When I got back to the Good Night, Sleep Tight, the palm-tree curtains were closed and the room was dark and Granny was still in bed.

“Granny?” I said.

“Mmmpph,” said Granny without moving or removing the covers from her head.

“Granny!” I said in a louder voice.

“I am very tired, Louisiana,” said Granny. “I am unwell and baffled and compromised. I would like to sleep.”

And I said, “Well, sleep away. I will be singing at a funeral, and that means we can keep staying in this motel and you can sleep and sleep and sleep.”

Granny moved the tiniest bit. She said, “Do not bother resenting me, Louisiana. I have always put you first in this world. I am trying to protect you. I am working very, very hard to protect you. It is just that I am so tired. . . .” She said all this without taking her head out from under the covers. Her voice was muffled. It was as if she were talking to me from a long, long way away. It was as if she had moved to a different country, a country without teeth.

“I want to go home,” I said.

Granny threw the covers off her head. It was the first time I had seen her face-to-face in what seemed like a long time. She looked different — smaller and less certain. Her mouth was caved in. Her cheeks were flushed. She glared at me.

Truthfully, she was somewhat frightening to behold.

“Louisiana Elefante,” she said, “we are not going home.”

I glared at her.

She glared at me.

I looked away first.

I said, “I’m hungry.”

“You are always hungry,” said Granny in a relieved voice. She put the covers back over her head. “Yours is a perpetual and unceasing hunger. Go and find some food. I am working to regain my strength. Do not forget the curse, Louisiana!”

How could I forget the curse? My great-grandfather sawed my great-grandmother in half on a stage in Elf Ear, Nebraska, and then refused to put her back together again. That is not the kind of thing you forget.

It may not be the kind of thing you want to face, but it is also not the kind of thing you forget.

I left the room and went and stood in the vestibule of the office of the Good Night, Sleep Tight. I considered the vending machine.

Of course, I was hoping that the boy on the roof would show up and offer to get me whatever I wanted, but I was starting to think that maybe I had imagined the boy. Just as maybe I had imagined the Blue Fairy holding out her arms to me the time I almost drowned.

Had I imagined the Blue Fairy?

I could not say for certain.

Had I imagined the boy?

I did not think I had.

I knew for a fact that I did not imagine the crow named Clarence, because he had been sitting on top of the Good Night, Sleep Tight sign when I stepped out of my room.

“Hello, Clarence!” I had shouted at him.

He had nodded and looked down at me in a very kingly way.

He was probably pleased that I had remembered his name.

In any case, the crow was real and the vending machine was real, and I stared at it and thought about what I would get if I could get anything I wanted.

I could see Bernice inside the office, sitting at her desk. Her hair was in curlers. What a surprise. I waved at her. She pretended not to see me.

If the boy showed up and offered to get me whatever I wanted, I decided that I would select a package of peanut-butter crackers and a package of crackers with cheese, and one of the ballpoint pens (so that I could continue to write everything down), and also an Oh Henry! candy bar because I like the name of them, how upbeat and hopeful they sound. And also, because they have caramel in them. And peanuts. Which is a very good combination.

I was thinking all of that when the door to the vestibule opened and there he was.

The boy.

“Hey,” he said.

Oh, my goodness, I was glad to see him.

I was glad even beyond the contents of the vending machine. And by that I mean that I liked his face and I was glad he existed — even if he couldn’t get me the crackers and the pen and the candy bar.

“I thought maybe I had made you up,” I said to him.

“Naw,” he said. He stood there, holding the door open, smiling. He nodded in the direction of Bernice. “She don’t like me,” he said. “Any minute now and she’ll be out here with her broom, trying to chase me off. Come on.”

The minute we stepped outside, Clarence came swooping down from the sign and landed on the boy’s shoulder.

I had never seen such black and shiny feathers. The crow stared at me and I stared back at him, and looking into his eyes was like looking in a dark mirror.

I felt that if I looked carefully enough, if I held myself still enough, I would be able to see the whole wide world reflected in that shiny blackness. Almost.

“Would he sit on my shoulder?” I said.

“I reckon if he gets to where he trusts you, he would.”

Clarence flapped his wings and took off, past the sign, toward the trees.

“What’s your name?” said the boy.

“Louisiana,” I said. “What’s yours?”

“Burke. Burke Allen. But I ain’t the first Burke Allen. My daddy is Burke Allen and my grandpap is Burke Allen and his daddy before him was Burke Allen, and his daddy, too. There’ve been a lot of Burke Allens.”

“Well, as far as I know, I am the only Louisiana Elefante.”

“That’s lucky, then. You ain’t got to be nobody but yourself.”

I said, “I have a curse on my head.”

I don’t know why I said it. I shouldn’t have said it. Granny has always insisted that we not talk about the curse to other people.

“To speak of the curse only intensifies the curse.” That is what Granny said.

Granny said a lot.

For as long as I could remember, Granny had been talking to me, telling me things, and telling me not to tell things.

I had never told Raymie about the curse. Or Beverly. But here I was telling this boy I did not know at all.

Maybe, in addition to being tired of imposing and persevering, I was also tired of keeping my mouth shut.

“A curse,” said Burke. “Dang.”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s a curse of sundering.”

“Of what?”

“Sundering.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“It means to tear apart,” I said.

“All right,” he said. “If you say so.” He pointed at the Good Night, Sleep Tight sign. “See that sign?” he said. “I can climb all the way up to the top of that sign. I can show you how, too.”

“I’m afraid of heights,” I said.

“Shoot,” he said. “There ain’t nothing to be afraid of.”

“I don’t want to fall.”

“You can’t fall because there’s little bitty handholds the whole way up. You just got to hold on and climb. I can show you how to climb up on the roof, too. Ain’t nothing to it.”

“No,” I said.

He waited, and I waited. His almost-not-there hair glinted in the sunlight.

“Why is your hair so short?”

He shrugged. “My mama cuts all our hair. My daddy and my grandpap and me. She cuts it all the same.”

“So your mother cuts the hair of Burke Allen and Burke Allen and Burke Allen?”

He smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “All of us.”

“My parents are dead. They were trapeze artists.”

“In a circus?”

“No,” I said. “They had their own show. They were famous. They were called the Flying Elefantes.”

“I want to be in a circus,” he said. “First chance I get, I’m going to join a circus. Circus trains come through here sometimes. You ever seen a circus train?”

I shook my head.

“They’re all on it. All of ’em. The whole circus. Elephants and clowns and giraffes and trapeze people. Next time that train comes through here, I am going to hop on it — can’t nobody stop me.” He sighed. He looked up at the motel sign.

Here he was, right in front of me, and already he was telling me how he was going to leave. It was the curse of sundering. I would never be free.

Suddenly, I felt terrified.

And also annoyed with Burke Allen.

“I thought you said you could get me anything I wanted out of the vending machine.”

“I can.”

“Good,” I told him. “I want the cheese crackers and the peanut-butter crackers and an Oh Henry! bar. And also a pen. To write with.”

He grinned at me. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

A few minutes later, he came running out of the office holding two packages of crackers and an Oh Henry! bar.

“I didn’t get the pen,” he said, “on account of I didn’t have time. Bernice is right behind me, and she ain’t happy.”

Well, Bernice was never happy, was she?

“Come on,” he said. “We got to run.”

I ran with him. We ran into the woods. At some point, Clarence showed up and he flew over our heads and cawed and cawed. He was laughing as if somebody had just told him a joke.

Crows have a good sense of humor.

I ran with Burke and Clarence, and I forgot about Granny being toothless and diminished. I forgot about Miss Lulu and how badly she played the organ and how she refused to share her caramels. I forgot that there were no phone listings for Raymie Clarke or Beverly Tapinski. I forgot that I had to sing at Hazel Elkhorn’s funeral.

I forgot that I was far from home.

I ran.