The next day, Ziggy was waiting for me in the copper beech tree just like he promised he would. When I squinted into the silvery branches, I could see his feet in their battered green sneakers and his bare legs dangling over the branch. I could see orange gym shorts and a flower-power T-shirt with a faded yellow peace sign in the middle. His wild hair was pulled into a messy ponytail that hung down over the same shoulder where Matthew was perched, batting absently at the loose strands and then above at the copper beech leaves with his tiny pink hands.

“Salutations,” said Ziggy when he saw me.

“Hey,” I said. “I worried you weren’t going to be here.”

“Where else would I be?” said Ziggy.

“I don’t know,” I said, smiling. “Maybe hanging out with those Crowley boys?”

“You’re funny,” said Ziggy. “Come up. I brought you something.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Lunch.”

I scrambled up as fast I could, swinging my leg onto the longest branch and then pulling myself up beside him. I was out of breath when Ziggy handed over the jar of cheese ravioli. “Nana Jean made this for me yesterday,” he said. “I thought you’d like it. We’ll need extra sustenance for our travels today. Cheese ravioli is perfect for wandering. Go ahead. It’s good. I promise.”

I unscrewed the lid and salty tendrils of cheese and tomatoes swirled from the jar.

“Go on,” said Ziggy again. “It’s okay.”

I took one ravioli from the jar by its corner and tasted it. It was heavenly. Then I took another. Then, before I knew it, I was shoving one ravioli after another into my mouth with my fingers while Ziggy leaned against the trunk watching. I licked the tomato sauce from my fingers as though I were drinking milk from a bottle.

“You were hungry,” said Ziggy.

I nodded, running my tongue along the inside of the jar to get the last drops.

Ziggy reached over for the empty jar and hung it on the stump of a broken branch.

“In the ninth dimension, no one is ever hungry,” he said. “You can get full just by breathing.”

“That sounds perfect.”

“It is,” said Ziggy.

“And no one in the ninth dimension is ever cruel. And no one is ever alone. And everyone is brave. And you can make anything you want happen, just by wishing. Do you remember the word I taught you yesterday that means moving objects with your mind?”

“Telekinesis,” I said.

“Right,” said Ziggy. “Every nomad of the ninth dimension knows how to use it. For most of us, it’s as natural as breathing. We can simply look at any object, reach out with our mind, tell the object to move, and the object will move.”

My heart was pounding. “I want to do that,” I said.

“We have to cast the inspiration spell on each other one more time. Just to make sure we are woven together. Are you ready?”

“I was born ready, remember?” I said.

Ziggy blew hard. I closed my eyes and inhaled. I could taste the Victorian houses and the green lawns and the suntan lotion. I could taste the greatest hits of 1983 coming from someone’s boom box far away, and Nana Jean’s macramé owls and the ravioli. Then I blew my air back at him, a spiraling spiderweb.

“How do you feel?” asked Ziggy.

“Tingly,” I told him.

“Me too,” said Ziggy. “That’s how you know the magic’s working. Now look up.”

I could see the silvery branches of the copper beech reaching above us, the beautiful red leaves making a canopy between earth and the blue beyond.

“See all those leaves?” Ziggy asked.

“Of course, I see them.”

“There’s no breeze, right?”

“Right. No breeze.”

“Okay. Watch what I do. I’m going to look into the leaves and concentrate until I can feel them with the tips of my fingers. Then I’m going to extend my mind and make them move.”

Ziggy raised his face to the sky. He seemed to grow taller. He moved his wrists and hands and his fingers all around him, as though the leaves far above his head were close enough to touch.

At first nothing happened. But then a breeze came through and the leaves started flickering. They quaked and crackled above us.

I shrieked with joy. “You did it!”

Matthew jumped up on his tiptoes and bounced back to Ziggy’s shoulder.

“Yes,” said Ziggy. “And now you’re going to do it.”

I stared at the leaves.

Nothing happened.

“I can’t,” I said.

“You can,” said Ziggy. “You’re a nomad. You understand the language of the trees. Look up at the leaves. Extend your mind. And they will move!”

I stared at the branches and leaves above me. I tried to send my mind to where the branches curled and crisscrossed.

I clenched my teeth and pushed, but I didn’t feel anything special.

“You’re trying too hard,” said Ziggy. “Take a deep breath and send yourself up there.”

“I can’t,” I said again.

“You can,” said Ziggy. “I’m with you. Can you feel me? I’m bringing you up into the branches. I’m lifting you.”

At first, I didn’t feel anything, but then I could feel him, below me, lifting me like I was a dancer. “It’s like wind,” I said. “Like I’m rising on a big pillow of air.”

“That’s it!” said Ziggy. “That’s how it’s supposed to feel. Now you do the rest by yourself. Lift yourself up until your face is right underneath the leaves. Until it tickles your cheeks.”

My face was tilted toward the sky and I was rising into the branches. I could feel the copper canopy touching my cheeks and my forehead.

“Now reach out with your hands and touch the leaves. Make them move.”

I bent my wrists and hands and fingers the way Ziggy did, wandering them through the air, flickering them around me like wind. The leaves began to wave along with my fingers, first just one leaf, then another and another, until pretty soon the whole canopy was quaking.

We spent the rest of the day moving other things with our minds: easy things like grass, sunlight, dandelion silk.

We made Mrs. Delmato blink her eyes.

We made John-John Crowley wobble on his bike.

We made Mr. Moniker’s crazy old dog pee on the fire hydrant.

And then at around five o’clock, when Mr. Delmato lit the charcoal and covered his grill with hamburgers and hot dogs and Italian sausages, and called into the neighborhood that anyone who was hungry should come and get it, and the Crowleys and the Monikers and the Konings started wandering over to stand on his lawn, and Mrs. Delmato came out with ketchup bottles and plates of tomatoes and lettuce, and Heather Anne and Lucy followed behind their mother with paper plates and cups and napkins, when the charcoals got good and hot and everyone started getting excited, we made the smoke rise up into the branches so that for one single moment everything in the neighborhood was perfect.

“Ziggy!” called Nana Jean from the porch below us. “Dinnertime!”

“I’ve got to go,” Ziggy told me. “She’s really into meals. She wants to get me fat. I don’t mind. Jenny wasn’t all that good about remembering dinner. June Bug Jordan, this has been a truly magnificent day.”

“The best day in the history of the entire earth,” I said.

“Oh no,” said Ziggy. “It can’t be the best day in the history of the entire earth. Because tomorrow is going to be even better. Tomorrow we’ll wander to the ninth dimension. Wait until I’m inside to climb down, please. That way Nana Jean won’t see you.”

I nodded.

“Listen to the screen door slam and then count to one hundred before you come down. Good night, June Bug Jordan.”

“Good night, Ziggy Karlo,” I said.

Then he climbed down with Matthew riding on his shoulder.

Ziggy crossed the lawn and stood with Nana Jean on the porch. They watched the neighbors milling around at the Delmatos’ place with their paper plates full of hamburgers and potato chips. They stood around talking about neighborhood things, about teachers and taxes and lawn mowers. All the kids went out back to play on Lucy and Heather Anne’s swing set.

“You want to go over there and get something to eat?” asked Nana Jean.

Buzz threw a football to John-John, who jumped and caught it.

“No way,” said Ziggy.

“Good,” said Nana Jean. “Because you and I have something more important to do tonight.”

“What’s that?” asked Ziggy.

“Well, I thought we’d give Jenny a call. See how things are going.”

Ziggy’s face went very still.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“Don’t you want to talk to your mama?”

“Oh, I do,” said Ziggy. “I miss her so much, it’s like a hole in my heart. I’m just not sure she’s going to miss me yet. I couldn’t bear it if she didn’t miss me.”

“Oh, Ziggy,” said Nana Jean, putting her arm around him. “How did you get to be so wise?”

“Jenny says I was born that way,” said Ziggy.

“I think she’s right.”

“Let’s go in,” said Ziggy.

“Okay,” said Nana Jean. “In we go.”

I waited for the screen door to slam just like he told me it would, and then I counted to one hundred before I climbed down.

I walked past the Delmatos’ house, where all the grown-ups gathered. Lucy and Buzz and some of the other neighborhood kids were playing in the tree house, and John-John and Heather Anne were taking turns swinging on an old tire swing that hung from a tall tree. One of them would climb on so they were standing on the top of the tire, and the other one would haul them back as far as they could go and then push them hard so they swung high over the hill and then back. Heather Anne was hanging on and John-John was pushing her, and she had thrown her head back and was laughing. Her teeth were so straight and so white, and she looked so happy that something inside me broke and I started to feel mean. I started to hate Heather Anne’s cute hair-sprayed feathered bangs and crimped hair and her cute Day-Glo tank top and her cute cutoff jeans and her cute straight white teeth.

I picked up a small rock from the side of the road, and without even thinking about it, I walked across the street and hurled that rock at Heather Anne as hard as I could.

“Hey!” screamed Heather Anne, clutching her shoulder.

John-John spotted me right away and pulled a horrible face that made him look just like his brother, even though he usually was nowhere near as ugly. “June Bug Jordan threw a rock at Heather Anne!” he shouted.

All the neighborhood kids stopped playing and stared at me.

Heather Anne’s face was red, and there were tears starting to stream out of her eyes. She was rubbing her shoulder.

“Why’d you do that, June Bug?” she asked.

“Hey, June Bug,” said Buzz, leaping from the tree house and advancing toward me. “See what happens when you throw a rock at me! She won’t do it. She’s scared. You scared, June Bug? She won’t do it. She’s crazy. Everyone knows it.”

“She is crazy,” said Lucy. “But her mom’s even crazier. And they all have AIDS at her house, so don’t get too close or you’ll get it too.”

Lucy and Buzz and John-John came over to the edge of the lawn.

I picked up another rock, a bigger one this time. I gathered my magic, extended my mind, and hurled it as hard as I could at Buzz, but Buzz was so mean, the magic fizzled and the rock clattered onto the road. Buzz picked it up and ran at me, screaming, “Stay away from us, you psycho!”

I took another rock, extended my mind, and threw it as hard as I could at Buzz, who caught it this time, in one fist, and charged down the street with a rock in each hand like he was going to brain me with them.

John-John and Lucy took off behind him, screaming, “Get her! Get her!”

Heather Anne followed them.

I ran as fast as I could down Trowbridge Road, leaving Ziggy’s house and the smell of the Delmatos’ barbecue and all the grown-ups behind us, the sound of our feet hitting the pavement past the tall houses and all the way down to number twenty-eight, where the porch sighed, and the raspberries grew wild, and all the curtains were pulled closed so that no sunlight could come inside.

I stood in front of my house, and Buzz and John-John and Lucy and Heather Anne stood around me.

We looked at each other, not sure what to do next.

Buzz wound up like a softball pitcher.

Then, suddenly, right before he let go, there was a clattering racket coming from the top floor of the house.

We all looked up to the window and there was Mother.

She had not shown her face to anyone but me and Uncle Toby since the funeral, and now she was pushing back the curtains and glaring down at us in her white nightgown. Her tangled hair fell over her jutting shoulders. Her skeletal face stared out at us with her mouth gaping open, screaming.

“A ghost!” shrieked John-John.

“Run!” yelled Lucy. “Run as fast as you can!”

Buzz dropped his rocks.

They took off screaming back down the road toward the Delmatos’ house.

They ran so hard, Buzz practically kicked himself in the butt while he ran, and John-John and Lucy were screeching about the ghost they saw at the window, and Heather Anne was crying about her shoulder, and pretty soon all four of them were surrounded by neighbors who cooed over them and made them feel like they were the ones who had been wronged.

I dodged headlong into my house, my heart still pounding in my chest, forgetting completely to slide off my sandals, forgetting completely to wipe the outdoor smells off my skin, bounding all the way up the stairs two steps a time, throwing open our bedroom door, and running in to hug my mother, who had just saved my life, but I found her wrapped in the curtains, staring at me.

Her face was white. She was not smiling at all.