Outside, a good portion of our block had emerged from their windowsill perches. Contempt seeped from every seam of their breezy layers and crooked robes. They were grandparents and recluses. We were the rascals of Albany Lane. Marley was fifteen, Aidy was fourteen, Bigs and Teeny were thirteen, Ruby was twelve, and Nick and I were eleven. Our unattractive ages rendered us too old to be babysat, but too young to be so self-sufficient. Still, an unspoken trust permeated throughout all of Cadence. All residents granted the town’s children permission to roam without any real supervision, just as they had, and the generation before, and the one before that, and so on and so forth.

“What was that sound?” Old Mr. Jimenez, in his worn khaki shorts, half-buttoned Hawaiian shirt, and beige ball cap, asked me with a heavy undertone of disdain. “Are you setting off fireworks? Where are your parents? It isn’t—”

“Leave us alone!” Ruby shouted in protection.

We continued toward Marley’s, running down the street and around to the back of her house. The screen door was open. Bloodstained footprints, tracked in reverse, led us to the master bedroom.

Looking at the size of the prints in comparison to mine, sometimes stepping in one to measure the heel of it to my toe, I knew they were Nick’s, but there was no time to wonder where he’d gone.

Marley’s dead body lay in front of us.

12

Everything around me looked like textbook Cadence, the same exterior I’d seen nearly every single day of my life, washed out by the sun, strangled by dry heat. The ancient train tracks had disappeared completely. Rocky sand and starved shrubbery left little indication of where they’d once been. I walked up and down, feeling for what was left of them.

After such a long bout with Harrison in the dark, my thoughts turned inside out in the startling brightness. To me, the letters read as sentimental. They highlighted what was best about each of us. They gave us each a task.

That didn’t seem despairing. Did it?

Chasing the Adventure five years later wasn’t supposed to mean rewriting history. But words could do that. Take on new life in different minds. Turn themselves into monsters when they might have been conceived as angels.