“After the art project thing? When she threw up in class? Didn’t cry before, didn’t cry after. Not that we saw. I saw her cry once, and we were all crying then. Somewhere along the line, she learned that being troubled means people pulling away or pushing her away.”

“She’s gotten better at showing it,” Ashley said. “The bag. That was positive.”

“That’s really, really good, then. Because before? It took the world ending to crack her. Outside of that, you’d have a nine—she’s eleven now?”

“Yeah,” Tristan said. “Thereabouts.”

“You’d have an eleven-year-old, then, who’s internalizing so much that she loses hair in patches or makes herself sick. She didn’t ever cry, she didn’t signal how upset she was. Even if she’s doing better, you have to pay attention.”

“For ten percent of what you dealt with?” I asked.

“Victoria,” Houndstooth said. “The school stuff, the Wards stuff was structured. There was natural pushback when she stepped over lines. Punishments, rules for the classroom, rules for the Wards, oversight, teams of people having hours-long meetings about her. The art project, moving classes, her being bullied because of her behavior and her visceral reactions to that, the bullying in school, all of that was the easy stuff.”

“Can I ask about the hard stuff?”

“You can ask, but I don’t know if I can summarize it. We had a nine-year-old girl with no stopping points when it came to anything social. No brakes, a practically nonexistent sense of boundaries, and zero emotional defenses.”

“An acquaintance of ours described her as a bull in a china shop with a profound love for dishware,” Tristan said.

“Don’t joke,” Ashley said.

“It’s pretty apt,” Houndstooth said. “And I don’t think anyone’s laughing.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“One of her classmates’ families moved away, in large part because of her. One or two other families were seriously considering it. At least one of her teachers from the training camps was being investigated with a job and career on the line. Most people who were involved knew what the reality of Kenzie was, but procedures had to be followed, and when you have someone as vulnerable as she is, you can’t ever be one hundred percent sure. We had a similar thing with our Wards team leader, early on, but we were more proactive in anticipating it, and they were allegations of a different tint. I wish I could convey the trail of destruction.”

“No,” Ashley said.

“No?” Houndstooth asked.

“She’s not a bull in a china shop. She’s not a headache, she’s not a bringer of destruction, a tinker, or Ward, a nine-year-old, or an eleven-year-old. You keep reducing her down, you make her small, and you make the problem big.”