The nightstand’s padlock did not cooperate with my tugging. I knew it required a key, but I didn’t have one to use. Even with the all clear, time was still precious. I looked around the room for something heavy. My eyes were beginning to adjust, and the night-cloaked furniture took on more color, as if it existed in the space between Kansas and Oz. A shelf above me held trophies from the many pageants Marley entered. Most were golden plastic and left behind thick dust outlines when moved. One had real weight. A “Most Photogenic” award Marley won when she was six. It jingled when I picked it up, and as I turned it over to examine why it was so much heavier than the others, coins and bills fell out of a jagged hole in the top. The figure had no head.

Two knocks on the door. Twice for get out of here.

I bashed the “Most Photogenic” award into the padlock, finally making a sound louder than the escalating beat of my heart. Nothing happened.

Two more quick, urgent knocks on the door.

Again, I bashed the trophy into the padlock. Nick opened the door and closed it behind him. “What are you doing?” he gasped. I hammered at the lock with the relic in my hands. The two would not do for each other what I needed. Nick tried to pick me up. “Ollie-we-have-to-go-we-will-try-again-her-dad-is-coming!”

I pounded until I’d hit my own hand more than the lock itself. Loose change flew out of the golden man like confetti. I didn’t do things halfway. Giving up was not an option. Every summer I was always the last to surrender, no matter how far I’d fallen behind the others.

Mr. Bricket found us right as the lock gave in to me. He stepped into the doorway of Marley’s unlit bedroom. His eyes did not fall onto Nick and me, but the room itself, as if it had newly been revealed to him as existing at all. I grabbed the notebook and folder from the drawer. There was a box still left behind. Before I could reach for it, Nick took a deep breath and grabbed it.

We bolted.

We headed toward the hilly part of Albany Lane. Both of us were fixed on a destination we didn’t have to discuss. Every place held a purpose for the Albany kids. Cadence Park had always been our sacred meeting ground: a wide-open space for the eight of us to gather and consider all we’d learned that day. Nick and I found our way to it in bursts—sometimes sprinting, sometimes jogging, sometimes walking so slow that every strike against the pavement echoed. Neither of us spoke.