My answer seems to bore her, and the girl wanders along the creek away from us.
Damiano steps closer to me. “How long has your mom been inside?”
He told me the truth about why I can’t sit by the house. I should tell him the truth too. “She’s not inside.”
He frowns at me, not understanding.
“A fish, a fish!” Lily screams, beating the surface of the water with her stick and no doubt scaring away any fish that might have been there.
Damiano calls out to her, “That’s close enough, Lily. The water is deep there.” When he’s satisfied she’s stepped back, he turns back to me. “If she’s not inside, where is your mom?”
I open my mouth, but no words come out. I’ve been asking myself that question for two days.
“I’m bored. I want Dad.” Lily drops her stick and dashes across the grass toward the house.
“Lily, don’t.” Damiano reaches for her, but it’s too late, and she slips away from him. As she flees, he shouts after her, “Don’t go in that house.”
Lily was about to reach for the handle on the back door, but she changes her mind and starts knocking instead.
He sighs and turns back to me. “Sorry. Where’s your mom?”
“I don’t know. She was in the house, and I was out here. I heard the car start, but when I ran over to it, she turned onto the street and drove away.” I can still see it—the red taillights disappearing around the corner while I screamed for her. I ran until my lungs burned and my legs gave out, and then I sat in the middle of the empty road and cried until I couldn’t cry anymore.
“You mean she drove off and left you here?” Damiano’s expression is full of disbelief. “I’m so sorry, Lucy. Do you know her phone number? When Dad comes out, I’ll borrow his phone, and we can call her.”
I shake my head. I don’t know her number. She changed it recently and I haven’t got the new one memorized.
“Then I guess we’ll have to call the police,” he says, with the grimace of someone who has learned to dislike cops. I wonder if seeing a police car makes his dad’s hands clench on the steering wheel like it does my mom. Maybe like Mom, Damiano’s father fearfully twitches aside the curtains to see who’s knocking on the front door.
“If Dad lets me,” he mutters, kicking a rock. “I’ll have to call where he can’t hear me.”
“I don’t want you to get into trouble because of me.”
He looks at me from beneath his lashes and smiles—a little cocky, a little sweet. It’s the first real smile I’ve seen from him, and it makes warmth bloom in my chest. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
I find myself smiling back at him. For the first time in two days, I don’t feel quite so alone.
He smiles wider, and then laughs, turning toward the house. “Come on, let’s go and get Lily before she—”
But Damiano’s words die in his throat. Lily is disappearing inside the house, the door closing behind her.
Damiano’s face drains of color. He takes one lurching step forward, then another. “Lily, come back out here.”
The world explodes.
A deafening roar tears the air apart. The house erupts in a ball of fire and light so bright it’s like the sun has crashed to earth. The force of the blast hits me like a physical thing, knocking the air from my lungs.
Damiano breaks into a run, his legs pumping as he races toward the house. “Lily!” he screams. “LILY!”
Damiano’s scream cuts off. I can hear more screaming from inside the house.
Heat washes over me in waves. Glass and metal rain down around us, glinting in the firelight. Something hot slices the right side of my head, a burning agony that makes white spots dance across my vision. Wet warmth streams down my neck and into my collar.
My knees buckle.
The world tilts sideways and goes dark.
Sound returns first,a high-pitched ringing that drowns out everything else. Then someone calling my name, over and over, desperate and broken.
