“You said she would be mad about you coming here.”

“We’ll say we met closer to my house.”

Raven didn’t know what to say. She had never left her land when she wasn’t with Mama. Would she be safe if she did? And what if Mama found out?

“Come on,” he said. “We have a lot of games. Mouse Trap, Chutes and Ladders, Guess Who? Do you like any of those?”

As always, she didn’t understand.

He had learned what her silences meant. “You never played those games?”

“No.”

“I’ll show you.”

The rain came down harder. They were getting cold. She either went to his house with him or they each would go home alone.

She didn’t want to leave him. “Okay,” she said.

Jackie’s smile was big. She followed him into the stream. Walking past the Wolfsbane, crossing onto Hooper’s land, felt strange. She’d never done that before. She turned around and looked at Madonna. Her outstretched arms seemed to say, Yes, go that way. Go. Go.

“Will Baby follow us?” Jackie asked.

“I don’t know.”

They stayed in the rocky streambed through Hooper’s land. The shores were still thick and brambly there. When the creek bent left, Jackie got onshore. They walked through a thicket of white-barked alder trees and followed a footpath into a field.

“That’s my house over there,” he said.

He pointed at a house on the other side of a wooden fence. It had a metal roof like Mama’s, but it was smaller. Mama’s house had natural logs on the outside; Jackie’s looked like pale yellow planks of wood.

They climbed through the slats of the fence. Raven’s stomach was a little bit sick. She hoped Jackie’s mother wouldn’t be angry. Raven would never bring someone home. There was no way to guess how Mama would react.

They crossed a field of short grass and entered the back door of the house as Raven did at hers. The door opened into a laundry room next to a kitchen. They took off their wet shoes and left them on a rug.

She heard boys laughing in the next room.

“Huck has friends over,” Jackie said.

She thought he looked nervous and wondered why.

“Let’s go in my room,” he said.

He led her to a stairway, hurrying past Huck, Reece, and another boy watching TV in the living room, but the boys saw them.

“It’s the bird girl!” Reece said.

“Where’re you going so fast?” Huck asked.

Jackie stopped walking. “My room.”

Reece and Huck grinned. The boy with dark, tight curls and brown skin was looking at Raven curiously.

“This is Raven,” Huck told him. “This is Chris,” he said to Raven.

She remembered the boys talking about someone called Chris the first day they’d met. “Nice to meet you, Chris,” she said.

Chris only nodded a little. Raven wondered why his mother hadn’t taught him what to say when he met a new person.

“Where’s your bird?” Reece asked.

“Outside,” she said.

“Really? It flies now?”

“Yes.”

“Do you still feed it bugs?”

“Sometimes. Mostly I give her peanuts while she learns to find her own food.” That was Mama’s idea. She’d had unsalted peanuts in the shell delivered to the house.

“Come on,” Jackie said to Raven, gesturing up the stairs.

“Jackie . . . ,” a woman said. She had come into the living room with a laundry basket in her hands. She stared at Raven.

Raven felt like wings were fluttering inside her chest. She knew the woman was Jackie’s mother. He looked like her.

“I didn’t know you had a friend over,” she said. She put the basket on a chair and walked over. Her face was nice to look at, like Jackie’s. She had the same light-tan skin and dark-brown hair. She wore her hair in a ponytail and had on jeans and a blue buttoned shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. Her eyes were green-brown when she came close.

“This is Raven,” Jackie said.

“Welcome, Raven. I’m Jackie’s mother, Ms. Taft.”

“Nice to meet you, Ms. Taft,” Raven said.

“And how did you get here?” she asked, smiling.

“She was walking in the woods,” Jackie said. “We met out back.”

Huck and Reece were grinning again. They knew Jackie was lying to his mother. Raven wondered why it was funny.

“So you live near here?” Jackie’s mother asked.

“Yes,” Raven said.

“She lives on the other side of Mr. Hooper,” Jackie said.

“Does your mother know you’re here?” she asked.

“She doesn’t need to know,” Raven said. “She likes me to go out and do new things.”

“But maybe you should call and tell her where you are,” Ms. Taft said.

“I can’t,” Raven said.

“Why not?”

“She doesn’t use the phone except to order things.”

“Do you know her number?”

Raven shook her head.

Ms. Taft looked at Jackie and raised her eyebrows a little.

“It’s okay,” Jackie said. “We just came in to get out of the rain for a minute.”