“Mo said they were going to teach him a lesson for messing with Leslie. I swear to you that’s all I knew. I don’t know how Leslie found out, but she said they’ve done this before. She said that they’ve hurt people… not just Eli.” He trailed off. “I can’t let anything happen to you, Ash. That’s why we have to go.”

Ash’s entire body vibrated with fear. She didn’t want to leave Becca. There had to be another way. “Fuck Mo. Let’s come clean. I’ll wake Becca up. We’ll tell her everything.”

Nate leaned back, crossing his arms, his eyes flashing. “And then what?”

“I don’t know. Becca’s partner Nina is cool. She’s helped me out. Between the two of them, they’ll know what to do.”

“Oh yeah, Nina’s cool? Think she’ll be cool with my arrests? The assault charges and my running from the cops?”

She knew Nate had been arrested for assault. Some guy was trying to get rough with him and he fought back. It wasn’t his fault. “We’ll explain that the guy was lying. That you were defending yourself.”

Nate shifted on the bed, his annoyance growing. “Think about it, Ash. We’ve both got records. You think the cops are going to take our word for it when we say bad things happened? We don’t even have Eli’s last fucking name or proof of what they did to him. Shit, you know as well as I do, even when you have proof, people don’t do shit,” Nate said.

Ash still remembered her first-grade teacher, Mrs. Boyles. She was magical, with her multicolored cardigans and gardenia-scented perfume. Her classroom was Ash’s escape, her only respite from her mother’s brutality. Each day she would try to find the right way to say the words out loud. “My mother hurts me.”

On the last day of school, Ash summoned all her courage and confessed that her mother beat her. The woman’s pale pinks lips pursed, her eyes narrowing into small slits. “Now, Ashley, I’ve met your mother, and she’s a lovely woman. Why would you make up such horrible lies?”

Ash imagined sitting across from the police and telling them about Eli. “They were beating him, and we left. We just left.” She imagined their questions, tinged with accusation.

“Why didn’t you do anything to stop them? Why didn’t you call for help? You waited to days to come forward? Why is that?” She imagined sitting across from Becca, her face etched with disappointment.

“I don’t know what to do,” Ash said softly.

“Have you ever been to Taos?”

“New Mexico?”

“Yeah, it’s amazing. When I was seven, my mom and I went there on our way to the Grand Canyon. It’s like this funky town with a bunch of artist types. You could take photos, and I could play music. We could get jobs, find a place to live.” He glanced over at Freud. “We could even get a dog of our own.”

“So we go to Taos and what—hide out?” Ash asked.