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what Roddy thought to ask then, at the moment.
    The sort of thing he asked later was “Can’t Grandma sell her house and move here?” and “But what about Mum? What if she comes and we’re not here any more?” Flatly, clearly, helplessly and pointlessly, he said, over and over, “I don’t want to,” and “I’m not going,” and “You can’t make me.” But of course they could.
    All that kicking and screaming the day they moved, it felt good. It felt like something useful and helpful, like if his mother did it, it would cheer her right up. His grandmother held her big arms around him and would have kept them there except he kicked at her and wrenched free. “Don’t worry,” she told his dad, “I’m fine. You can’t expect him not to be upset. He’s best left alone for the time being.”
    His dad hauled in boxes and lamps, a couple of chairs, stuff like that, and it piled up in his grandmother’s little front hall. His grandmother took his father a beer and said, “Just leave it all for a while,” and “I know it’s been hard for you, but oh my, I am glad to be back in my own house.”
    After a while there were smells from the kitchen. They had supper, and then Roddy went off to bed, in his new room at the top of the house, with the blue nightlight casting a faint, reflecting light upwards. He lay on his new bed, furious until the moment, he guessed, he fell asleep.
    The next day he made his first, best, real friends: Buster, who woke him up bouncing onto his bed, and Mike, who turned up at the door with his mother.
    Other than that, well, this is a small town and people know things. So they knew why he and his dad moved in with his grandmother. When he started school, it was different from his other one. Like, people looked at him weird, like they were waiting for him to do something strange. One bold kid, who was in fourth grade, marched up the first day at recess and poked a finger into his chest and said, “Your mother’s nuts. Bet you’re nuts, too.” A bunch of littler kids started chanting, “Nuts, nuts, your mother is nuts,” and running in a circle around Roddy, reaching out as they ran, touching him and dodging away, screaming as if he was dangerous and they were real brave.
    He had a choice of things to do. What he did was grab the grade four kid who was standing around watching what he’d started, and take a hard, fast shot at him. He aimed at the nose and didn’t miss. Blood, gushers of it, made the circle stop dancing. A howl made everyone silent.
    Roddy got sent home for two days. On his very first day, he got sent home. “Don’t take any crap,” was his father’s advice, which was Roddy’s idea, too. His grandmother only looked worried. After that he learned to walk with a sort of roll to his hips, his legs widened, eyes narrowed. It seemed to work. Nobody messed with him much. There was Mike, too, and that helped, the two of them a team, pretty much.
    He and Mike have spent a lot of time together, roaming around, exploring in town and also out here in the country. Sometimes they’ve got tired and dropped their bikes in a ditch and wandered into a field, and crashed for a while, lying side by side with their hands behind their heads, chewing over some event or idea and looking up into the sky.
    A lot of good times. Roddy has often come out here on his own, too. Mike isn’t so interested in some of the things that fascinate Roddy. Like watching the purpose and intention of bees, or the progress of a snail traversing the length of his arm, or an ant tugging another insect larger than itself back to its community, for the whole community to devour — this sort of thing he could spend a lot of time on. Because up close, none of these creatures were disgusting or weird. They were amazing. Antennas and hairy legs waved, dark faceted eyes kept