She turns to reply and trips in front of me, falling to her knees. She’s hit the edge of a lump in the road, an understuffed ball of mush that has burst. She howls, and I see it: the ragged body of a dead cat, beneath our feet. Hit by a car and tossed aside, I think, but doom builds in me anyway, like the roadkill’s a threat, a symbol of what happens if you let darkness sneak up on you. I help her up, out of breath, and she pushes me away and starts running again, half hobbling and crying. Leaving delicate footprints in congealing blood.

“Stop. Stop,” I say, slowing by a lamppost to catch my breath. I settle on the curb to finally put on my shoes, my feet blackened with dirt. A chorus of insect life sounds through the low bushes lining the streets, causing the subtlest tremor in the leaves, as if creatures in the bush rush up with urgent warnings. The gnarled trees above us cut giant hunchbacked figures, displeased, looming with crooked necks like mourners.

“Do you have a wet wipe or something?” she asks, in the most despairing voice I’ve ever heard.

I rustle through my backpack but only find our copy of White Fox I brought.

“Then what was the point of bringing a whole hiking backpack?” She moans, dropping next to me. “What the hell was that? Why would you make us stay in that haunted house with that batshit woman? I don’t want to do anything like this ever again. I’m done.” Her face is wet and puffy, only loosely formed. “I want to go home.”

I am afraid to tell her what I know: that there is no home for us, not as there once was. There hasn’t been a home for a long time. Stökéwood doesn’t count, because when people leave a house, it stops being a home. And Aunt Marion’s doesn’t count, either, because if it did, Tai wouldn’t have to drown herself in the pixelated light of her phone nightly. I wouldn’t have to journal constantly to pull myself out of anxious holes.

I try the zippered pockets of my backpack and find a crunched-up old receipt. I help her get some of the crustiness off her feet. It doesn’t do much good, but it calms her down.