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said.
    “It’s a new linguistics thing I’ve been working on. Just add ‘azoid’ to any noun or ‘ify’ to any verb. Voilà. Instant avant-garde word.”
    “So, you’re saying that in basketball you could shootify a shotazoid?”
    “Precisely.”
    “That’s weird.”
    “Who knows. It might just catch on.”
    “ Also,” Mia added, “ yo u could add ‘anate,’ or ‘ification ’—l ike, ‘disqualif ya nate,’ or ‘disqualif yi fication.’”
    “So ”—D aniel was thinking alou d—“ digestif y, digestanate, or digestification.”
    She nodded. “But not digestazoid.”
    “Definitely not,” Kyle agreed.
    “You two were meant for each other,” Daniel said.
    The conversation wandered briefly toward school and how glad they were that vacation was finally here. Mia mentioned Christmasazoid, which was just around the corner, and Daniel asked them what they were doing. Kyle replied, “Michelle, Mom and I are sticking around here. I guess Glenn is coming over.”
    “Is that the guy your mom’s seeing?”
    “Yeah. Glenn Kramer.”
    Daniel couldn’t tell from his friend’s tone of voice if he was excited about the prospect of spending Christmas with Glenn or not. “What is it?”
    “Nothing. It’s just . . . Well, I’m sick of him talking about his gun collection. I get it. He’s into collecting antique firearms. It’s this huge deal to him. Anyway.” He waved his hand through the air as if he were erasing what he’d just said. “Whatever.”
    Mia said, “We’re taking off to visit my grandma and grandpa in Eau Claire. I guess we’re leaving Monday morning and coming back Wednesday around noon. Should be alright—as long as there’s no more snow.”
    “I still can’t believe yo u don’t like snow.” K yl e was working his wa y through the bowl of cheese curls. Halfwa y gone.
    “Believe it.”
    “I’m just saying, living up here in the Great White North you gotta love snow. How can you not love snow? Inuit people, Eskimos, you know, they have dozens of words for snow.”
    “I heard that was just an urban legend sort of thing.”
    “One way to find out.” Kyle pulled out his phone and did a quick search. “Okay. This one anthropologist figured out that different branches of their language really do have dozens of different words for snow. Even better: one group of people in Russia, the Sami, they have more than a hundred words for snow. So, there you go.”
    “Well, I have one word for it,” Mia said.
    “What’s that?”
    “Annoying. If God had wanted people to be outside in the winter he would’ve covered us with fur.”
    Kyle licked some cheese granules off his orange fingers. “You ever see Jason Berring’s back? I saw him in the locker room after PE and I think God definitely made him for playing in the snow.”
    “Ew. Now see, that’s just wrong.”
    A car pulled into the driveway.
    While Daniel had been listening to K yl e and Mia, the nightmare of the girl bursting into flames hadn’t left him alone.
    Last fall, when the blurs started, he’d found that his subconscious was remembering things, piecing together what his conscious mind wasn’t even aware of.
    It was almost like an untapped part of his brain was rifling through the vast amount of information that sweeps past us each day, noticing things that no one else was noticing and then revealing them to him through the blurs.
    He tried to figure out what the girl in the nightgown had been referring to when she said, “You have to stop him before it happens again,” and “You can’t let him get away with it.”
    Stop who?
    Get awa y with what?
    “You okay?” Kyle said.
    Daniel looked up to see both of his friends staring at him. “Huh?”
    “You zoned out there for a minute.”
    “I’m good.” He went for some of the remaining cheese curls, carefully choosing ones that were not quite so Tabasco-sauceafied.
    A car door closed and a few seconds later Nicole appeared in the living room doorway