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whispered into Sancho’s neck, burying her face in his mane. Sancho pushed his nose against her cheek. His horsey lips were wet from the dewy grass. It was the closest Sancho could get to giving a hug, and in that moment, Danya knew he was just as devastated as she was.
    â€œWe’ll fix this,” Danya said into Sancho’s neck. Sancho pulled back and licked Danya’s forehead, slicking her bangs up into strange, swoopy shapes. His way of saying, “I know.”
    Danya straightened, wiping a teary eye on her sleeve. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Pia tuck
The Adventures of Ferdinand and Dapple, Book One: The Hero’s Journey
into her back pocket. Pia caught Danya’s eye and gave her a sheepish smile.
    â€œWhat? You’re rescuing someone suffering an injustice. Get it? Because Sancho’s going to be sold to a man who doesn’t love him like you do. That’s third on the list!”
    Danya shook her head, biting back a smile. It was kind of cool that Pia thought she had it in her to be a hero, but they didn’t have time to play silly make-believe games right now. At any moment her parents could look out the window and see her, or peek into her bedroom and notice she was missing. They had to move.
    She and Pia bridled and saddled Sancho, and then Danya took him by the reins and led him out of the backyard, to the path they took around the pond on their early morning rides. She fished the map out of her back pocket and unfolded it. Sancho’s ears perked up, giving Danya the feeling he was as interested in where they were going as she was. She squinted down at the map, following the highway they’d need to take to Florida with her finger.
    â€œUm. Okay . . .” she said. “It looks like Florida is . . .
that
way.” Danya pointed south. She climbed on Sancho’s back, scooting forward in the saddle so Pia could get on behind her.
    â€œNo thanks,” Pia said. “
My
legs are longer than Sancho’s. I’ll walk.”
    Shrugging, Danya tugged Sancho’s ear, and he started forward at a steady clip. Pia jogged along beside them. She was right: with her long, gangly legs she easily matched their speed.
    Streetlamps lined the sidewalks in Danya’s neighborhood, painting the concrete they traveled white and yellow. They quickly passed neighboring houses and headed down a main street that twisted out of the residential area toward a busy intersection. There, gas stations and fast food restaurants lit up the dark with their orange and blue neon signs. It hardly even felt like nighttime.
    â€œWe can follow this street all the way to the highway,” Danya said, squinting down at the twisty lines on her map. She held out her finger to judge the distance they had to travel. “It should be pretty close—only half a fingernail away.”
    It took a little over an hour of walking for Danya to realize that “half a fingernail” of distance on a map was actually quite a
long
distance in real life.
    â€œMy legs are getting tired,” Pia moaned. During the first half of their walk she bounced along next to them and jogged ahead on the sidewalk. Now she leaned heavily on Sancho, looking like she was about to collapse. Danya gave her hand a squeeze and glanced back down at the map again. Were they even going the right way?
    Danya loosened her grip on Sancho’s reins so she could study the map, and Sancho wandered over to the side of the street and started munching on some dandelions.
    â€œCool pony!” called a teenage boy riding his bike around in lazy circles in the street.
    â€œThanks,” Danya said. Pia plopped down on the sidewalk, staring longingly at the all-night gas station a few yards away. Its fluorescent yellow sign buzzed in the dark.
    â€œThink they have corn dogs?” she asked just as an old Ford flatbed truck rumbled down the street, taking a sharp turn into the gas station