crossed my mind, Avery thought, but I’d get lost in the woods. Even if I didn’t, the boat is gone. “Never mind. You have to help me fill it in.”
“Why?”
“Just because. And don’t say excape, it sounds ignorant. Ess, Stevie. Esscape.” Which is just what his friend had done, God love and bless him. Where was he now? Avery had no idea. He’d lost touch.
“Esscape,” Stevie said. “Got it.”
“Terrific. Now help me.”
The boys got down on their knees and began to fill in the depression under the fence, scooping with their hands and raising a cloud of dust. It was hot work, and they were both soon sweating. Stevie’s face was bright red.
“What are you boys doing?”
They looked around. It was Gladys, her usual big smile nowhere in sight.
“Nothing,” Avery said.
“Nothing,” Stevie agreed. “Just playin in the dirt. You know, the dirty ole dirt.”
“Let me see. Move.” And when neither of them did, she kicked Avery in the side.
“Ow!” he cried, and curled up. “Ow, that hurt!”
Stevie said, “What are you, on the rag or some—” Then he got his own kick, high up on the shoulder.
Gladys looked at the trench, only partially filled in, then at Frieda, still absorbed in her artistic endeavors. “Did you do this?”
Frieda shook her head without looking up.
Gladys pulled her walkie from the pocket of her white pants and keyed it. “Mr. Stackhouse? This is Gladys for Mr. Stackhouse.”
There was a pause, then: “This is Stackhouse, go.”
“I think you need to come out to the playground as soon as possible. There’s something you need to see. Maybe it’s nothing, but I don’t like it.”
11
After notifying the security chief, Gladys called Winona to take the two boys back to their rooms. They were to stay there until further notice.
“I don’t know nothing about that hole,” Stevie said sulkily. “I thought a woodchuck done it.”
Winona told him to shut up and herded the boys back inside.
Stackhouse arrived with Mrs. Sigsby. She bent and he squatted, first looking at the dip under the chainlink, then at the fence itself.
“Nobody could crawl under there,” Mrs. Sigsby said. “Well, maybe Dixon, he’s not much bigger than those Wilcox twins were, but no one else.”
Stackhouse scooped away the loose mix of rocks and dirt the two boys had put back in, deepening the dip to a trench. “Are you sure of that?”
Mrs. Sigsby realized she was biting at her lip, and made herself stop. The idea is ridiculous, she thought. We have cameras, we have microphones, we have the caretakers and the janitors and the housekeepers, we have security. All to take care of a bunch of kids so terrified they wouldn’t say boo to a goose.
Of course there was Wilholm, who definitely would say boo to a goose, and there had been a few others like him over the years. But still . . .
“Julia.” Very low.
“What?”
“Get down here with me.”
She started to do it, then saw the Brown girl staring at them. “Get inside,” she snapped. “This second.”
Frieda went in a hurry, dusting off her chalky hands, leaving her smiling cartoon people behind. As the girl entered the lounge, Mrs. Sigsby saw a small cluster of children gawking out. Where were the caretakers when you needed them? In the break room, swapping stories with one of the extraction teams? Telling dirty jo—
“Julia!”
She dropped to one knee, wincing when a sharp piece of gravel bit into her.
“There’s blood on this fence. See it?”
She didn’t want to, but she did. Yes, that was blood. Dried to maroon, but definitely blood.
“Now look over there.”
He poked a finger through one of the chainlink diamonds, pointing at a partially uprooted bush. There was blood on that, too. As Mrs. Sigsby looked at those few spots, spots that were outside, her stomach dropped and for one alarming moment she thought she was going to wet her pants, as she had on that long-ago trike. She thought of the Zero Phone and saw her life as head of the Institute—because that was what it was, not her job but her life—disappearing into it. What would the lisping man on the other end say if she had to call and tell him that, in what was supposed to be the most secret and secure facility in the country—not to mention the most vital facility in the country—a child had escaped by going under a fence?
They would say she was done, of course. Done and dusted.
“The residents are all here,” she said in a hoarse whisper. She