One night, every year, Mom and Dad went out, along with all the other moms and dads in the neighborhood. We had no idea what they did, but they didn’t come back until late. Sometimes it was light out by the time they got home. They always wore masks. Masks were part of it too.

Mom and Dad always took a long time to get ready. They were playful in the bathroom, listening to music on the tiny red speaker. Mom put on makeup. Dad shaved and splashed on cologne. The smells coming from the bathroom felt new to us and made Mom and Dad seem like different people.

This year, they wore dog masks. Dad’s was a German shepherd. He pulled it over his head and looked at himself in the mirror and made a woof-woof-grrr sound. It looked strange with his jacket and tie. Mom’s poodle mask was lying on the floor next to the sink.

“Why are you going out tonight?” we asked.

“It’s St. Crispin’s Day,” Mom said as she drew makeup under her eye. “We do this every year.”

“Who’s St. Crispin?” we asked.

“He’s very old,” Dad said. “So old no one remembers why they even remember him.”

Mom and Dad had gone out every St. Crispin’s Day for as long as we’d lived in this neighborhood. And we’d lived there as long as any of us could remember, even Terrance.

We liked our neighborhood, mostly because there were lots of kids our age. We played great games of Spud, six different kinds of Tag, Sardines, Kick the Can, Bloody Murder, you name it. Usually we played

in the front yard. Sometimes in the backyard, in the shadows of the woods that surrounded us.

It wasn’t all great, though. There were teenagers that drove too fast up and down the streets. They’d park and sit on the hoods of their cars. Sometimes they’d knock over garbage cans or bash mailboxes with baseball bats. Mom was always complaining about the teenagers. She called them a “bad element.”

“Did you see that one in the pickup?” she’d say to Dad. “With that flag in the back window? I don’t think he even lives around here.”

“We were teenagers driving too fast once,” he’d say. “Our kids’ll be teenagers driving too fast one day. Circle of life.” By the time he was done talking, he’d have a little smile on his face.

We could tell Mom hated it when Dad smiled like that. Under her breath, she’d whisper, Thanks so much for listening.

“Who’s babysitting tonight?” For us, this was the most important question.

“Marisol,” Mom said. “Yay!” we shouted.

Marisol was nice, and she was pretty, and she did something with the popcorn that made it taste delicious. We all liked Marisol, but Terrance liked her a little bit more. Terrance used to be called Pink Terrance, but now that he was older, he wanted everyone to call him just Terrance, which we mostly did.

Marisol was getting older too. She didn’t babysit as often as she used to. One day, when we were playing Sprinkler Tag in the front yard, a teenager was driving too fast by the house, and we could swear we saw Marisol riding in the passenger seat. But we didn’t tell Mom, since we worried she wouldn’t let her babysit for us anymore.

“I don’t think it’s fair, you guys get to go out and we have to stay at home.” Little Judy buried her face in a pillow. She was always making declarations. Usually she said the things we wanted to say but were too afraid to. She was the youngest; she didn’t know any better.

“There’s a lot of things in the world that aren’t fair,” Mom said. “Try being a grown adult, with a house full of kids always screaming in your ear, and not ever getting a minute to yourself.”

Dad joined in, “Or paying the bills, and working every day even when you don’t want to.”

“Then we can talk about what’s fair,” Mom added.

Little Judy shook her head and bit the pillow. Dad gargled mouthwash.

Mom slipped on high heels. The doorbell rang.

We piled out of their bed and raced downstairs. Marisol had on a blue flannel shirt and a pair of jeans with a tear in them. We could see the skin of her knee through the tear. She had a backpack hanging off

her left shoulder. Her hair was black and curly, and tonight she wore it pulled back in a poofy ponytail.

“Thank you so much for coming over,” Mom said, shooing us away from the door. “It’s getting harder and harder to find someone to sit for St. Crispin’s.”

“It’s not a problem.” Marisol set her backpack near the door.

“Pizza’s already ordered and paid for,” Mom said. “Should be here in an hour. Kids in bed by nine. And this one,” she pointed at Little Judy, “has been told not to give you any grief tonight.”

“Aww, she never gives me grief.” Marisol ruffled Little Judy’s hair. “Besides, if they want some real fun, they can help me study for AP Bio. How’s that sound, kids?”

“Booo!” we all shouted.

“Let’s make popcorn!” Little Judy said.

“Okay,” Mom said, “looks like everything is all together.”

Dad came downstairs wearing his German shepherd mask. He couldn’t see too well, and he stumbled on the landing. Mom put on her poodle mask. The two of them stood next to each other, posing, even though no one was taking their picture.

“You know the number if anything comes up,” Mom said. Marisol gave her an okay sign.

“But let’s make sure nothing comes up.” Dad was giggling.

“We’re at the Norwoods’ this year,” Mom said. “You know which one their place is?”

“I passed it on my way here,” Marisol said.

“Let’s take our leave, m’lady.” Dad put his arm out, and Mom took it. “St. Crispin awaits.”

They walked out the door, and began cutting across the lawn. The Norwoods’ house was four blocks away. Mom and Dad waved. We stood on the porch watching our parents—both wearing dog masks—march over the grass in the fading light.

•

“I want to watch Kid Copz,” Slow Winston said. “We always get to watch

Kid Copz.”

“Noooo,” Little Judy said. “Kid Copz sucks.”

“Does your mom know you use that word?” Marisol looked at Little Judy.

“She knows, but she doesn’t like it,” Slow Winston said.

We noticed Terrance had disappeared, but we didn’t care enough to make a big deal out of it. He’d been spending more time alone in his bedroom lately. We’d decided Terrance was turning weird.

Slow Winston turned on the TV. In tonight’s episode, Pinkie Cop was trying to catch Cat Burglar robbing the Fish Factory. Sergeant

Ellroy said if Pinkie Cop couldn’t stop the heist, then maybe she wasn’t meant to be a kid cop. Slow Winston, as usual, sat on the floor, close to the TV. He said this was on account of his cross-eyes. The rest of us gathered around Marisol on the couch.

It was almost dark out. The sliding door to the backyard was showing our reflection back to us, but we could just make out the outlines of the swing set. Marisol was braiding Little Judy’s hair.

“What do moms and dads do on St. Crispin’s Day?” we asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not a mom or dad.” She was watching

Kid Copz, but she wasn’t really watching it.

“You’re older than us,” we said. “You’re closer to being a mom or dad than we are.”

She smiled when we said this. Marisol was easily the prettiest babysitter we’d ever had, with big brown eyes and freckles on her cheeks. “The moms and dads around here have one night where they get to have fun,” she said.

“Watching Kid Copz is fun,” Slow Winston said from the floor. He only said it because there was a commercial on.

“Sometimes moms and dads want a different kind of fun.”

We didn’t know what Marisol meant by this, only that it made us feel left out.

On Kid Copz, Pinkie Cop was making a deal with Cat Burglar about not robbing the Fish Factory. To seal the deal, they both spit on their hands before shaking.

“What a terrible show,” Little Judy said. “Just terrible.” “Hey, where’s Terrance?” Marisol asked.

“He’s in his room,” we told her. “He’s always in his room.”

“Terrance!” Marisol could have a loud voice when she wanted to. “Are you okay up there, Terrance?”

Just then, Little Judy leapt up from the couch. She did it so fast that Marisol barely had a chance to let go of the braid she was making.

“What was that?” Little Judy shouted. “What was what?” we asked.

Little Judy pointed at the sliding glass door. “Out there! In the woods!”

“What did you see?” we asked. “A man in white!”

Our eyes followed Little Judy’s finger. The porch light was on, but it barely cast a glow over the deck. The rest of the backyard was dark. And the woods at the edge of the yard were black.

“Tell me exactly what you saw.” Marisol sounded calm, which made us feel better.

“I was looking out there and saw this blur in the woods, so I kept looking and then this guy, maybe a teenager, but dressed all in white,

stepped out of the woods and was looking this way. And then he stepped backwards into the woods and disappeared.”

We all looked, but we couldn’t see a man in white anywhere. “That’s what I saw,” Little Judy said.

Terrance came into the living room. “Did someone call me?” His hair was messed up like he’d been asleep.

“Little Judy saw someone in the woods!” we told him.

“Probably a jogger,” he said. “There’s jogging trails all over the place back there.”

“But he was wearing all white,” we insisted.

“Let’s not get carried away,” Marisol said. “We don’t know enough to get carried away.”

“It was a teenager,” Little Judy declared. “I know it was.” Then the doorbell rang.

We all screamed and huddled on the couch. We could tell Marisol wanted to huddle with us, but she was trying to be an adult. Adults can’t just scream and huddle on the couch the first time the doorbell rings. She got up.

“Don’t answer it!” we shouted. “It could be the man in white! Let’s hide!”

But she didn’t listen to us. She walked out of the living room and down the hallway.

“Should we pray?” Slow Winston asked. “Praying won’t help,” Terrance said.

Some of us were listening to the sounds in the hallway. Some of us were scanning the trees along the edge of the backyard. We weren’t sure what we should be more afraid of.

“She just opened the door.” Little Judy was listening to Marisol. “I hear voices. Oh god!”

We all scrambled for the couch again. We were climbing over each other, elbows poking eye sockets, knees mashing kidneys, fingernails catching skin.

Then—whoosh—Marisol sprang into the living room and shouted: “Pizza’s here!”

We screamed. We scrambled some more. Slow Winston fell off the side of the couch and landed on his butt. Then we laughed at how silly the whole thing was. Even Slow Winston laughed as he rubbed his big butt. We’d let our imagination run away from us. Maybe we’d seen too many scary movies. Marisol was here, and she’d always protect us, and pizza was here, and everything seemed better with pizza.

Marisol let us eat in the living room on the condition that we wouldn’t tell Mom and Dad. Also on the condition that we wouldn’t watch any more Kid Copz. Everyone agreed, except Slow Winston, but he was outnumbered.

“How about this one?” Marisol said, switching the channels. “It’s called Fashion Police.”

We’d never heard of Fashion Police, and we weren’t even sure if we were allowed to watch it.

“It’s where they drive around until they find someone who’s dressing badly, and then they kidnap them and take them back to their studio and give them a makeover.”

“It sounds scary,” Slow Winston said.

“It’s funny,” Marisol said, “because the people dress so badly, and then it’s nice because they get to keep the new clothes once they get the makeover.”

“That sounds good,” Terrance said. “It’s a show for grownups.”

The rest of us didn’t feel like arguing. At least we had pizza, and at least we got to eat it in the living room. Things could be a lot worse.

On the TV, a fat man was walking down the sidewalk and the Fashion Police pulled up alongside him and shouted at him through a megaphone.

Marisol’s phone made a ding. She looked at it, then started typing. “Whatcha typing?” Little Judy asked.

“I’m texting.”

“Whatcha texting?”

“A friend of mine is watching Fashion Police too. He thinks it’s hilarious.”

“He?” Little Judy was perceptive. “Yes, he.”

“It’s a boy? Who’s a friend?” “Yes.”

“So . . . a boyfriend? You have a boyfriend?”

Everything went quiet. Terrance was blushing, which is part of the reason we used to call him Pink Terrance. The Fashion Police were hustling to give the fat guy his final makeover.

“I want popcorn,” Slow Winston said.

“Yay popcorn!” we shouted. “Make it the way you make it,” we told Marisol.

She hit pause on the TV and got up and went into the kitchen. The screen was frozen on the fat guy’s face. He was wearing makeup to hide his pimples. Underneath, we could tell he was scared.

“Kid Copz is better than Fashion Police,” Slow Winston whispered to us.

“Yes, it is,” Little Judy said quietly. “Yes, it sure is.” “I think this is okay,” Terrance said.

“Marisol’s already got a boyfriend,” we told him. “You’re too late.” Terrance blushed some more and sighed loudly.

No one could remember who saw it first, because it started off small and slowly grew. It was a light, in the backyard.

“Does anyone else see that?” Slow Winston asked. “Yes,” we all said.

By now it was the size of a campfire. It was right in front of the swing set because we could see the light reflecting off the monkey bars and curly slide. Everything else in the backyard was pitch black. Maybe because it came on so slowly, none of us shouted or screamed. We just watched the flames flicker and leap and grow.

Marisol was still in the kitchen. We could hear the popcorn popping. “Pretty quiet in there,” she called out to us. “You haven’t murdered

each other, have you?”

We didn’t say anything.

There was movement. Something came out of the darkness and stood by the fire. It was the man in white. It looked like he was wearing a sheet with a hood on it, kind of like a ghost. He walked out of the woods and stood by the fire.

It was quiet for a long time. We didn’t know what to do or what he wanted. Then, out of the darkness, another man in white appeared. This one walked weird, as if he didn’t have to take steps to move. He stood next to the other man in white at the fire.

Then a third man in white appeared. He moved quicker than the second man in white. Then a fourth and a fifth came out at the same time. They made a circle around the fire.

“I’m putting the special seasoning on the popcorn.” Marisol was still in the kitchen.

“Maybe they’re ghosts,” Slow Winston said.

No one else said anything. Even Little Judy was speechless.

A minute passed. The men in white didn’t move. We couldn’t see their faces, couldn’t see their eyes, or even if they had eyes.

“Okay, you little church mice, here it is.”

Marisol came out from the kitchen carrying the big metal bowl that we only ever used on movie nights because it held so much popcorn. She came into the room and stopped. What she first saw was us, not looking at the TV, but instead looking out the sliding glass door. Then she followed our stares out to the back, and that’s when she saw what we saw.

“Terrance, hand me my phone.” Her voice sounded strange. It was calm, but too calm. “Terrance, where’s my phone?”

He didn’t move. His mouth was opening and closing like he might be trying to talk.

Marisol put the popcorn bowl on the coffee table, but she set it too close to the edge. It tipped and went over, and as it went, it threw a

shower of hot popcorn in the air, and it landed all over us and the couch and the floor, and that was what finally broke the spell.

Little Judy screamed, and Slow Winston joined in, and then everyone, including Marisol and Terrance, started screaming and huddling on the couch.

Finally, Marisol managed to catch herself. She got up and went to the door, and pulled the curtains closed. Now that we couldn’t see the men in white, the rest of us got quiet.

“Little Judy, you’re sitting on my phone.”

Marisol reached under her and pulled out the phone. We could see her hands were shaking, and that made us even more nervous. She pulled up Mom’s number.

It rang and went straight to voicemail. “Fuck!” Marisol said.

“Hey,” Slow Winston started to say, but then decided not to make a fuss about swears.

She tried Mom’s number again. Then again. Finally, she left a voicemail.

“Mrs. Garvey, this is Marisol. There’s something going on here at the house. Something . . . I don’t know. There’s strange men. I need you to call me back. Please? Okay.”

She hung up and looked at us. Then she went to the window and pulled the curtain to the side so she could peek out.

“Fuck!”

None of us bothered to say anything about swears this time.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m sure this is okay. It’s nothing. Probably.

Probably a prank. A messed-up prank on St. Crispin’s Day.”

She looked out the window again. The firelight from outside caught her face.

“What if it’s ghosts?” Slow Winston said. Marisol pressed 9-1-1 and send.

“Hello—yes—there are strange men—in the backyard—I don’t know—wearing costumes—I don’t know—3355 Cripple Creek Lane— yes—Marisol—I’m the babysitter—Garvey—I don’t know—sir, I don’t know—white, it looks like robes—I don’t know—no—I’m not—sir, I’m not—this isn’t a—yes, sir, I know what day it is—this isn’t—please—sir, please, listen—I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to raise my voice—I’m trying to—I don’t know—I don’t—why won’t you—please—sir—please—”

She pulled the phone from her ear, and we could see they’d hung up on her. It was quiet for a long time. Marisol’s face looked different, like she’d just realized something important about how the world works.

“What did they say?” Slow Winston asked.

“They think it’s a prank,” she said. “They have more important things to do.”

“Maybe the men in white are gone,” Little Judy said. “Maybe they had their fun and now that they think the cops are coming maybe they left.”

We all went to a corner of the curtain and pulled it back to look. It was the same five men standing around the fire in the backyard. It didn’t seem like they’d moved a single muscle since the last time we’d looked. There was something about the way they stood, feet set shoulder-width apart, arms crossed, they looked like they belonged there, like we were the ones invading their property.

“What do they want?” Terrance asked.

“This is ridiculous,” Marisol said. “Someone needs to find out.” She sat us all down on the couch. “Listen,” she said, “I’m just going   to talk to them. It’s no big deal.”

“No, no, no!” we all shouted. “Don’t go!”

“They’re trying to scare us, so I’m going out there and telling them to take it someplace else. Don’t worry. Just lock the door behind me. Okay? Don’t worry, but lock the door.”

We yelled and screamed for her to stay. She wouldn’t listen. Little Judy even wrapped herself around Marisol’s legs, but she eventually got her to let go.

“I’ve got my phone with me,” she said. “If something happens, I can call the house phone. I’ll pull the number up so it’s ready. Probably this is nothing.”

She unhooked the lock and pulled open the sliding glass door. Once it was closed behind her, she made sure we locked it. Then Marisol turned around to face the men in white who waited by the fire. We were all watching her from the window. She seemed so small. She seemed so brave. We could see her take a deep breath and then walk to the end of the deck, and then out into the yard and up the rise to where the men in white waited.

As she approached them, the men parted, as if to make room for her around the fire. Marisol had her arms crossed. She got up to the circle and said something.

“She doesn’t look scared,” Little Judy said. “I’d be so scared.” “I wonder what they’re saying,” Terrance said.

None of us knew, so none of us said anything. But the fact that they were talking made us feel better. Marisol had taken care of everything. This was all a misunderstanding. And she cleared it up.

Then, from the darkness at the edge of the yard, two more men in white appeared. They were behind Marisol, moving toward her.

“She can’t see them!” Little Judy said.

“Somebody, do something,” Slow Winston said and closed his eyes. The men in white behind Marisol were crawling. Kind of crab-

walking. And they kept moving closer.

Terrance pounded on the window.

Marisol turned to look back at the house. We could see she had a smile on her face, as if she was about to tell us that the whole thing had been a big mix-up. But then she saw the two men crab-walking behind her, and the smile dropped from her face.

One of the men lunged toward Marisol. He swung and hit her on the side of the head. He moved fast and with the robes, it was hard to tell exactly how it happened, but we could hear the crack from inside the house.

Marisol went down on one knee. She reached her hand out to the ground to steady herself. Her head wobbled. Then the other man who’d been crab-walking punched her on the cheekbone, and she fell over backwards so that her legs were folded underneath her.

The other men in white—the ones who’d been standing around the fire—didn’t move. They just watched as the two crab-walkers grabbed her by the wrists and dragged her into the woods.

The darkness swallowed them up.

The whole thing lasted five seconds. We stepped back from the window and tried to understand what had just happened. We were alone in the house. The TV screen was still frozen on the big fat guy’s face from Fashion Police.

“Maybe we should open the curtain,” Terrance finally said, “because then at least we could see what they’re doing.”

“I don’t want them looking at me,” Little Judy said.

“We’ll open it halfway,” Terrance said. “You can stay behind that part, and I’ll keep an eye on them.”

“Like you could do anything about it anyway,” Slow Winston said, but no one said anything back.

We decided to call Mom and Dad again from the kitchen phone. We dialed both their cellphones, plus a number we had for the Norwoods’, but got no answer.

Just as we were about to dial 9-1-1, the phone rang. The little blue screen said, “Marisol A.”

“That’s her!” Little Judy shouted. “She’s calling to tell us she’s okay!

Pick it up. Put it on speaker.”

She sounded so convinced. And we wanted so badly for her to be right. Terrance pushed the button. We leaned in and listened.

From the first second the phone crackled to life, we realized everything was not okay. Nothing was okay.

There was a scraping sound, and then a sound of someone lifting a heavy weight. There was ragged breathing. Then we could hear Marisol, but she wasn’t close to the phone.

“No, no, no,” she said. “Why? Please. Why? God.”

There were more sounds, and she said some more things but she was too far from the phone to understand. And then the phone cut off and the noise stopped.

“What are they doing?” Little Judy asked.

We looked at her, our young sister, and wondered if she knew, deep down, what was happening. Or if she should know. Even when you’re going through the worst things, it’s not always good to know.

“I think they’re ghosts,” Slow Winston said, even though that wasn’t what we were talking about.

“No, that’s not—”

Wham! Wham, wham!

We froze.

Bang! Bang, wham, wham!

It was the front door. “Maybe it’s the cops.”

“Maybe it’s more ghosts.”

Wham, wham, wham!

We crawled down the hallway. We peeked around the corner and saw, through the side window, a bunch of kids standing on our porch. They were kids we knew, the ones we’d play Spud, and six different kinds of Tag, and Sardines, and Kick the Can, and Bloody Murder with. Terrance opened the door and the kids all piled in. It was the McDaniels—Wanda, Wendell, and Walter. And it was the Orchards— Itsy, Zippy, and Pico. They were all talking at the same time, so it was hard to understand what was going on. But once we got them into the

living room, they began to make sense.

“We were all together when we saw the sheet men,” they said. “So did we,” we said.

“Then they lit a fire in the backyard.” “Exactly!” we shouted.

“And we tried to get help, but no one would come.” “Same here.”

“So Denise went out to see what they wanted, but they took her.”

We could tell by their grim faces that Denise had met the same fate as Marisol.

“What do we do now?” Pico Orchard asked. We all looked at each other.

“Let’s hide,” Little Judy finally said. “We can go up to the attic and put a big trunk over the door and they’ll never be able to get us.”

“We’d be sitting ducks.” “Trapped.”

“What if they decided to set the house on fire?”

“I don’t hear you guys coming up with any ideas,” Little Judy said. We could tell she was embarrassed by how hers had been shot down.

“We could ignore them,” someone said. “Should we call our parents again?”

“Maybe the police?”

“We could go on the roof and spell out Help with bedsheets.” “That’s for floods.”

Then it was quiet for a long time. No one had any more ideas.

We looked out the window again. The men in white were still there, standing around the fire. The wind was blowing and the bottoms of their robes flapped like clothes hanging on a line. There were five in our backyard, but we knew there were more. In the woods, hiding, waiting. “We could fight back.” It was Terrance who said this. He was the

oldest of all the kids, and that made us listen.

“There’s too many of them,” Wendell McDaniel said. “That’s what Denise tried to do,” Zippy Orchard said.

“They might be ghosts anyway,” Slow Winston said. “How do you fight ghosts?”

“Hold on.” Terrance ran upstairs and came down a minute later with his aluminum baseball bat, the one he used to hit a homerun in the game against Interstate Bank last year.

It was Little Judy who spoke first. “Pink Terrance, don’t you even dare think about going out there.”

“I’m just Terrance now, Little Judy.”

“No one has to go out there,” we all said. “There’s no rule.” “We can’t just sit here,” Terrance said.

“Why not?” we asked.

“Because they’re coming for us. Sooner or later. They’re coming. We can’t hide forever.”

We yelled and pleaded. We screamed and grabbed his arms and legs and tried to drag him back to the couch. But he had grown a lot in the last year, and he was stronger than we’d realized.

He peeled us off. He told us everything would be all right. He told   us that once they realized he meant business they’d probably get scared and run. He said that’s what bullies do, and the men in white were nothing more than big bullies. He said we could help Marisol once we chased the men in white away and that, eventually, Mom and Dad would come back and we would barely remember this whole thing, like it was a bad dream that was only half there when you wake up.

This made us feel better. It gave us hope. We stopped yelling.

And he went. He slid open the back door. He closed it behind him.

We locked it. We watched him turn around to face the men in white.

He shifted the baseball bat from one hand to the other. He took a step toward the edge of the deck.

That was when we saw a gray blur. Almost like a cloud or a puff of smoke. It started from the right and whizzed across the window. It seemed like it surrounded Terrance and picked him up and threw him off the deck to the left. It moved so fast Terrance didn’t even have time to use his bat. We couldn’t even tell what got him. But we knew what it meant, knew Terrance had been taken, knew he was gone.

We huddled in the living room, looking out the window, watching the men in white while they stood in our backyard watching us. There were too many of us to all fit on the couch, so some of us huddled on the floor. When the gray cloud took Terrance, none of us screamed. Maybe we knew something like that was bound to happen, and we were ready for it.

The TV screen clicked over to the screensaver. It started showing pictures of different places from way high above them. First it was a city with tall buildings, then a wide river valley, then a desert with sandy dunes that stretched on forever. Some of the youngest kids were crying, even Little Judy. But none of us said anything. There was nothing left to say.

It was Slow Winston who finally came up with the solution. No one expected it to come from him, but he was the next oldest, even counting the McDaniels and the Orchards, so maybe he was in the best position to figure it out.

When he told us the plan, it didn’t make any sense. So he kept explaining it until we understood. It wasn’t the best solution, wasn’t what any of us would have wanted, but it didn’t feel like we had a choice. So we quietly agreed.

We all lined up, biggest to smallest. From Slow Winston down to little Pico Orchard. We unlocked the back door and pulled it open wide. No one said a word. We walked out, and we didn’t even bother to close the door behind us. The air smelled like smoke, from the fire. But we could smell something else too, something sharp in the air, like the smell of metal.

We stepped off the deck, still lined up in order. If you were watching from far away, you might think we were playing a game, but we weren’t. We walked like that through the backyard.

The men in white who stood by the fire just watched us go by. As we got to the edge of the yard, we could hear sounds coming from the woods. Other kids, from other houses, crying. There were other sounds too. Adults making growls and grunts and yips and yowls. We knew now what waited for us in there. But what else could we do? We kept going. We marched straight into the woods, because we knew, as sure as anything, that we had no other choice.

---

WANT TO SUPPORT HMS’S PROGRAMMING MISSION TO EMPOWER CHICAGO-AREA ADULTS USING STORYTELLING TECHNIQUES TO GIVE THEM A VOICE AND PUBLISHING TO GIVE THEIR WORDS A VISIBLE HOME? YOU CAN DONATE HERE OR BUY A JOURNAL HERE.