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“Where?”

“Pilot, you have to tell me, you have to tell me where you found that shoe.” Her voice was desperate, screechy. “You have
to, have to tell me. Now.”

I knew these were my parents, and I knew I was supposed to help them. I overcame my muteness and put the wolf boy away. “In,
in, in the woods,” I stammered, pointing to where I had come from. “Back, back there.”

“Can you find it again?” my father said.

“Pilot,” my mother said, “Pilot, do you know where Fiona is? Have you been lying to us?”

I shook my head.

“I’m getting a flashlight,” my father announced, “and we’re going out there, and I want you to show me exactly where you found
that fucking sneaker, do you understand?”

My mother put her arms around me and pulled me toward her. “You have to find Fiona,” she said. “I can’t take this. I can’t.”

“Call Cleveland,” my father said. “Call that stupid cop.”

But I was lying. But I have been lying for years. I was not becoming the wolf boy; I was becoming my brother.

I have been lying for years.

When I stepped into the woods behind my parents’ house and heard those voices arguing about how they would kill me, it was
not to look for Fiona, it was not even that year. It was to rescue my mother, to rescue Hannah, who was seeing ghosts by the
highway. And it was only me, the wolf boy, starved for the taste of blood, and bleeding, who could save her.

Only me.

And Eric was on his way.

Time folding over like a sheet. Its corners touching.

And this is the truth:

I had gone into my room and reached into the plastic Wonderbread bag containing the two red shoes and the bloody hunting knife,
and I had removed one of the shoes. I had taken it out and put it inside my shirt, holding it close to me so no one could
see, and when I got out there, into the middle of the darkness, of the trees, nine years old, I placed this red sneaker in
the middle of a small patch of light, light that came from the moon, I guess, and I walked away, and I returned a few minutes
later, as if I had discovered it there.

There were no voices.

A few minutes later, I stood in the backyard of an alien house and spoke.

“In, in, in the woods,” I stammered, pointing to where I had come from. “Back, back there.”

“Can you find it again?” my father said.

“Pilot,” my mother said, “Pilot, do you know where Fiona is? Have you been lying to us?”

For some reason, she was nervous. For some reason, her hands were shaking, just slightly. “Dr. Lennox,” Katherine asked at
his door, knuckles poised to knock, “can I speak with you, please?”

Without looking up from his desk, Dr. Lennox said, as if sensing her nervousness, as if enjoying it, “What’s going on, Kate?”
She could see that he was smiling, but she could also see that he didn’t mean it.

“I think we should talk about Pilot Airie.” She entered the
psychiatrist’s office. It contained the same kind of ugly brown furniture as Katherine’s. For some reason, here it looked
appropriate.

“Now?” Dr. Lennox said, irritated.

“He’s experiencing fairly severe paranoia,” Katherine said, “so I’m wondering about the medication you prescribed. Perhaps—”

His pen stopped moving. “Perhaps I should increase the dosage?” the doctor asked, his smile bigger than ever.

“I think it might help.”

“I’ll take another look at him this afternoon.” Dr. Lennox still had not looked at her directly.

When he would see me, he would stare at my face for a long time, just looking. And my face would empty out like an upside-down
pitcher pouring its contents onto the ground. Then Dr. Lennox would turn back to his desk, writing something, that faint sarcastic
smile of his never leaving his lips, his hair quivering like a beehive.

“Thank you.” Katherine stepped back out of his office and into the hallway. She exhaled. What was wrong with her?

From her cubicle, Elizabeth smiled warmly. “Is everything okay, Katherine? Something I can do?”

“No,” Katherine said. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m just worried about a patient.”

“Pilot Airie?”

“How did you know?”

“I could tell,” Elizabeth said, and her face was soft. “I could just tell.”

Katherine walked over to Elizabeth, her heels clicking, saying, “What do you mean?” There was something wrong here, Katherine
could feel it. Something wasn’t right.

My own paranoia was infecting Katherine, perhaps. Like it was seeping through.

Or maybe it was guilt about Eric.

“He’s different from the other patients, that’s all.” Unlike Dr. Lennox’s, Elizabeth’s eyes met Katherine’s exactly, unblinking.
“Different,” she repeated, “that’s all.” And her expression was genuine.

Katherine felt frustrated. She blinked her eyes several times back at Elizabeth, deliberately holding her attention as she
hadn’t been able to do with Dr. Lennox. “He has schizophrenia,” she said. “We don’t have any other patients like that here.
And I don’t have much experience with… people like him.”

“I was reading about it,” Elizabeth said, as if to ask a question. She turned her wide face away, indicating a college psychology
textbook lying open on her desk. “Is he hearing voices?”

“He was,” Katherine told her. “But now that he’s on medication he seems better. He’s still a bit paranoid, though—more than
a bit, really—and that’s why I was talking to Dr. Lennox.”

The red light on Elizabeth’s telephone lit up next to Katherine’s name. Elizabeth picked up, her forefinger indicating that
Katherine should wait. “East Meadow Psychiatric In-Patient Clinic,” she said into the phone. “Katherine DeQuincey-Joy’s office.
Can I help you?” She waited a moment, then said, “Please hold.” She looked at Katherine. “It’s his mother.”

“Pilot’s?”

Elizabeth nodded.

Katherine ran into her office. “Mrs. Airie?” she said into the phone.

“Hello, Miss DeQuincey-Joy.”

“You can call me Katherine,” Katherine said. “Please.”

“Thank you,” my mother said. “I was calling about Pilot.”

“Of course. I’m glad you called. I saw him just this morning.

“Is he all right?” Her voice was hurried, concerned.

“Well,” Katherine said, “the medication is helping tone down a lot of his symptoms. But I’m afraid he’s—”

“Is he still hearing voices?”

“I don’t think so, Mrs. Airie, no. He’s—”

“That’s good.”

“—still experiencing some delusional—”

“Like what?”

“He thinks, he believes his brother, he thinks your son Eric is trying to kill him,” Katherine said as evenly as she could.
“And Mrs. Airie, I’m sorry I have to ask you this, but are you well? I mean, Pilot believes you have a, a brain tumor.”

“Oh.” It was pained. I could see my mother touching her temple, her skinny finger caressing that blue-purple vein.

“Is that—”

“I doubt very seriously it’s a brain tumor,” Hannah said, almost complaining, virtually whining. “I’ve been experiencing some
kind of trouble with my optical nerve. There has been some difficulty diagnosing why, that’s all.”

“Are you—”

“I’m seeing ghosts.”

“Ghosts?”

“Double images, like on television.”

Katherine looked out the window to the highway, at the woods beyond it. “I understand. It seems that Pilot has taken this
to mean, perhaps to mean more than it should.”

“Yes.”

“He also seems to think Eric is somehow responsible.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Of course it’s ridiculous, Mrs. Airie.” Katherine walked around her desk and sat down. “Pilot is suffering from the symptoms
of schizophrenia, and he’s enlarging and exaggerating some of his feelings unnaturally.” Katherine wasn’t sure if she believed
it herself. “I’m sorry to say it’s to be expected at
this point. I’ve only just spoken to Dr. Lennox a few minutes ago, and I recommended that he increase the dosage of—”

“That’s good,” my mother said, not interested in how much medication I was on. “Have you spoken to Eric?”

“Not today,” Katherine said. She closed her eyes, thinking,
Last night I did, last night I spoke to Eric
. She felt her skin growing warm, her pulse quickening.

He pulled up outside our house and saw me watching him through the window. Cleveland got out of the car—an old Chevy even
then—and instead of walking across the lawn to our front door, he waved to me. I stood inside the window and pointed to my
chest. The policeman smiled and waved again, telegraphing that I should come outside.