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time it seemed so damn real I wanted to pee my pants. Now I know why people think there are ghosts.
    Next day around noon I woke up and couldn’t remember for a minute why I felt so awful. Then it hit me all over again. Aaron. Dead.
    I just lay there. Couldn’t face the day. After a while the pain eased up, I started to drift, and I daydreamed Aaron was still alive, he was okay, I had saved him. I had phoned at just the right minute to distract the murderer so Aaron could run out the door. Or, no, I had followed Aaron home because I knew something was going to happen, I heard him yell and I ran into his house like rushing a quarterback and there was this huge guy in a black ski mask lunging at Aaron with the knife and I kicked the knife out of his hand and he hollered and turned on me and Aaron got away and I tackled the murderer and he went down and I kicked him and kicked him—
    There I lay in bed, punching the pillow and kicking the mattress. I could daydream all I liked, but Aaron was still dead.
    It took me an hour to get myself together and pointed in a direction and moving. Finally I got up, showered, found something to wear, and sat down in the kitchen to eat a leftover sub Rose had sent home with me. Mom was at work, I guess. She had left a big Hallmark sympathy card on the table with a note for me to sign it so she could send it to the Gingriches. She and Jamy had already signed it, and Mom had written a little note saying how sorry she was. The card said about the same, except it rhymed.
    I wanted to write something, and I tried to think what. I mean, the Gingriches were like a second family to me, especially when Mom and Dad broke up. I remembered sleeping over there for two or three days at a time, and Mrs. Gingrich would make homemade macaroni and cheese and not ask too many questions. Mr. Gingrich helped Mom with my shoes and stuff for football, got them wholesale. He and Mrs. Gingrich both saw us through a hard time. But now that Aaron was dead, I couldn’t think of what to say to either of them. Or Aardy. Or Nathan.
    I signed my name, but I didn’t write any note.
    I tried to eat the rest of the sub, but I couldn’t. I threw it in the garbage, then headed out to go take my polygraph test.

chapter six
    I’d never been in the police station before, and when I got to the front door, I felt freaked, like I was a criminal or something. I had to force myself to haul on the handle and keep going. But once I got inside, it wasn’t like a TV jail or anything, more like a doctor’s office, with a waiting room and a receptionist at a desk behind a sliding-glass window. Not that I like doctor’s offices too much, either, but the receptionist didn’t keep me waiting. She called the detective, and then she led me into the back, which was just a bunch of grubby offices that smelled like cigarette smoke, and a dark little locker room with the door hanging open, and a room with shelves and coatracks and six old typewriters. The receptionist pointed me into the detective’s office.
    The detective wasn’t scary, either, just a skinny little guy with bright eyes, interested in everything, including me. He sat me down in a chair with ripped plastic upholstery, gave me a pen and a clipboard, and helped me fill out medical history forms and consent forms and stuff. We talked for more than an hour. He wanted to make sure I understood about the polygraph, that I had to answer all the questions either yes or no, that he’d run the same test three times to make sure, that none of this was evidence. I wanted to ask him, what was it, then? But we got to talking about football, and somehow we ended up talking about Aaron and Nathan and me. I told him about one time when we were little kids, we played mailman and switched around all the mail in all the mailboxes in the neighborhood. He laughed so hard, he got me laughing. I wouldn’t have believed I could still laugh. I liked him.