Mary Ellen went downstairs. The den was strewn with clothes; an empty soda bottle lay on the floor. She looked out the sliding glass door at the footprints running across the deck. The girl hadn’t been wearing a coat. And—was this even possible? Mary Ellen could have sworn she wasn’t wearing any shoes.
9
The snow was fighting her, pulling down her pants, sucking off her socks. Ivy needed to get away from the snow the way you escape a dog or a bear: up a tree. She could see the little tree house, but she seemed to be in a nightmare, because it kept drawing away from her no matter how hard she ran. It couldn’t be a nightmare, though. This was the most awake she’d felt in weeks. Needles were stabbing her feet, flames licking her hands. What was happening? She couldn’t remember.
It was so hard to hold on to a thought these days, so hard to stay tethered to reality during this feverish, vomit-soaked dream. She stumbled, fell to her knees. The snow attacked her hands, and she cried out. She got up and lurched toward the tree house, clutching the waistband of her thin cotton pants. This was the one with a blanket, she was pretty sure of that. The one upstream of the Dumpster house, down the hill a bit. The one with the dirty magazines and the dirtier blanket.
She couldn’t get up the ladder. She managed to clamp her fingers around the rough wooden crosspieces, but the ground kept leaping up to grab her. She raised one foot onto the ladder, her wet sock drooping over the end of her foot. She bounced a little, then heaved her weight up and over that foot, one arm reaching up to hook an elbow around the next rung. She rested a moment but knew she had to keep moving before everything turned to spaghetti and she fell backward into the snow.
Next foot up. She couldn’t feel it touching the ladder, just a dull sort of pressure at the bottom of her leg. “Come on, Ivy,” she muttered. “Up.” Each time she got a foot onto a rung, it would take a few bounces to straighten her knee, and then she’d feel her weight sway backward and she’d have to gather every ounce of strength into her arms to pull herself back against the wood. Her breaths were coming faster and faster, her head feeling lighter and lighter.
Finally, with a squeezed kind of moan—nnnggg—she heaved her belly onto the floor of the tree house and swung a knee up behind her. After a moment, she pulled the rest of her body across the floor, sat up, tugged off her wet socks, and wrapped the stiff, dusty blanket around her legs and feet. She hugged her knees and rocked back and forth, white puffs of breath blooming from her mouth.
Stupid. Stupid. What did it matter if Agnes saw her like this, all sweaty and dull-eyed? Ivy could make her understand; she would fill her in on the plan. It was silly to hide from her. If only she’d had a chance to comb her hair, change her clothes. No more soap; the sliver had slipped down the drain. Agnes would make that face, but whatever. The important thing now was to rest, so she could get her head together when it was time to talk.
They’d talk in the morning, when light began to soak through the hem of sky above the trees. Now everything was going black. The threads of the sheets were sugared with broken glass, and something was coming in the night and cutting her hair, but if she didn’t move, she’d be safe. Safe as houses, Gran always said, safe as Dumpsters, safe as swinging crystals in filthy cars. Crystals were growing all over her body. She could feel them flowering hungrily; she could hear the tinkle and clank through the darkness. And then, without warning, everything hardened into silence.
10
Mary Ellen stepped onto the deck, holding her phone up in the air. No signal. She spun around, walked the length of the deck, waved the phone back and forth like a flag. Nothing. She stared at the path of footprints leading into the woods, her head buzzing with alarm and indecision. Part of her wanted to run to the car; part of her thought the shoeless girl must be half-frozen by now. She felt confused. Who, exactly, needed saving? She jammed the phone into her coat pocket and went inside, where she fetched a long knife from the kitchen. Best to hedge her bets.
The footprints zigzagged a lot, yielding occasionally to what appeared to be hand- and knee-prints. They were easy to follow, having been punched clearly through the icy crust on top of the snow. Mary Ellen’s large, heavy boots obliterated the prints as she matched the girl’s stride, trying to imagine the story behind this barefoot flight.
The prints led to a ladder, which led to a deer blind jutted against a tree, about six feet up. Mary Ellen stopped a few yards away, watching.
“Hello?”
She coughed.
“Are you all right?”
She gripped the knife, waited a moment, drew a few steps closer.
“It’s a little cold to be out here without shoes.”
The trees were creaking; the forest sounded like an old wooden ship. Mary Ellen pulled herself up the first few rungs of the ladder so she could peek into the blind. The girl was asleep under a muddy blanket, her wet socks off to the side, her long hair covering her face.
“Excuse me?”
Mary Ellen dropped the knife in the snow, then pulled herself up farther and reached her hand in to touch the girl’s leg. She didn’t move. Mary Ellen climbed into the little structure, knelt next to the girl, and brushed her hair back.
“My God.” She pulled off a glove and pressed two fingers against the girl’s neck, but the angle was awkward, and her fingers were
