“Krys isn’t here yet,” I said.

“You still like him,” Sadie said. “I can hear it in how you say his name.”

I shrugged. “Perhaps. But we can never be together, so what does it matter?”

“Never say never,” she said, flinging my own words from earlier back at me. We laughed for a moment, our voices carrying too far with the wind. “Love always matters,” she added, her voice earnest now.

We rounded the corner near the bridge. Just then, there came the sound of a car engine ahead. It was a police car like the one we had seen earlier, now patrolling the riverbank. We leapt back around the corner, pressing ourselves flat against one of the buildings to stay out of sight. Beside me, Sadie trembled. I braced for our discovery, tried to think of an excuse to explain our being out at this hour. The police car snaked slowly by on the road that ran along the river.

“We can’t wait here,” I said when the police car had passed.

“What should we do?” Sadie asked, still shaking with fear. I considered the question. We could not go back to my house, but it wasn’t safe to stay on the street. “We need to find somewhere out of sight.”

“Where?” she asked.

I did not answer, but studied the row of houses that ran along the river, searching desperately for some sort of hiding place. My gaze stopped at a house that looked abandoned, with a set of steps leading up to the front door. “There,” I said, pointing to the space beneath the stairs, which was empty but for a handful of crates.

Sadie followed me to the house with the stairs. As we pulled the crates out of the way, a stale odor billowed out from the crawl space. I took shallow breaths and tried not to gag, but Sadie climbed into the tiny space without hesitation, seeming not to notice the smell. I didn’t know if people lived in the adjacent houses, whether they would notice us under the stairs or mind. But it was all we had and it would have to do.

I crawled in carefully and Sadie blocked the entrance with the crates to protect us, though they would not stop anyone who tried to get in. We huddled together in silence. “It’s my birthday today,” I realized suddenly aloud. With all that had happened, the way the days blended together, I had nearly forgotten.

Sadie sat up straighter. “Oh, Ella, happy birthday!”

It was hard to believe I had forgotten my own birthday. I was the youngest child in my family and my parents had always made a great fuss, with parties and presents and balloons, and a trip to the zoo if the weather was nice. Now there was simply no one to remember. “When is your birthday?” I asked Sadie.

“September 8. Maybe this will all be over by then and we can celebrate together.”

“We shall,” I said, wanting to cling to the improbable vision of the future she offered. Seemingly exhausted, Sadie leaned her head on my shoulder. She began to shiver, and I wasn’t sure if it was from cold or fear or something else. I moved closer for warmth, then took off my sweater and placed it around her, pulling her close. Then warmth enveloped me, and in this most improbable of places, we slept.