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like, four minutes early. I was just
–
    You should just do what I told you. You’re still a child. You do what your mother says. And I say you wait for me at eight o’clock EXACTLY. Do you think I say these things for fun? No. I say them because
–
    I’m not a child
.
    What?
    You said I was a child. I’m not. I’m seventeen
.
    You’re a child under the law
, she says.
    I glower at her.
    She closes her eyes for a long moment.
I’m sorry. I know the car came up on the sidewalk. But … that’s why you have to be careful, Shelby
.
    I didn’t want the car to hit me!
    No
, she says.
No, of course not. But someone else might have seen it in time, or heard it, you know. You’re special, Shelby. You’re in your own world. That’s why you need to be careful. That’s why you need me
.
    I know
, I say.
    A pause.
    Is it a boy?
she says, suddenly.
    What?
I say, wrongfooted.
    The book. It’s not a library book. I’m still wondering where you got it
.
    No!
I say, all horrified. And I’m not totally lying. I mean, there is a boy, of course. But he works for the library. So in a way, it kind of is a library book.
    She looks at me, hard, like: Spill.
    OK, there’s a boy
, I say.
    She raises her eyebrows, like: Spill more.
    He works at the library
, I say.
His name is Mark. He’s nice
.
    Now Mom is almost shaking with fear and anger. Boys and men – those are the things you have to watch out for the most. In her version of the world, they’re like wolves and we’re like sheep; they’re circling us all the time, looking for weakness.
    He’s NICE? Everything I’ve ever taught you and you tell me he’s – Wait
.
    Mom is fixing me with this very odd look, her brow furrowed, like she doesn’t understand something.
    What?
I ask.
What is it?
    When you came out of the ER
… she says.
I
…
I wanted to understand what had happened. I went down to the library. The police were asking questions
.
    Oh, right
, I say.
So you met him. What is it, the tattoo?
    Now she’s looking at me as if she’s sorry for me, or as if she thinks I’m crazy, which I guess amounts to the same thing.
    What?
I say, more insistently now.
    Shelby, honey
, she says.
There was no man at the library when I went down there
.

Chapter
8
    I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to sleep in a hospital bed, but it’s pretty much impossible. There’s always someone coming in to check on you, or people walking up and down in the corridor – or running, sometimes, which is more worrying. You get those shadows of moving feet in the crack of light under the door, flickering, like a movie projector, except the pattern draws your eye without meaning anything.
    There’s a meditation trick Mom taught me where you focus on your breathing, try to subtract everything else from your consciousness, and I try that for a while until I realise I’m thinking about Mark, and how Mom says he doesn’t exist. Which is, to say the least, a disquieting development.
    A nurse comes and takes my blood pressure.
    I press the button to feed more painkillers into my IV but I guess I must have already done it recently, because nothing happens. I don’t remember though.
    The moon shines into the room. I told them not to close the curtains – I like seeing the world out there. It makes me feel less like the next flood has come, and this hospital room is the only thing saved; just floating on its own through dark water.
    I try to think about the crash, and the coyote, but the images slip away from me, fish in a pond, flitting under cover when your shadow creeps over them.
    Instead, the picture that keeps coming to me is of a park, one dusty summer when I’m, I guess, ten, maybe just turned eleven. Mom and I are walking to a clear patch in the middle, the grass brown and dying. There aren’t many people – it’s a weekday, presumably, and Mom isn’t working right then. I can see a couple of men ambling around, one of them with a dog on a lead. I don’t look at them – I know