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fainter every year.”
    Charlie seemed pleased with this. He’d heard the story of my scars long ago. I’d got them the day my father died. He was on a dig in Libya. Not everyone knows it, but there are a lot of ruins there. It was once part of the Roman Empire. Anyway, my father was working, and late in the day a temple he was examining collapsed on him. He was crushed instantly.
    Thinking back, I suppose it was good that he didn’t suffer, but at the time I wasn’t thinking about that. I just wanted to find him. Since no one could show me his body, I didn’t believe he was really gone. And so I took off from camp by myself. I shouldn’t have, but it’s not every day you become an orphan.
    I never found him. I found an angry dog instead. It was hiding in the shadows of a building. Nurse Ophelia once told me that animals will do that when they know they’re going to die. They crawl off by themselves and look for a dark hiding place. Well, that dog must have had more diseases than a vet hospital because when it bit me, it made me so sick no one even yelled at me for running away. Apparently I fell into a coma afterwards and stayed like that for a few weeks. I had a high fever too, and a bunch of convulsions.
    Because all of my problems started the day my father died, Dr. Shepherd thought the trouble was all in my head. He thought it was just about sadness and loss. But what does a shrink know about Libyan dogs? Five-eighths of sweet diddly, as far as I could tell.
    Charlie stayed for another half hour or so. He was a reader, likeme, so we talked about books, and that led to movies, and that led to which actors we would want to play us in our life stories. Charlie picked Christian Bale because he was a good Batman. I picked Leonardo DiCaprio, but not because he looked like me, just because he was very good at playing complex characters. Not that I’d have been all that hard to play. I slept all day.
    â€œHe’s too skinny to play you,” said Charlie. “You need that guy . . . what’s his name? He played Robin Hood in the old movie.”
    â€œErrol Flynn?”
    â€œYeah, he’d be perfect.”
    â€œHe was totally skinny,” I said. “Plus, he’s dead.”
    Charlie laughed. “Yeah, but you need someone like that.”
    Then he told me how his classes had ended, and which couples in his grade were doomed to break up over the summer. I didn’t know any of the people he was talking about, but I didn’t mind. Then he said he had to go, but he’d call the next night and see if I could go with him.
    â€œTry to find out what it takes to get a day pass,” he added.
    â€œA day pass? What’s that?”
    He shook his head. “A day pass out of this place, you numbskull. A ‘get out of jail free’ card. So you can come to the lake. Don’t you want to show off your tan?”
    He was backing out the door when he stopped.
    â€œMan, I can’t believe I almost forgot.” He stepped back in and closed the door. “I met a girl last Saturday. Suki.”
    â€œThat’s her real name, Suki? It sounds like a motorcycle.”
    â€œHer real name is Suzanne. God, you are such a dork. Anyway, she has a younger sister, Luna. I told her about you and she wants to meet you. I said you were cool, so you’d better spend the next few days ungeekifying yourself. And you have to find some way out of here.”
    â€œHow?” I asked.
    â€œI don’t know. Can’t you chew through the wall or something?”He opened the door again, then turned back and smiled. “It will be worth it.”
    Then he left. And although he’d visited me many times before, this time was different because it was the first time he had ever told a girl about me, and it was the first time I’d ever heard of Luna.

Chapter 7
Bad Dreams
    I t didn’t take me long to fall asleep after Charlie was gone. I was