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  I slam on the brakes; Haze falls forward and we conk heads. The hit just about knocks me out. I see stars circling my head—I swear I do, just like in a cartoon.

  "Oh man!" Haze says, shaking his head, trying to shake off the pain. He rubs at his temple. "Oh man, that kills!" He shakes his head again and tells me to move over, his voice still whiny with pain.

  "Yeah, gladly," I say.

  I start to slide over, and everyone yells, "Put it in park!"

  "Shit!" I put the car in park and scramble to the passenger seat, not caring if I rip my whole arm off in the process. I know that at any minute the mail truck is going to come careening around the corner after us.

  Haze jumps into the driver's seat, puts the pedal to the metal, and tears out of there. When we turn out of the neighborhood and no truck is following us, I look into the back of the van and see peace-loving Pete sitting on my dad's lap with Dad squirming beneath him. "Oh, the indignity!" he cries, pushing against Pete's back.

  Pete braces himself against the bench in front of him. "Are you going to be still now, or do I have to sit on you all the way home?"

  "I am in possession of secret and mystical powers on loan from Zeus himself! Get off me or I will be forced to use them!" Dad pushes again, but Pete doesn't budge.

  I smile, happy to let Pete deal with Dad for a minute; then I glance at Shelby staring out the window, her mouth set in a straight line, and she seems deep in thought. I know all this mess has taken her away from her mother for the past two days, and I feel bad for this.

  CRAZY GLUE: Maybe you can comfort her—hmmm?

  Well, I need to find some way to make it up to her. I face forward and nod to myself. Yeah, I'll find some way to make it up to all of them. That is, if the police don't haul us in first.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dear Mouse:

  Don't print this in the paper. Just answer me by e-mail, ok? If you do print this, I swear I'll kill you.

  So, I'm in a sort of gang—well, yeah, I'm in a gang, and I want to get out, but they'll crucify me if I even try. I've done some bad shit, okay, and I had to do it, but I don't feel good about it anymore. I never felt good about it. I don't think anybody—well, we're all scared, you know? Well, you probably don't. But I figure I got two career choices, prison or death, unless you know of something else. So what do I do? You can't answer that, can you? Didn't think so. You're not so smart, are you, Dr. Gomez?

  DOA

  Dear DOA:

  You're right. I can't answer that, 'cause if I did, I'd tell you to run away, which is probably not the right answer. If I were you, or if I were me in your situation, I'd fake my death somehow, so no one would come after me or my family, grab some money, and run away to some whole other state. Maybe I'd take off for the woods, live up in the mountains in a cave. But I'm not you and that's probably a dumb idea. If I were Dr. Gomez, I'd know what to tell you to do. Maybe you should ask her. She's all right as far as shrinks go.

  Mouse

  I stare down at my answer. What a dumb answer. What am I doing? I can't even run my own life and here I am telling people what to do. Run away? How can I tell DOA to run away? Man, how did I get into this, anyway?

  CRAZY GLUE: So what. At least you know you're not the only one with problems.

  AUNT BEE: You're not so alone anymore. You have friends. You have these letters.

  FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: Maybe you think you can save yourself by helping others.

  Do I need saving?

  LAUGH TRACK: Yes! (Laughter).

  SEXY LADY: He's hot no matter what.

  A whole week goes by and there's no news about the missing violin. I stay home with Dad and call the school every day, pretending to be sick. I say I have mono. Everybody gets mono. It lasts a long time, so I figure I can get away with missing a lot of school.

  AUNT BEE: For shame! There are people who really are sick.

  CRAZY GLUE: Yeah, you might be creating bad mojo for yourself, and you'll get really sick some day as a payback for the lie.

  Well, I don't know what else to do.

  Dad keeps leaving the house and disappearing—sometimes naked—and he claims the Furies have poisoned his meds, so I have a royal fight with him every day trying to convince him that I've removed the poison so it's safe to take the pills.

  I'm spending a lot of time down in the basement in my mother's darkroom. I've stored all her photos in here, all the pictures of faces she's taken, all the brides and grooms and their families—so many smiling, happy faces. I look at them and wonder how many couples are still together? How many have had a serious illness in the family? How many have died?

  CRAZY GLUE: A little morbid, don't you think?

  I've put the photographs we have of my mom down here, too, in folders, stacks of them, but I can't bring myself to look at them—at her.

  AUNT BEE: Because you miss her, of course. That's all.

  I keep my back to the folders while I develop a roll of film, but I can feel them behind me. I feel them like a cold hand on my back. It gives me chills, makes me squirm, but I keep working. I've found a bunch of film in the dorm-size refrigerator inside the darkroom. I load a roll into her camera and take it upstairs to get some pictures of Dad.

  It's a little awkward handling the camera because I've made myself a sling for my sore arm and I have to take my arm out of the sling to take the pictures, which kills, so some pics are out of focus.

  Haze and Pete dropped by during the week and I took their pictures, too, but Shelby hasn't come once.

  CRAZY GLUE: The one pic you really want, too bad. That's what you get for calling in and pretending to have mono.

  I didn't capture anything special in my pictures the way my mom did when she made portraits. I'm better with photographing stone, but I develop the roll, anyway, and I laugh at the picture of Haze all decked out like he's some kind of rock climber with a bunch of different-colored carabiners hooked on all his belt loops. Then I hold up the one I took of Pete yesterday and he looks...

  CRAZY GLUE: Guilty! He so doesn't want you to know something. It's written all over his face.

  AUNT BEE: Or maybe it's shame.

  LAUGH TRACK: Uh-oh!

  I don't know what it is, but it makes me nervous—very nervous.

  I hear the doorbell ring, so I leave the darkroom and hurry upstairs.

  I open the door and it's Pete.

  CRAZY GLUE: Speak of the devil. And look at his face—he's still guilty of something.

  "Hi, Pete," I say, stepping back to let him in.

  "Pope-a-Dope, any news on the violin?" He steps inside and we automatically head back to the kitchen, and I like how natural—comfortable—this feels.

  CRAZY GLUE: If only he didn't still look so guilty.

  "No. No news, yet," I say. "I don't know what's going on. Maybe the mail carrier is a violin virtuoso and he thinks somebody gave it to him as a gift."

  "Or he's trying to sell it for millions," Pete says.

  "Yeah, or he went to the police and they're trying to trace the fingerprints I left." I whisper this because we're passing through the living room and my dad's asleep in the tub upstairs. He fell asleep trying to stay warm again, so I drained it and put a pillow under his head and several wool blankets on top of him. I tell Pete he's asleep. He nods and kind of tiptoes the rest of the way to the kitchen.

  We sit in the kitchen and drink tea—the cheapest way I know to keep warm in our house. Pete has brought over a tin of some kind of homemade herbal tea concoction that smells like candy and tastes kind of sweet and mellow. He mixes the herbs himself, which I guess is weird but definitely a Pete kind of thing to do. He tells me the tea is an amazing health elixir and that I should get my dad to drink it, too.

  CRAZY GLUE: Come on. He's stalling. It's so obvious he's got something on his mind.

  AUNT BEE: Oh dear. I don't like this.

  "Someday I'm going to live in Hawaii and grow all my own tea," he says, "and medicinal herbs, too. I think I'll
become an herbalist—you know, a healer."

  "Oh yeah?" I stare into my mug of tea, only half listening.

  CRAZY GLUE: It's the police. They know who stole the violin. That's got to be it. You and your dad are in big trouble now.

  FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: Now, let's not jump to conclusions, everybody.

  "I'm starting with my dad," Pete says, and I try to remember what he's talking about. "I'm planning on using herbs with special properties that help curb cravings and addictions. I can't give him anything while he's in rehab, though—of course."

  I nod and think maybe this look on his face isn't anything about me. Maybe it's just something about his dad.

  CRAZY GLUE: Doubt it, but nice try.

  "Yeah, so how's that going with your dad?" I say.

  Pete shrugs and flicks his fingers at a barrel-shaped bead he's wearing on a hemp cord around his neck. "All right, so far, I guess. We're not allowed to see him, but he's still there sweating it out. He keeps saying on the phone he's miserable, but he's saying it with less and less conviction, if you know what I mean." Pete rocks back in his chair and rubs his hand over his bald head. "The important thing is he's there. In time he'll come around." He looks at me; then he looks at his watch. It's the third time in about ten minutes that he's looked at it.

  "You need to be somewhere? If you do, that's okay. Go on—don't let me keep you." I wave him away and smile to show I don't mind.

  CRAZY GLUE: You're so lame. Just ask what's going on.

  FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: I'm with Crazy on that one.

  Pete lets the chair fall forward and goes back to flicking at the bead around his neck.

  "Yeah—uh, no, uh—I'm just waiting for the others."

  I feel my body tense. "The others? Who others?"

  "Haze and Shelby." Pete's face, usually so calm, is tomato red and his eyes are looking everywhere but at me.

  CRAZY GLUE: Shelby's coming!

  "Hey, what's going on, Pete?" I ask. "Is it about the violin? Did they find it and you're just not saying? Are we in trouble? Did the mailman turn in Haze's license number or my fingerprints or something?"

  Pete waves his hand and takes another sip of his tea. "Nah, not that I've heard."

  He shrugs and acts like what he's about to say doesn't mean much, but his face says otherwise. "Anyway, Dr. Gomez isn't buying it that you've got mono."

  CRAZY GLUE: Oh, is that all.

  AUNT BEE: What a relief. I was so worried.

  SEXY LADY: I wasn't. I knew it all along.

  I straighten my back and adjust the homemade sling on my sore arm to keep the knot of the sling from cutting into my neck. "Oh yeah? Why? What do you mean? Why couldn't I have mono?"

  Pete twists his mouth and doesn't answer me. He checks his watch again.

  "Hey, come on—what's going on? Come on—tell me." I get to my feet. "Why are Haze and Shelby coming over? I haven't seen Shelby since that day with the violin. So why is she coming over now?"

  AUNT BEE: Don't get your hopes up.

  CRAZY GLUE: Too late.

  Pete looks over his shoulder at the entrance to the kitchen, and, as if on cue, the doorbell rings. I glance at Pete and he's even more nervous, almost frightened. I hurry out to the door before Haze and Shelby ring it again and wake Dad. I open the door and find Haze on the balls of his feet, shifting from one foot to the other, flakes of snow melting in his hair. He looks ready to spring straight to the sky, he's so nervous. Shelby looks her usual self, though. She bursts in. "Is Pete here?" she says, too loudly. "Who's here?" She pulls off her hat, setting free her pile of hair, and strides into the living room.

  SEXY LADY: She always needs to make such a grand entrance.

  I tell them to keep it down and lead them back to the kitchen. My kneecaps are jiggling up and down as I walk. What's going on?

  We all take chairs around the table and the three of them give one another these anxious looks, like they're signaling something to one another.

  FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: Oh, this setup doesn't look good, Jase.

  "Okay, is someone going to tell me what's happened or what?" I say. My throat constricts and my voice comes out sounding thin and high.

  "Look—it's like this," Shelby says, scooping up her hair and releasing it. "Well, you're in bad shape, Jason. Your father's nuts, I mean, let's face it, and dangerous..."

  "Hey, wait a minute," I say. "He may be a tiny bit crazy, but he isn't dangerous." I shake my head. "He is not dangerous. No way."

  Shelby touches my bad arm. "You're wearing a rigged-up sling and your hand is swollen and bruised. You could have broken your back, you know."

  "That was an accident."

  Shelby shrugs. "Whatever, okay?"

  "I wouldn't have said anything, man," Haze says, speaking for the first time since he got here. "But you know she asked us in group the other day and we"—he looks at Pete—"we had to tell. Sorry, man." He leans forward and sets his elbows on the table, resting his head in his hands.

  LAUGH TRACK: Uh-oh.

  I break out in a sweat. "Tell what?" I say. "What do you mean?" I pound the table, and Shelby draws back and sucks in her breath between her teeth.

  "Tell him what you did, Socks," Pete says.

  Shelby leans forward again. She looks miserable and this scares me. "Okay." She closes her eyes. "You have no food, no heat, your dad's crazy, he pushed you down the stairs, stole a three-million-dollar violin, the house is falling apart, and you can't even get out of the house to go to school. So—you need help." She opens her eyes.

  I'm standing over her. I don't know when I stood up, but here I am, standing over her, glaring, panting, fuming, gripping my one good hand into a fist that very much wants to plow into her face.

  AUNT BEE: Careful, now.

  "What did you do?"

  Shelby raises her shoulders and leans away from me. "I told Dr. Gomez," she says, her voice barely a whisper.

  I knew she was going to say that. I knew it! I knew it was coming, but I explode as if I didn't know. I slam my fist on the table and get right up in her face. "You did what?"

  FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: You're fighting a losing battle, son. The word is out—too late. Dr. Gomez will have to report you.

  CRAZY GLUE: She totally torpedoed you, goob.

  Shelby rams the palm of her hand into my forehead. "Back off me!" she shouts. "Don't you dare touch me!"

  I stumble backwards, feeling stunned by the blow, and she springs from her chair and backs away from me, huddling against the wall as though she expects me to pound her. Tears are running down her face.

  AUNT BEE: Don't you touch her. Your mother raised you better than that.

  Mother? What mother? Where is she now when I need her?

  FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: Just stay calm, son. Buck up.

  Pete gets to his feet and jumps between us. He holds out his arms as though he's playing defense in a game of basketball. "She told because she cares about you, Jason—we all do. Your father needs help. So do you. You can't do this on your own, man. Come on—you know it. You can't do it. Not anymore."

  "What is this?" I shout, no longer caring if my dad wakes. "Is this one of your interventions? Is that what this is? Huh?" I glare at the three of them. "You playing psychologist now, Pete? Mr. Healer, Mr. Peace Buddha?" I sneer at him. "I—I tell you guys everything and this is what you do? You tell Gomez? You ruin my life?" I'm gasping and choking on my words, but I refuse to cry. Here it is again, the betrayal, just like in fifth grade with the swirlie and my best friend—only worse, much worse. When will I ever learn?

  CRAZY GLUE: Never trust a soul ever again.

  SEXY LADY: Just us.

  LAUGH TRACK: We're here for you. We're all you need.

  "You three admitted it," I say. "You've wanted your parents dead. Well, I never did. I know what it's like to lose ... I know, okay? My dad is all I have. How could you—how dare you try to take him from me?"

  I move left, then right, trying to yell specifically at Shelby, who
stays behind Pete with her arms wrapped around herself for protection.

  I glare at Haze, then back at Shelby. "Remember Haze once asked you if you could ever leave your mother helpless and—and gasping for air? Remember? You couldn't do it! You know you couldn't do it, and yet you're trying to force me to do that—to leave my dad. I won't! He's helpless, too—without me."

  I turn to leave. "Dad and I are getting out of here. We're leaving this house."

  Pete calls after me, "But, Jason, where will you go? It's snowing, it's cold, your father is crazy, and you have no money. Come on, man—think it through. How are you going to handle him when he's loose on the streets?"

  I keep walking, trying not to let his words reach me.

  CRAZY GLUE: You'll live in the woods, in a cave.

  I hear the three of them hurrying after me and they stop at the bottom of the steps while I charge them two at a time, leaping over a broken tread.

  I hear Haze say behind me, "Come on—we need to tell him, man. We need to tell him now."

  I turn around at the top of the stairs. I see the three of them looking up at me with anxious expressions—

  Pete's face, always so open and friendly, and Haze's bearded face with the drawn-on teardrops, and freckled Shelby—and all I feel is hate. I hate them more than I've ever hated anything or anyone. I hate them.

  AUNT BEE: Oh dear.

  "Tell me what?" I ask. "What more could you have to do to me?"

  "Dr. Gomez..." Shelby starts, but the doorbell rings.

  "Oops, too late," Haze says, and I know that Dr. Gomez, and whatever authorities handle the removal of crazy people, are standing on the other side of the door.

  I back away from the stairs and down the hallway toward the bathroom, where my dad is still sleeping, and I shout, "No! No! No! No! No! No! No!"

  I just can't stop. The day, the moment I have feared and fought against ever since my mom died, is here. I need to escape. I need to think, but all I can think of is "no"—the same word that's been screaming inside my head every day for the past eight months.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I KNEW THAT IF ANYONE found out about my dad, he'd get taken away and I'd never see him again. I knew it. I should have kept my mouth shut. I should never have told Pete, or Haze, or Shelby. I should never have let them in my house. How could I have let my guard down like this? I knew better.