He’d been left where he’d fallen asleep, in the chair, but someone had given him a blanket and he was wrapped up in it, curled like a shrimp. The sun was high in the sky, and he heard the sound of his father’s truck clattering up the drive, so it was obviously past breakfast time, and he wondered why he hadn’t been awakened and forced to eat his meal in the proper manner at the proper hour.

They’d never gotten around to discussing the girl. They hadn’t discussed Billings or the House, either. He roused himself, pushed off the blanket, stretched out, and stood up. His muscles were sore, and there was a hard crick in his neck. Yawning tiredly, he walked over to the front door and walked inside. He expected to smell breakfast, or at least the remnants of breakfast, but even as he walked through the dining room into the kitchen, there were no odors of food. The dishes in the sink were all from last night.

“Mom!” he called. “Kristen!”

“Mom went to town for groceries.”

His sister was standing in the doorway, staring at him, and he had a quick flash of déjà vu. He’d been here before, standing in this exact same spot, with Kristen standing in the exact same spot and saying exactly the same thing. He wondered if this whole experience at the House had been cobbled from preexisting events, edited together like a videotape or a CD-ROM game.

No. Kristen walked into the kitchen, took a sack of bread out of the refrigerator, and popped two slices into the toaster. He knew nothing like that had ever happened at their House; snacks had never been allowed and meals had always been eaten together.

This was really happening.

“Dad’s outside,” Kristen said. “I think he’s unloading the feed. He probably wants you to help him.”

Mark nodded dumbly, then walked outside, pushing open the kitchen door and stepping onto the side porch. He thought of grabbing a bite to eat, but he really wasn’t hungry. He’d eaten breakfast with Daniel and Laurie and Norton and Stormy, then found himself on the porch at night after the Houses split, and slept for a while, so even though it was morning here, it felt like lunchtime to his body. And he usually skipped lunch.

He stepped off the porch, walked across the dirt and around back. The already hot air was heavy with the muted sound of thousands of chickens, clucking and moving rustlingly in their cages. The four chicken coops, long low buildings of tin roofs and unpainted slat walls, stretched away from the House on a slight grade.

His father’s pickup was parked next to the second coop, on this side of the metal silo, and Mark walked over, the gradual slope causing him to unintentionally increase the speed of his step.