Behind us, the bathroom window explodes.
I bite my sleeve to keep from screaming.
The boy then saunters on as his friends joke and point out his next shot, a mailbox farther away. He shoots that, too, the echo of the shot reverberating across my skin, or maybe it’s just that I’m shaking and can’t seem to stop.
We wait until we can’t hear them anymore, and then we creep across the lawn and away from the house. Loudly, far more loudly than I’d like, Peter says, “Well, that was a productive stop. Still need breakfast food, though. Ready for our next target?”
He sounds so cheery. I point behind us. “There’s a dead man back there.”
He pauses, puts down the trash bag, and puts his hands on my shoulders. I feel the strength in his hands. I don’t know how his hands continue to have such calming power. It’s as if he’s cupped his hands around my heart, soothing it. “You can’t save everyone. Consider that your next lesson. That man died before he came here.” He’s earnest in a way I’ve never seen him, eyes intent on mine. I imagine I see a flicker of...what? Sadness? All the childlike play is gone, and I see a man who looks as though he’s lost more than I can imagine.
“How do you know? Those kids had guns. They could have—”
Claire answers. “If he’d died here without the Missing Man, he wouldn’t have been able to leave.” She mimes a bird flying away with her hands.
I try to make sense of that statement, turn it around in my head, twist it upside down and sideways as if it were a Rubik’s Cube that will resolve itself if I turn the sides correctly. It matches what she said earlier about the man’s death, but it still doesn’t make sense. If Claire is telling the truth...even death isn’t an escape from this place. “I don’t—”
“And now we hide again.” Peter yanks my arm and pulls me behind the nearest junk pile. We crouch while Claire scampers silently to the top of the heap. She peeks around an open, torn umbrella. She holds up three fingers for us to see and then points to the left.
“Three people, to the left,” Peter whispers in my ear.
“You know I’m not an idiot, right?”
“All evidence disagrees with you.” His breath flutters on my skin, and I tell myself not to react to his nearness, not to even notice.
“All evidence says you’re insane, but you don’t see me condescending to you, do you?”
His mouth twists as if he wants to laugh. He glances up at Claire. She scrambles down from the heap and lands lightly beside us. “Lots of scavengers today,” she reports. “Another group of six that way. And I think I saw three go into a blue house.”
“All right then,” Peter says. “It’s time for intensive training. First, keep your hands free.” He combs over the trash heap and extracts a backpack. It’s black with lacrosse team patches sewn on. “There’s never a shortage of bags here. Always check them for holes. Also, for scorpions.” He unzips and upends it. Notebook and textbooks fall out. Claire squats and sorts through it but comes up empty, except for a soccer-ball key chain, which she pockets. Peter fills the bag with the canned goods and other food items from the dead man’s house. He slings the pack over his shoulders. “Second, keep moving. Scavengers are interested in what’s stationary and easy, not in what’s tough to catch or hard to see.” He strides toward the nearest building. It’s a boarded-up storefront, formerly a Laundromat. A row of rusted washing machines lines the window. “Third, when possible, go up.” He climbs onto a trash can, grabs the Laundromat sign, and swings onto the roof. He then flattens onto his stomach, leans over and holds out his arms. Claire climbs like a spider monkey up the window and onto the roof without his help. He’s waiting for me.
I step onto the trash can and grab his hand. His muscles flex as he pulls me up. I try to help by clinging to the gutter and swinging my leg, but it’s mostly him hoisting me onto the roof.
He continues as if he weren’t hefting me up with one arm, “Scavengers are looking down most of the time, not up. You can pass within feet of them without notice if you’re above them.”
I flop onto the flat roof like a fish, and I roll onto my back. He doesn’t look winded. In fact, he smiles at me. “There has to be a better way to do that,” I say.
“You’ll learn,” he promises.
“I don’t want to learn. I want to go home.” His smile fades, and I wish I could suck the words back in. “I’m sorry. I know you’re trying to help.”
“I’ve told you already—I can’t send you home.” I hear coldness in his voice, and I shrink from it. “How many times must I say it?”
“I know. I’m sorry. Only the Missing Man can. I get it, really. Please...continue the lessons. I’ll shut up.” I mentally slap myself. Last thing I need is to offend him so badly that he strands me on a roof.
Peter looks at Claire. “Are yousureshe’s different?”
Claire nods. “Maybe she just doesn’t know it yet?”
“All right. I’ll accept that. For now.” Peter spins, and his coat swirls around him like a cape. He springs across the rooftop. Claire runs after him, and I follow, determined not to risk alienating him again. If I want to find my way home to Mom, I have to stay alive long enough to do it.
He lifts up a plank of wood that lies near the gutter, and he lays it from one roof to the next. He then walks across it with his arms outstretched for balance. Claire follows behind him like a little acrobat.
Clearly, they expect me to follow them.
Just as clearly, I have to.
Stopping at the edge of the plank, I look down. It’s only one story. People can’t die from a one-story fall, can they? Peter and Claire wait on the other side. I kneel on the board, focus on them, and crawl across. I don’t look down.
