When exactly to return to the trailer park presented something of a conundrum. Nights were more likely to attract vagrants and delinquents, as were weekends, and weekend nights were surely the most risky of all. Minn had to work, though, and the week after spring break was not a time to take off, to call in sick. She had to keep up appearances, especially after her most recent therapy session. Isaac's case manager and the foster care people would be checking into every angle of her life in the next few weeks; she couldn't appear to be flaky or in any way unstable. She had to be rock solid. So it was best to get this out of the way before anyone started getting too close.

Minn drove to the abandoned trailer park right after classes ended on Thursday. She hoped to beat any teens who grew bored during their after-school hours and any creeps who might frequent the place once dusk fell. The drive alone was enough to give her chills, as she recalled the night that had recently changed her life, how Isaac had been so threatening and so defenseless at the same time, how she'd had no comprehension of his intentions. A sort of electrifying buzz moved through her; in retrospect, the night had been exciting, a complete rush. No matter the fear and discomfort she'd felt—that was forgotten. This boy had chosen her. He trusted her. Out of everyone else, he'd needed to confide in her, because she was trustworthy, and because he could tell she'd care. That was it, mostly. That's what he'd said . . . she'd looked as if she'd care.

And she did. So, so much.

The ramp down into the trailer park was bathed in the heavy afternoon sunlight, a golden glow so thick it could practically be sliced and buttered. In a weird way, the veritable junkyard with its dilapidated structures looked rather lovely, Minn thought. Sunlight could do that—turn even a concrete block into something momentarily magical. Or perhaps this place had another value to her, now, one it never could've had three weeks earlier, and that was what made it strangely beautiful.

Isaac had told her the bag was in the trailer in which they'd spent the night, and though Minn had figured she'd easily be able to find the right one, she was disconcerted by their similarity as she descended amongst them. She'd thought the location would be familiar, seared into her mind, but it seemed that the emotional wreckage of that whole experience had dulled her recollection rather than sharpened it. Maybe she'd been too hyperfocused on herself and Isaac to retain any details not about themselves. She remembered watching him as he sat across the way in the dark, trying to make out the expressions he wore; she remembered the morning, seeing him standing there in that weird blue dawn, the gun up under his chin; she remembered his utter shame and sobbing and her attempts to console him; she remembered sitting in the car, watching that festering pond sparkle while he told her what he'd needed to say. But she no longer recalled which of the many trailers they'd sat in. All of them propped up piles of trash and the defunct paraphernalia of once-present people: topless eroding barbecue grills, threadbare tires, dirty plastic children's playhouses, wheelbarrows and shredded lawn chairs, snow shovels and rusted lawnmowers and an occasional sad, crumbling garden gnome. All of them peeled down their sides and flaunted broken windows. All of them were lined up adjacent to the gravel road, colorless, decrepit eyesores. The only thing Minn knew for certain was that her and Isaac's trailer had been to the left, and that, at least, was some kind of start. She parked and figured she'd go place to place until the interior of one sparked her memory—surely it would happen.

There were no signs of any other people, no cars, no sounds of laughter or conversation or music. Minn thanked her luck and headed toward the nearest trailer. Its door hung off its hinges in a way that felt wrong, and she knew in her gut that this wasn't the one. Still, she cautiously ascended its rotting wooden stairs and peeked into it. The thing smelled absolutely foul. Its roof had caved in, and racoons were probably nesting inside of it. She backed away without even stepping in and carried on to the next.

As she moved trailer to trailer, Minn found her thoughts wandering backward in time, to a night long ago, when she'd run away from her and her brother's foster home, and Wolf had come after her. She'd not gotten far, just packed a bag, walked to the nearest gas station, and hitched a ride from a young couple. They'd dropped her about twenty miles away at a rest stop after arguing over the decision to take a stranger into their car. Funny, Minn had thought—they'd seemed afraid of her, when she'd been the one at the mercy of two adults. Even though they'd kicked her out, she'd never felt braver. Why, she'd intimidated two grown people! She could definitely conquer the world. Or, at least, the adolescent her had thought so.

Minn could hardly recall what it was that'd set her off enough to leave. Something about wanting to go to a party, but their guardians had refused because there wouldn't be supervision . . . oh, it didn't matter. That'd surely only been the last in a series of frustrations, and for children who'd grown up virtually wild, restrictions had never made much sense. No doubt it was why she and Wolf had gone through more than a handful of foster homes.

A lot like Isaac, really.

Of course. Minn had been thinking so much of how the boy was like Peter, but he was also like herself. She'd known the difficulty of instability, but unlike Isaac, she'd never felt alone, because she'd always had her brother. Maybe that's what Isaac had sensed in her, then, not just that she looked like a good listener but that she was someone who could, on a very basic level, relate to him. Words weren't necessary for connections like that. He'd just known, even if he hadn't been able to say how.

Minn had spent a whole night at that rest stop, after that couple had dropped her off there without so much as a word of advice. There'd been cell phones back then, but they hadn't been smart, and it wasn't as if Minn's foster parents would've bought one for her anyway. She'd been fifteen, entirely alone in the middle of nowhere, and she'd been fortunate that the weather had been nice enough for her to lounge outside on some nearby playground equipment. She'd sat up at the top of a twisty slide, virtually invisible to anyone not looking for her, and watched semi-trucks pull in and out. When no one was around, she'd hopped down a couple of times to use the restroom, and after the night had deepened into its heavy summer blanket, she'd curled up and tried to sleep. It hadn't been comfortable, though, and after a few hours, she'd definitely begun to regret running. The realization that she was utterly alone had sunk in, and the night itself had seemed unending.

She'd somehow fallen asleep at last, though, for she'd found herself suddenly shaken awake in the early, milky morning light. Self-preservation had kicked in, and she'd bolted up to find that it was only her brother crouching over her.

Wolf's reprimand still held in her memory: "What the fuck are you thinking? You want to get us split up?"

Minn knew, even now, that he hadn't been angry so much as worried. She'd been stupid, and Wolf, as usual, had been right—no one could guarantee they'd be kept together if they were fostered out again. He'd been happy to find her, said he'd figured she'd try to head out of town, to hitchhike for as much as she'd talked about it, and he had borrowed a friend's car (nevermind that he had no license) and gone down the freeway, stopping at every gas station and fast food joint. It'd taken longer than he'd thought, and he'd almost given up, but he'd found her after all. And more than anything, more than frustration over his search or annoyance at her lack of foresight, he'd been hurt that she'd considered leaving him.

"Whatever shit I get up to, it's always going to come back to you," he'd said (or something like it). "Because we're all we have."

All they had—each other. She'd known it was right. But then . . . well, memories were strange. Minn knew that. Sometimes she dreamed things and thought they were real, and what'd happened in that silvery cool summer morning, sitting up there in that slide with Wolf after he'd barked at her . . . it surely hadn't happened. Just like that argument they'd had as children, standing in that dead corn, him angry at her for something she didn't remember. That had surely been altered by the passing time, colored by her imagination. Memory was like that. Wolf couldn't recall the corn field, and Minn had always been too embarrassed to mention the rest stop, because of course it hadn't happened, and Wolf would laugh at her, maybe even grow angry. But more than that, he'd probably say she was shameful for even thinking such things. So she'd never asked about it. Whatever she thought she knew, she was wrong. That's just how it had to be.

Attempting to shake her thoughts free of the past, Minn strode to the next trailer and yanked back its door which, due to its broken spring, flung back and banged against the outer wall. This was it! A thrill shivered through her, as if she were about to enter a secret treasure horde instead of a disgusting squalid box. Stepping up through the doorway, Minn's suspicions were confirmed. There was the hallway to the left, where an open door spilled clothing, and another day-lit, closet-sized room revealed a sink and some trash bags. To the right was a large space where a stained mattress slumped against a wall, and beyond that, a cracked window graced the end. That mattress—it'd been where Isaac had sat most of the night. Everything was exactly the same.

The backpack she was looking for was black, Isaac had told her. The night he'd made her drive them to the trailer park wasn't the first time he'd been there, apparently; in fact, he'd told her he'd cut class and missed curfew several times in order to hang out in the trailer park, and Minn believed him. Circle Ridge had indicated his night out hadn't been the first, that his absenteeism was the main reason he couldn't go to the school anymore. He was essentially grounded. What he'd been doing at the park was anyone's guess. Minn certainly hadn't asked him, and he'd neglected to say, nor had he told his case manager, apparently. She assumed drugs. That was the most likely scenario. The boy didn't seem social enough to be hanging out with other teens, but where he would've gotten money for weed or anything else was beyond her. Surely it was why Isaac had been put in isolation, for not disclosing his pastimes. Circle Ridge was probably going to be happy to shove him off onto Minn, to get rid of one of their more problematic cares.

Finding a black bag in the midst of a trailer of dark material and piles of leaves was a daunting task. Isaac hadn't exactly given her instructions, told her only it was somewhere in there. Minn hadn't considered that she might have to actually go through the crap in that trailer, and as she stood there in its gloom, a sudden wave of frustration nearly overwhelmed her. But Isaac wouldn't bury the backpack, she told herself. He wouldn't put it somewhere even he would be loath to touch. Would he? Think like a teenaged boy, she thought, correcting herself with Think like a smart teenaged boy.

Where would Peter have hidden a bag? Not the bathroom. That place was too gross. And not the main room; that would be too obvious. It had to be a space no one would be likely to go if they wandered in but also somewhere Isaac would be willing to frequent.

One of the rooms at the back. They were most likely bedrooms. Minn turned and moved down the hall and past the bathroom, climbing over the mountain of old clothing blocking the way. She gently pushed aside the half-open door and stepped into a semi-dark room all the way at the end, the windows of which were covered with broken blinds. Bits of dust and decay hovered in the air, which itself was a thick miasma of stagnance. There was a bed in the room (or to be accurate, there was a box spring; the mattress was obviously the one in the front of the trailer), and there was a dresser with all its drawers out. A couple of broken lamps were twisted on the floor, and bits of other random things were scattered throughout. In all, though, the place was far less full than the rest of the trailer, and when Minn turned to glance toward the closet, whose by-pass doors were off their track and propped against the wall, she saw, sitting plainly in its interior as if it wished to be found, a black backpack.

Immense gratification flowed through Minn as she stepped into the closet to pick it up. The bag was surprisingly light, although she admittedly had no idea what she'd expected. Isaac had never told her she could look inside, and yet . . . he hadn't told her she couldn't, either. He'd just asked her to destroy it. But, she reasoned, if she were throwing caution to the wind and bringing him into her home, she had a right (well, perhaps not a right, but maybe a responsibility?) to know whether the boy's secrets were tolerable.

So out she went, taking deep breaths of fresh air the moment she exited that hellish junkheap. She briefly considered taking the bag home in order to examine its contents in private, away from this open space where people could at any moment appear, but her curiosity got the best of her, and the minute Minn got into her car, she locked the doors and, bag on the passenger seat, unzipped it.

For the next thirty minutes, Minn could hardly follow her own absorbing thoughts. Whoever this boy really was, she was his salvation, and he was hers.

Nothing in a soon-to-be-burning black bag could change that.