I walked down the Hawthorne stairs for the last time. On the last step, I hesitated. I stared at the flyers on the bulletin boards and the recently filled pigeonholes full of mail. Claudia’s voice was fully audible, even though her office door was closed. She was telling my parents about hockey opportunities in Bristol.

“ . . . once her injuries are healed, of course, but the padding does cover quite a lot . . .”

I turned in the direction of the bathroom. I could leave now and never see that room again, but something drew me toward it. I walked down the hall. I reached out and ran my hand down the wall. I passed the common room, the study rooms . . .

The bathroom door was gone. From the way the hinges were bent, it looked like it had been smashed down. The glass of the mirrors was completely gone; only the silver backings remained. There was also a crack in the floor—a long one, at least five feet, and maybe a quarter of an inch wide at points. It ran jagged from the center of the room in the direction of the bathroom stall, breaking every tiny tile in its path. I walked along it, up until the point where it slipped under the door. I pushed the door open.

There was a woman standing there.

Maybe I still had some of the painkillers in my system or something, because I should have jumped or screamed or registered some surprise. But I didn’t.

This woman was old. Not in age—she looked like she was maybe twenty or thirty or something, it was hard to tell—but in time itself. She wore a rough blousy shirtdress.

Over that, she had a heavy, rust-colored skirt that went to the ground, and over that, a stained yellow apron. Her hair was as black as mine and was drawn away from her face with a scarf. But it wasn’t just her clothes that told me she was old—it was the way light reacted to her. She was there, she was solid and real, but there was a strange cast about her, like she was standing in a fog.

“Hello?” I said.

Her eyes widened in terror and she backed up into the corner, squeezing herself between the toilet and the wall.

“I won’t hurt you,” I told her.

The woman pressed against the tiled wall with her hands, which were worn and red and marked with cuts and strange patches of black and green.

“Seriously,” I tried again. “It’s okay. You’re safe here. My name is Rory. What’s yours?”

She seemed to understand this, because she stopped clawing at the wall for a minute and looked at me unblinkingly. She opened her mouth to speak, but only a rasping sound came out. A slow hiss. It wasn’t an angry hiss. I think that was just what her voice sounded like now. It was a solid conversational start.