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When Corey Fletcher was five, he saw a woman on the C train take out her teeth and argue with them. At age seven, he ran out of his house on West Ninety-Fifth Street in New York City and nearly collided with a man walking a pig.

Corey was thirteen now, and already in his life he’d seen a naked wedding by the Hudson River, an elephant lumbering up Amsterdam Avenue, an actor falling off a Broadway stage onto a trombone player, and a singing group that burped entire tunes in harmony.

Corey didn’t seek out strange things. They just came to him.

But nothing was stranger than the vision he’d once observed at age seven, outside his window. It disturbed him so much he told no one, not even his grandfather, who lived with Corey’s family.

And he told his grandfather everything.

People said Corey had an active imagination, but Corey didn’t think so. He didn’t imagine any more or less than other people. He just kept his eyes open. And he had a good eye. He knew this because way back when he told his grandfather about the woman and her teeth, the old man said, “Corey, you have an Ed Gooey.”

It took Corey only a few seconds to realize that the letters of “Ed Gooey” spelled out “good eye.” His grandfather liked anagrams. He could mix the letters of words in his head and make up new words on the spot.

“Both eyes are good, Papou,” Corey replied proudly, which cracked the old man up.

“Bravo, paithi mou!”

Papou is Greek for “grandfather.” Which sounds a lot nicer than his real name, Konstantino Vlechos, which no one could pronounce. Or Gus Fletcher, his American name. Or Odd Gus, which is what some people called him. He was a New Yorker through and through, but he liked to use Greek expressions like paithi mou, which means “my child.” And bravo, which means “yay.”

Of course, Corey loved his mom, dad, and sometimes even his sister, Zenobia. But if you asked him in secret, he’d say he loved Papou best. Odd Gus—I mean, Papou—liked crossword puzzles, word games, and the New York Mets, in that order. But he loved hearing Corey’s stories.

Well, he did love them, before he disappeared one year ago.

Which brings us to the story that Corey never told.

One night when Corey was seven, Papou was reading aloud from A Wrinkle in Time. His voice always put Corey to sleep, even when the book was amazing.

Corey’s eyes were half-shut when he saw a shadow outside his window. Behind Papou’s shoulder.

The Fletchers lived in a sunken, ground-floor apartment in a four-story building. So they were used to people passing by the front windows. Not so much the back, where Corey’s bedroom was.

In the soft drone of Papou’s voice, Corey was seeing tesseracts dancing in his head. He knew those weren’t real, so he didn’t think the shadow was real either.

Even when it leaned forward and pressed its nose to the glass.

It was someone Corey had never seen, someone much older than he was. But he knew who it was. He recognized the face.

It was his own.

He did not scream, although he wanted to. Instead, he lay in bed silently for hours and finally fell asleep. Papou hadn’t seemed to notice. Which meant, Corey thought, that the whole thing might not have really happened. So he never said a word about it to anyone.

If he had, this whole story might have been different.

Or maybe not.

Corey, like everyone said, had an active imagination.