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were strange white lumps all over the room now. And as I thumbed through the pics, sometimes there were a couple of lumps in the picture, and sometimes it was just one white lump real close. Lying on the floor or even one on the pool table.
    Lumps covered in sheets. Sheets stained red.
    And then I finally figured out what I was looking at.
    You too, I bet.



CHAPTER SIX
    W hen I added up all the different bodies in all the pictures, I counted ten. (The two other people killed that night I did not see pictures of.) Strewn around that room. Each one murdered just the night before. I’d spent that same night afraid and angry in my room. How had they spent theirs ?
    I could make out their shapes perfectly now. These lifeless bodies. Leg here, the shape of a shoulder or head there. A couple of the covered bodies were so small.
    The carpet caked with dried blood. The walls streaked with it. Castillo’d taken one picture where someone had written curse words on the wall and drawn a big dick. Even that was in blood.
    It was like Castillo had a blood app on his smartphone.
    I closed the pictures and tossed the phone back onto the empty car seat next to me.
    My whole body was shaking.
    What happened there? I kept thinking. What happened?
    And: How much worse might it have been if summer term hadn’t just started?
    And: How could my father be involved in something so awful?
    Castillo eyed me from the distance, looked concerned. Probably thought from my body language I was getting ready to start freaking out or something. I looked away and tried to pull myself together.
    Good luck with that. I mean, I still had 0.00 idea what was going on. Or what Castillo was really doing standing over there, who he was really talking to. What would really happen to me next? I tried listening as hard as I could to what he was saying. Even tried reading his lips. Nothing.
    Sure, he’d seemed upset about DSTI jerking him around and holding back info on him. And, well, yeah, sure he said he wanted to help and all, but I just kept replaying all my father’s warnings of DSTI, and I easily imagined Castillo was even now talking to them. Deciding what to do with me, and they were probably telling him to bring me in immediately. Or telling him to take me a couple of miles deeper into the Pine Barrens and shoot me in the head with that gun of his. Make me VANISH.
    I’d known my dad for sixteen (OK, technically eight ) years, and I’d known Castillo for about two hours. Let’s just say I now started to look around to, like, escape or something.
    There was the doughnut shop’s parking lot. Abandoned video store. Gas station. Street heading deeper into the woods, into nowhere. Carpet store. Closed hair salon. Auto parts place. My eyes ran down the street, and I wondered how far I’d get before he caught me. I’d take my chances with the police. I’d . . .
    Any escape fantasies ended without my even putting my hand on the car door handle. Really, what was the point anyway? My father’s last words to me echoed in my brain. Any fear or anger I’d just felt nowgave way to sudden and total despair. Despair to the one essential truth beneath/behind all the others:
    The truth of what I really was.
    •  •  •
    I suppose if I’d found out I was secretly a wizard or the lost son of a Greek god, it might have gone differently. But that’s not what I was. I was something that left bloody lumps in the Activity Center.
    •  •  •
    We were heading south back toward Philadelphia. I knew DSTI/Massey was in this direction and asked Castillo if he was taking me there. If he’d said YES, at this point I really wouldn’t have cared. I was already tired of worrying about it, and I just wanted to get things over with one way or the other. I was also holding out some with the idea and hope that my father would be there.
    But Castillo shook his head and told me he’d just contacted some people to help start getting information. Said it was time to get