They Made the Orphan Clean Their House. She Was Quietly Counting Their Lies.

Maisie climbed onto the dryer and pushed. It didn't move. She pushed harder. Old paint cracked like ice. The window jerked open three inches, then six, then just enough.

She was small. For once in her life, that was lucky.

She squeezed through, scraping her elbow on the frame, and dropped into the rose bushes behind the house. Thorns caught her sweater. She didn't care.

She was outside.

She was barefoot. It was 7:52.

Maisie ran.

She ran down Linwood Avenue, past the mailboxes and the sprinklers and a man walking his dog who stared at her bare feet. She ran past the gas station and the Dollar General. Her feet hurt. Her lungs burned. She kept doing math in her head because it was the only thing that made the pain feel smaller.

Three miles. Six thousand steps. I've done maybe two thousand.

At the corner of Main and Fifth, a little blue car screeched to a stop beside her.

Mrs. Bell leaned across and threw the passenger door open.

"The judge called me!" she said. "Get in, get in, get in!"

Maisie got in.

On the back seat was a pair of brand-new white sneakers, exactly her size, still in the box.

"How did you—"

"Librarians know everything," Mrs. Bell said, and ran a yellow light.

They pulled up in front of Westfield High School at 8:59.

A woman at the registration table was already packing up her clipboard.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Check-in closed at 8:45. Rules are rules."

Maisie felt the whole world tilt.

"She's here," said a deep voice behind them.

Judge Walter Harlan was walking up the sidewalk as fast as his cane would let him, a little out of breath, in a suit and tie.

"Margaret," he said to the woman, "I believe the Olympiad committee received a call from me this morning."

The woman looked at the name on her list. Then at the judge. Then she sighed and smiled.

"Go on in, Miss Cole," she said. "You're in Room 104."

The written round was two hours long. Maisie finished it in fifty minutes and spent the rest of the time checking her work.

At lunch, the names of the top five students went up on the wall.

Maisie's name was at the top.

The final round was live, on the auditorium stage, in front of three hundred people. Five students. Ten questions. No calculators. No paper.

Maisie stood at the podium in her new white sneakers with her braids coming loose.

She got the first question right. And the second. By the ninth question, there were only two students left: Maisie, and a boy from Cleveland named Ethan who went to a private school and had a coach.

The tenth question was a tiebreaker.

The moderator read it slowly. It was the hardest problem Maisie had ever heard. Numbers inside numbers inside numbers.

Ethan pressed his buzzer first. "Four hundred and eighteen."

"I'm sorry. That is incorrect."

Every light in the auditorium seemed to turn toward Maisie.

She closed her eyes. She saw the numbers the way she always saw them, like a page in a notebook.

"Four hundred and eighty-one," she said.

There was a pause.

"That is correct. Ladies and gentlemen, your Ohio State Math Olympiad champion, from Maple Ridge, Maisie Cole!"

The auditorium exploded.

Maisie stood very still. She was looking at the third row.

Next to Mrs. Bell and Judge Harlan sat an elderly woman she had never seen before. She had silver-white hair in a bun and a simple wool coat. She was crying and clapping at the same time.

And she had Maisie's eyes. Exactly Maisie's brown eyes.

Before Maisie could move, the back doors of the auditorium banged open.

Aunt Darlene stormed down the aisle, her face red, Brittany behind her holding her phone up to record.

"That child is a runaway!" Darlene shouted. "She broke out of my house! She stole private documents from my office! She's a thief!"

The applause died.

Darlene turned to the two police officers standing at the back of the auditorium.

"Officers! Arrest her!"

The officers began walking down the aisle toward the stage.

Toward Maisie.