“Hey, Oliver,” a voice says. “Time to wake up. Rise and shine. Rise and shine.”

A hand pats my head.

For a moment, I think the voice and the hand belong to you, Mother. I can practically smell the citrusy hair tonic that seeps into all your clothes on account of the hours you spend at Clippers.

I am not dead, I think. I am not dead after all.

But when I blink open my eyes, the face I see is not pink and skinny like Mother’s. It is brown and chubby. “Thelma,” I say, lifting my head. “Oh, it’s so nice to see you, even though you don’t smell of hair tonic.”

She looks confused but then says, “It’s nice to see you, too, honey.” She smiles to reveal the gap in her teeth.

I have a crick in my neck because I fell asleep seated at the desk.

Thelma looks at the desk blotter. “What’s that you drew?”

I look at the blotter. “A horse.” Last night, to kill time, I mapped stars and created a new constellation, not a winged horse like Pegasus but a regular horse. Yet my horse has only three legs because there were no bright stars to form a fourth. For those who believe in omens, a three-legged horse is most likely a bad sign. Luckily, I do not believe in omens.

“I brought you some fresh clothes, shoes, and even a toothbrush.” Thelma points to the items she has laid on the bed.

“Where is Johnny? Where was he taken?”

Thelma looks away. “Why don’t you get dressed, honey? Then we’ll have ourselves a little talk. I need to tell you a few things.”

There is something different about Thelma. It takes me a moment to pinpoint what. “You are not wearing your armband,” I say.

She glances at her upper arm as though wondering where the heck the purple band went. Then she sits on the bed and hands me jeans with faint grass stains on the knees. “Well, Oliver, I’m not a do-gooder no more.”

“Did you retire?” I ask, pulling on the pants.

“No, I was kicked out.”

“You got fired?”

“They’re calling it a ‘leave of absence.’ The council wasn’t too happy about our escapades.”

She means Johnny’s escapades and mine. Our attack on Charles Lindblom lost her a job.

“Oh, Thelma, I am so sorry.”

What a horrible mess I made! You would be ashamed of me, Father and Mother! Fractured skulls, lost jobs, sad and confused friends. Not to mention that poor Rover the roach was left behind at the Marcy. Johnny will be devastated if we lose his pet!

I accidentally put my T-shirt on inside out, a sign of how stupid I have become.

“I will accept any punishment the council sees fit,” I tell Thelma, and she pats the bedsheets beside her so I will come and sit down.

Her eyes are anxious and red. “You won’t be punished, honey. The council decided you did nothing wrong.”

“But it was my fault, Thelma. I am what is called an instigator. I told Johnny that Charles Lindblom was Gunboy. He looked like the boy in the dead-or-alive poster.”

Thelma moves her hand in the air as though erasing words on a chalkboard.

“Listen, Oliver. I need you to meet somebody.”

She glances at the door. Then she gets up, goes to it, and edges it open. She nods to whoever is in the hallway.

The door pushes open and in come a boy and a girl. I stand up. The boy I recognize. It is Reginald Washington with his splotchy arms, face, and even kneecaps (he is wearing shorts, and one knee is pink and the other brown). He smiles and says, “Hello there, young fellow.” As for the girl, I have never seen her before. She is very skinny, scrawnier than even I am. Two braids protrude straight out from either side of her head. Reginald nudges her toward me. She has an astonished look, as though she has seen a ghost.

To break the ice, I almost say, “Boo!”

She takes a few more steps forward, looking at me in an odd way, as though taking stock of each individual feature—my nose, my lips, my forehead.

“It’s him,” she says.

A sharp intake of breath from Thelma.

“Are you sure?” Reginald says.

The girl nods.

“On a scale of one to ten,” Reginald says, “one being least certain and ten being most certain, how certain are you?”

A spectrum of certainty. How strange.

The girl says, “Nine and a half.”

“May I ask what is going on?” I say.

“Honey, I’d like to introduce you to Sandy.”

“Hi, Sandy. Nice to meet you. My name is Oliver.”

“Yeah, so they told me,” Sandy says, still staring.

Reginald gives Thelma a nod. Then he says, “Well, now, Sandy, we should get going. We have a long day ahead.”

Sandy finally tears her attention away from my face, but just before leaving the room, she turns and gives me one last look. “Poor thing,” she says.

I do not reply. I do not know why she pities me.

Once they leave, Thelma mops her forehead and cheeks with the palms of her hands.

It finally comes to me who the braided girl must be. How stupid I have been! “That was the girl from Schaumburg, Illinois,” I say, and Thelma nods.

“She passed after Johnny and me. She knows who killed us, doesn’t she? She knows who Gunboy is.” I feel a shot of excitement. Not to mention a little ping of pain in my holey heart.

The whites of Thelma’s eyes are pinker than I have ever seen them. Her face scrunches up.

“There ain’t no Gunboy, Oliver.”

“What? You mean we were not shot after all?”

“No, baby, there was a boy with a gun.”

I am confused. “There was no Gunboy. There was a Gunboy. How can both be true? You are making no sense, Thelma.” Thelma takes me by the shoulders and looks me straight in the eye. Her voice comes in a raspy whisper: “Listen to me, Oliver. The boy who shot you was Johnny.”

She is pulling my leg. I draw away, emitting a ha-ha to show that I like her joke, though I in fact find it distasteful.

Thelma Rudd is crying now, tears as big and fat as the wooden beads she wears in her hair. “There was only two boys, not three,” she sobs. “The killer was a mental case, Oliver! A sadcon, just like Johnny said he used to be.”