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dials were here, the switches. I had watched Dad do it so many times that I knew I could turn it all on, line up the numbers. I had talked to people far away before, heard their tiny voices say hello in my ears.
    I felt it then, a change in the house. I was nervous, I couldn’t hear, and I put the headset back and stood up, and waited.
    â€œVivian!” Audra shouted. “Are you home? Where are you?”
    â€œHere,” I said, already upstairs, halfway into the kitchen.
    She was all the way on the second floor, waiting for me at the top of the stairs.
    â€œWere you in my room?” she said.
    I didn’t say anything.
    â€œI know someone was,” she said. “I put a piece of spiderweb on my door, across the top, and it’s broken. So I know someone was in there. Mom’s home?”
    I looked across the hall; the door to our parents’ room was closed.
    â€œIt was me,” I said. “I pushed it open because I missed you.”
    â€œOh,” she said. “That’s good. That it was you, I mean. Not Mom and Dad again. They’re always saying they respect my privacy, but they’re into everything, all the time. Here, come in, talk to me while I get ready.”
    I climbed the stairs and walked by close to her, close enough to smell her sweat, her hair. I sat on her bed.
    â€œGirls?” Mom said, coming down the hallway.
    Audra closed the door so we couldn’t hear the rest of what she was saying. I could feel Mom, standing there for a moment, then heard her turn and walk back down the hall.
    â€œWhat are you getting ready for?” I said.
    She pulled down the ragged tights she was wearing, kicked them into the closet, and started pulling on her camouflage pants.
    â€œYou’re not wearing underwear?” I said.
    She opened a drawer of her dresser and took something out, held it up. It was white, thin ropes wrapped tightly around themselves.
    â€œI’m going to sleep in the trees,” she said. “High up in the branches, in Mount Tabor Park.”
    â€œWhat?” I said.
    â€œIt’s a hammock,” she said. “No one will know where I am.”
    â€œCan I come?” I said.
    â€œNot this time.” Audra was opening and closing drawers, looking up to check on me. “You know,” she said, “you can come in here anytime, look at anything you want.”
    â€œAre you running away?” I said.
    Audra laughed. “That sounds so stupid, if you say it like that, like a little kid who’s rebelling.”
    â€œAre you?”
    â€œRebelling?”
    â€œNo,” I said. “Running away.”
    â€œI’m going somewhere,” she said. “That’s different.”
    â€œWhere?” I said.
    Audra didn’t say anything at first. She just looked around at the walls of her room like she hated them.
    â€œPeople aren’t supposed to live in cities,” she said. “It’s so claustrophobic. And we live in a suburb, which is even worse—every person in our neighborhood is exactly the same.”
    â€œNot exactly,” I said.
    â€œVivian,” she said. “You know what I mean.”
    The back of Audra’s hair was clumping together, notquite like dreadlocks, and the bones in her face seemed sharper. She was starting to look kind of like another person, a woman, not like a girl anymore.
    â€œWhose hands are those?” I said.
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œOn the wall. The bigger ones.”
    â€œA friend,” she said, and didn’t say anything more, turning away, filling up her pockets with things I couldn’t see.
    â€œDid he come back?” I said. “The one who disappeared?”
    â€œYes,” she said. “He came back for me.”
    â€œWhere’s he from?” I said.
    â€œNot the city,” she said. “A long ways from here. That’s where we’re going.”
    â€œWhen?” I said. “Just you and