His world had disintegrated. It was being eaten away by the bitterness of the people inhabiting it, and he hadn't noticed at all. Hadn't cared one bit. Had his indifference been a blessing in disguise? Would the world have fallen apart regardless of his state of mind? Was there anything he could have done about it? And if not—if his medication had been a shield against all that was happening—why had he been allowed off of it, only to see that everything was lost? How cruel! What now, if he was being given this chance to see things for what they really were? Was there any purpose to not continue his pills? They would continue to shield him—would turn him back into an apathetic shade of his real self. Jack wasn't sure that was what he wanted. But he knew, also, that he couldn't bear to stay aware of his life if this horror was what it had become.

He lay in his bed, eyes staring blindly across the room, not taking note of the shadows or his mother as she came in to see how he was doing. There was nothing to be said. Nothing to be done. Things had fallen too far. Kyle hated him too much. His parents had forgotten their love. He couldn't break free of his suffocating thoughts.

Tears remained in his eyes. Still trickled every so often down his cheeks or fell onto his damp pillow. He wouldn't eat. He wouldn't take any medicine his mother brought to him. His brother didn't even come into the room. They couldn't tell what was wrong with Jack. Couldn't understand what he saw or felt. They'd never been able to. Never could understand the way his senses worked and interpreted his surroundings. To them, the house looked the same as it always had. To them, the heater and the lights kept the rooms warm and bright. They couldn't feel the cold or breathe it in. They couldn't sense the heaviness of the air or the physical manifestation of the house's dejection as it curled in tendrils through the space and air before their faces. But Jack could. And it hurt him. Kept him in his bed.

His mother called the doctor. They considered him in shock. If he didn't begin eating in a day or so, he'd have to be taken into the hospital and put on an IV.

So he ate some. Drank some. But still refused to speak. Still wouldn't leave his bed. Didn't go to school. Ran a fever. Mrs. Kemper brought him his schoolwork, but he wouldn't do it. A week passed. Another weekend came. Jack felt as if the world was unreal. When he slept, he was in nightmares. When he woke, he was in nightmares. The voices at his ears had quieted. The droning lull of the pit outside had subsided. The deadly quiet of defeat had settled into his room. He saw no light; only shades of gray. A black, cat-like shape sat in the corner, readjusting its position every so often, but Jack took little notice of it. He knew it was there, had known since he'd entered the house. It was the same shape that had passed him as he sat on the porch all those months ago, right after Kyle's accident. It was the same shape that had been in the hospital after Kyle realized he'd broken his spine. It had been invited into the house, and it had grown comfortable. It was no longer scared of Jack or the others, if it ever really had been to begin with.

Nothing made much sense to him. Everything hurt, but none of it made sense. He'd never regretted his differentness. Never been angry or disturbed by the fact that he saw and heard and felt things. But it had never mattered that what he experienced didn't make sense. There had never been a time when he'd felt that what he knew must be understood. He'd never been threatened or truly disadvantaged. Now, though, his differences were killing him. Hurting him more than anyone else could tell. What he saw was the disease that had taken over his home and destroyed his family. What he felt was the fury and resentment underlying the mask of normality that Kyle and his mother wore. He couldn't change the way things looked or sounded or felt. There was nothing he could do. He wished he was like Kyle, now. Wished he was like any other boy who knew only the surface reality. He didn't want to know what was really there, beneath the sugar-coated covering everyone else knew, because he didn't understand it or how to deal with it.

Saturday morning, just over a week after he'd stopped taking his medication, just as his mother admitted to being at her wits' end with him, Jack felt something different in his room. Something . . . unlike the dulled presence of his mother, unlike the simmering hatred of his brother, and far different from the strange sensation of the black-cat shadow. It was a feeling he hadn't known in a long, long time—since a time before realizing the nothing, a time before he'd been medicated, a time before Kyle's accident. And it took him several moments to realize what it was.

It was light.

His mind touched on this thought. Light . . . could it be? He'd nearly forgotten what light was! A brighter shade of reality . . . a thing that filtered hope through the atmosphere . . . a tangible belief that what was so broken could possibly be mended . . .

A sound snaked its way through the rushing that had begun between Jack's ears. Words, detached at first, and then stringing themselves together: ". . . here . . . are . . . sick . . . wake up . . . Grace . . . Jack, are you . . . It's me . . . come to see you . . ." And then they joined. "Jack, it's me, Grace Maloney. I came to see you. You're a lot worse off than I thought."

The gray shifted, trembled suddenly, then shattered before his eyes. The face of a girl was in front of him, seeming to materialize out of nowhere. The murky film Jack had been staring through for days parted to allow in Grace Maloney. The girl from school. Her large, bright eyes, her mismatched earrings, her every-which-way hair.

A breath left Jack; another inhalation pulled life back into him. The air fill his lungs as he gulped it in. Had he not been breathing, living, for the past week?

The room and all its furniture sharpened into view. He sat up. "Grace!"

The girl leapt up from her kneeling position, just as startled as he was. "Yes! It's me! Geez, you scared the life out of me."

Jack put a hand onto his chest, felt his heart beating. Quietly, he replied, "I think you scared it back into me."

"I have that effect on people sometimes." Grace smiled. Jack stared at her as if she was making some foreign gesture.

The black-cat shadow skulked out of the open bedroom door; Jack didn't even take notice of it. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to see you." The girl pulled Jack's desk chair away from his desk and sat on it. "You've been out of school for a whole week, and I wondered what was wrong, so I came over. Your mom is really nice. She just told me to come on up. Your brother though . . ." She let out a low whistle. Clicked her tongue. "He's got issues."

Jack frowned.

"I mean, he was the one that opened the door. Looks just like you! But I knew it wasn't you. He's got some different sort of vibe about him, you know? Like, he's just annoyed at the world."

"It's more than that," Jack commented. Grace was talking lightheartedly, but he knew she had to have felt the seriousness of Kyle's condition. "He hates the world. Really, really hates it. And me most of all."

The girl didn't say anything, for once. She knew not to.

Jack glanced around. His bedroom looked normal, all of a sudden, even though he knew that beyond it seethed the shadows and emptiness. A shiver crossed his shoulders, ran down his spine. "It's really bad, Grace," was what he said, noticing with wonder that he felt safer with her there. He didn't know why he'd said it. How could he expect her to know what he saw or felt or heard? She wouldn't know what was happening in his home or family. She'd know the surface, like everyone else did. That was all. So why had he spoken to her as if expecting she'd understand him?

Grace put her hand on Jack's, which rested on the side of his mattress. "I know," she said sincerely. "I've never heard so much wind-talk in all my life."

Her words hardly reached him for a moment. He nodded robotically. And then he caught them. Wind-talk. He knew, then, why he'd always felt something about her. Wide eyes, opening mouth, he said incredulously, "You hear them too?"

Her expression answered his question.

The boy's heart began to beat wildly. "And . . . the shadows? The movements . . . those?"

"Always have, always will."

With those words, Grace Maloney put part of the world back into place.