“Not to worry. I’ve haven’t worn one of the wretched things since I burned mine in 1969.”

“Did women really burn their bras?” Mel asks.

“Yup.”

“I thought it was an urban legend, like Freddy and Elm Street,” Mel says.

The jeans are a little loose in the seat, but otherwise they fit. The T-shirt is a T-shirt. Dressed, Rose is amazed at how much more substantial she feels, almost capable, almost brave.

“The fashion cure,” she says as she pulls on the ball cap.

“Whatever.” Mel taps thumbs against the face of her cell phone. “Car in four minutes,” she says, looking out the little window. “I think you should go now. You never know how long Stella’s going to be gone. Mostly it’s like days or weeks, but I think she pops back unexpectedly, hoping to catch me and Uncle Daniel out, so she can snoop. I’m pretty sure she copied Uncle Daniel’s house key.”

“I’m packed,” Rose says.

“I’ll come by your house later and bring you food and stuff for a couple days,” Mel promises.

“Don’t you have school?” Rose asks as she follows Mel out the stunted door.

“It’s Sunday.”

“I knew that.”

In six minutes Rose is in the passenger seat of a black late-model SUV headed to 87 Applegarth Street. Mel had the address in the contacts list on her phone. To save face, Rose acted like it was familiar. It wasn’t. Applegarth rang not even one tiny bell.

Rose intends to really pay attention, to learn the way from Melanie’s house to hers, to remember street names and landmarks. Soon she gives up and stares out the window at an endless upscale sameness of bedroom community stitched together by trees, lawns, and spent azaleas. The city of Charlotte must have an ordinance requiring homeowners to plant twenty percent of their land in azaleas, Rose thinks.

“Here we go,” says the driver, a nice-looking man named Andre. Andre stays silent for the fifteen-minute drive, so Rose is rather fond of him. The car turns off Laurel Street onto Applegarth. A block and a half down, on the right, is a lot twice as deep as its neighbors. Rose remembers they chose it for the illusion of seclusion. At the end of a gravel drive is a small two-story house, faintly Victorian in the sharpness of its roof and the wraparound porch.

Halfway up the long drive a police car is parked on the gravel. An officer stands talking to two women.