throw it into the rhododendron that bordered St. Agnes, the university at the heart of East Amity. He cut through the campus, speeding toward Harrow Creek.

East Amity was an ill-conceived town, a concrete canvas thrown over the sodden greenery of the Housatonic’s flood lands. For that reason the fabric of the suburban grid was eaten through in places, sunken by ravines that filled with rainwater and grew fuzzy with forests. Harrow Creek ribboned through these small forests, hemmed to the land by a running path. It was the least direct route home. But it was safe. No cars could drive alongside it looking for him. No little sisters out searching for their brothers.

Kane needed time and space to think, and the path had always given him both.

He looked up through the birch trees that webbed across the dimming sky. By the time he was alongside the creek, night shaded the distance and drew a curtain of shadow right up to the path’s edge. Every few yards stood a glowing lamppost wreathed by moths, neon and frantic. Down a steep bank the creek slid over its bed of worn rocks, silent and unbothered and everything Kane was not. On the path two kids scraped by on scooters, followed by their parents. They stared at Kane, which is how he realized he looked as dismal as he felt.