She pushed herself up to a stand, putting most of her weight on her good right ankle, and tried shifting to her left. A twinge of pain arced up her leg from the instep of her foot, unpleasant but not excruciating. She could get home on it, and more easily if she cut across Sheila Friend’s land to the road, where the rest of the going would be easier. She started hobbling toward Sheila’s fence line, but as she approached it, she doubted herself. The barbwire snarled thick and furred with rust in three layers separated by only eight or nine inches, the highest strand about three feet off the ground. As she tested the spring of the barbwire under her palm, she could see two or three of Sheila’s goats watching her with their black little eyes, waiting. Her parents had taken her and Billy to a petting zoo when they were small—Emily four or five, Billy eight or nine—and Billy had ruined the day, as he so often did, with one of his tantrums. “No, no, no,” he’d started in a low, steady voice when the first goat came toward him and sniveled in his pockets for the treats Billy had bought from the dispenser outside. When the second goat approached, he had shrieked, then screamed. Emily remembered terror, quick movement; she remembered the swelling power of her own voice joining Billy’s in affront. And then, dimly, the car ride home, and her mother’s tired voice: He’s turned us all into prisoners.