shape in a gown, and the doctors do not know when—or if—he will come back to himself. He does come back, though; it just randomly happens in the middle of one night in the hospital, when Patrick wakes up and says he wants a cup of apple juice. Let’s call this a miracle, the doctors say.
Oh, and just one other thing, they say: if Patrick has another episode like this, it’s likely to be much worse. Perhaps never-come-back, lost-forever worse.
Right when all that is happening, guess what? The rescuers do come. The cops ask why Patrick got scared. Mom lies to the cops.
And Michael realizes he has to make Mom tell the police, somehow. So he decides to run away. He still has this yes-yes inside him, but it’s not quite yes-yes that tells him to run away. Because one night, after Patrick accidentally breaks Ron’s football championship trophy and Michael takes the blame, Ron hits Michael for the first time. And in the pain and terror of realizing how close Ron came to hitting his small brother, something speaks inside Michael: something that felt as if it were telling him not just how to outplay or endure all the in-the-moment dangers, but how to escape Ron’s games altogether and forever. You’ll leave, this Game Master says. You’ll run away. You’ll change everything. You’ll save everything, Michael. Because if no one saves Mom and Patrick, then someday—probably soon—they are going to be lost.
This is who I am; I’m the one who can really make us safe. I can save us, by making Mom tell the truth to the cops. “Mrs. Faris,” the cops will ask, “is there any reason your sons would run away? Has there been any trouble at home?”
Yes, yes.
Michael can see the image of a finish line, then: he can see The End. The cops taking Ron away, and Patrick no longer being torn apart by a world that is supposed to be safe but isn’t. And Mom looking at Michael with astonishment and sadness, yes, but also with gratitude, and that smile, that smile like light. . . .
So Michael leaves on Halloween night.
And the yes-yes does keep him safe every moment.
But something gets in the way of Michael’s great plan.
The end of the world.
EENSY DETAIL, HA HA HA HA.
Gunshots from inside the garage. The captain whooped.
“That captain,” Holly said, “he’s like a kid in a munitions factory, huh?”
Michael startled: Holly had walked the twenty feet or so from the Hummer to him. He felt, honestly, depressed; he didn’t want to talk. Still, the automatic response, honed from living with Ron and from weeks on the road with Patrick, kicked in: Michael wiped his face of any upset emotions, made a politely interested face.
“You sure you’re not hungry?” she asked. “Miss Bobbie’s the best cook in town.”
“Nah, I’m good.”
Holly seemed to wait for him to go on. When he didn’t, she said cautiously, “For sure? I mean, you’re sure you’re okay?”
Awesome. Cute Girl feels bad for me. Man, I must look so stupid, moping out here.
“Just tired,” he said.
“Not that I’m prying or anything,” Holly said. She laughed nervously, shook her head at herself, pulled a cloth napkin from her hoodie pocket, wiped the tomato sauce from her fingers. The confidence she’d shown in the cafeteria wasn’t there. “Anyhoo, hey look,” she spouted quickly, “I just wanted to say, please don’t feel horrible-awful about this morning, because I did not actually see anything.”
Michael, despite himself, blushed, even laughed a little. Patrick looked up from his perch on the bumper with a happy, curious expression.
“Well,” Michael said, “I didn’t feel bad, except you just implied that letting someone see my bod would be something to feel horrible-awful about.”
Holly grinned sheepishly, put a hand on her head. “Ahhhh, mister. I came over here absolutely convinced that I would figure out a non-awkward way to say it.”
Starting a sentence, Michael thought, and hoping it finishes itself. He felt a surprising, glad spark of connection.
“You finally reach the Safe Zone, only to encounter Holly, the world’s worst conversationalist,” Holly said. “That can’t be at all how you imagined.”
“Yeah! Yeah, that’s exactly what it is—no no, not that you’re the worst.”
I can kill, like, a hundred monsters, he thought, but I cannot talk to a girl.
“I just mean, I had all these ideas about what things I had to do to get me and Patrick to someplace that was, y’know, not awful. And now I’ve done them all. And if there’s