Nigel’s steady, methodical footsteps echoed above Juno’s head. She crouched beneath the coats and costumes, breathing through her nose and smelling the faint aroma of urine. A cough stirred at the back of her throat, and she tried to swallow it down before it became a thing. That was one of her biggest fears—discovery by coughing. Her thighs burned, muscles she hadn’t used in weeks being forced to hold her weight, however slight she was. His boots were on the stairs now; soon he’d put off the alarm and open the closet to grab his bag. Juno heard him clear his throat, then the faint beeping of buttons as he tapped in the code, disarming the alarm. The code was Sam’s original due date: 0602. She’d once overheard Winnie reminding Dakota of it. The door opened and closed, and Nigel was gone. He hadn’t taken his gym bag today, and she stared at it hard before crawling over. She checked the zippers first, then the inside. There was a five stuck in the inside pocket; she smoothed it out on her knee and kept looking. She pushed past a change of clothes and a small bottle of cologne. At the bottom of the bag was an Altoids tin that didn’t rattle with mints when she nudged past it. Juno brought it out and flipped open the lid. She didn’t have time for this; Sam would be waking up any moment.

Her mouth went dry as she stared down at a credit card, a wad of twenties that looked like it amounted to about five hundred dollars, and a single, foil-wrapped condom. She unwrapped a twenty from the wad and shoved it into her pocket with the five. What she did next didn’t surprise her as much as it amused her. Juno crawled back to the hot dog costume, the one she liked to hold against her face. She’d had a big surprise one day when the tip of a safety pin had jabbed her in the cheek. She’d reattached it to the hot dog, the sharp pin tucked away. Now she retrieved the pin with only minutes to spare; Sam was in the bathroom. With the aspirin coating her pain, Juno was actually pretty fast. She liked the way it felt to stick the sharp end of the safety pin past the foil and into the rubbery onionskin beneath it. She pushed the pin all the way through. Then she put everything back the way she found it; that was the trick. Juno was out the front door before Sam had even flushed the toilet. She had an eight-hour window.