“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.”

I hurry to the entrance, ashamed to remember tiny Eoin Colfey, with his shaved head and snotty nose. Eoin, Alan Brownlow, Janice Pistorius, and Melody Pine come from the Fairview Orphanage, a long concrete building with a tin roof weighed down by bricks and car tires. Mr. and Mrs. Vincent raise money from overseas to cover the cost of their education, because Fairview orphans have no parents to pay their school fees and no parents who wish to claim them. No-fee students get smaller portions of food. Their stomachs are always empty, and that’s not how things should be. I wish there was a way to make things different.

“Follow me.” Lottie ducks through the low entrance and stands awhile to breathe the clean air. The cave is on a high ridge, and far below it is the river. A line of girls and boys wades through the water, calling out, “Darnell, Darnell” in flat voices; the novelty of searching for him is already starting to wear off. Soon, one of the bad boys—Lazy-Eye Matthew or Richard D, who lives with his uncle in Manzini and rides his rusted-out bicycle from one end of town to the other with a slingshot stuck in the waistband of his shorts—one of them will change Darnell to Dumbbell or Bumsmell, and the others will laugh.

“Should we catch up with them?” I block the entrance to the cave with the dried branches.

Lottie says, “There’s one more place that Darnell might be.”

Of course there is.