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I was cute and actually wanted to hold my hand. Wow. (My interest in members of the opposite sex had begun in earnest during my ninth year, which only served to make me even more of a weirdo among my schoolmates; after all, everyone knew girls were gross , they had cooties, and the last thing you wanted was for one to touch you. I’d thought about asking one of the nurses or doctors where the Cootie Ward was located, just to see if they could kill you like all the other kids said.)
    There were things about Beth I didn’t really understand, like how she could get so serious sometimes. Once I’d awakened in my hospital bed a few days after my surgery to find her standing over me with two of her girlfriends. I tried to speak but my throat was still sore; she put a finger to my lips, bent down, and kissed me, just like that. Her girlfriends had kissed me, as well. I don’t know what kind of a reaction they were expecting, but the look on my face made all three of them go “ Awww ,” and touch me: my cheek, my hand, my shoulder. I never asked Beth why she did that, or why her friends acted the way they did, because I was afraid that she’d tell me the look on my face had been goofy. Beth was the only person I didn’t feel goofy around, and if I’d looked that way I didn’t want to know. I would pretend. Like she did about her mother, the famous stage actress. That would be okay.
    “This way,” the orderly said, pointing toward where this tunnel split off into another.
    He led us through the tunnel that connected with the building across the street. It was a long, boring tunnel, not a creepy one like we’d just come through, and I was happy about that. Boring was good.
    Once we made it through the tunnel, we got into another elevator and took it all the way up. I was secretly hoping that we’d skip both tunnels on the way back and just walk outside and cross the street; if the tunnels were part of a great adventure, I’d just as soon go back to being a goofy zero with iffy eyesight in his mismatched plaid and paisley.
    The elevator stopped and the doors opened onto a large foyer. Open windows with a breathtaking view of Cedar Hill took up most of the walls. A cool, gentle wind came in through the windows, fluffing the curtains outward. Up here the ghosts weren’t trapped in the walls; they fluttered free, saying hello. Even the concrete floors seemed less threatening. On either side of the foyer were sets of swinging metal doors. We went through the set on the right, and as we stepped through it hit us full-force: the stink of ammonia mixed with the chemical cleaners. It burned the inside of my nose and made my eyes tear up. This probably should have been an omen but we continued on down the hall, anyway, fun-fun-fun, following the smells until we came to the doors marked:
     
    Sanctioned Personnel Only
     
    “You okay?” Beth whispered to me.
    “I guess. Do you think this is okay?”
    She leaned her head to one side and sucked once on her lower lip. “Hard to say, kiddo, but we’ve come this far, might as well finish it, huh?”
    I didn’t like her calling me “kiddo” but didn’t say anything about it. Maybe she was just nervous. I was.
    We pushed open the doors and entered a cavernous room. Equipment of all sorts stolen from every science-fiction movie I’d ever seen lined the walls, and in the center stood interlocking pens with metal poles for sides. In two of the pens were pigs; in the other two, sheep. They had no straw for bedding, and the concrete floor, dribbled with urine and liquid feces, sloped downward toward a system of drains. My first thought was: How can they sleep on this floor? It’s so cold and hard and...messy .
    The animals had been sleeping but stirred when we entered. The sheep bleated and the pigs snorted, both sounding almost human, and circled their small pens. I’d never been close to sheep or pigs before, and they seemed enormous, like creatures that the scientist