Brigid was fast. Some of her friends were fast, too—Liza, for instance, had a leggy stride that could outpace just about anyone over a distance. But none of them wanted rid of me quite as vigorously as Brigid, and so they’d trailed off, falling to the sidelines, clustering together between the flowerbeds and watching as I’d chased my sister. Brigid was running flat-out, but her legs were shorter than mine, and I had quickly caught up.

She’d rounded on me when I reached her and shoved me, flat-palmed, both against my chest. “Why won’t you stay the hell away?” she’d shouted.

“Can’t make me,” I’d said.

“I’ll tell Mom!”

My mother’s name had been Callie. Her maiden name had been Peterson, and she’d kept her name after the marriage. Our last name had not been Wren, it had been Hart, but there had been a family of wrens in the backyard that we coddled and wooed into hanging around summer after summer in a faded little birdhouse. I’d gone by Wren after I left Kystrom behind. My father’s name had been David, but my mother had called him Red, because of the shade of his hair. Brigid and I had both inherited my mother’s blonde hair, but the shapes of our faces, I was told, were dead-on copies of my father’s. I had no pictures of them left. I’d taken nothing with me from Kystrom except pale and fading memories.

I remember Brigid and I shouted for a while after that, a vicious fight that only my father had broken up, but the rest of my memory falls oddly short. I don’t remember what we said. I remember her face gone red and blotchy, streaked with tears. I’d ruined her birthday.

Oh, right. I remembered now. Brigid had told me she wished I was dead. And I’d told her I wished she’d never been born.

There was a lump in my throat I couldn’t swallow away. I reached up on blind instinct to wipe my eyes, but touched only dry skin.

My head was an ache so solid it no longer registered as pain. Pain requires change. This was just a new state of being. My lip had split sometime after walking away from the tomb doors, but my blood tasted salty, not refreshing at all. I’d lost track of where I was walking.

Going off on my own had been a mistake. Sure, I had the bombs to defend myself, but I had no supplies and no idea of where I was going. If I’d stopped and thought about it at all, I would’ve realized that. Instead, I’d just run. Imp of the perverse. Benny’d always said it would one day get me killed.

Something skittered out of my flashlight beam. My reflexes were so dulled that I flinched back belatedly and stumbled, nearly falling. I lifted the flashlight, ready to swing it at whatever attacked me.

Which was nothing. I wavered, waiting, then turned the beam ahead of me, crossing over the empty floor. Something skittered out of the light again, but this time I recognized it—a cockroach.