The instant Feely goes around the corner, Flavia has to suppress the urge to hunker down with her fingers in her ears, like someone cartoonishly waiting out an explosion. But there isn't the shouting and screaming she'd expected; just a quiet, broken Oh that sends her heart flying to pieces and her feet dashing to her sister's side.

"It just showed up and I didn't know what to do," she says. "I kept visiting it, hoping maybe the answer'd be there on its own, but it never was."