[Group Narrative: Hannah] Hannah wasn't actually sure if Si would be able to get the day-pass he needed to come help, and so she carried his box of stuff with her when she arrived that morning at her new, soon-to-be sometimes home. She stood in front of the place, box in hand, and she tipped her head up and looked at the house from ground to tippity-top. It was a pretty little house in a pretty little neighborhood, and she could almost squint her eyes and pretend that she was a normal woman that was moving into a nice house. Tea, coffee, pizza, books, music, and it wasn't so very different from the feeling she'd gotten when she moved to college way, way, way long ago, and a decade felt like a decade, and it felt so much longer. But this time wasn't like last time, and last time she'd had her whole life ahead of her. She'd made terrible, terrible choices, and there was no rolling back the clock and changing things now. And so she was here, box in her hand and thinking about the past a moment. Mourning on that sidewalk, and the carny that had given her a lift was waiting a few feet behind.
She didn't have many things, and the other box, the one the carny carried, was filled with flowers and scarves and tiny knickknacks from years and years past. A lot of the things living in the box had belonged to her mother, and she had some things that had been Molly's, and she'd collected things herself along the way. She carried Si's things up to his room, and then she helped the carny carry the boxes to her room. There was the skeleton of a tiny bed inside the room, and she didn't need anything bigger. She asked for help from anyone walking by after, because she'd found the corresponding mattress in the attic, and then she sat on the floor in the center of the room a little, and she looked up at the ceiling.
And then she was there. The bent-neck lady, there, in the corner, and Hannah lowered her gaze and looked at her for a long, long time. There and gone, and she felt a little guilty for bringing her death into Audrey's safe space. But no one ever saw the bent-neck lady but her, and it would be okay. Everything would be okay. She wasn't running right now, and Carnem was happy with their research at the carnival, and she was good. It was good, and even her work over the past few days, street corners instead of a trailer outside of town, had been okay. She had enough money to cover herself and Si for two months of rent, and she carried the money down to where Audrey was working in a kitchen that smelled so good Hannah's mouth watered.
After a little bit to eat, she would help everyone and anyone with anything, and she thought it would be a good beginning to a new tiny-little life, one she could pretend was really, really hers, if only a little bit, and if only for a little while. She played music from a tinny speaker she placed on the kitchen counter, and everyone had permission to change the playlist, and maybe she danced a little too much when she should be working, but that was okay too.