“I can’t believe it,” they said.

They turned to Janelle. There were greeting kisses at breakfast now, like a couple from TV. Nate tore his waffle slowly as the pair leaned cozily into one another.

“You know we’re cute,” Janelle said to him.

“Cuteness is my favorite,” he said.

“It’s good for when you write romances in your book, right?” Stevie said.

“I don’t write romance. I write about finding dragons and breaking magic rocks in half.”

“The real magic rocks are the friends we make along the way,” Stevie replied. “Right?”

“He’s happy for us,” Janelle said. “This is how he shows it.”

Nate looked up at all of them, dark shadows under his eyes.

“This is why I prefer books to people.”

“We love you too,” Janelle said.

Even though Janelle had food, she accompanied Vi up to the food line. Nate centered his scrambled eggs on his plate.

“So,” he said. “What changed your parents’ minds?”

Stevie dunked her waffle nervously into the syrup pool.

“Who knows?”

“They just said, ‘We’re sending you back’?”

“I mean . . .” Stevie nervously rubbed under her eye. “We talked about it a little, but . . .”

She was dancing on the edge of the truth, telling a lie of omission. One step could send her into falsehood.

“I don’t know what motivates my parents,” she said.

There. She lied. So simple. It fell out of her mouth. Plop.

“You guys ever hear anything about Ellie?” Stevie said, changing the conversation. “What’s going on with that?”

Nate was still studying Stevie’s expression, but then he seemed to give up and returned to his eggs.

“Nothing,” he said. “I mean, they looked. There were police around for a few days. Low-key, but they were around. I think they may have had dogs, even. She must have gone to Burlington. She knows a lot of people there.”

Stevie sipped at her coffee and looked out the window. They were facing toward the back, to the thick line of trees that bordered the property. During the day, they were a bright, bold wall. At night, they loomed and contained multitudes. The area where the school was was flat, but it dipped down dramatically as it went toward the road, and there was a river that bordered it on two sides. The other way out was up, toward jagged rocks and higher peaks and thicker woods.

Getting out would not have been easy. Stevie wasn’t even sure Ellie had a coat on when she vanished that night.

“It’s not your fault,” Nate said.

“What?”

“It’s not your fault,” he repeated. “Whatever Ellie has done—why she ran—that’s not on you.”

“I know that,” she said, concentrating on the squares in her waffles. “Are people saying this is my fault?”

“No,” he said quickly. “No. Just . . . no. Forget I said anything. I think Vi and Janelle are about to make out on top of those mugs.”

Stevie turned and saw Vi and Janelle locked in an intense embrace by the coffee station.

“It’s been a long week,” Nate said. “Don’t leave again. Don’t leave me with these people.”

“Which people?”

“Any people.”

“I don’t count as people?”

“Of course not,” he said. “It’s been all feelings and love. I want to go back to numbness and avoidance. You’re great at that stuff.”

She smiled and tapped her phone to check the time.

“I have to go,” she said. “Meeting with Call Me Charles.”

“Go forth and learn or whatever, I’ll see you at home.”

Home.

Yes. This was home. This home welcomed her as she was, which was unusual in her experience. It was also, and more familiarly, the place where she had to tell the biggest lies.

April 14, 1936, 3:00 a.m.

“WE HAVE TO READ THE SIGNS,” EDDIE SAID. “THE DARK STARS MAY have aligned for us. It’s time for us to go.”

Eddie was squatting on the floor of the gymnasium, bobbing lightly on the balls of his feet like a broken jack-in-the-box. Francis did not believe in Eddie’s astrological fascinations, but she usually entertained them. Not tonight. Everything was coming unspooled.

“Let’s run. Let’s start the plan.”

“No,” Francis heard herself say. Her voice was like stone. “No. Not now. We’ll never make it now. Don’t you know what this means?”

“It means the dark star . . .”

Edward was about to go on one of his poetic nonsense trips about the dark star and the silver princess and all these characters he had in his head. He took his poetry too far sometimes, got caught up in symbols. Francis cut this off.

“Whatever is going on,” she said, “our letter is mixed up in it. There will be cops, Eddie. Lots of cops.”

“So what? We’re going to be outlaws!”

“If we go now,” Francis said, “we’ll get caught in the first hour. We need to wait. Be cool about it.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Edward said, moving close to her, his breath on her lips.

“The fun,” she said, pushing him back gently, “is making our escape and getting out. When we go, we go forever. We need to be smart.”

This is where it always fell apart with Eddie. He was so wild, he had the imagination, the dreams. But he didn’t think about practicalities, like G-men, police dogs, and roadblocks. He wanted to be an outlaw without the discipline or practice of being an outlaw. It was up to her to keep him in line. That’s why she had done so much of her own preparations. She had to get back to Minerva, back to her room. The things she needed were there.

“They’re making us leave anyway,” he said.

“Maybe for a day or two. Maybe only for a few hours. You need to trust me. Keep your cool. Go home.”

She pressed her lips hard against his and left the gymnasium. She couldn’t risk using the tunnel. Miss Nelson might be in it, and the hatch on the other end would likely be bolted. She would have to go above ground.

There was one advantage tonight, a blue sulfuric fog. This would likely be her only protection against the men with the shotguns. The air was bitingly cold now and the fog went into her nose and mouth, tangling its way down into her lungs. She was up by the library, and in theory she only had to make a straight shot across the top of the green to get home. But the door would obviously be guarded and the entire area exposed. She would have to take the long route around, all the way through the far end of the campus, through the half-finished sites down near the road.

She stayed low, moving from one tree to the next. She tripped over the roots and branches, and the leaves crunched under her feet. She saw the first gunmen in their overalls and coats, their shotguns slung over their shoulders. There were three of them, talking together, by the cupola. She got down, her heart beating fast. They would shoot tonight. They would not hesitate. For one second, she tried to imagine the hot bullet sinking into her chest, the impact. It made her heart race painfully and her hands grew slick. She considered calling out, asking them for help. They would take her home to Minerva. She would get in trouble, but she wouldn’t get shot.

No. She pressed to the ground. She would be a cat. They loved cats here. “Cats know best,” Albert Ellingham would say. She would slink and slide. It was a big campus. She had the courage. Tonight, she would prove herself.

The hardest part would be crossing the road. That was the most open area. She would have to climb down the decline into the woods and cross somewhere in the dark. Francis made her way down the steep slope. Her expensive coat caught on brambles and made her trip, so she tucked it up and crab-walked her way down several feet. If she tried to stand, she was likely to tumble and hit every tree and rock all the way to the river. The rock cut her hands as she grabbed at the ground. Everything smelled of dirt and decaying leaves.

“What’s that?” one of the men said.

She froze.

A light shone through the trees.

“Probably an animal,” another replied.

Francis was very close to being sick. She swallowed hard and waited, not moving an inch. She froze. It must have been fifteen or twenty minutes later before she moved again. Once she had made it a good distance from the statues and the men, she crept to the road’s edge and, taking a deep breath, she ran across. It was a very slender road, so it was just a few steps. She fell into the culvert on the other side and bashed her face. But she did not cry out. She crawled on her belly into the dark.

Then, she went back up the hill. This was much harder. Her breath was labored now. Cops and robbers. G-men and guns, sneaking in the dark. And she was doing it. Francis Josephine Crane, the flour princess of Fifth Avenue, was crawling through the dirt and the night. She dug her nails into the ground with determination, not caring about breaking them. She didn’t care about her clothes or her shoes. This was life.