"It's not a lie," he said, mustering a tear. "My brother David, we don't know how long he'll live, but it won't be long. He acts like a monster, so it's hard to love him, but we all try." She rocked back onto her haunches. "It's true, then?" she asked softly. He nodded miserably. "Let's say no more about it, then," she said. She took his hand and traced hieroglyphs on his palm with the ragged edges of her chewed-up fingernails. The recess bell rang and they headed back to school. They were about to leave the marshland when something hard hit Alan in the back of the head. He spun around and saw a small, sharp rock skitter into the grass, saw Davey's face contorted with rage, lips pulled all the way back off his teeth, half-hidden in the boughs of a tree, winding up to throw another rock. He flinched away and the rock hit the paving hard enough to bounce. Marci whirled around, but David was gone, high up in the leaves, invisible, malicious, biding. "What was that?" "I dunno," Alan lied, and groaned. # Kurt and Alan examined every gap between every storefront on Augusta, no matter how narrow. Kurt kept silent as Alan fished his arm up to the shoulder along miniature alleys that were just wide enough to accommodate the rain gutters depending from the roof. They found the alley that Frederick had been dragged down near the end of the block, between a mattress store and an egg wholesaler. It was narrow enough that they had to traverse it sideways, but there, at the entrance, were two smears of skin and blood, just above the ground, stretching off into the sulfurous, rotty-egg depths of the alleyway. They slid along the alley's length, headed for the gloom of the back. Something skittered away from Alan's shoe and he bent down, but couldn't see it. He ran his hands along the ground and the walls and they came back with a rime of dried blood and a single strand of long, oily hair stuck to them. He wiped his palms off on the bricks. "I can't see," he said. "Here," Kurt said, handing him a miniature maglight whose handle was corrugated by hundreds of toothmarks. Alan saw that he was intense, watching. Alan twisted the light on. "Thanks," he said, and Kurt smiled at him, seemed a little taller. Alan looked again. There, on the ground, was a sharpened black tooth, pierced by a piece of pipe-cleaner wire.