Audrey didn't care. Tomorrow she would be home again. Her real home. French toast wouldn't have made everything suddenly wonderful. Why did her mother think that? She wasn't a little kid anymore. French toast wasn't going to make staying at her mom's any better.

She wanted to be home, at her dad's, in her own room, her own bed, near her friends. Not here, where everything was weird even when the electricity was on.

Years ago, Elise-Audrey called her mother Elise, at least in her mind-Elise had started restoring the place, digging into rooms, tearing the walls down to stinky old boards, and stinky, stained wallpaper and holes big enough to crawl through.

Then one day she just stopped.

The floors still creaked, and doors opened by themselves. Her mother-Elise-blamed it on gravity, said the building had settled, and the doors were now hanging wrong, but that didn't make Audrey feel any better when one would swing open behind her.

Elise was coming at her now, with stacked bowls in one hand, a box of cereal in the other, another tucked under her arm. Wearing an old gray Savannah Police Department T-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms. No bra.

Her chin-length hair was straight and dark; her eyes had strange lines going through them.

"This is cozy, isn't it?" Elise asked, sitting down at the table.

Cozy?

Sweet kitty!

Audrey liked to make up phrases. Sweet kitty was her newest, and a big hit at school. One day she hoped she'd turn on the TV and hear somebody say one of the cool phrases she'd invented. One day, maybe she'd turn on the TV and David Letterman would shout, "Sweet kitty!"

Audrey poured herself some juice, then reached for a box of cereal.

"I read about a girl who got her name changed," Audrey said, cereal spilling on the table. "Said it was easy." She poured milk and picked up a spoon.

"Do you want to change your name?"

Audrey shrugged, trying to look unconcerned even though her heart was racing. "I've been thinking about it."