I don’t answer. All I want to do is get out of these woods alive.

Carter and Jason run behind the trailer in a half crouch, like soldiers in a war movie.

The thing is, this is not a crime show and it’s not a war movie. Am I the only one who knows that?

Moving from tree to tree, we find a good watching place. Jason and Carter grab the edges of a camouflage tarpaulin and struggle to pull it off whatever’s hidden underneath. They almost fall over backwards, but they finally succeed. It’s Ms. Sullivan’s car—or what’s left of it. The tires are gone, the doors are gone, the seats are gone. Even the dashboard, the console, and the glove compartment are gone. We wouldn’t have known it was hers if we hadn’t seen the license plate lying in the weeds.

Skylar and I huddle so close together I can almost hear her heart beating. Except for the license plate, there’s nothing left to prove that Ms. Sullivan owned this car. There’s no sense of her as my teacher, as an artist, as a really special person I will never see again. I picture her driving to the end of Marie Drive the day she disappeared forever. She must have been angry with him. He let her down, I guess, and she left him sitting in his SUV with Andy’s car seat in the back. It was all so sad.

If only she hadn’t fallen in love with him, if only he’d been who we thought he was.

Carter swears and draws my attention back to him and Jason. “He’s stripped it already.”

“Let’s go,” Jason says. “There’s nothing left to take.”

As they walk away, we hear an engine.

Jason looks over his shoulder. “Someone’s coming!” The boys run toward us and dive into the bushes a heartbeat away from Skylar and me. We freeze.

Paul’s red pickup comes up a dirt driveway and stops near the trailer. He shuts off the engine and sits and listens before he gets out. A big black dog jumps from the back of the truck. If it smells us, we’re dead. Nobody moves. Nobody even breathes.

The dog stops to pee and then follows Paul. I’m too scared to watch them, so I close my eyes like a kid at a horror movie. I knew something like this would happen.

I hear the key turn in the padlock and then the squeak of the door. After it closes softly, I open my eyes. The trailer looks as deserted as before, but I know Paul and his dog are in there.

That’s when Carter and Jason notice us. They stare at us like they’re in shock.

“What are you doing here?” Carter growls.

“We followed you,” Skylar says.