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a trench that you can’t find now. What was his name?”
    â€œWalter.”
    â€œWalter what?”
    Teddy sighed. “I don’t know.”
    â€œI see. So a boy you don’t know disappeared in a hole you can’t find.” Barnes shook his head and waved the emergency crews away. He opened a notebook and took out a pen. “And what’s your name, son?” he grumbled.
    Teddy’s shoulders slumped. He dropped his head onto his chest; he couldn’t look Barnes in the eye anymore. “Teddy,” he said.

CHAPTER 7
    Once the emergency crews had cleared out, Officer Barnes drove Teddy home. He was reluctant to leave Teddy stranded outside his house without a parent, and it took Teddy a long time to explain that he didn’t know the location of his mother’s new high-security job and that her phone number was locked inside the house. He also declined Barnes’s offer to break in for him, and, finally, Barnes had simply left with his name and home phone number so that he could call Teddy’s mom later, probably to tell her how much trouble Teddy had gotten himself into by telling such a ferocious lie.
    Teddy was still outside on the porch when his mother pulled up after work to find him sitting there sunburned as red as a lobster. He didn’t tell her about Walter—he wasn’t exactly sure what to tell her. Instead, he simply said that the air conditioner had broken, he’d taken the check over to Lynwood Court, then he’d hung out in front of the house, all of which were true.
    If I’m lucky, he thought, Officer Barnes will get busy and forget about me.
    His mom made spaghetti for dinner, and Teddy silently plowed through two full plates to make up for missing lunch. As he ate, he listened to her talk about her new job at the nuclear plant.
    â€œI like the lab here,” she was saying, “and I’ll get a raise after my probationary period. Until then, we’ll have to watch our budget. Thank goodness you’re responsible enough that I can leave you home without—”
    â€œCan nuclear waste make people hallucinate?” Teddy interrupted.
    â€œWell, no,” she answered, seeming surprised about his concern with toxic waste, “although it can be dangerous.”
    â€œHow?”
    She thought for a moment. “Some highly radioactive material gives off energy in large, lethal doses—it kills things. Low-level material takes a longer time to decay, but the energy still seeps out, and it can mutate living cells. They’re very careful with it nowadays, though.”
    â€œHow long does it take to decay?”
    â€œWhy do you ask?”
    â€œJust interested in your new job,” Teddy fibbed.
    â€œIt varies,” she answered. “It has what they call a half-life. Half the energy of something radioactive is drained over a period of time. It takes that same amount of time again to drain half of what’s left, and so on. The energy dwindles until there’s almost nothing left.” She paused to take a mouthful of spaghetti. “But don’t worry,” she reassured him. “I work in a very safe area at the plant.”
    Teddy nodded that he understood. But it wasn’t an area at the plant he was worried about.

CHAPTER 8
    The next morning, Teddy sat at the kitchen table as his mom got ready for work. He’d lain awake puzzling over the disappearances of Walter and Albert, all the while listening to the branches clawing at his bedroom window. Either the boys in the neighborhood were playing very disturbing tricks on him or his mind was, but he couldn’t figure out which, and for the second night in a row, he hadn’t slept a wink.
    His mom noticed. “So I take it you haven’t had the best first couple of days here,” she said.
    â€œNot the best, no,” Teddy admitted.
    She rose from the table. “I’m too new to ask for time off work or I’d stay here