Every now and again, Matthew would pause by my bedroom door in the middle of the night, along the way to the bathroom or to the kitchen for a glass of water. I got to know which footsteps were Matthew’s and which belonged to Joseph. Matthew’s footsteps were light and airy as they moved down the hall, then hesitant as he closed in on my room, as if not knowing whether or not they should pause by my bedroom door. Joseph’s, on the other hand, had their minds made up. They were coming to my room, right through the white door without a second thought or a moment’s hesitation.

Matthew pulled the door open carefully, so it wouldn’t squeak, while Joseph flung it straight open, never mind if its bellowing woke someone in the house. Matthew stayed a couple seconds, at best, and would offer some tidbit of information that really, I didn’t give two shits about and chances are he didn’t, either. I came to understand it wasn’t about the information itself but the exchange: a pact, a bond.

I was not alone.

One night: “Did you know a crocodile can’t stick out its tongue?” And another: “Did you know nothing rhymes with orange?” and I admitted that no, I didn’t know that, and spent the rest of the sleepless night trying to come up with something to rhyme with orange. Something so that I could tell him about it the next time he passed by. Porange. Yorange. Florange.

Nope. Nothing.

“Did you know Venus is the hottest planet? It’s surface can be 450 degrees Celsius. That’s over 800 degrees.” And I kind of just stared because really, I didn’t know much about Celsius or Fahrenheit, and in all honesty, I was starting to forget all about Venus. It had been so long since I’d sat in a classroom back in Ogallala and learned about the planets and weather and all that. The next day there was another book: a book on astronomy.

One night Matthew passed through and said to me, “Did you know my folks get almost twenty bucks a day to foster you?”

“What?” I asked. I’d never heard of such a thing. “From who?” I wondered if the money was coming from what little money Momma and Daddy used to have, or if my caseworker was paying my fare.

But in the near darkness, Matthew shook his head and said, “From the good ol’ state of Nebraska. That’s who.” He stood in the doorway, in the plaid pants he wore every night to bed, and a white undershirt with yellow stains down the front, two inches too short for his lanky body.

“Lily, too?” I asked, wondering if Paul and Lily Zeeger were making twenty bucks a day to care for Lily.

But Matthew said no. “Not when you’re adopted. The Zeegers had to pay for Lily. Like ten thousand dollars or something.”

“Huh?” I asked, disbelieving. Ten thousand dollars was a lot of money. The Zeegers bought my Lily like you’d buy a shirt at the store. I didn’t know how I felt about that, if I was supposed to feel good that they’d fork over that much money to own my Lily, or if I was supposed to feel bad because she was just like any other commodity you might find at the supermarket. Clothing. Peanut butter. Bug spray.

I wondered if one day, if I ever had more than ten thousand dollars, if I could buy my Lily back. Or maybe, one day, the Zeegers would want to return her, like a shirt that didn’t quite fit right. Maybe one day Lily would be for sale again, and I’d figure out a way to buy her myself.

But what really rubbed me the wrong way was that Joseph and Miriam were getting paid for keeping me. They didn’t buy me like the Zeegers bought Lily.

“How do you know?” I asked.

He shrugged, like duh. “I just do.” And then he closed the door and walked away.

“Why didn’t you ever try to run away?” asks Ms. Flores. By now the man in the corner, the guard, has leaned in and I know he’s wondering the very same thing. Why didn’t I try to run? I glance at him, his brown eyes prodding me on from behind a navy uniform that looks like something his dad should be wearing, not him. He is a boy, not a man.

“Well,” they say, those eyes, “why didn’t you?”

“I was scared,” I say. “Scared to stay and scared to go. God would be mad at me if I disobeyed Joseph. That’s what he told me. That’s what he made me believe.”

I knew that there was no way I could go. Not at first anyway. Not that there was anywhere to go, but if I left, Joseph would do something to harm Lily—that he told me nearly a million times—and if by some chance he didn’t, then God would send his thunderstorms and vultures after me, and I wouldn’t stand a chance. He’d turn me into a salt pillar. Drown me with a flood. “I was a kid,” I remind her. Before going to live with Joseph and Miriam, I believed in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny. Until I lost a canine tooth, that is, and stuck it under the pillow on my bed and waited all night for one of the shiny gold coins the Tooth Fairy used to leave me back in Ogallala.

But she didn’t come.

I made believe she couldn’t find me, there in that house in Omaha, that she was flying all over Ogallala looking for me.

And then I started to wonder about things back home, in the prefab house on Canyon Drive. I wondered if another family had moved into that home, into my home, and if some other little girl was sleeping in my bed. The one with the hot-pink quilt—with orange polka dots all over—and lacy indigo curtains Momma had made with fabric she found on clearance, though they didn’t match a thing. I wondered if that little girl was hugging my favorite stuffed purple kitten, all wrapped up in my hot-pink quilt, reading aloud from my favorite picture books with her momma, awakening in the morning to find my shiny gold coin tucked neatly under my fluffy pillow.

I told Matthew about it, one night when he passed by my room. I told him how the Tooth Fairy couldn’t find me. How I was still holding on to that shiny canine tooth. How I didn’t know what to do, how to get it to the Tooth Fairy so she could use it to build her gleaming white castle in Fairyland.

“Fairyland?” he whispered. And I told him how the Tooth Fairy used all those millions of teeth she collected to build a shimmering castle and village for her and all of her fairy friends. And they called it Fairyland.

He just stared at me, dumbly, like he didn’t know what to say.

And then he kinda stuttered, “There ain’t no Tooth Fairy, Claire,” he said. It was quiet for a real long time. And then, “Throw it away.”

And just like the day Momma and Daddy died, a little part of me died, too.

I was too scared to ask about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. But when Christmas came and went again, with no presents, I knew the reason. And it wasn’t that I’d been a naughty girl that year.

Days later Matthew left a new book under my mattress: a book of fairy tales. Goldilocks and the Three Little Pigs, Rumpelstiltskin.

But the one that interested me the most was the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin, the tale of a funny-looking man who played his magic pipe to lure the children away from town. They were never seen again. I envisioned Joseph, dressed like a medieval jester from the pages of the fairy-tale book, in a motley coat and tights, playing his pipe up and down the streets of Ogallala to lure the children from their homes. Children like me.

I wasn’t sure what scared me the most about living with Joseph and Miriam. Joseph with his hawk eyes and aquiline nose or the vengeful God Joseph told me about or the things he said he would do to my Lily if ever I misbehaved, how he would trap her and skin her alive. He told me how he’d do it, too, how he’d hang her by her feet, then cut her jugular and carotid veins with a blade so that she’d bleed to death. Then, with slow, deliberate movements, he sliced his cold fingers against my throat, so I knew exactly what he meant. He used words like sinews and corpuscles, words that I didn’t know, but they scared me nonetheless.