I peered up at the sixth floor of the building. Our apartment was the farthest on the left, where the fire escape had rusted through and left a jagged black skeleton hanging askew and useless. I was aces at climbing, and had tried a few weeks ago to descend the railing and sneak out at night for a session with my camera. I had slipped and fallen.

Six stories was a long drop. I should’ve died, or at least broken multiple bones. But I lapsed into a dream state on the way down and somehow, when I woke up, didn’t have a bruise on me anywhere. I didn’t even ache. All I had was a strange memory of giant, flapping black wings.

Sorting through my pictures, I found one at the bottom of the pile: a sparrow-size moth with a blue body and black wings, splayed on a flower between a slant of sun and shade. I remember the day I saw it in the park, as if it was sitting between two worlds. I took the shot not only for the symbolism, but because I’d seen the bug before. My mother had sketched one that looked just like it on a slip of paper that she kept in her Alice books. The strangest thing was she’d also made a rough sketch of Alice from the Wonderland illustrations right next to it. Somehow—in her mind—they were connected. I’d lost the drawing during one of my many moves. So when I saw that identical moth, live and in person, I had to immortalize it with my camera.

Sighing, I tucked the picture into my Alice book to hold my spot. That shot was Mrs. Bunsby’s favorite. She said I had a gift, that if I kept improving, she would give me her late husband’s camera—a Yashica 44—along with his books on developing your own film.

She was one of the few adults who’d ever believed in me without being judgmental. But if Mrs. Bunsby knew that I thought this very moth had played a role in my mother’s Wonderland fantasies, she would think my imagination was too vivid, like my teachers and caregivers always said. I’d done research at the library. Moths have a life span of months, certainly not decades.

Thinking about it even kind of gave me the creeps. But it also made me feel special, like my mom and I mattered to someone somewhere—enough to warrant watching. It wasn’t the first time I’d felt like bugs and plants were reaching out to me in a way they didn’t to other people. I’d been hearing their voices ever since I hit puberty close to my twelfth birthday a year ago. Still, I knew better than to share that tidbit with anyone for risk of ending up in a psych ward like my mom.

My stomach growled. I shoved a fist beneath my ribs. Mrs. Bunsby would be serving pickled beet and tofu casserole tonight. Just the thought made my taste buds want to run for cover. I had to stretch out my snack as long as possible. The package of peanut butter crackers I’d saved from lunch lay open next to me. I slid one out and munched on it. Crumbs gathered on the illustration of Alice fleeing from some card guards in hopes of keeping her head, and I shook the cracker remnants off so they fell on my thigh.

A roach skittered out from under one of the box’s flaps and climbed onto my pants to gobble up the residue without so much as a please or thank-you. In my opinion, they were the rudest of all the insects. I’d had conversations with houseflies and mealworm beetles that were civil and interesting. But roaches never had much to say, other than to grumble about the lack of trash piles and dirt now that humans populated their world, claiming garbage bags and vacuum cleaners were the bane of their existence.

I waved my hand, shooing the bug away. It skittered back into the folds of the box and scolded my bad manners.

“I’m trying to help you, moron. You want to get squished?” I gathered up my canvas tote, shoving my pictures and books inside, then bounded into the storm, making a run for the skinny space between my apartment building and the run-down barbershop next door.

The only way in was from the front. Our landlord, Wally Harcus, kept the back door to the building locked for “safety reasons.” Or so he claimed. He just wanted to gawk at all the single moms and young girls who lived in his low-rent building. His door was the first one down the hall from the entrance, meaning he had the ideal situation from any perv’s perspective.

Shards of rain, laced with ice, pelted me. The denim of my jacket and jeans absorbed every droplet, and I felt ten pounds heavier and twenty degrees colder by the time I pushed inside the building.

My hands were too wet to hold on to the knob, and the door slammed shut. I cringed at the sound.

I’d barely skirted by Wally’s room when his door flung open. I backed slowly down the hall toward the stairway, keeping him in my sights.

His sweaty face appeared first, then the rest of him, rolls of flab barely contained within a tight blue T-shirt and grease-stained khaki pants. I could smell his distinctive odor even with my eyes—the scent of rotting cabbage and meat. Pools of perspiration formed uneven circles beneath his armpits, darkening the blue to navy.

He’d always reminded me of a walrus—bald head, deep folds of skin over his brow, double chin, and a handlebar mustache that looked like a half-chewed kielbasa dangling over his sausage-fat lips. The wheezes and clicking sounds he emitted with each breath only added to the illusion of a beached sea mammal.

“Hey there, Alison. Get a little wet, did ya?” His gaze glittered—watery and dark like liquid charcoal—as he took a bite of an overripe apricot. The juices drizzled down his chin and he offered a sleazy smirk. His incisors—two sizes too big for his mouth—hung low like underdeveloped ivory tusks.

My stomach twisted with disgust as he stepped full into the hallway and made an obvious appraisal of my chest where my shirt clung to me. He looked famished, as if he wanted to gobble me up. I snapped my jacket closed and shoved ringlets of dripping blond hair off my face.

“I’ve got some hot chocolate on the stove. Wanna cup?” he asked.

I’d caught him staring plenty of times, but he’d never had the guts to ask me in. I swallowed and held tighter to my bag’s straps. “Nah. Mrs. Bunsby’s waiting.”

“Nope, she’s not. Had to make a run to the grocery store.” He flashed a note at me.

I only had time to see a tiny triangle torn from the top, right above the words I’ll be back in an hour, before he shoved it into his pocket.

“In fact,” Wally wheezed, “she told me to keep you company. Says you’re too young to be on your own and stay out of trouble. I can come to your room instead, if ya like.” He jangled the keys that hung on one of his belt loops and smirked bigger.

Idiot.

I hated him, and hated myself more for being scared. I’d faced monsters like him before. Two foster families ago, I had a fourteen-year-old foster brother who trapped me in the basement and stuck his tongue down my throat while his hands found their way up my shirt. Yet I was the one who got sent back to the children’s home for biting off the tip of his tongue and breaking his thumb. I was the one with issues.

Unfortunately for me, Wally Harcus wouldn’t be as easy to fend off as a skinny teenage boy.

The bottom step hit the back of my heels, stalling me. It was fight or flight. One thing I knew: Mrs. Bunsby wouldn’t have asked the walrus to keep me company. He probably saw her leave and decided it was the perfect chance to make a move. So there he stood between me and the only way out. And even if I locked myself inside our apartment, he had the keys to get in.

I could prop something against the door and buy myself time to clamber down the broken fire escape. I’d probably fall to my death, but that had to be better than the alternative.