Friday, the fifth day Jack was at his new school, he had to miss his end room. He'd seen Grace each day but hadn't said anything to her. He hadn't cared about saying anything to her. And she obviously hadn't cared about saying anything to him. On Friday, Jack was glad to miss that class. He didn't like it. All his others seemed fine. Bearable. Not really different from what they'd been like at Webster Day School. Except they were with a mix of different people. Lunch was the same as it had been. He ate by himself, and it didn't bother him to do it. His mind was ever elsewhere, listening to the fluttering of sounds that always stayed above the din of the students' laughing and talking, the heavier sounds that lolled underneath. He liked that the cafeteria had a lot of windows in it. He could look outside. There was typically more light outside than inside, no matter where he was. And because the trees were bare now, he could see the clouds and watch the things move inside them.

Going to a new school was actually a relief. Jack didn't exactly realize it, but he felt calmer there already. Because nobody knew who he was. Nobody cared at all about him. The only person who'd cared about him at Webster Day School was Kyle, and now that Kyle didn't care either, there was no point in staying there. Glorion Middle was somewhere Jack could blend in and be entirely unrecognizable. Left to his own imaginings without risk of embarrassment.

His mother picked him up early. He had a one-thirty appointment with a doctor. When he got in the car, despite being with his mother, Jack noticed he felt just about as frightened as he had been when Kyle fell.

He did not want to go to the doctor.

He did not want to get medicine.

He wanted to stay with what was familiar to him, even if he was frightened of it sometimes.

But he didn't argue, because he loved his mother, and he loved his father, and the last thing he wanted was to appear as if he was being uncooperative. Besides, they didn't know he'd been listening to their conversation in the kitchen the night Kyle had returned.

The doctor was nice. She didn't treat Jack like he was stupid or insignificant. She didn't say anything mean, and she talked a long time with Mrs. Kemper while Jack sat in the waiting room. Then they left, stopping at the grocery store to drop off his new prescription. Then home. Finally. Home.

It was nearing five-thirty when they got home. When Jack walked into the kitchen, the first thing he saw was his brother. Kyle was at the table working on something. Mr. Kemper had left work early to pick him up from school. So now here he was. And he didn't even glance at his twin when he entered the room.

"What are you working on?" asked Jack timidly.

Kyle didn't answer right away. He finished whatever he was writing. Then said, "Stuff."

Jack was too apprehensive to push his brother into talking more. He felt something heavy in his chest. He wanted Kyle to treat him the same way he had before the accident. With kindness. But he knew Kyle blamed him. Like his parents did. And the sorrow of that was horrible. Just nearly unbearable.

Kyle set his pencil down, grunted in frustration. Turned toward Jack. "What do you want?"

"Nothing," Jack answered. He saw something dark flapping against the overhead light. Almost like a moth. But he knew it wasn't one. "I just wanted to see how school was.

Kyle hadn't yet asked him what Glorion Middle was like.

"Fine," muttered Kyle, going back to his paper. "Better without you there."

Closing his eyes tight for a second, Jack realized that there was so much he'd always wanted to tell his brother. So much he now desperately wished he could say to him. Because his life suddenly felt like an awful burden.

"Did you get some meds?" Kyle bitterly added.

Before Jack could respond, Mrs. Kemper came into the kitchen, a smile on her face. "What would you boys like for dinner?"

Kyle and Jack both looked to her, then at one another. Then back at their mother again. In their glance at each other, there had almost seemed to be a smile. A touch of their old selves. A sense of camaraderie. But both had been anxious and turned away from it. They were too different now. Jack didn't know how to act around his brother and was trying to find a medium.

Mrs. Kemper raised her eyebrows in expectancy. When neither son answered her, she said, "Well all right, then. I'll just make whatever I'd like to have."

Kyle started working again. Jack stood at the door some moments longer, looking at his twin's back, sad over so much. When a wave of regret surged through him, he became afraid he'd begin crying and so left the kitchen. Wandering. He wandered through the rooms on the first floor. Twice. He didn't want to go upstairs. Didn't want to go to his room. Too many shadows there.

So he went to the only place that felt right: the back porch.

The backyard greeted him gloomily. The nights still started too early, Jack thought, sitting down on the top step of the stairs leading into the short grass. They still got dark around six-thirty. He liked when the sun stayed around until eight. That was always nice. But now that winter was very close, the skies seemed to be perpetually deepening. Always going a shade darker. Sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious. And sometimes it was more a feeling than any visibly perceivable change. Jack had never particularly disliked winter, but he knew that this one was going to be hard. They all did.

Jack took in the yard with his large, brown, softly blinking eyes. The pit was now heavily barricaded. A sturdier wall had gone up around its perimeter the morning after Kyle's accident. Then a large covering had been placed over the top and tied down tight at its ends; there was no way that someone was going to fall into it unless they purposely tried to. Mr. and Mrs. Kemper had asked that the hole be filled up. They didn't care what it was filled with—concrete, mud, bricks—they just wanted it filled. But it could be an archaeological site, or some interesting geological find. That was what the city had said. So they told the Kempers that it would remain open but guarded, until they had the time to study it more. Because it was too cold and potentially too wet (with the promise of coming snowfalls) to do much at the time.

So Jack's parents had discussed moving. But they didn't have the money. After the surgery and the new wheelchair and Kyle's weekly therapy. And now Jack's medication. Mr. and Mrs. Kemper were unable to pull enough together to chance a move. They planned to try in the spring.

Jack knew all of these things only because he sensed them. He felt, sometimes, as if he heard his parents talking in his dreams at night. Especially after he'd actually listened to them talking about him in the kitchen. Their words were doubly vivid. And he'd wake up the following morning and just know. How they were trying to put things back together after they'd been so violently torn apart.

The boy pulled his knees close to him, wrapped his arms around them, rested his chin on his knees. Sighed into the wind that was whispering through the bare tree branches. Dead leaves rippled across the ground, catching on roots and bramble bushes. Jack had thought a million times over about what he'd seen that night. What had happened.

Because, in all the visions that were familiar to him, that he'd been so used to seeing all his life, he'd never been so misled by one. When Jack told everyone he'd seen a person out there—one he'd thought was his brother—there had been a lot of questions. But nobody had been in the area. No one admitted to being there. And when Jack recalled the words he'd heard that night, the sound tempting him to leave the house, to come outside—it had known his name!—he'd been suddenly aware that whatever he'd seen that night, it had been there to deceive him. And that unsettled him. Was still unsettling him. Each time he thought about it. The shadows. The lights. The sounds. They'd always been there. Never obtrusive. Never actually interfering in his life. But the night Kyle fell, something had caused it to happen. Something had wanted to fool Jack.

He tried not to think about that. Because he knew deep inside that if he admitted there were things out there capable of harming him, his world would suddenly look very dangerous, and he'd become afraid. He'd never considered what he saw or heard to be able to interact with what was reality. He couldn't start now.

As he sat there, trying not to recall the dark figure he'd seen that night—the slight, slender form of shadow he'd believed was Kyle—Jack felt a strange sensation against his left arm. It was very soft at first, so that he wasn't even sure of feeling it. But then there was definite pressure against him, and he knew something was there. Anxiously, he turned his head.

But he was too slow.

The black, cat-like shape darted down the steps and across the yard in choppy movements that resembled the flickering of an old roll of film. One split second dashing left, the next split second behind a bush on the right. Until it neared the pit. And was gone.

Jack found himself trembling. Wanting to get into the house. Fast.

He was unused to having such things make physical contact with him. The idea that they could scared him to his very core.