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over on the edge of the pavement just in case. It was slow walking with the car seat. It kept banging against my leg every time I took a step. After a few minutes of walking, I looked down the embankment next to the road. I could just barely make out some kind of gravel trail that wound away through the bushes. If I could get down there, I thought, there was no way Justin would be able to find me.
    The bank wasn’t that steep—mostly big rocks and grass. “Okay, okay, we can do this,” I said to Brianna. I wrapped both arms around the car seat and eased my way down, feeling with my feet because I couldn’t really see where we were going. One foot slipped on the long grass and I lost my balance and ended up sliding the rest of the way on my butt, but I held on tight to Brianna. I set the car seat down on the ground and leaned in to check on her.
    She gave me a wide-eyed
what-the-hell-was-that?
look. “We’re okay. We made it,” I told her. Her nose was drippy again. I found a Kleenex in my pocket and wiped it one more time. I wished babies knew how to blow.
    I got up and brushed the dirt off my pants. We were right by the edge of the trail. It turned up ahead so I couldn’t see where it went, but I knew it had to be a lot safer than being up on the road. I shifted my backpack to one side a little and picked up the car seat. I suddenlyremembered something my mother used to say whenever we were going somewhere—even just to the store. She’d grin at me like it was some kind of big adventure and then she’d say, “We’re off to see the wizard.” I never even knew what that meant. But I smiled at Brianna and said it anyway, “We’re off to see the wizard.”
    I followed the trail because I didn’t really know what else to do. I needed to find a bus station so I could get to Montreal...or anywhere, as long as it was away from here. I finally figured out how to hold the car seat on one side so it didn’t keep hitting my leg, but it was heavy and I still had to keep shifting it from one arm to the other.
    When the trail came out of the trees I could see another road running beside it, but there were enough bushes and we were far enough away that I figured no one would spot us. And the trail seemed to be getting closer to some kind of downtown. If I could find a place witha phone, I could look in the phone book for a bus station.
    My feet hurt and my arms ached, but every time I thought about stopping I remembered Justin on that phone, selling me out. That made me feel like there was a hand inside me, squeezing my stomach, and I’d walk faster then because I knew I had to get away from Justin, from this place, from everyone, because nobody was going to take my baby away from me.
    Finally the trail took us by a park and a big building that reminded me of the Y at home. There were a couple of benches out in front of the place, and I sat down for a rest. The bottoms of my feet were burning.
    I set Brianna up beside me. She was asleep again. I studied her face, trying to figure out who she looked like—Justin or me. She had my hair, that’s for sure. And she yelled like me when she was pissed. But I couldn’t tell about the rest. Mostly she just looked like herself.
    Everyone always said I looked like my mom except for I had my dad’s temper. I didn’t see how I looked like her at all, except for the color of our hair—a sort of dark reddish brown. I mean, I wouldn’t have minded looking like her because she was beautiful. She had brown eyes like chocolate, and her skin was so perfect she didn’t have to put anything on it. And she could eat anything and not gain weight.
    But the best thing about her was her laugh. It would make you laugh too when you didn’t even know what was funny. I missed my mom laughing. Nobody laughed in my house after she died. My dad hardly even smiled.
    Three girls came across the grass in my