Building Four, Room 23 is barren on Miranda’s side, the left one. The bed has been carefully made up with white sheets, but that’s all. She cannot believe that they expect this to be her new home. Miranda feels a sudden longing for home, for her own down comforter, for the curtains she had sewn herself in the sixth grade.

But she still had one relic of the life she had left behind. She pulled her doll, carefully wrapped in blankets, from her duffel bag, and set Sarabeth in her rightful place on the bed.

Just then, the door swung open and a girl with long, blond hair walked in.

“I’m Hannah,” she said. “Are you Miranda? The new one?”

Miranda could only nod. Hannah surveyed Sarabeth, taking in her bloody dress, the tearstains, her hair slightly mussed from all the hugging she had undergone.

“Ew.” She said. “What on earth is that thing? I don’t want to live in the same room as that…ew!”

Miranda struggled not to cry.