“I’m hoping that I’m not the fatling,” I say.

“Can I be the lion?” Claire asks as she claws the air. “Roar?”

“You lead,” Peter says. “You’re the child.”

Outside, it’s already desert warm, with the wind sucking the moisture out of my skin. I lick my lips; they feel dry. The sky is crisp blue, cloudless, and so bright that I wince.

I start toward the junk pile, but Claire pulls me back.

Peter strides past me. “You want this place to look abandoned, right? Then don’t pilfer from your own yard. Consider that lesson number one.”

“Okay. What’s lesson two?”

“Watch and learn, Fatling.” Peter vaults over the fence. “Just watch and learn.”

On the outskirts of Lost, the expanse of houses stretches farther than I’d thought. Mile after mile of house after house, many packed close together and others spread far apart. All of them look as if they were blown here by Dorothy’s tornado. A few are damaged so badly that they look as if they’d collapse if I blew on them. Others are pristine, freshly built with cheery paint and flowers in the window boxes, the kind of flowers that shouldn’t be able to grow in the desert. I imagine primly dressed little old ladies tottering onto the porches to water their geraniums or fetch their mail from cute duck-shaped mailboxes, but I see no one.

The houses are so silent and still that it’s like walking through a cemetery. I walk faster, trying not to look in the windows, trying not to feel as if the windows are watching me. But the curtains in the windows are motionless, and the lights are off.

Peter and Claire bypass several dozen houses without pause. They scamper over junk piles and climb over fences and race through the spaces between the abandoned buildings. I try to memorize which way the little yellow house is, which way the center of town is, which way is out of town—but it’s hard enough to keep up with the two of them. Often, they turn a corner, and I lose them for a few seconds as I race to catch up and I think, What if they’re gone? What if I turn the corner and I don’t see them and I’m alone and it’s all a trick to lure me away and abandon me where the feral pigs will savage me as if I’m an errant ear of corn, or whatever pigs eat...

But they’re there.

And I don’t see any feral pigs or dogs or people.

Waiting for me, Peter stands on a fence post on one foot. He balances with his other foot on his knee like a crane in the water. So still and silent, he looks not quite human. I can’t read the expression in his eyes as he watches me. Claire crouches on the ground beside him. Her nose twitches like she’s a fox as her gaze darts right, left, and up, looking for...I don’t know what. Whatever we’re hunting, I guess. Or whatever’s hunting us.

I catch up, and we go on.

At last, the two of them halt. Hidden by a half-dead bush, they crouch in front of a ranch house with wind chimes on the wraparound porch and a pile of newspapers on the front stoop. The chimes clink discordantly. Peter opens the mailbox. It’s stuffed with letters and magazines and flyers. He checks the postmark on a few. “Recent. Very recent.” His face lights up as he looks at me. “Ready to break and enter?”

“How do we know there’s no one inside?” I don’t think there is. There’s been no one anywhere. But we can’t be the only ones in this weird, silent world. I peer at the windows. The shades are drawn. I don’t see any lights.

Claire darts across the lawn and onto the porch. She presses the doorbell and then she runs back, her plump legs pumping. She skids to a halt and hides with us behind the shrubbery that chokes the mailbox.

No one comes to the door.

“Someone could still be home,” I point out. I don’t always answer the door if I think it’s someone selling something or wanting a signature on a petition. And then of course I worry that I’ve just alerted a burglar that my apartment is empty, and someone will break in while I’m home and then panic because they didn’t expect anyone, which is how most thefts-turned-murders are reported, so statistically...

Claire and Peter are already jogging toward the house. I lag behind as they veer left at the porch and circle the house. In the backyard, there’s a barbecue grill on the patio and a swing set with three faded plastic swings and a slide.

Even in the wind, the swings don’t move.

I feel goose bumps prickle up and down my arms, even though the air is as hot as someone’s breath. Weeks, months, or years ago, a family had a barbecue here. Kids swung on the swings, played catch, chased each other around, while the adults gossiped and ate burnt burgers and drank lukewarm beers that had been sitting in the sun. I don’t know how they lost their house, or why they left their things behind. But I decide that abandoned playgrounds score high for spookiness, even considering the fierce competition in this place for Most Spooky. I hurry after Peter and Claire.

The sliding glass door on the back patio is broken. Peter steps over the shards and ducks through the hole. His coat brushes against the broken edges but doesn’t catch. Claire shoots looks left and right and then darts through the hole in the door. I hesitate for a moment, but then the wind blows harder and one of the swings squeaks as it swings back and forth, as if a ghost child were pumping her legs. I step over the broken glass into the house.

“Don’t look at the couch,” Peter says.

Of course, I look at the couch.

And I scream.

There’s a dead man, white T-shirt, briefs, stomach exposed with hair curled around his belly button. He has a rifle in one hand, resting against the couch. His other hand is coated in reddish-brown. It rests over a stain of more red-brown-rust...blood. Oh, God, he’s covered in dried blood. His eyes are open and sightless.

Peter claps his hand over my mouth. “Shh.” His breath is warm and soft as a feather against my ear. I feel my body shake. He holds me tight against him, stilling me. His warmth comforts me, even if I shouldn’t feel comforted looking at a dead man. Peter lowers his hand. “Food will be in the kitchen.”

I’m not screaming anymore. I force myself to stop looking. “We should...” I try to think. I can’t think. There’s a dead man on the couch. What do you do when there’s a dead man on a couch? “Call the police.” Yes, that’s it. I feel as though I have had an epiphany, the thoughts stirring up through the murk of my mind. “Get out and call the police. We don’t know...who did this. Or why. Or if they’re still here.”

“Hence the ‘shh.’ Come on.”

He tugs my arm, and I follow him numbly through the house. I think the death must be recent, or the house would smell. Oh, God, what a horrible practical thought: the smell. But the house only smells a little like Lysol, a little like potato chips.

Claire is already in the kitchen, standing on a stool, an array of food spread out on the counter in front of her: cans of tomato sauce, black beans, peas, tuna fish. There’s a box of Uncle Ben’s rice. “Jackpot!” she crows.

I feel stuck in the doorway. “Shh!” To Peter, I say, “Does she know? Did she see?”

Claire looks up from her treasures. “It’s been more than a few hours but not more than a day. You can tell because the blood has dried but it doesn’t stink yet.”

She sounds so nonchalant that I can’t even process her words. “But there could be... Whoever killed...” The words feel caught in my throat. I go back to the first thing I said. “We need to call the police.”

“There aren’t any,” Claire says.

“But the killer...”

“Probably isn’t lost, either,” she says.

“How do you know?”

“No one can leave without the Missing Man,” Claire says as if this is a perfectly clear explanation. “If that man had been killed in Lost, he wouldn’t be only a dead body. He’d still be here. And he wouldn’t like us taking his stuff. So someone must have killed him somewhere else and then lost the body. Silly thing to lose.” She opens another cabinet. “Ooh, raisins!”