No shoes.
I ran.
Out the back gate.
Across the wet grass behind the Hendersons’ place.
Down the old tractor path.
Into the old Pruitt orchard.
Old Mrs. Pruitt had moved into a nursing home two winters ago.
Nobody had picked those apples since.
The trees were black and twisted.
Rotten fruit squished under my bare feet.
Scout kept running.
He’d stop.
Look back.
Make sure I was still coming.
Then run again.
My lungs burned.
My feet were cut up from the gravel.
I didn’t feel it.
Ten minutes.
Maybe twelve.
Then Scout stopped.
And sat.
In front of a shed.
An old picking shed at the far end of the orchard.
Gray boards.
Tar-paper roof.
One dusty window.
I’d lived in Wrenfield for eleven years.
I’d never known it was there.
My heart started slamming.
Because nothing about that shed made sense.
The boards were rotting.
But the padlock hanging on it was new.
Shiny brass.
The orange price sticker still stuck to the bottom.
In the mud beside the door were tire tracks.
Fresh.
Deep.
And there was a smell.
Faint.
Coffee.
And something else.
Something that made my throat close.
Strawberry shampoo.
I stepped closer.
And I heard it.
Humming.
Soft.
Behind the boards.
A little made-up tune.
Four notes up.
Two notes down.
Ruby’s painting song.
She’d hummed it every time she held a brush since she was four.
Nobody else on earth knew that song.
I grabbed the padlock.
I yanked it.
It didn’t give.
I yanked again.
“Ruby?”
It came out as a whisper.
“Ruby?”
The humming stopped.
Behind me, a branch cracked.
I spun around.
Jason was standing between two apple trees.
Ten feet away.
No crutches.
No brace.
No limp.
Standing on both legs like a man who’d never been hurt at all.
A plastic grocery bag hung from one hand.
I could see what was inside it.
Strawberry juice boxes.
A new sketchbook.
Three tubes of paint.
All of them purple.
He saw me.
He saw my bare feet.
He saw Scout.
All the color left his face.
“Hannah,” he said.
