Glory Fischer lay atop a mattress on the floor with her brown eyes wide open, smearing the mosquitoes that landed on her face and listening to the moths beat their wings madly against the screen. Her skin was filmy with sweat. Her nightgown clung to her scrawny legs in the dampness. She waited, chewing her fingernails, until the house was dead still. At one in the morning, she finally decided it was safe to sneak away, the way she had done for the past five nights.

No one would hear her leave. No one would hear her come back.

Her mother slept alone in a bedroom across the hall, with an electric fan grinding beside her pillow that drowned out her snores. Her sister Tresa, and Tresa's best friend Jen, were finally sleeping, too. The two girls had stayed up late, acting out stories from a vampire fanzine in loud voices. It was a Tuesday in mid-July, and bedtimes and school nights were a long way away. Usually, Glory didn't like Jen sleeping over because the ruckus of the girls on the other side of the wall kept her awake. Tonight she didn't care because she needed to stay awake anyway.

Jen lived in the house across the road, but Glory didn't think that her sister's friend knew what was hidden in the loft of their garage. Nobody did. Not Jen's mother Nettie, who was in a wheelchair now and rarely left the house. Not her father Harris, who was on the road most days, traveling around Wisconsin for his job. Not Jen's two older brothers either. Especially not them. If they'd known, they would have done something cruel, because that was who they were. Cruel boys.