“Anyway then it was June, and the school year was all over. Time to go home. But on the last day there was some kind of mix-up, my dad thought he sent a car for me, I guess, but his assistant forgot, or the driver never showed, either way nobody came for me. I sat on my suitcase in the lobby all day, while the other kids got picked up one by one, and I kicked my legs and read one of those big floppy Peanuts books over and over again, and nobody came. That was before cell phones, and they couldn’t track down my parents. The staff were whispering behind my back. They felt sorry for me, but I could tell they kind of wanted me the hell out of there too so they could go home.

“I can still remember the view from the lobby: the line of palm trees through the glass doors, the sunset highlights on the wobbly linoleum tiles, the smell of the varnish on the wooden benches. I’ll never forget it. I’d look at the shadows and think, definitely he’ll have come by the time the shadow of the window frame hits that corner of the bench, but then he wouldn’t come, and I’d pick a new spot. I was realizing for the first time what a small part of my parents’ world I was. They were everything to me, but I wasn’t everything to them.

“The staff let me eat dinner with them, which ordinarily students never got to do. They ordered in from Popeye’s. I felt so excited and special.”

Eliot wished he could go back in time and get that mini-Janet, scoop her up and take her home. But he couldn’t.

“Then after dinner my dad finally showed up. He came striding through the door, stiff-arming it open without breaking stride, tie loose, walking too fast. He was probably pissed off at himself, about the mix-up, but it came off like he was pissed off at me somehow. Like it was my fault. He was pretty much of an asshole about the whole thing.

“I guess you can see where this is going. I was seriously weak at that point. I had the spins. I was falling asleep every five minutes. I woke up at dawn on day five and I knew that the Smelter wasn’t coming. And I gave up. It was over.

“Somebody stronger would have stayed out there till they died. Julia might have. Alice, maybe. I guess if somebody really wants to break me, it turns out I can be broken. There it is. I didn’t know. Now I know.