My eyes open and the battlefield disappears. The familiar bed in the darkened room has returned. The moon is normal and bright yellow. I get up and walk to the window. I scan the dark terrain, still and quiet. No sign of the mustached man, or anything else, for that matter. All the snow has melted, and the moon glistens on the wet cobblestones. Is he watching me?

I turn away and crawl back into bed. I lie on my back, taking deep breaths to calm myself. My whole body is tense and rigid. I think about the cave and how I haven’t been back since the boot prints appeared. I roll to my side with my back towards the window. I don’t want to see what’s out there. Ella still isn’t in her bed. I try to wait up for her to return, but I fall asleep. No further dreams come.

When the morning bell rings I raise my head off the pillow, my body stiff and sore. A cold rain beats against the window. I glance across the room and see Ella sitting up, lifting her arms towards the ceiling, yawning deeply.

We shuffle from the room together, saying nothing. We coast about our Sunday routines and sit through Mass with our heads hung. At one point I nudge Ella awake, and twenty minutes later she returns the favor. I survive the El Festín lunch line, doling out food while looking for anyone suspicious. When everything appears normal, I can’t decide if I’m relieved or disappointed. What saddens me most is that I don’t see Héctor.

Towards the end of cleanup, La Gorda and Gabby begin horsing around, spraying each other with the hose attached to the kitchen sink as I dry dishes. I ignore them, even when I get splashed in the face. Twenty minutes later when I’ve just finished drying the last dish, carefully placing it atop the tall stack, a girl named Delfina slips on the wet floor and bumps into me, causing me to fall into the stack and send all thirty plates back into the dirty water, where some of them break.

“Why don’t you watch what you’re doing,” I say, and I push her with one arm.

Delfina spins around and shoves me right back.

“Hey!” Sister Dora barks from across the kitchen. “You two, knock it off! Right now!”

“You’re going to pay for that,” Delfina says.

I can’t wait to be officially done with Santa Teresa.

“Whatever,” I say, still scowling.

She nods at me, a malicious look upon her face. “Watch your back.”

“If I have to come over there, Lord help me, you are going to regret it,” Sister Dora says.

Instead of using telekinesis to toss Delfina through the roof—or Sister Dora or Gabby or La Gorda, for that matter—I turn back to the dishes.