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The answer popped out before I could stop myself "The day after my tenth birthday"

Liam blew out a lohistle, and I wondered exactly how much of Thurmond’s reputation had leaked out in the ti about it--the forned there?

And, if people knehy hadn’t anyone couys in Caledonia?"

"Suzume was there for about two years I was there for a year and a half, and Lee was there for a year or so"

"That’s…" A sly voice inside my head whispered, That’s it? even as the better part of me knew full well that it didn’t matter if they had been there for one year or one day--a h to smash you into pieces

"And you’re what, sixteen? Seventeen?"

"I don’t know," I said, and the thought nearly knocked ainst the van I really wasn’t sure--Sa We didn’t keep track of ti, but sorew bigger, I knew every winter that I must be another year older, but none of it…it just hadn’t seemed tohis eyes heavenward He opened his ood look at , but it erased his exasperation in two seconds flat His narrowed eyes widened into so that looked very much like pity

And Liam…his expression seein to prickle, ers twist the fabric of --I wanted was to be pitied by a bunch of strangers Regret washed down throughout evenat all; I should have lied or dodged the question Whatever they thought Thurh, it was bad enough to mark me as pathetic in their eyes I could see it in their faces, and the irony stung more than I expected it to They’d taken in ait was a mouse

"Sixteen, then," I said, once Liaht after all

So new ca kids to theer set--Zu’s age--they were hit the hardest People got scared, and the birthrate dropped off even before the govern new births Most of the kids that are still being sent to ca collections or tried to run"

I nodded, an, "did they really--"

"I think that’s enough," Liam interrupted He reached past Chubs’s outstretched arain "She answered your questions, we answered hers, and noe’ve gotta hit the road while the going is still good"