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don’t believe that.”
    â€œShe really said that?” Arrow asked. She moved an inch away from me and squinted, studying my face. “You don’t look like Wallace Green.”
    â€œI don’t look like my father either,” I said. In truth, I was the spitting image of my mother. If it was possible for a person to have sex with themselves, to get pregnant by themselves, to have an immaculately conceived baby, then that was me. There was nobody else in my face. Just my mother.
    â€œI brought this,” I said, pulling my mother’s last letter out of my pocket. It was dated just last week.
    â€œIs that . . .”
    â€œYeah.”
    I handed it to Arrow and then read it over her shoulder, even though I had already read it a dozen times. I’d read all of them a dozen times.
    Heph—Some days are easier than others, some days are almost inbearable. Unbearable? I miss you a lot, but it’s okay that you haven’t written because you shouldn’t have to carry this burden around with you. The burden of words. It wouldn’t be fair.
    The man in the top hat came back to see me and told me a very important secret about the bedsheets here. Oh, Heph, I wish I could see you one last time, but I could never get the hang of astral projection. It’s unfortunate because it would have been so useful, all those nights I missed you so much I couldn’t sleep.
    All I wish for you is that you find Wallace Green because I never had the guts to. I was comfortable with Frances the First and thought that following my dreams might only ruin them or worse, I’d come to realize that our dreams are never what we think they are.
    You are the stuff of stars and you deserve to have a real father, not a coward who tried to kill you.
    All my love. Mom
    â€œJesus,” Arrow said when she had finished.
    â€œI know.”
    Arrow got off the bed. She turned a few tight circles in the carpet and then looked at me, worried.
    â€œAre you going to?”
    â€œGoing to?”
    â€œFind him? Wallace Green?”
    â€œOf course not.” I paused, thinking back to my conversation with Bucker. Bucker wasn’t his real name. I didn’t know his real name because I’d never asked because it didn’t matter. He was just a screen name. He could have been a fifty-year-old convicted felon. He could be instamessing me from a jail cell. I think he said once that Bucker was hiscat, but Bucker could just as easily have been his cellmate. “He lives in Texas, I guess.”
    â€œTexas is far from here.”
    â€œWell, yeah. It’s halfway across the country.”
    â€œHow do you know he lives in Texas?”
    â€œTILTgroup.”
    â€œSomeone on TILT knows Wallace Green?”
    â€œWell, he knows where he lives, I guess.”
    Arrow was still standing. She was playing with the ends of her hair, making miniature braids and unbraiding them. I’d always been jealous of Arrow’s hair. It was stick straight and thick. Even when they’d brought her home (an event I only vaguely remembered, and probably only because it was on videotape somewhere), she’d already had that hair. It grew at an alarming rate. She got a trim every other week.
    â€œI’m really sorry, Frannie,” she said after a minute. “I loved your mom so much. She always had those little butterscotch candies in her purse. I almost choked to death on one because she let me eat them in the car. And she was funny, you know? She was really funny.”
    â€œAnd she was really crazy,” I added.
    â€œSure,” Arrow said. “But look around you. Everyone is.”
    â€œYou’re not crazy.”
    â€œMy mom is probably crazy. I mean, they’re cut from the same cloth and everything. And you’ve seen how many veggie platters my mom makes. Like, who are all theseveggie platters even for? What does she do with them? They’re there and then they’re gone. I