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daughter?”
    â€œSome boys came,” he said. “They held her down and filled her mouth and eyes and nose with mud.” The woman went inside the house and emerged with a bottle of water. Rosa, still unable to catch her breath, held her head back and allowed her to pour its contents into her mouth and over her face. Eventually Rosa took the bottle, and the woman came toward Bobby. She put a hand around the back of his head and forced him to look up at her. Above her head the dark cloud that trapped the sun inside it formed a sullen halo.
    â€œThese boys,” she said, “were these boys your friends?”
    â€œNo,” he said, but, still racked with shame, even he thought it sounded like a lie. She pinched harder. “I don’t know who they were. I didn’t see them.”
    â€œYou tell me the truth. Did you do this to her?” She pointed toward Rosa. Bobby shook his head. Two tears fell from the woman’s face, hot ants landing on his hair.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œBecause I will kill you if you did.”
    The words tumbled out of Bobby. “I was scared. I hid. And I’m sorry.”
    â€œGod help me I will break every bone in your body . . .”
    â€œNo!” Rosa shouted. The woman let go of his neck. Rosa opened her dirty clenched fist and inside it was the piece of paper bearing their names. The woman took it and read aloud.
    â€œBobby Nusku.”
    â€œThis is Bobby Nusku,” Rosa said. “Bobby Nusku is my friend.”
    The piss stain on his trousers was lightening, but was still visible, his cowardice drying on the cloth. The woman had seen it. This circle of his shame complete, he ran as quickly as he could. When he got home, there was nobody there.

CHAPTER FOUR
THE QUEEN
    Bobby opened the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink, pulled out a bottle of bleach and found that he wasn’t quite strong enough to twist the child lock. The corrugated lid scored his palms. Frustrated, he grabbed the next closest bottle he could find and, with the coarsest brush, scrubbed the piss from his trousers. When his father and Cindy got home from their anniversary dinner at a local Chinese restaurant, they could tell by the smell of lemons that Bobby had used her most expensive shampoo—reserved for her best clients—and ruined her nail brush. When she got angry the skin on her neck pulled taut, bringing all of her features into sharp focus. She demanded Bobby be punished, but he ducked under his father’s outstretched arm and fled as quickly as he could.
    He spent the evening in his bedroom, frantically gathering things for his mother’s return. It had been a while since she’d left. He wasn’t sure exactly how long, but he was sure that she’d come back soon. Of course she would. She had never let him down before.
    Underneath his mattress, hidden inside the lining, was a scalpel he’d taken from his father’s tool belt. He used it to cut a small square of material from every one of Cindy’s dresses. In the event that she ran away and changed her identity before Sunny the cyborg was up and running, robbing Bobby of his shot at vengeance, this would make life simpler. By slipping the square into the hole in the cloth, Sunny would be able to confirm her true identity. Then he could destroy her. Have fire dance in circles at her feet, scorch her skeleton, and leave nothing but a black mound of ash inside her clothes where her body used to be. Perhaps then she would feel foolish for her flammable hair.
    Bobby had never been this angry before. His mother always taught him that anger was a wasted energy, that it was better turned to love. But it felt good, coursing through him, cooking his blood. He wanted to cut himself, let it out, spurt a great red arc across the room. Watch it cool on the cold windowpane where he now saw his reflection, a swarm of veins in his temples. The same as his father. But he didn’t want to be