Eight or nine boys were kicking a ball through the square. They were excellent players, even the littlest ones. Danny didn’t think much about his own soccer days anymore, but once in a while he’d remember something from that time: the smell of crushed-up grass or how the sky looked when he would walk home after practice, a strip of rust above the houses, then neon blue edging into black. Coming home in the almost dark made him feel grown up—a taste of grown-up life. Looking back, that seemed like one of the best parts of being a kid.

She turns to me, and I swear to God her eyes are bugging half out of her head. Are you aware, she says, that every question you ask is costing the taxpayer money? Those two guards outside the door, how much you think they’re getting paid? We’re turning people away downstairs because they don’t have insurance, and you robbers and rapists and murderers are lying around here being treated like kings. I don’t get it.

I try again. But the operation—

They should have a meter running right next to your bed, she says. Just so you can see the burden you are. Then maybe you’d give me a peaceful minute to do my work.

Is it the same as the last oper—

That’s fifteen dollars.

Or is it something—

Another fifteen. You’re up to thirty.

I stare at her. My head is starting to fog up. I say, Are you seriously asking me for money?

Angela looks behind her, realizing all of a sudden that this doesn’t look too good. I don’t hear you, she says, and starts to hum. She hums and hums. I try to talk, but all she does is hum.

Hey, Hannah, I say. How come you’re so nice to criminals?

That’s got nothing to do with me, LB, she says. That’s between you and God.

I have dreams, oh shit. Drug dreams, those ones where the past slops all over the place like a backed-up line. Sometimes I’m at school. The other boys would steal your food if you didn’t steal theirs first. Howie couldn’t do it. When he first came in he says, I don’t want their food. I can’t eat that much. I just want my own food. And I tell him, Take it, man, or they’ll take yours and then you’ll starve. I’ve seen it happen. They bring in fat kids like you and the next thing you know they’re skeletons. They take ’em out in coffins and bury them in unmarked graves. And then I start to laugh. He’s so new, that sweet scared face. Everyone’s like that at first. But you stay in here long enough, you can laugh about anything.

She looks up. I’ve caught her by surprise. Her face opens up and all of a sudden it’s like that paper mask is transparent. I’m looking right through it, and I get a flash of some kind of life we could’ve had—barbecues, dogs, kids flopping over us in bed—it rolls through me fast but strong and clear, like one of those cooking smells that blows in the window so sharp you can pick out the ingredients. And then it’s gone. It’s gone, and Holly’s holding my hand. Finally, after that long long wait, her hand is back on mine. Dry cool fingers, slim. The rings loose. I close my eyes. My hand is so hot, I feel my pulse in every finger. I’m afraid she’ll let go but she doesn’t let go. She keeps her hand around mine and it’s like she’s holding all of me in her cool sweetness, calming my fever back down.

Benjy was moaning. The baroness’s words were caught in his ears, Danny could tell. He needed to erase them, keep them from tunneling into the boy’s brain. He started whispering into his hair as they followed the endless hall: It’ll be fine, you’ll see, you’ll grow up and you won’t even remember this stuff, it’ll all be so long ago, just a funny thing you’ll tell your friends and they’ll say: What? No way! And you’ll say: Yeah, it’s true, I promise, that stuff really happened but I was a brave kid and I got through it, I kept my cool because that’s the kind of kid I am….

Howard had left his body completely—he was somewhere else. No, no, please! Please! Oh my God, I can’t breathe. Help!

The room was starting to spin. Danny felt like all the oxygen had run out. The harder he tried to breathe the dizzier he got. The kid stirred in his arms and he thought, I can’t pass out while I’m holding this kid.

Ann: Howard, stop. You’ve got to stop. Stop! We’ve got the kids here and a lot of other people who need to get out.

But Howard couldn’t stop. His body went suddenly rigid, his eyes wide and blind. He clawed at the air and then, in a terrible guttural voice, he screamed Danny’s name, dragging it out so it filled the torture space with one long howl.

Howard: Danny! Danny! Danny help me, please let me out.

Danny please, I’ll do anything—please let me out. I’ll give you anything you want. Wait, Danny, don’t go! Don’t leave me here!

He wasn’t looking at Danny, but everyone else was. Mick and Ann and the graduate students who were still in the room gaped at him in confusion. Each time Howard screamed his name seemed to push Danny’s skull one step closer to exploding. Unbelievably, the kid in his arms was still asleep. Danny noticed himself squeezing Benjy, clutching onto him like the kid was holding him up.

Howard sat on the ground, leaning against the Medusa head spigot where Danny had seen the moving figures back when he was wigging out. His elbows were on his knees, his head on his fists. Something had gone out of Howard. Maybe Howard had gone out of Howard.

Mick was standing near him. Danny couldn’t catch his eye.

Phase Four was when Danny realized that the power was his. Howard was done, Mick was out, which left Danny in the position he’d spent sixteen years waiting for, wishing for, scheming for, groveling for, grabbing and even (when he was really desperate) praying for. The force of getting this reward after so long overwhelmed Danny at first: the pure thrill of it. That lasted maybe thirty seconds, and then the thrill quieted down and Danny realized something he couldn’t quite put a name to. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Howard’s power—more that the whole power thing seemed phony, beside the point, or maybe just old, like it couldn’t help Danny see this world he was looking at.

Eventually Howard lifted up his head. His face looked gray, old. His voice was flat: You did good, Danny. Under there.

Funny answers, stupid answers, answers that are a way of not answering—all these went through Danny’s head: Hey, I needed the exercise or Falling out a window was a tough act to follow but I gave it my best, or It must’ve been those injections the doc gave me, or Thank God for that trail of bread crumbs, or Tell my dad, wouldja?

But what he finally said was: I left you to die.

Howard looked up, squinting at Danny in the sun. But I didn’t die. I got out.

Danny: They found you.

Before that. I escaped with my mind. I got out of there because I wasn’t going to make it otherwise.

How?

I don’t know. I left. I went into a game. Rooms in my head. We can all do it, you know—we’re just out of practice.

The gun came from somewhere on Mick’s ankle. He was unbelievably fast.

Danny tried to lunge with his knife, but he was too late. He’d hardly moved when I fired at his forehead. He was looking at me when the bullet tore through, and I watched the light go out.

Why? That’s a reasonable question. You shoot someone in the head, you should have a reason. And what I’d like to do right now is make you a list, pile up the evidence piece by piece (things like: I actually thought for a second that he was going at Howard with the knife and I knew he’d tell Howard about Ann and me eventually and After fucking up Howard like he did when they were kids, I didn’t think he should get off so easy), so at the end of the list you’d say, Well of course he shot that asshole, and good thing—look at all these reasons! But I don’t have a list. I liked Danny. He reminded me of me.