Naomi stood up. She did something surprising then. “I thought I would kiss you,” she said. “That way, in the future, if someone asks us, we can say we’ve done it before and we won’t be lying. I figured it would save a lot of embarrassment.”

She put her hands on his shoulders. She leaned slightly forward, close enough that her hair brushed against him. She closed her eyes and placed her mouth against his, very lightly. Then it was over.

“There,” she said. “Now you can say you’ve got experience.”

Their family had one last night at the house. After the auction Poppa and Grandma brought over sandwiches that they ate off paper plates on the floor, with a sheet laid out like they were having a picnic. Aunt Sal had asked, “Don’t you think it would be better if Harold and I brought the children to our place tonight?” but Nate’s mom had said no. She’d drop them off tomorrow on her way to Billings after the movers came.

“I promise you it’s going to be better once we leave this place,” Mom said when she tucked Junie in that night. Her voice sounded stronger than it had lately, and her hands weren’t shaking. Then she went back downstairs, and Nate could hear her playing her piano on the dark porch and singing softly—the song he had loved when he was younger, “Over the Rainbow.”

Sometime later Junie tiptoed into Nate’s room and asked if she could climb into bed with him. “I promise I’ll stay dry tonight,” she said. “I’m over that now.”

Lying in the dark next to Nate, Junie told him what it was that worried her the most. “What if our dad comes back to see us and we’re not here? How will he ever find us?”

Twenty-Nine

SOMETIME IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT NATE WOKE up. He threw on a sweatshirt, grabbed his Polaroid camera, and made his way down the stairs. He wanted a picture of the cloud chamber.

Outside, it seemed that there had never been so many stars, but he didn’t stop to study them. He was going to the implement shed. It was empty now, except for a handful of broken stuff and, on the old wood workbench, the cloud chamber.

There was a single chunk of dry ice left over, wrapped in newspaper, in the sawdust-covered cooler. He lifted it onto the workbench and placed the cloud chamber on top of it.

Slowly, like a mad scientist, he uncapped the ethyl alcohol and sprinkled it on the blotting paper. He replaced the top on the cloud chamber.

Poppa’s watch was gone. If there were any rays to be seen now, they’d be the kind that came from real stars, not a luminous-dial watch face.