“What happens if it reaches the house?” I want him to say that it will pass by, or that it wouldn’t reach the house, that it will stop just beyond the town, but it’s so vast that I can’t imagine any structure blocking it. “Peter, what will happen?” My voice rises.

Claire pads into the room. “Oh. She noticed?”

“Yes,” Peter says simply.

“Told you she would.”

“I need an explanation, a clear explanation, please.” I think my voice is remarkably calm, given the situation. “Why is it closer? Is it closer everywhere? Is it contracting around us? Is it swallowing us?” I am shouting. I clap my mouth shut so hard that it rattles my jaw. Suddenly, it occurs to me that I don’t need them to answer the last question. I can see for myself. Pivoting, I march to the bike behind the couch.

Claire trails after me as I pull the bike through the hall and carry it outside. Out of the corner of my eye, I see that Peter has followed, too. He stops on the porch. Claire launches herself off the steps and climbs onto the back of the bike behind me. She wraps her skinny arms around my waist and leans against my back. I’m on the tip of the bike seat, but I don’t object.

I look at Peter. He looks oddly lonely standing on the porch of the house, the front door swung open wide behind him. His face is carefully blank, as if he’s hiding sadness or fear or some other emotion darker than either of those.

Leaving him, I ride with Claire out of the yard toward the dust.

The sun beats down, and I feel sweat prickle my back where Claire clutches me, her arms tight around my stomach. My hands are slick on the handlebars. Last time I rode out to the border, it took an hour. This time, I reach it much, much faster.

I don’t know how I failed to notice how strange the dust is on the day I came to Lost, but I am very aware of it now. The air is clear where I am and then only a few feet away, it’s choked with dust. The dust hangs in the air, barely stirring, as if it’s suspended in a liquid.

Claire continues to cling to me as I turn east and follow the edge of the void. I never thought to measure its distance from the houses before. I didn’t think it could move. Never thought to ask. Peter warned me to avoid it, but he never said it could come to me. I imagine it rolling in like the tide, sweeping over the desert and then the houses and then the heart of Lost, erasing everything like it erased the horizon.

A half a mile later, I hear a scream.

I skid the bike to a stop. “Claire?”

“Not me!”

“But where?”

She points past my shoulder: up ahead in the direction we’re headed, near the void.

I could flee. I should flee. Whoever is screaming is most likely my enemy. Certainly my enemy. It would be safer, better, smarter, not to let whoever it is see me. But I can’t. There’s no one else out here to help, and the scream hasn’t stopped. It’s such a raw scream that it pulls me forward.

“Claire?”

“Yes?”

“Hang on.” Leaning into the handlebars, I pedal faster.

The dust storm looms beside me and ahead of me, and I don’t see... No, there! A figure. A woman. I pedal harder. It’s a woman in a waitress uniform, screaming at the void and hurling anything she can reach—boxes, shoes, jackets, hats, kites, spoons, forks, notebooks—into the motionless beige wall. Closer, I hear words in her scream. “Give him back! You can’t take him! Give him to me!” The rest dissolves into curses. Tears are streaking down the woman’s face, smearing her mascara on her cheeks.

Victoria, I think. I’m surprised that I recognize her. I’m even more surprised that I remember her name. But then, she is the one who first kicked me out, who first hated me. I slow and then brake. I don’t know what to do. Do I run? Do I speak? Do I help? She seems to be doing a fine job of hurling things and curses into the void on her own. But she’s close to the dust, too close.

Victoria lifts up a toilet seat and hurls it into the dust. I don’t hear it land. I realize I haven’t heard any of the things she’s thrown land. It’s as if the void has swallowed them.

Before I can decide what to do, Claire jumps off the back of the bike and runs toward Victoria. “No, Claire, wait!”

Victoria stops, turns, and sees us.

She won’t recognize me, I think. I hope. I wish I were wearing a wig or had made an attempt at a disguise—I left too suddenly for that.

Her eyes widen and then narrow. She straightens as if she’s backed against a wall. “You!” She imbues that word with such anger, hatred, and revulsion that I shiver.

So much for not recognizing me. “I heard you scream...” I try to explain.

Reaching her, Claire tugs on her sleeve. “Back up. Please. It could come closer.”

Victoria yanks her sleeve out of Claire’s tiny fingers. She steps backward, and her pointed black high-heeled shoes are only inches from the void. “Let it come. It took my Sean.”

“Oh!” Claire sounds like a squeezed bird. “No! Not Sean! How?”

I look at the mass of reddish-brown that swallowed every item she lobbed at it and imagine it consuming a person. A man named Sean. I don’t know who that is. Husband? Brother? Friend?

“We’d been careful. We knew the limits. It shouldn’t have grown so fast!” Victoria gulps in air. She fixes her eyes on me and begins to stalk toward me. “It should be you in there. Nothing like this ever happened before you came!” Claire jumps in front of her and puts her hands on Victoria’s stomach. She braces herself as if to hold the woman back, but Victoria pushes past her.

On my bike, I tense. Everything inside me screams to turn the handlebars and pedal hard and fast in the other direction. But Claire...I can’t leave her. Victoria advances on me as I dither. “The void left us alone. It didn’t move. But then, you came to town...”

“Peter! The Finder...he can find him. Sean. He can find Sean!” Straightening the bike, I put my foot on the pedal—

Victoria kneels and then rises, holding a shotgun. She aims it at me. I’ve never had a gun aimed at me before. It’s an odd sensation. Part of me, the sensible part, is screaming, It’s a gun! A gun! But another part of me sees a hunk of metal, a toy, a water pistol, a thing, and it doesn’t feel real. “Don’t move,” Victoria says, her voice too calm for a woman with a gun. She should be shrill or hysterical, not alert and cold. “You caused this, you ran, and now you want to run again. And you won’t. You caused this. Besides, the Finder won’t help us. He hates us.”

Claire slides her knife out.

“Claire. Don’t.” My eyes are glued to the gun. Again, I feel split: part of me wants to run, doesn’t believe she’ll shoot or thinks that the bullets will fly on either side of me as if I’m the heroine of an action movie. But the other part of my brain keeps me in place. I like that part of my brain. I think it’s keeping me alive. “The Finder doesn’t hate you. He saved you. He brought you out of the void. He hates that you all blame him for being here when all he did was help. And he can help again, if you’ll let me get him.”

Victoria isn’t listening. “You deserve to be in the void. You deserve to dissolve into nothingness. You deserve...” She chokes on her words and swallows hard, but the gun doesn’t waver and I think, She’ll shoot. She’s not calm and cold anymore. She could squeeze the trigger. She may feel sorry later. She may feel sick. She may feel guilt, regret, horror, but that won’t help me.

“I’ll go in,” I hear myself say.

I don’t know what part of my brain said that.

Go in?

Claire echoes me. “Go in?”

Victoria lowers the gun by an inch. “Sorry?”

Slowly, I step off the bike. I spread my hands in front of me. “I trust Peter to find me. And once he does, I’ll make sure he finds Sean. Claire, please get Peter.”

“You cannot be serious,” Victoria says. “That’s insane. You can’t voluntarily—”