“Detention?” my mother yelled in disbelief. “Again?”

She stood at the kitchen counter, holding a wooden pasta fork-spoon thing like a weapon. I thought she was going to wing it at me.

“The guy deserved it,” I countered. “He was being a bully and—”

“I don’t care if he stole your lunch money and made you stand on your head. You do not question the authority of your teachers.”

“But he was embarrassing this girl.”

Mom slammed the wooden fork down onto the counter so hard, I thought she’d break it. Or the counter.

“You realize these multiple detentions go on your permanent record.”

“I’m in seventh grade. There is no permanent record.”

“People remember. This kind of behavior is going to haunt you.”

“Who’s being haunted?” Dad asked brightly as he strolled into the kitchen.

I was, and it had nothing to do with Mr. Winser. But it wasn’t a good time to mention a phantom bull or a spooky guy in a bathrobe. Adding insanity to their list of my flaws would make a bad night even worse.

“Your son was given a week of detention for talking back to a teacher,” Mom said through pinched lips.

“Technically, I didn’t say a word,” I corrected.

“And now you’re being flip with us!” Mom exclaimed. “This kind of behavior might make you a hero to your friends, but it’s not going to help get you into a decent college.”

“What’s this got to do with college?” I shouted back in frustration. “I don’t even want to go to college!”

The two went rigid and stared at me with stunned expressions, as if I had just told them I was getting a Batman logo tattooed across my forehead.

“I can’t talk to you anymore,” Mom said, and stormed away. She then stopped and spun back, stabbed a finger my way, and said, “You’re grounded. Two weeks.”

“I thought you couldn’t talk to me anymore?” I said.

Thinking back, that probably wasn’t the smartest thing to say.

Mom gasped in disbelief.

I did too. I’d crossed a line.

She glared at my dad as if it was all his fault, then turned and stomped out of the kitchen, leaving Dad and me alone for a long, awkward silence.

“Seriously?” he finally said, exasperated.

“I’m sorry. That was a dumb thing to say, but she never listens to my side.”

“That crack about not going to college was uncalled for,” he said.

“I know, I get it, but why does everything have to be about how it affects my future? Why can’t I just live today?”

Dad sighed and went to the fridge to grab a can of soda.

“We’re just looking out for you, Marcus. You’re thirteen. Before you know it you’ll be in high school, and after that, well, you really have to go to college.”

“Jeez, Dad, I know. You’ve been drumming that into my head forever. But I’m not you. Or Mom. Maybe I want to do things differently.”

Dad stared at his soda can for a good long time. I think he was trying to come up with the right words. Or maybe he was just wishing he had cracked open a Sprite instead of a Pepsi.

“You know how much we love you, right?” he asked.

That was uncomfortable. Dad never said anything that sappy to me.

“Yeah,” I said. Though I wasn’t exactly sure how to measure love.

“Then let’s all try to get along, okay?”

“Sure. Can you start by ungrounding me?”

“Sorry. Your mother and I always stand united.”

“I know. I just wish you’d stand on my side for once.”

I headed upstairs to my bedroom. There wouldn’t be any dinner tonight. Mom had only gotten as far as taking out the pasta fork that she nearly clubbed me with. I was going to have to sneak down later for a little PB&J.

My parents cared about me. I knew that. Heck, if they hadn’t wanted to have me, they wouldn’t have, considering I was adopted. But sometimes I wondered what they expected. Did they want another human being in their lives? Or a robot they could dress up and mold into a clone of themselves?

I often thought about what my biological parents were like and if I was anything like them. There were times when I couldn’t imagine having different parents. Other times I imagined (okay, hoped) I had parents who wouldn’t be so obsessed with my permanent record and who might actually be proud of me for standing up to a bully, even if it was a teacher.

My mother was angry. Nothing new there; I was used to it. What I wasn’t used to was hallucinating. That was a whole new territory.

What the heck happened at school?

I wished I could have talked to my parents about it. Most kids would have, I guess. But I didn’t want them to think any less of me than they already did. Finding out I was a step away from an asylum would have made their brains melt.

I went to my bedroom and sat at my desk. Being grounded meant no TV and no computer. I knew the drill. I actually wished I hadn’t done my homework during detention. It would have given me something to do other than stare at the walls, wondering if I was losing my mind. I grabbed my earth science book and slipped out the piece of paper with my sketch of the ghostly key.

“ ‘Surrender the key,’ ” I said out loud, reading the words that had been spelled out in bits of crushed glass. Or I thought had been spelled out in broken glass.

My sketch of the key was pretty accurate. I drew it to size, about four inches long. The handle had four ornate circles, like a four-leaf clover, with detailed carvings on each one. This sketch was the only physical record of the strange things I had seen that afternoon. Of course, I could just as easily have drawn a picture of Sasquatch, but that wouldn’t prove Sasquatch was real.

I tacked the sketch to the corkboard above my desk, next to the various ticket stubs, video-game promos, and pictures I had on display. I was already resigning myself to the fact that I’d never find an explanation for what I’d seen. It was a fluke. A brain fart. An unexplainable incident that would soon become a distant memory.

And then I looked out my window.

Standing in our yard, staring up at me, was the man in the bathrobe. He slowly lifted his hand and gestured for me to come outside.

I pulled away from the window, practically flew across my room, and ran into the hallway. My pounding footsteps must have shaken the whole house, because my mother poked her head out of her bedroom door as I ran by.

“What are you doing?” she yelled, annoyed.

There was no time to stop and answer. I didn’t want that guy to get away again. I thundered down the stairs and nearly knocked my dad over on my way to the door.

“Hey!” he shouted.

No time to stop. I threw open the door and shot outside.

“What do you want?” I yelled…to nobody.

The yard was empty.

I ran to the spot where he had been standing and spun around, but the guy was gone.

Mom and Dad were right on my heels.

“What in God’s name?” Mom shouted as she ran up to me.

“What’s going on, Marcus?” Dad asked.

I took one last, desperate look around.

“I—I…saw…,” I stammered. “There was a guy out here. He was looking up at me in the window.”

“A guy?” Dad asked, glancing around.

“What do you mean, a guy?” Mom asked.

“A guy!” I shouted. “In pajamas.”

Mom gave Dad a suspicious look. I knew what they were thinking, because I was thinking the same thing: there wasn’t anybody there, and nobody could get away that fast.

“What are you doing, Marcus?” Mom asked in an exasperated tone that made my blood boil.

“Doing?” I shot back. “You think I’m making this up? Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know,” she said with frustration. “But there’s nobody here.”

I had seen him. He was real. But there was no use trying to convince my parents of that, because the only thing it would prove was that I was crazy. I pushed past them and headed back to the house.

“And no TV!” Mom called after me.

She didn’t have to say that. I think she liked pouring salt in my wounds.

All I wanted to do was sleep. I put on sweats and fell into bed but couldn’t stop thinking about the guy, and the bull, and the fact that I was going out of my mind.

“ ‘Surrender the key,’ ” I said aloud.

I wanted to surrender more than a phantom key. I wanted to surrender my memory of that entire day. I closed my eyes and rolled over to try and turn my brain off. It didn’t take long before I had calmed down and my body relaxed. Sleep wasn’t far off. There was nothing to prevent me from slipping into a state of unconsciousness…

…except for the strange scratching sound that came from under my bed.