I’m not above asking Dad to get rid of a bug for me—not proud, either—but they’re asleep, turned in to watch a movie on the laptop over an hour ago, which means Ma was probably dead to the world by nine thirty, rolled over on her side with her pillow stuffed between her arm and head. She wasn’t in a great mood tonight; I think hope’s fading fast that her job might not be too awful, that the same old stuff—jerk coworkers, mind-numbing tasks, managers who are never around—might not have followed her here.

I grab a notebook and reach out toward the moth, not sure if I’m offering a ride to freedom or preparing to smack. It slides on without resistance, paper on paper. Those pantomime eyes never waver.

Dark trek through the hallway and kitchen, lit only by occasional swaths of streetlight spilling across our linoleum. Some neighbor has their music up loud, and there are muffled voices out there, probably a party.

Slide the chain lock, lean out the back door to shake the moth free. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it loop-the-loop and it’s gone, part of the night. I stand for a moment, trying to make out the dark scribble of treetops against the sky, imagining the marsh. I wonder if somebody else is trying to catch Kincaid on the trails tonight. I had to leave early to get home in time for supper with Dad, Bree walking through the woods with me, the two of us talking Kincaid rapid-fire, my memory of finding him alone in the marsh glowing like an ember inside me, flickering, buried deep. Telling her now would be impossible, would make it look like I was hoarding secrets and afraid of getting caught. Bree would smell betrayal. I can’t risk that, not with her.

Bang. I flinch back, pulling the door shut. Nothing more. I peer out the window that faces on the next unit, seeing a light burning behind Bree’s window shade. Their back door hangs open, swaying. The music is coming from their place.

More voices. Raised in laughter or anger—funny how they sound the same through the thickness of a single wall. Silhouettes move past Bree’s shade. The bass is pounding, pounding, and not Hazel’s dance music, either. Something heavier, older. Metallica, maybe Pantera.

The back door is shoved wide open again, bouncing off the side of the house. A woman’s voice—“What do you want from me?” Tense, charged silence. “Well?”

Bree says something in her quiet, cutting tone. I can’t make out what.

Then her mom comes down the steps, jacket in hand, boots clopping sharply as she passes by our windows on the way to the parking lot.