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clapping Zach on the shoulder. “We understand each other, don’t we?”
    Awkward silence stretched between them.
    Finally Zach nodded, because he did understand his father. He understood his wanting to make Mom happy. He understood not being sorry. It just didn’t make Zach forgive him.
    The next day, Zach went to practice and tried to blot out thoughts of Poppy and Alice and his father by playing ball so aggressively that he got lectured by his coach and benched for the rest of practice. He tried not to think about the story, which would go on without him, flowing around the empty spaces where his characters used to be until they were swallowed up and forgotten.
    He thought again about running away, but the more time passed, the more he’d realized that he had nowhere to go.
    Since his father was at the restaurant that night, his mother let him eat ravioli from a can on the couch in front of the television. They didn’t talk much, although he caught her shooting him worried looks.
    In the morning Zach asked her to drive him to school, and that afternoon he went home with Alex Rios. They played video games in Alex’s finished basement on a bigger television than Zach had seen outside of a store.
    The day after that, Alice walked up to Zach while he was shooting baskets at recess and pressed a note into his hand. A couple of the other guys yelled “Go ask Alice!” and “Somebody’s got a girlfriend!” as she walked off, which made her hunch her shoulders like she was braced against a hard wind.
    “Shut up,” Zach said, shoving Peter Lewis, since he was standing closest.
    “What?” Peter said. “I didn’t say anything.”
    The note was folded up in a square this time, with his name carefully printed in blue ink. When he opened it, there were only three short sentences on the lined paper:
Something happened with the Queen. Go to the hermit’s place by the Silver Hills after school. It’s important.
    Important was underlined three times.
    It’s nothing, Zach told himself.
    He thought of the Queen’s fluttering lashes and the feeling of her closed eyes following him as he walked through the room.
    The Queen wasn’t real, though, so nothing important could have happened with her. This was just Poppy and Alice attempting to get him to show up so they could all have the same fight over again. They wanted him to play and he couldn’t. There was nothing he could do except explain why it was over, and he couldn’t bring himself to do that.
    “What did the note say?” Alex asked. “She tell you that she wants your skinny body?”
    Zach tore it in half and then in half again. “Nah. She just wants my math homework.”
    There was no practice after school that day, but he stayed late anyway, pretending there was. He managed to talk the coach into letting him shoot hoops in the gym, which he did methodically, alone, letting himself drown in the thump of the ball, the squeak of his sneakers, and the familiar smell of fresh floor wax and old sweat.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Z ACH WOKE IN THE DARKNESS OF HIS BEDROOM. HE wasn’t surewhy, but his heart raced, adrenaline pumping through his body, as though something had activated his body’s fight-or-flight response. He blinked in the dark, letting his eyes adjust. The moon was high enough to give the room an eerie silvery glow. He could make out the familiar shapes of his furniture. His black cat was uncurling and stretching her long sleek body, claws digging into the coverlet. She padded up to him, her yellow eyes full of reflected light.
    “What’s up?” he whispered to The Party, reaching out to pet her soft triangular head and press his thumb against her ear, folding it down and rubbing it. She butted against him and started to purr.
    Tap.
    He jumped. The cat hissed, her white teeth flashing in the moonlight, and she jumped off the bed. Something small and hard had struck the window.
    This was no echo of a dream, no made-up story. Something really had hit the glass,