I cup my palm over my mouth to stop from gagging. The cave disgusts and fascinates me. Boys, in greater number than Darnell Parns, found this hideaway and furnished it with a long log to sit on and a dug-out fire pit filled with ash and the bones of tiny birds. A stack of canned food and a metal can opener rest against a wall, no doubt stolen from boys like Rian, who are too small or weak to defend themselves.

“No Darnell.” I slowly circle the cave, drawn to the rude pictures and the damp section of wall where boys pee. It really is foul, and we ought to leave immediately. “Did he tell you about his place?”

“The boys who use this cave buy their home-brewed beer from Mama Khumalo. I followed them one day, just to see where they’d end up. They disappeared into the hillside and I knew, for sure, that there was a cave hidden somewhere.”

“You were right,” I say and step around a pile of bloody chicken feathers. What the boys did to the chicken, I do not want to know.

“Look here.” Lottie wanders over to a hand-drawn map on the back wall. Father says that maps help us make sense of the world. They tell us where we are and which direction to go in to find what we’re looking for. If you’re lost, a map can save your life.

“That’s Keziah.” I recognize the square shapes that represent the chapel, the classrooms, and the girls’ and boys’ dormitories. Trees drawn with stuck-out branches mark the orchard and the bush that grows down to the river.

“And that’s Mama Khumalo’s hut,” Lottie says. Of course, she knows what lies beyond the school boundaries better than I do.

“What do these mean?” A dozen white crosses are scattered across the map at odd intervals and make no sense to me. Lottie tilts her head and squints. She overlays her mental map of the lazy river bends and the blue distant hills and, after a moment, her eyes go bright.

“I get it. The white crosses are food.” She jabs a mark near Mama Khumalo’s hut. “That’s a fig tree, and these baby crosses here are a stand of bananas right on the border of Bosman’s farm. The fruit is still green, but in a few weeks it’ll be good to eat.”

“And the red line around the bananas?”

“A warning,” she says. “Bosman. He has guns, and his three sons have guns, like I told you. It’s better to stay away from him and his farm.”

“Oh . . .” Hunger makes people do strange things. One day, one of the poor boys who helped set up the cave might ignore the red warning lines and risk an encounter with Bosman and his sons to grab a handful of ripe bananas. “Let’s go.”