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hair, or threatened to cut her with a shard of mirror from the girl’s bathroom. Orrin would never betray her, she hoped. Could ravens betray?
    As the reality of leaving Bollingbrook settled in her mind, Skyla realized just how few regrets she had. She would miss little about this city. Not a friendly face in Bollingbrook, she used to say.
    All except for Missy , she thought with a sudden pang in her chest. That friendship had ended in disaster. There were little hands clutching Skyla’s arms, a pair of pliers grinning at her—Victoria’s smile with her tiny lizard teeth…
    “A tooth for a tooth,” Victoria had said. “Teach you to punch me.”
    “Hold her down! Get her down!” Dona’s laughing voice echoed in Skyla’s mind.
    They had nearly gotten her too, the bullies with their expensive clothes and cruel eyes. Melissa had sold her out alright. It was a raven who had saved her in the end, never a person.
    Laughter and taunting clouded her thoughts. Skyla shunted the memories away, forbidding herself to dwell on them.
    Dwelling is a luxury for people with money and time, not for the dirty faces of the Gutter Wedge. Not for the hunted, not for people like me, she thought, wiping a tear from her cheek.
    Missy’s red book bounced in her rucksack, suddenly feeling heavier as her footsteps drove her forward, a cadence into the unknown.
     
    *
     
    Her journey through the sewers was damp and tedious, but not nearly as terrifying as the stories promised, aside from her discovery of a banana slug the length of her arm. Then there was the beetle colony that scattered, covering the floor in shifting blue before vanishing into the cracks. But there were no monsters, not like the monsters in her house before it burned.
    Now that was a monster, she thought. Even now it seemed more like a dream, the shapes too impossible, the movement too fluid.
    They traveled down the same hallway next to the canal for miles it seemed. The only variation was the widening and narrowing of the walls and ceiling where different eras of construction collided. Juxtaposed slabs of reality hid behind curtains of moss and algae. They said all of Bollingbrook was built on the shoulders of greater cities. Now she could see why.
    “The way they talk about this place, you’d think it ate children alive,” she said to Orrin.
    Croak. Click, click, click , went Orrin.
    She had begun talking conversationally to the bird more and more, partly because no one else was around, but also because she had the feeling that he actually understood what she was saying. When she spoke, his head would tilt slightly and his eyes would gaze at her. Sometimes his vocal range was extraordinary, from croaks and clucks to deep squawks and actual words. Other times he would simply blink once or twice and then look away as if mulling over her statement.
    “I mean the place doesn’t seem to be very scary at all.”
    Squawk .
    “Dona would be scared, if only for fear of getting her shoes dirty. Missy told me once that Dona had over four hundred pairs of shoes. Who needs that many shoes?”
    Cluck .
    “She had so many that her parents had to build a new room on their mansion to fit them all.”
    Croak .
    “I miss Melissa…”
    Squawk .
    “Do you think they’ll find us?”
    This was met with silence. Orrin only stared.
    As the thrill of being chased began to wear off, Skyla yawned. Her eyes felt like they had sand in them. There was no sun or moon to indicate what time it was. She hoped they could make it under cover of night, but who could tell? They may as well have been walking for days.
    When Skyla had found Orrin, he was entangled, tethered to the ground, boys throwing stones at him. She had thrown herself in-between him and the cruel boys without even thinking, because Orrin was small. Orrin was defenseless and beaten. She could relate.
    He had spoken her aunt’s name, and then her own.
    “ Ree -ah,” he uttered from her shoulder. A rusty old sound, nothing like a