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Please , I have to go to Lego Physics Camp . (Never mind that I didn’t like Legos.) I was growing frantic, I could feel my dreams being scoured off me with steel wool. All my other friends were going to Avignon to brush up their language skills, to Dartmouth to study with poet laureates, to Salzburg to take violin lessons, or Ashland for Acting Shakespeare 101. All I learned was how to poison baby rats then scoop their corpses out of fireplaces. But who cared what I thought, when you could smell the resin in the air, drink water straight from the river?
    Then on Labor Day, Dad decided we needed a weekend getaway every day of the week and moved us there full-time. At that point, all I could do was smile a hollow smile. What was the use of fighting? By that point my old life was already gone, daddy, gone.
    But it all started before then, on that sticky-sweet morning in May, with my dad inconsolable and my mother frantically baking. That was when I first sensed life closing in on me. As I sat there in the warm kitchen of our funky urban house, watching my decisive father not know what to do, then finally realizing it was enough to move, that was the exact moment I first started running.

6

    Mom and Dad were sitting on the front porch when we rolled up. Tomás, my not-quite foster brother, was playing hoops in the parking lot with Casey Burns. They made an odd pair since Casey was a foot shorter than Tomás. But then again, everyone was a foot shorter than Tomás.
    Tomás was someone I definitely didn’t want to talk to today. Don’t get me wrong—he wasn’t a bad guy. As far as I could tell he was a good kid. He had ways of fixing stuff around the inn before anyone even knew it was broken. But being around him was work. I tried to draw him out when he first moved in but all I ever got for my trouble was a shrug or a “dunno.”
    I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Casey, out here in the rain like a good sport, getting a slam dunk in the face for his effort. But he just laughed it off. Then he saw us climb out of Ranger Dave’s car. “Dude, I told you your sister was okay,” he said to Tomás.
    Tomás palmed the slippery basketball and banked a jump shot, trying to appear nonchalant. But he’d noticed us. “She’s not my sister,” he said.
    “Then why won’t you let me…”
    “Shut up !” Tomás elbowed Casey hard in the ribs.
    Mom and Dad raced down from the porch. As they did, I heard Tomás spit at Casey: “Do you always have to be such a douchebag?”
    Dad wrapped himself around me and squeezed hard, like a constrictor, as though crushing the air out of me would make me more alive. I understood, remembering how I’d whacked Karen harder and harder on the back when she didn’t breathe. Violence oughta do the trick .
    “Are you all right, Ronnie?” Dad said. “Dave told us not to come get you.”
    “You couldn’t have done anything, Paul,” Ranger Dave said.
    “Thanks for bringing her home,” Dad said.
    “You would’ve been proud of our girl. She kept her wits and did everything she could.”
    You can’t be proud of me , I wanted to shriek. I’ve done nothing to be proud of. Oh, man. I definitely didn’t have any friendly left in me. Even the word pride made me want to smack someone.
    “Is it true? Was it Karen?” Dad said.
    Ranger Dave nodded.
    “That poor family,” Dad said, and pulled hard on his face as though he could tug the whole thing off, like a mask.
    Mom, perhaps sensing another Dad meltdown, crowded in on me. “Well, at least you’re okay, Ronnie. See, Paul? She’s fine. You’re fine, aren’t you, honey?” She nodded at me, willing it to be true. But I noticed her hands were empty. Where were my s’mores? Where was the food that would transform me back into a normal human being? I wanted to lash out at her, claw her eyes from her skull. I wanted to say: This is your fault . We shouldn’t be here at all . You picked what was best for Dad over what was best for me and