When I get to the end of the driveway, I lay the bike down and stare at what remains of my house. Somehow, there is one lamp on in the parlor, though one parlor wall is missing. It casts a shadowy light in the dark night.

The house is half caved in—all the windows smashed, half the roof gone. Furniture, blankets, and clothes lie tangled across the yard. As I walk closer, I find small and familiar things—a broken cookie jar, one of my mom’s shoes.

I climb the collapsing front steps carefully. There’s broken glass under every footstep. Walking gingerly inside, I jump at the sight of Soggy, sitting in the one upright chair in the parlor (where Agatha used to sit), looking back at me blankly. Down the hall, I can hear another ghost crying.

There’s no rhyme or reason to what’s been broken or not. A glass vase sits on the kitchen table, but every chair has been knocked across the room. The coatrack is standing, but the corner cabinet’s been smashed to pieces. Feathers from pillows lie everywhere.

I make my way across the parlor to the stairs. I test them one by one, trying to be quick but careful.

Getting to my room, I swallow the lump in my throat. Papers from textbooks and school binders are strewn across the floor. I step in quickly and retrieve the one thing I want most from here—the engraved silver whistle—and slip it into my pocket for safekeeping.

My mom’s room is even worse off than mine. All her paintings, all her knickknacks and reminders of the old her: destroyed. And then I see the pile of books on her floor, the ones she kept taking back from me, tumbled on top of each other: Where the Wild Things Are, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel. I pick up Where the Wild Things Are and flip through it, thinking how just a few days ago I looked for answers to fighting witches in its pages.

And then it comes to me: why my mom wouldn’t let these books go.

They’re all about lost children.

It settles around me; my skin swims with chills.

And I realize… maybe my mom has returned to these stories again and again for the same reason why I turn to the books in my room: to fill in the places that are missing, to push back against the darkness that has taken those things. To remind herself—because she has no memory—that monsters can be destroyed, and heroes can win, even if it’s only pretend. Maybe stories make us stronger because they make a bridge to things we’ve lost. Maybe stories make powerful things out of broken ones.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” says a voice behind me.

I turn.