Berkeley was still in the closet.

She had made a pile of rectangles with her scissors.

“Tickets,” she said. “For the circus.”

I smiled. “That’s good.”

I took her to the bathroom in the upstairs one and luckily it was still during class so no one saw us.

“Are you okay?” I asked her once we were back.

“Yeah,” she said. “I guess.”

“Remember, this is a secret school. No one can know you’re here.”

“I remember,” she said. “It’s okay. I’ll be okay.”

She said it in a way that showed she understood, which was sad.

I handed her a notebook from math. “You can draw ideas on here for what we should have for the food and maybe for what we should wear.”

She looked at me. “How long will it be until we can go home?”

I took a breath. “I have one more class and then I’ll come in here and we’ll eat lunch. Then it won’t be long.”

“Okay,” she said, and I loved her. I loved her so so much.

~

I didn’t meet Bart at the drinking fountain by the cafeteria.

I didn’t look for him in the halls.

I didn’t even hope he’d see me and take me with him to Mongolia.

Mostly I just kept my head down and tried to not get noticed.

On the walk home, Berkeley talked about trapezes and how to make them and about how school was kind of fun and how she wanted to get a new leotard and how I should probably wear one and I was thinking how this wasn’t going to work.

Something had to happen: take care of your sister.

Take care of your sister.

Take care of your sister.

Something had to happen soon or everything was going to blow up and nothing would ever be the same again.