Did she tell you that?” I hadn’t eaten any more onion rings, so why did I have this lump in my throat that I couldn’t seem to swallow down? Ren looked away and didn’t answer. The thing was, when life got too hard for Mac, she ran. I knew she’d run away right after her grandmother died, when she had to switch to Riverview, and then she’d taken off a couple of months ago after some big blowup with her uncle. I wondered if that was when he’d told her he was going to sell the little green house. I didn’t know where she’d gone or what she’d done those two times before. She was just gone, and everyone—Mr. Kenner, Mrs. Robinson—kept asking, had she called us, had she said anything? And then three or four days later she was back like nothing had happened. When I asked her where she’d gone, she just shrugged. The last time, before she took off, she’d given Ren her favorite purple scarf, and she’d given me this funny little windup chicken that did the bird dance. It was like she didn’t want us to forget her in case she didn’t come back, but of course she had.
