"Maybe I could meet up with the first and form a support group?" Alan pushed his omelet away. "You can't. She's dead." # Davey haunted the schoolyard. Alan had always treated the school and its grounds as a safe haven, a place where he could get away from the inexplicable, a place where he could play at being normal. But now Davey was everywhere, lurking in the climber, hiding in the trees, peering through the tinsel-hung windows during class. Alan only caught the quickest glimpses of him, but he had the sense that if he turned his head around quickly enough, he'd see him. Davey made himself scarce in the mountain, hiding in the golems' cave or one of the deep tunnels. Marci didn't come to class after Monday. Alan fretted every morning, waiting for her to turn up. He worried that she'd told her father, or that she was at home sulking, too angry to come to school, glaring at her Christmas tree. Davey's grin was everywhere. On Wednesday, he got called into the vice principal's office. As he neared it, he heard the rumble of Marci's father's thick voice and his heart began to pound in his chest. He cracked the door and put his face in the gap, looking at the two men there: Mr. Davenport, the vice principal, with his gray hair growing out his large ears and cavernous nostrils, sitting behind his desk, looking awkwardly at Marci's father, eyes bugged and bagged and bloodshot, face turned to the ground, looking like a different man, the picture of worry and loss. Mr. Davenport saw him and crooked a finger at him, looking stern and stony. Alan was sure, then, that Marci'd told it all to her father, who'd told it all to Mr. Davenport, who would tell the world, and suddenly he was jealous of his secret, couldn't bear to have it revealed, couldn't bear the thought of men coming to the mountain to catalogue it for the subject index at the library, to study him and take him apart. And he was... afraid. Not of what they'd all do to him. What Davey would do to them. He knew, suddenly, that Davey would not abide their secrets being disclosed. He forced himself forward, his feet dragging like millstones, and stood between the two men, hands in his pockets, nervously twining at his underwear. "Alan," Marci's father croaked. Mr. Davenport held up a hand to silence him. "Alan," Mr. Davenport said. "Have you seen Marci?" Alan had been prepared to deny everything, call Marci a liar, betray her as she'd betrayed him, make it her word against his. Protect her. Protect her father and the school and the town from what Davey would do. Now he whipped his head toward Marci's father, suddenly understanding. "No," he said. "Not all week! Is she all right?" Marci's father sobbed, a sound Alan had never heard an adult make.