The only halfway decent outfit I had was the one I was wearing: a ruffled blue blouse one of the nurses at the hospital had given me as a gift, a pair of old jeans from another nurse, and a pair of flip-flops one of the volunteers bought me at the drugstore down the street when she learned I didn’t have any shoes.

What I wore hadn’t mattered at Palmer House. Once school started in the fall, it might have been an issue, but even then I couldn’t imagine caring.

“It’s all I have,” I said.

“Well,” she said, “we’ll need to get you some things, won’t we?”

I can’t afford things, I thought, and then I remembered what John had said. Were they really going to buy me clothes? Give me money to spend on whatever I wanted?

Maybe I could save up for a laptop, to replace the one I’d lost.

“Wear whatever’s comfortable for tonight,” she said. “Tomorrow, we’ll take care of the rest.”

I nodded. I didn’t want to unpack with her standing there, though I could sense her curiosity about my belongings.

“Do you think I might be able to have that toothbrush?” I said.

Laura stepped back. “Oh, yes. Give me two minutes. Will you be all right in here with Agatha?”

“Sure,” I said, and she scurried away.

While she was gone, I hurriedly dumped the contents of my bags into the top two drawers of the dresser. After that, which had taken maybe fourteen seconds, I wandered back out into the main part of the room and stopped short.

Agatha’s chair was empty.

The whispery silence of the room turned to a roar in my ears.

I looked around but didn’t see her anywhere. And there was nowhere for her to hide.

She was gone.

The door to the hall was closed—I would have heard it open, right? And the bathroom door was wide open, the light on. There was no one in there.

Oh, God, I’d lost her already. They were going to kick me out.

Deep breath. First of all, I didn’t lose her. She lost herself. Second of all, it wasn’t my job to keep her in one place, was it? What should I have done, commanded her to stay still? Wrestled her to the ground? This wasn’t my fault. Of course it wasn’t.

But I knew I needed to find her before Laura came back.

Could she be hiding under one of the beds?

I stared at the nearest one warily, half expecting Agatha to be hiding underneath, waiting to jump out at me when I leaned close. I crossed the room, steeled myself, and knelt down to push away the white bedskirt and look under the bed frame.

Empty. Not so much as a single dust bunny.