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Annie hadn’t thought of that. She wouldn’t be able to pawn the necklace and earrings until tomorrow morning, when shops would be open. And by then she wanted to be miles and miles from Bel Jardin.

Then Laurel piped, “I have money, Annie. Almost a hundred dollars. Remember after Dearie’s Christmas party when Mr. Oliver thought he lost his wallet with all that money in it? Well, I found it under the sofa … a week later.” She blushed. “I know I should have told you before, but …” Her voice trailed off.

“Laurey! You didn’t keep it, did you?”

Color flared in Laurel’s pale cheeks. “Of course I didn’t! I just didn’t tell you about the reward he gave me. I… I was saving it to buy you something for your birthday. Then Dearie …” She stopped in the middle of buttoning her blouse. “Annie, you’re not mad, are you?”

Annie hugged her again, relief rinsing through her. “Laurey, you dope. Come on, get dressed or we’ll never get out of here.”

Laurel gave her a long look that seemed burdened with far more than any elevenyear-old should have to carry. “It’s because of… of Val, isn’t it?” she whispered. “Something he did?” Not “Daddy” or “Dad”; since she could talk, she’d called him Val.

Annie nodded, her throat suddenly tight.

“Annie,” Laurel whispered sheepishly as they were leaving. “Can I take Boo?” Boo was her old baby blanket, nubby and tattered from a thousand washings. She didn’t like to admit she still slept with it, at her age, but Annie knew how much Boo meant.

” ‘Course,” she said.

At the front door, Annie paused, remembering another keepsake: Dearie’s Oscar. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving it behind, but she was scared of going back in there. What if Val was up, and tried to come after

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her again? Still, she couldn’t just walk away without the one thing that had meant the most to her mother.

“Wait here,” she whispered.

Her heart slamming against her ribs, Annie slipped back into the living room, and snatched up the Oscar from the rug where she’d dropped it, quickly averting her eyes from the still form sprawled on the couch. Reaching Laurel’s side, she saw a horrified look dawn on her sister’s face. Annie looked down at the statuette in her hand, and in the dim glow of the porch light she saw the blood smearing its bright surface. Oh God.

Then, wordlessly, her eyes as big and dark as holes punched in her chalk-white face, Laurel took it from Annie, using her precious Boo to wipe it clean. She handed it back to Annie, who quickly stuffed it into the bulging overnight bag. Looking into Laurel’s trusting eyes, she found the strength to push open the door.

Minutes later, as they made their way in darkness down the long, curving drive toward the wrought-iron gates at the bottom, Annie turned for one last look at Bel Jardin. In the faint glow of a sickle-shaped moon, it seemed to rise like a huge, pale cliff from a wavy sea of honeysuckle, oleander, and hibiscus. Above the palms that lined the drive, she saw the first milky light of dawn touch the top of the tiled roof, and she turned away, quickening her step.

At that moment, clutching the heavy overnight bag, the bulge that was Dearie’s Oscar banging against her leg, Annie’s courage seemed to wither again. Where on earth was she going? And what was she going to do when she got there? And what if the phone booth at the Gulf station out on Sunset wasn’t working and she couldn’t even call a taxi? I

Then, sttangely, she felt an invisible hand against the small of her back, giving her a gentle push. Inside her head, a sweet, throaty voice drawled, Once you’ve made up your mind to go someplace, don’t waste all your time fiddling with your shoelaces.

Annie straightened suddenly, hitching the heavy suitcase a little higher so she could walk faster. She reached

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for Laurel’s hand, which felt cool and dry in her sweaty grasp. Her heart was thundering in her ears-she had never felt so scared and unsure-but the main thing was to fool Laurel into thinking that she knew exactly where she was headed, and that she wasn’t a bit afraid. Suddenly, that seemed like the most important thing in the world.

“I hope you wore socks.” She spoke briskly to her sister, who trudged listlessly alongside her, hugging a tattered baby blanket smeared with her father’s blood, a pale goldenhaired stalk of a girl dressed in pink pedal pushers and a puff-sleeved blouse. “You know how you get blisters when you don’t wear socks. And we have a long way to go.”

LNew York City aurel pushed the sausage to one side of her plate. Maybe if she hid it under her toast, Anme wouldn’t notice. She felt too sick to eat another bite, but the last thing Laurel wanted was for Annie to start in again about her being too skinny.

Anyway, look who was talking! Annie looked awful, the way her green cashmere sweater hung on her. With her cheekbones sticking out, and those brown smudges under her eyes, she could have passed for Morticia Addams.

Why hadn’t Annie ordered something besides toast? She looked hungry enough to gobble up every stale donut in this diner.

But, no, they had to watch every penny, Annie kept saying; they had to save for when they found an apartment. But when would that be? A whole two weeks in New York, and they were still stuck in that smelly, dark room at the Allerton. Laurel still believed that somehow Annie was going to make everything okay. But what if she just

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couldn’t? Or what if something happened to her, like getting really sick or hurt?

Thinking of all the awful things that might happen, Laurel felt as if she were on a roller coaster, inching up that first big hill, when you don’t know if you’re going to pee your pants or throw up, or maybe both. In her whole life, she’d never felt so scared.

In the beginning, the $970 they’d gotten for Dearie’s jewelry had seemed like a king’s treasure … but now it was almost all gone. Everything cost so much! Annie hadn’t told her they were almost broke, but Laurel had seen the worried look on her sister’s face last night when she carefully counted out this week’s money for Mr. Mancusi at the front desk. She saw it now, too, in the way Annie nibbled her toast, trying to make it last, carefully sipping her tea between each bite.

And dragging back in every night, trying to act cheerful even though no one would give her a job. How much longer could Annie go on like that? Living in Bel Air and going to Green Oaks School wasn’t exactly ideal for being a hotel maid or a waitress. But Annie was smarter than anyone. Hadn’t she talked Mancusi into letting them have their room for five dollars a week less in exchange for her sweeping out the entry hall and reception area each day?

Annie would find something. She’d always taken care of everything, even when Dearie was alive. Like that time at Palisades Park, when Dearie had too many beers and, just as they were getting ready to go home, passed out at the wheel. Annie had somehow pulled her into the back seat, and driven them all safely home. Now, remembering it, Laurel realized that Annie had been only fourteen, not old enough to drive. How had she known what to do? *

Laurel wished she could be strong like Annie.

If only I was older. Then I could get a job too, and Annie wouldn’t have to do everything herself.

But who would ever hire an elevenyear-old kid, when Annie, who looked older than seventeen, was having a hard time?

Laurel watched Annie break open another plastic

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container of grape jelly, and begin spreading it thickly on her last wedge of toast. She felt a surge of love for her sister. At least she had Annie. What if she were alone? The thought made her stomach dip crazily, and the room seemed to tilt.

Holding tightly to the edge of her seat, as if she might otherwise be catapulted off, she glanced around at the other booths, mostly empty. Weekdays it was usually pretty crowded, but this was Sunday. Across the aisle, a man wearing khakis and work boots was drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette. At the counter, a baggy-eyed lady in a tight miniskirt sat hunched over a Danish, the spike heels of her black patent-leather boots hooked over the rung of her stool. The food wasn’t very good, but it was cheap and nobody here seemed to mind that everything smelled and tasted like fried bacon-the air, her napkin when she wiped her mouth, even her milk.

Annie looked up, and said, “I have a feeling this is our lucky day.” She sounded so cheerful and determined that Laurel believed her and began feeling a little better. Then she remembered, Annie said the same thing every day.

Laurel pushed her milk glass across the Formica tabletop. “Here, you finish it.”

Annie frowned and pushed it back. “You need it more than I do. Anyway, I’m full.”

It was a lie. Laurel wanted to shout at her sister, plead with her to please, please stop being so nice. Like ordering these eggs and sausages for her after she’d said all she wanted was cornflakes. Annie meant well, but she wished Annie would stop treating her like a two-year-old.

If only Annie would let me, I bet I’d be good at helping out.

But all Laurel said was, “Can I see the paper?”

One thing they had to buy every day was The New York Times. Sunday’s fat edition, with today’s date at the top, October 9, lay folded next to Annie’s plate; she hadn’t looked at it yet. Usually, she began circling ads the minute they got it-so did this mean she was losing hope? Laurel felt her stomach do a lazy somersault.

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Some of the apartments they’d looked at were nice but way too expensive. Or they were so awful, in neighborhoods where the sidewalks were lined with overflowing garbage cans, and you had to watch so you didn’t step on the broken glass. And inside, dark halls and pee smells, like the Allerton. In one, when the super switched on the light, a whole parade of cockroaches began scurrying over the kitchen counter, trying to escape while he muttered under his breath, smacking them with a rolled-up newspaper.

It was such an enormous city. Maybe Annie hadn’t been looking in the right places. What about Brooklyn, for instance? That was where Val and Uncle Rudy had grown up. On the map, it looked close, connected to Manhattan by the colored lines that stood for different subway lines.

But where Laurel really wanted to be at this moment was back home, at Bel Jardin.

She badly missed her room, with its sunny window seat crammed with stuffed animals. And her best friend, Bonnie Pell, who knew every Beatles song by heart, and always picked Laurel first when they were choosing up teams.

In a weird way, even though when she had been there he’d hardly ever paid attention to her, she even missed her father.

She imagined Val asleep in the king-sized bed he’d once shared with Dearie. Hector was cutting the grass, and Bonita was flipping flapjacks at the stove while singing Spanish songs in her high, warbly voice …

Then the image dissolved, and all she could see in her mind was blood. Val’s blood. And the darkness that had followedซher and Annie all the way down Chantilly and Tarcuto, toast the golf course, to Sunset, where in the yellow glow of street lamps, she’d seen the smears of dried blood on Boo. She remembered dropping her old blanket in the first garbage can they came to, yet feeling as if somehow she was the one being left behind. As if the girl she had been back then was a friend who had moved away, someone she barely remembered anymore.

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If only Annie would tell her what Val had done that night to get her mad enough to hit him. Imagining Val dead, lying on the floor in a pool of blood, she felt gripped by an icy chill.

No, she told herself, that couldn’t be. Val couldn’t be dead. She didn’t want him to be dead.

But if he was alive, then he might be out looking for them. Annie had said they had to be careful not to get caught, or Val would take her away from Annie. And maybe even get Annie arrested for kidnapping.

Annie in jail? Laurel couldn’t bear the thought. Nor could she imagine being separated from her sister. So she had to be very careful, and not tell anyone too much about herself.

But clinging to Annie like a little kid in diapers, that wasn’t how she wanted to be, either. As scared and sick as she felt, she didn’t want to drag Annie down. Wouldn’t it be great if they could somehow be partners? If Annie could lean on her once in a while?

I have to show her somehow … make her SEE that I’m old enough to be a big help.

Laurel, forcing herself to ignore the topsy-turvy feeling inside her, grabbed the paper, flipping through until she found the realestate section. Moving her finger down columns for unfurnished studios, she pored over tiny advertisements. Two weeks ago, she hadn’t understood any of those abbreviations, but now she knew right away that “A/C” meant air-conditioned and that EIK meant eat-in kitchen. Finally she spotted one for $300, which was the most Annie said they could afford, except when she showed it to Annie, her sister pointed out that East 116th Street was in Harlem, which was overrun by muggers and junkies.

Laurel felt discouraged, stupid somehow, like the time, playing Softball, with all the bases loaded, when she fumbled the easiest fly ball in the world.

Annie, meanwhile, was buried in the “Help Wanted” section.

“Look at this,” she said, reading aloud, ” ‘Gal Friday. Hat company seeks energetic young person for busy

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office.’ You see? Didn’t I tell you? I’ll bet I’d be perfect for it.”

“What about typing? Don’t you need to type?”

“I can type … only not very fast.”

“But if they give you a test-“

Annie cut her off, smiling forcefully. “Last time, I was nervous. The next time, I’ll do better. I know I will.” She looked down at Laurel’s plate, and Laurel saw a worried look on her face. “You didn’t finish your breakfast. Are you feeling okay?”

“I ate as much as I could. Why don’t you have the rest?”

Annie looked up sharply, her eyes narrowing, as if she thought Laurel might just be pretending not to want it for her sake. But if anyone was pretending, Laurel thought, it was Annie. She acted so positive that everything would turn out okay, but look how bitten-down her nails were, worse than before, all red and puffy, and dotted with dried blood in spots.