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carve. A few minutes later, Mrs. Felko stops by to see how I am doing. The sound of her sigh is like air rushing out of a punctured balloon.
    â€œWell, Douglas, I see you have found your muse.”
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    She shakes her head. “Are you ever going to share with us the meaning of that device?”
    â€œIt’s not a device, it’s a sigil.”
    â€œI see,” she said. Although it is perfectly clear to me that she does not understand a thing.

13
I SPY
    M elissa Haverman lives at 3417 Oak View Terrace in the Woodland Trails development. Her house has lots of big windows and a wraparound second-story deck, and it is located on a large lot surrounded by trees. All the Woodland Trails lots are surrounded by trees. The idea is that every house in the development is separated from its neighbors by a “greenway,” or a belt of trees about fifty feet wide. That way they can pretend they are living in the middle of a great forest. I’ve seen the sales brochures: In the Arms of Nature—Safe, Forested Privacy Only 20 Minutes from Downtown.
    Of course, the privacy is an illusion. They are stillclose enough to hear one another’s lawn mowers. The safety is an illusion too. Anybody could be hiding in the greenway—criminals, escapees from the insane asylum, or serial killers.
    Or me. I am sitting in the crotch of an oak tree looking into Melissa Haverman’s bedroom. I guess that is why they call her street Oak View Terrace. It is eleven o’clock at night, but Melissa has not yet gone to bed. Her room is dark except for the faint yellow glow of a night-light.
    I suspect that she is downstairs watching television. I wonder how late her parents will let her stay up.
    Time passes, which I measure in seventeen-second intervals: 17, 34, 51, 68, 85, 102, 119, 136, 153, 170, 187. … I once counted as high as 78,251 before being interrupted. I am always getting interrupted, which is the main challenge to staying focused. My goal is to count to 170,000 by 17s. To do that I would probably have to hide in a cave or something.
    I am at 9,520 when the light goes on in Melissa’s room.
    She is wearing a pink sweatshirt and blue jeans and her hair is tied back in a ponytail. She closes the door and kicks off her shoes and throws herself back on her bed. For thirty-four seconds she just lays there perfectly still, then she sits up and takes off her sweatshirt. She is wearing a white tank top underneath. She stands and carefully folds the sweatshirt and walks it to the part of her room I can’t see. She is out of sight for almost a minute, then she reappears, still wearing the same jeans and tank top, but with her hair loose. She stops right in front of the window and stares out, directly at me. She can’t really be seeing me. Shemust be looking at her reflection in the glass. I know I am invisible to her in my dark and leafy nest, but the feeling is quite eerie. I am holding my breath.
    Her mouth moves. Who is she talking to? She gestures with one hand, a dismissive, “what ever ” flick of the wrist, then she laughs and her mouth forms the words “No way.”
    Is she talking to her reflection? Then I see the thin black cord trailing from her soft blond hair, and I notice the cell phone clipped to the waistband of her jeans. She is talking on her headset. She laughs again and her mouth twists into a disgusted grimace and I can make out the word she is mouthing as clearly as if she were whispering it into my ear: “Worm.”
    The tree starts to spin and I realize that I am still holding my breath. I let it out and replace the dead air in my lungs with fresh oxygen.
    Melissa has her back to the window now and is waving her hands; she is doing a little dance, wiggling her butt and shaking her hair. Then she stops and removes the headset and unclips the phone from her jeans. She starts to unbutton her jeans, then stops, walks a few steps to the