My mother came to the swim meet where I swam like shit in every event. On the way home she gave me a hug and told me everyone had an off day and I’d do better next time. I almost blurted everything out right then, ending with my fear—which I now felt was reasonably justified—that Kenneth Therriault was trying to ruin my life for screwing up his last and biggest bomb. If we hadn’t been in a taxi, I really might have. Since we were, I just put my head on her shoulder as I had when I was small and thought my hand-turkey was the greatest work of art since the Mona Lisa. Tell you what, the worst part of growing up is how it shuts you up.

33

When I headed out of our apartment on the last day of school, Therriault was once again in the elevator. Grinning and beckoning. He probably expected me to cringe back like I had the first time I saw him in there, but I didn’t. I was scared, all right, but not as scared, because I was getting used to him, the way you might get used to a growth or a birthmark on your face, even if it was ugly. This time I was more angry than scared, because he wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone.

Instead of cringing, I lunged forward and put my arm out to stop the elevator doors. I wasn’t going to get in with him—Christ, no!—but I wasn’t going to let the doors close until I got a few answers.

“Does my mother really have cancer?”

Once again his face twisted like I was hurting him, and once again I hoped I was.

“Does my mother have cancer?”

“I don’t know.” The way he was staring at me…you know that old saying about if looks could kill?

“Then why did you say that?”

He was at the back of the car now, with his hands pressed to his chest, as if I was scaring him. He turned his head, showing me that enormous exit wound, but if he thought that was going to make me let go of the door and step back, he was wrong. Horrible as it was, I’d gotten used to it.

“Why did you say that?”

“Because I hate you,” Therriault said, and bared his teeth.

“Why are you still here? How can you be?”

“I don’t know.”

“Go away.”

He said nothing.

“Go away!”

“I’m not going away. I’m never going away.”

That scared the hell out of me and my arm flopped down to my side as if it had gained weight.

“Be seeing you, Champ.”

The elevator doors rolled shut, but the car didn’t go anywhere because there was no one to push any of the inside buttons. When I pushed the one on my side, the doors rolled open on an empty car, but I took the stairs anyway.

I’ll get used to him, I thought. I got used to the hole in his head and I’ll get used to him. It’s not like he can hurt me.

But in some ways he’d hurt me already: the D- on my math test and screwing the pooch at the swim meet were just two examples. I was sleeping badly (Mom had already commented on the pouches under my eyes), and little noises, even a dropped book in study hall, made me jump. I kept thinking I’d open my closet to get a shirt and he’d be in there, my own personal boogeyman. Or under the bed, and what if he grabbed my wrist or my dangling foot while I was sleeping? I didn’t think he could grab, but I wasn’t sure of that, either, especially if he was getting stronger.

What if I woke up and he was lying in bed with me? Maybe even grabbing at my junk?

That was an idea that, once thought, couldn’t be unthought.

And something else, something even worse. What if he was still haunting me—because that’s what this was, all right—when I was twenty? Or forty? What if he was there when I died at eighty-nine, waiting to welcome me into the afterlife, where he would go on haunting me even after I was dead?

If this is what a good deed gets you, I thought one night, looking out my window and watching Thumper across the street under his streetlight, I never want to do another one.

34

In late June, Mom and I made our monthly visit to see Uncle Harry. He didn’t talk much anymore and hardly ever went into the common room. Although he still wasn’t fifty, his hair had gone snow white.

Mom said, “Jamie brought you rugelach from Zabar’s, Harry. Would you like some?”

I held the bag up from my place in the doorway (I didn’t really want to go all the way in), smiling and feeling a little like one of the models on The Price is Right.

Uncle Harry said yig.

“Does that mean yes?” Mom asked.

Uncle Harry said ng, and waved both hands at me. Which you didn’t have to be a mind reader to know meant no fucking cookies.

“Would you like to go out? It’s beautiful.”

I wasn’t sure Uncle Harry even knew what out was these days.

“I’ll help you up,” Mom said, and took his arm.

“No!” Uncle Harry said. Not ng, not yig, not ug, no. As clear as a bell. His eyes had gotten big and were starting to water. Then, also as clear as a bell, “Who’s that?”

“It’s Jamie. You know Jamie, Harry.”

Only he didn’t know me, not anymore, and it wasn’t me he was looking at. He was looking over my shoulder. I didn’t need to turn around to know what I was going to see there, but I did, anyway.

“What he’s got is hereditary,” Therriault said, “and it runs in the male line. You’ll be like him, Champ. You’ll be like him before you know it.”

“Jamie?” Mom asked. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I said, looking at Therriault. “I’m just fine.”

But I wasn’t, and Therriault’s grin said he knew it, too.

“Go away!” Uncle Harry said. “Go away, go away, go away!”

So we did.

All three of us.

35

I had just about decided to tell my mother everything—I needed to let it out, even if it scared her and made her unhappy—when fate, as the saying is, took a hand. This was in July of 2013, about three weeks after our trip to see Uncle Harry.

My mother got a call early one morning, while she was getting ready to go to the office. I was sitting at the kitchen table, scarfing up Cheerios with one eye open. She came out of her bedroom, zipping her skirt. “Marty Burkett had a little accident last night. Tripped over something—going to the toilet, I imagine—and strained his hip. He says he’s fine, and maybe he is, but maybe he’s just trying to be macho.”

“Yeah,” I said, mostly because it’s always safer to agree with my mom when she’s rushing around and trying to do like three different things at once. Privately I was thinking that Mr. Burkett was a little old to be a macho man, although it was amusing to think of him starring in a movie like Terminator: The Retirement Years. Waving his cane and proclaiming “I’ll be back.” I picked up my bowl and started to slurp the milk.

“Jamie, how many times have I told you not to do that?”

I couldn’t remember if she ever had, because quite a few parental edicts, especially those concerning table manners, had a tendency to slide by me. “How else am I supposed to get it all?”

She sighed. “Never mind. I made a casserole for our supper, but we could have burgers. If, that is, you could interrupt your busy schedule of watching TV and playing games on your phone long enough to take it to Marty. I can’t, full schedule. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to do that? And then call and tell me how he’s doing?”