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tea set in a blanket and take it into the field. But she said it
wasn t really a party unless there were at least three people
there three girls and so I convinced Rae to come too.
As we set up the plastic cups and stale banana muffins,
Rae told me for the first time that she was leaving Amble as
soon as she could. I remember ice dripping into my stomach
when she told me, and the feeling of cold running under my
skin. But it wasn t because Rae said she was leaving; it was
96
the way Ella looked when she said it. Her eyes grew as round
as moons, but she wasn t scared. There was something else
prickling up inside of her interest. She didn t tell Rae she
shouldn t go, or that she was stupid for leaving, like I did. I
remember she just asked a lot of questions: Why would you
leave? How are you going to leave? When?
Rae was my best friend, but I could learn to live with-
out her. I think there was a part of me that knew all along
that Rae would eventually leave me, anyway. She always
reminded me of a caged animal pacing, staring out
between the bars with wide eyes. Waiting until someone
left the door ajar, even for a second.
Ella, however, I thought would stay.
And at first, it seemed like she would. She was the
golden child of Amble, the dimple-faced girl filled with
laughter and light. Ella always got her choice of part in the
church play (which was usually some oddball, obscure part
like the angel or townsperson #2 in Joseph and the Tech-
nicolor Dream Coat). She played soccer and decorated her
ceiling with stars and lightning bolts, and secretly painted
Ella lives here on a bench in town with orange nail pol-
ish. She had it all in Amble. Why would she ever leave?
So when Aunt Sharon eventually came out of her room,
her face raw and swollen, I help but think that whatever had
happened to Ella wasn t because she wanted it to.
Claire, sit down, Aunt Sharon said patted the couch
next to her. I need to tell you some bad news.
I sat and I waited.
It s about Ella.
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I nodded, trying to swallow down the impatience bub-
bling in my chest. We d already been over this.
Aunt Sharon took a deep breath and said, She s missing.
I waited.
And I felt nothing.
But it wasn t the same kind of nothing I d felt when
I found Ella half-dead in the cornfield two years ago. It
wasn t the kind of nothing that consumed me so that I
could stare at bloody rip across her face and still be able to
sing her Christmas carols.
This nothing felt empty.
I think part of that emptiness was because I already
knew that something terrible had happened to her. But I
think the rest of it was because I d expected it all along,
since the day I left Amble.
I d taunted the wolves my whole life, yelled into the
stalks that they weren t real. I d teased them that night,
splashing the snow with cherry vodka and dangling peri-
winkle yarn into the star-splattered sky.
The wolves were still after me. They wouldn t stop
hunting until they killed me.
They re watching you, Claire.
They waited as long as they could, watching for my
hair to get tangled in corn leaves so they could tear out my
throat while I wasn t paying attention. They followed me
in the shadows of the city, and painted the streets red with
their bloody paws. But I left Amble, I never came back.
So they took her as ransom.
They wanted me back in Amble.
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Claire! A finger snapped in front of my face. Claire,
are you going to pass out? She started to press the buttons
on her cell phone, probably to call an ambulance or some-
thing overdramatic like that.
I m fine, I m fine. I pulled the phone out of her
hand. I m not going to pass out, I swear.
Aunt Sharon s shoulders slumped and she pressed her
hands into her face. That poor, poor girl. After everything
that happened before, now this. She choked back a sob.
What are Mike and Rosie going to do? What are we going
to do?
I don t know, I said, and I stood. But that wasn t
the truth. I m going to my room. That was the truth. I
stepped over Aunt Sharon s purse and headed toward the
hallway.
Before I turned the knob, I d made up my mind.
I had no choice.
It was me or Ella, and I d already let them hurt Ella
once.
Now it was my turn.
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twelve
It s a funny thing, when you decide it s okay to die. I guess
when Mom and Dad sent me to New York, they d thought
I wanted to die then, that they d find me hanging from my
doorframe, strung up by Ella s blinking rainbow lights. But
they were wrong.
I wanted to find the wolves.
I wanted them to know I didn t care if they still
watched me.
I wanted to watch her learn to talk again, watch her
half-eaten lips learn to make sounds again.
I didn t want to die then.
And I guess I still didn t. But that itchy feeling prick-
ling at the back of my mind always told me that I d have
to face them one day The wolves were waiting, and they
didn t care if I wanted to live.
The train was only five miles from my exit, about a
100
half an hour outside of Amble. I hadn t stopped chewing
my lip since Philadelphia, and now I had a bloody crater
pooling there.
Hysteria bubbled up in me and I started to giggle.
Even when I pressed my hand over my mouth, I couldn t
muffle the manic laughter coming out of my throat. The
guy next to me shifted his Time magazine so there was a
wall of glossy pictures between us.
The two most important things I took with me when I
left Amble: Ella s periwinkle bird and a mountain of guilt.
I took the same two things with me when I came back.
I couldn t stop laughing about this.
The train lurched to a stop, metal screeched against
steel until the seat beneath me stopped rumbling.
Outside the sign said: Welcome to Elton, Ohio.
I was home. Or close to somewhere that used to be
home.
I sucked on my lip until the skin was dry and stared
out the window.
There they were, my parents.
A part of me hadn t expected them to show, especially
not Dad. Why would they? We d barely spoken in the past
two years, except for the obligatory birthday phone call
(which didn t happen this year because of Ella s disappear-
ance) and an occasional silly card in the mail from Mom,
signed with just X s and O s along the bottom.
And yet, they were here, standing the snow with red
ears and windswept hair and looking extremely three-
dimensional.
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I grabbed my backpack and stepped off the train and
held my breath the whole way down the steps.
Claire, Mom breathed. She stared at me with the
same round eyes she d given Ella. Her mouth hung limp
against her face, and I couldn t tell if she was happy to see
me or if she was going to turn on her heel and walk back
to the car without another word.
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