Juno ate cake with her hands, great big chunks of it. It hit her stomach like a grenade. The frosting was blue and green like the Seahawks—no, Sam was a soccer kid—the Sounders.

There was a bowl of chips next to the cake (Juno didn’t dare eat those; they would crunch too loudly) and a tray of sandwiches sliced into little triangles. She took a plate, piled as many on as she could, and carried them back to the closet to wait.

No one opened the closet the next morning; she was so sure that Nigel Crouch would come to retrieve his golf clubs or Sam would get the itch to play one of the board games stacked on the shelves above her head. But no one came. The boys noisily ate breakfast, and they were picked up promptly at ten o’ clock by mothers who didn’t push their luck. Juno lay hidden behind the ski suits and winter coats as each of the boys said goodbye, her head resting on one of those airplane pillows. If someone were to open the door to her little hideout and really look, they’d spot her easily, but no one was looking. Her pain wasn’t any better, but her comfort was. She was ashamed to admit that lying on the freshly carpeted floor of the Crouches’ closet was the most comfortable place she’d slept in over a year.

After all of Sam’s little friends were gone, the family collected their shoes from the foyer.

“Will Grandma wait ’til the end of the night to give me my present or will she just let me open it right away?”

Juno didn’t get to hear the answer; the Crouches were out the door and heading to what Juno presumed was a family celebration for Sam. Before the door slammed behind them and the key turned in the lock, she heard Nigel punching the code into the alarm box.

Sure enough, when Juno opened the closet door five minutes later, the little screen read ARMED. The red light glowed above the word like an all-seeing red eye, mocking her. She shouted every curse word she could think of, shaking her fist at it. Had she really thought she was going to be able to just walk out of here? And then her arm fell uselessly at her side and hung there. Where did she have to be? Nowhere, Juno, you dumbbitch. She’d graduated from calling herself an idiot to a dumbbitch.