His first thought when he saw the boy was Abe.

His rapid-firing second thought was that this boy — who was obviously older than Abe — was a ghost from the funeral home next door.

The boy (or the ghost of a boy) leaned forward on his elbows. “How do you like my room?”

“Your room?” Lowen managed to say.

“Yup.” The kid stood and walked over to where Lowen was standing. Lowen jumped aside, but all the kid did was flip the light switch.

Not a ghost, then.

The boy had a buzz cut and wore a tattered T-shirt with camo pants. He drifted over to the closet and peered inside. Lowen’s duffel bag was there. Was this kid a thief? Was he looking for something to steal?

“My grandfather is a town councillor.”

Coach? Not likely. “Mr. Avery?” Anyway, what did that have to do with anything?

He nodded. “I live with him. But this is my family’s house. My father built the dormer in this room. That’s what you call the addition. A dormer. It makes the room longer.”

Lowen wanted to say, “It was your family’s house, and get out of my closet,” but he felt less certain of these facts.

The kid picked up one of Lowen’s Bone books and leafed through it. “How tall are you?”

“Five foot six,” Lowen practically shouted, hoping Mum or Anneth might hear him and come investigate. What did this kid want?

“I’m Dylan Firebrand,” the kid said. “People call this the Firebrand House.”

“Lowen Grover,” Lowen replied. He was tempted to add, “And we call this house the Albatross,” but he didn’t think Dylan would appreciate the joke.

“I know,” Dylan said. “You’re in the sixth grade like me.” And with that, he brushed past Lowen, clunked down the stairwell, and went out the front door. The door none of them had used yet. Neither Mum nor Anneth seemed to notice him at all — almost like he was a ghost.

Lowen took a deep breath, though it didn’t stop his heart from trying to break out of his rib cage.

He thought of going downstairs, telling Mum what had just happened, but he remembered her feelings of defeat earlier today. He didn’t want to add one more worry. So he said nothing and crawled into bed. But a good deal of time passed before he stopped lying there with his eyes open, convinced that people were drifting in and out of his room.

Lowen figured he wouldn’t see Dylan Firebrand again until they landed in the same classroom in September.

That wasn’t the case by a long shot.

The next morning when Lowen stumbled down to breakfast, Dylan was lolling in the kitchen talking to Mum. She was pouring him a paper cup of juice. “Look who’s here,” she said.

Lowen didn’t know if Mum meant him or Dylan. Either way, she seemed pleased.

Lowen knew that his mother wished he had more friends. It used to worry her that he mostly spent time with Abe, who was so much younger than he was. He’d tried to explain that he had plenty of friends at school. It’s just that he didn’t like having friends over. When friends came to your house, you had to entertain them: figure out their interests, keep them busy. In his precious spare time, Lowen wanted to do the things he loved best. Alone. He’d hoped that she would take the hint and realize that he probably didn’t love having Abe hanging around, but she never did, and he couldn’t bring himself to say it outright. It just felt too mean.

Lowen poured himself a cup of juice and waited for Dylan to ask him more questions, but mostly Dylan talked to Mum. He told her where his mother had kept her pots and pans, how the refrigerator light would come back on if you jiggled the bulb, that they never bothered to lock the front door — which was probably why it had been stuck, after being locked for so many months — and that trash was picked up on Thursdays.

Lowen reached into a box of oatmeal squares (which Mum had found at Roger’s, and which had unfortunately replaced the marshmallow cereal), pulled out a handful, and headed out the door.

“Where are you going?” Mum called.

“To explore,” Lowen replied. “I need a break from cleaning.”

“Why don’t you and Dy —”

Lowen didn’t slow down to listen. He had no interest in befriending Dylan Firebrand. He’d probably give Lowen all kinds of advice about where best to place things in his room. It was just too weird. And let’s face it, Dylan was probably better off without his friendship.

He decided to walk farther up Beech Street instead of down toward town. A scruffy man in jeans and slippers (slippers that Lowen would turn into big hairy things if he were to draw them) stepped out of a home badly in need of repair and paused to talk to Lowen on his way to get his newspaper.

“You’re one of those Dollar Kids, aren’t you?”

“I guess, yeah.”

“So where’s your family from?”

“Flintlock.”

“Crazy city, man! I could never live in one of those crime-infested places. Sure is nice and peaceful here in Millville, isn’t it?”

Lowen just nodded and kept moving. He had never thought of Flintlock as crime-infested before; the shooting at Georgio’s had been the only really violent crime he’d heard about. He wondered again how much people knew about him.

When Lowen crossed School Street, he noticed a public playground and went to investigate. A worn picnic table occupied the only shade. Sprawled across the spotty grass were a metal swing set with three swings, a wooden teeter-totter, a tall metal slide, and one of those merry-go-rounds that turned only when pushed. The merry-go-round had faded, paint-chipped animals for seats: a rabbit, a duck, a rooster, a lamb. It made him wish that he were younger. That was the problem with being eleven: you didn’t belong with the teenagers skateboarding on the paved paths by the bandstand, and you were too old to ride the merry-go-round — even though it still looked fun. He’d pick the duck.

Behind the playground was a fenced-in pool. An instructor was standing in the shallow end of the pool, giving some kids slightly younger than Lowen a swim lesson. The kids were sitting on the edge of the pool, their feet dangling. Lowen shivered. It seemed awfully early to have to get into that cool blue water. One boy glanced up at Lowen and then whispered to the kid beside him. Now both were looking his way. Lowen sped up.

He walked west on School and back down Maple, where he recognized the Grey kids out in their front yard. The three kids were playing a game where they kept reciting, “Mr. Fox, Mr. Fox.”

Lagi came running over to him on the sidewalk. “What’s your name?” he asked.

Lowen told him, and the little boy said, “I’m Lagi. That’s Lily, and that’s Wanda.”

The two girls joined them.

“Do you want to play Mr. Fox?” asked Wanda, who Lowen guessed was in third or fourth grade. “I’m it.”

“Please, please, please!” said Lily, who was probably two years younger than her sister, and wearing butterfly wings.

“Please, please, please!” Lagi repeated.

The two younger kids grabbed on to his hands and tried pulling him into the yard. Lowen smiled and recalled a time when Abe had begged him in a similar manner. The snake climbed. “I have to get home. My mum’s expecting me,” he said.

He took the longest route back he could think of, hoping that Dylan would have moved on. As he approached 11 Beech, he noticed two bags by the front porch. One had boys’ clothes; the other contained a tablecloth, a wooden bowl, and some Tupperware. He had no idea who had dropped them off or what it meant.

“The Welcome Wagon again?” Anneth asked, when he deposited the bags inside. Fortunately, Dylan was nowhere in sight.

“Maybe,” said Mum. “But I have a sneaky suspicion it has more to do with the folks in this town viewing us all as quite needy.”

“What do we do with all this junk?” asked Clem, who had finally gotten out of bed.

Mum shot him a chastising look. “I guess we accept their generosity,” she said, looking for a place to store the bowl.

“But aren’t we here to help them?” asked Lowen. “You know, bring in more people, more businesses . . . that sort of thing?”

“We’re here to help each other,” said Mum. “I’m sure they realize that.”