Light from the boys’ dormitory fades, and the road ahead is dark. We drag our branches with us so we’ll be ready to fight the fire the moment that we get back. Butcher, a Rhodesian ridgeback who killed five chickens last term and almost cost the night watchman his arm, barks in Mrs. McDonald’s yard. Butcher is cracked in the head, but Mrs. McDonald doesn’t have the heart to put him down, so she keeps him chained to a metal spike under the mango trees. I’m sure that Lottie thinks chaining an animal is cruel and that Mrs. McDonald is wrong to do it.

“I wish Butcher would shut up,” I say. The staff houses on either side of us make black shapes against the night. “The generator is on. How come there’s no lights?”

“Nobody’s home to turn the light switches on. Everyone’s at the fire.” Lottie is sullen. “Everyone but us.”

“It’s all right. We’ll go when we get back from the shed.” I loop my arm through hers to let her know that she’s not alone in her disappointment. We’re more than just roommates. We shared our dreams for the future and read Jane Eyre together and we might even be friends, though neither one of us would say it out loud. Friendship with Lottie Diamond seemed impossible at the beginning of term but now, well, here we are, arm in arm, and not one part of me is shocked by how easily we fit. Strange thumping sounds break through my thoughts and I go still.

“Hear that?” My heart leaps into my throat.

“No,” Lottie says.

“Shh . . . listen.” Another thump comes from our left. Butcher goes berserk. His metal chain rakes across the dirt as he chases whatever’s back there. I grip the wooden handle of my panga and squeeze Lottie’s arm. The ground shakes, and a vervet monkey leaps over the front fence of Mrs. McDonald’s house and runs across the road with a baby on its back. A troop of monkeys follows, and their howls make the skin on my neck prickle. They disappear into the vacant land between the big-boys’ dorm and the woodworking shed, and the monkey run happened so fast that I wonder if I dreamed it, except that Butcher is mad with barking and Lottie is wide-eyed.

“See that?” she says. “Something scared them. We should go look.”

“No.” I grind my feet into the ground. “We have to take the pangas to the shed and join the others.”

“Fine.” Lottie pulls away from me. “When you get back to the sports field, tell Mrs. Thomas that you lost me. I’m going to see what made those monkeys run.”

She hurries toward the classrooms and doesn’t look back.

I look toward the faraway shed. Then I look at her vanishing in the dark. I chase after her. “Wait for me!”