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came back and told us.
    “Did you go to the cliffs?” I asked Eleanor.
    She told us what she’d seen: different colors of Styrofoam, plastic bottles, plastic bags, and one shoe, all floating near the rocks. Isobel asked about the shoe, but Eleanor said it was too far away to tell the size. She asked me about the trees, and I described going to the window instead, and the picture of bones.
    “Why did you go there?” asked Isobel, but then she answered her own question, both eyes blinking. “You decided the parrot was the girl.”
    When Robbert asked why I’d stayed at the dock instead of coming back on time, I’d known what I’d done, but not why. The why felt like a little hole somewhere inside, and now, even though I couldn’t name the feeling, it was happening again. The three of us ought to have been sitting on the steps, but we were all standing in the yard. Then, like three birds keen on the same crab, we turned to look at Robbert’s porch.
    “They could some back,” said Eleanor. “I’ll see them sooner from the kitchen porch.”
    As if this decided everything, Isobel and I crossed the yard. At the top of Robbert’s steps we looked to Eleanor, who stood on the kitchen porch, staring out. She shook her head—no one was coming.
    Very carefully, quietly, we pressed our faces against the screen.
    Right inside was the empty classroom. The room was dim, dotted with blinks and blips from different machines. The bed was against the wall, the shape upon it still. Isobel opened the door so slowly that the squeak turned to a long soft sigh.
    Bottles and wadded towels cluttered the table by the bed. The girl’s clothes were heaped on a countertop, and Robbert’s desk had been cleared to make room for books, left open next to the keyboard and big screens. On top of the books lay a glossy stack of dark pages, more bone pictures.
    We crept to the bed. The girl had rolled toward the wall, so we couldn’t see her face. Her breathing was a faint, clogged whistle. Her hair was damp on the nape of her neck. One arm lay flung out, wrapped round with white stripes of tape and gauze.
    “Zebra,” whispered Isobel.
    The girl’s breath caught, as if she’d heard. We didn’t move. The machines hummed quietly, hives of sleeping bees. We never woke up without Irene rousing us, and since this girl was so extra tired, we decided we were safe. But just then we heard Eleanor across the courtyard, high-pitched and shrill.
    “They’re coming back! They’re coming back!”
    The girl sat up at the noise. She looked right at us. We didn’t move, and for a moment neither did she. Then her eyes got wide. Her mouth shot open and she screamed.
    We got out of Robbert’s building as fast as we could, banging open the screen and racing down the steps. I expected more screams behind us, but we only heard Eleanor.
    “What happened? What happened?”
    Before we could answer, she pointed past us to the beach, where Irene’s and Robbert’s heads bobbed above the curve of the path. Then Caroline’s head was visible, too, walking hand in hand with Irene. Robbert had something heavy in his arms.
    I looked back to Robbert’s door, wondering if the girl had climbed out of the bed, if she was there looking out at us. “What happened?” whispered Eleanor, again.
    “She woke up,” I said.
    “Do you think they heard?” asked Isobel.
    “It was loud,” said Eleanor.
    Irene and Caroline waved and we all waved back. By now I could see that Robbert carried a big bundle of white cloth. He got to the middle of the yard and set it down and began to unwrap it, tugging and kicking at the roll. I didn’t see anything inside except sand.
    Caroline came up the steps. Irene called for us to go inside and wait. Then she walked to the classroom. Robbert said something to her as she passed, but we couldn’t hear it.
    “What are you looking at?” asked Caroline, who had opened the door and didn’t know why no one else was coming.
    “The girl,”