"I mean it," I mumble, and feel guilty for even thinking about Alan. Instead I start remembering all the sweet songs Blake made for me, all the times he'd get mad at other guys treating girls like possessions. How could he change so much? Maybe Courtney was right.

"HAYLEY! GET YOUR TUCHUS OVER HERE!" Coach yells way more harshly than she normally would.

Hayley rolls her eyes and runs off.

I watch. They're doing pressure pa.s.sing drills and it basically sucks to be stuck here doing nothing. My hands cover my face. My body sits on the ground. I just exist.

Even though I try not to think about him because I've only just broken up with Blake ... this whole thing with Alan? It's so weird. When we talk there's this funky connection thing going on and when he touches me, it's like the cliche of sparks and electricity. That's got to mean something, doesn't it? Something good in this world of bad? I can't believe Courtney mentioned the River Man. I've been trying for years not to think about him.

When I was around seven, I dreamed of this tiny airplane all broken in the woods with fire all around it in little bursts. In my dream, everything was the opposite of supersized; things were mini-sized, like toy sets. There was a man in a blue jumpsuit standing at the edge of the road. He looked lost. He lifted his hand to me, and I tried to take it.

That was the first dream I had that came true.

I tried to tell my mother about it during breakfast in the kitchen. She liked to hear about my dreams. If she could have had an automatic feed into my brain so that she could know everything I was thinking, she would have done it.

"There was a blue man," I said.

"Sweetie, don't talk with your mouth full." She smiled to make it not so much of a scold.

I chewed my English m.u.f.fin and swallowed real fast. "And there was a little plane in the woods, but it was broken in half like Benji's toy plane that he dropped off his high chair, but it wasn't a toy. And there were lots of fire bushes all around." I got back to my m.u.f.fin. My belly felt too liquid from so much apple juice.

My mom nodded. "Anything else?" I shook my head. "Well, that's an interesting dream," she said, which is what she always said. "I wonder what that means."

Later, she came out of the shower wrapped up in a white bathrobe. Her hair dripped onto the floor, making little drip noises, a sort of splat as the drops. .h.i.t the ground. She smelled like her lilac soap. She crouched down, adjusted her robe, and then put both her hands on my shoulders and said, "Sometimes I see a man, too."

"Really?"

Her hands felt good on my shoulders, like they were holding me to the ground. She nodded. "On the river."

"On a boat?"

"No." Her lip quivered and steadied. "Just ... just standing there."

She brushed some dirt off my shoulder and started to stand up, but I didn't want her to go. I blurted, "What does the River Man do?"

She froze in place. "Calls me. He calls me. He wants my soul, and then once he gets it, he'll feed on it; he'll be so powerful, baby. He'll leave the river and walk into town and everything ... everything will be gone."

Alan brings me home, and it's a ten-minute ride of awkwardness. We talk about Courtney. Neither of us mentions Blake. I thank him and scoot into the house as quickly as possible.

At dinner I want to tell Dad about Alan and Courtney, but I can't because Benji's yammering away about Cheetos and baseball and Gramps dating some woman named Doris, which is where he is now, and how disgusting girls are. I try not to be annoyed at Benji because I know he's just psyched that Dad's actually having dinner with us and not working late, but it's hard.

"How do they run with those ... those things on their chest?" Benji moves his hands and totally inappropriately shows what he's talking about.

"Benji!" Dad acts horrified, but his eyes are laughing.

"You call them b.r.e.a.s.t.s, Benji," I say really slowly. I poke my fork in his direction. He scoops up some spaghetti.

"Well, they're disgusting," he announces, then shoves way too much spaghetti into his mouth. It dangles out.

"You're disgusting," I say. He shakes his head back and forth so the spaghetti flaps all around, flinging this way and that. "At least we don't have p.e.n.i.ses and scrota. That's what's really disgusting."

"Aimee!" Dad scolds.

"What? Like 'p.e.n.i.s' is a bad word?"

"I was more worried about scrota," he says, and takes a sip of his wine. His eyes sparkle like he's not really mad.

"It's the plural of s.c.r.o.t.u.m," I explain in a teacher voice.

"I know what it is," he says.

Benji's just looking at us, figuring things out. It takes him a minute to compute. Finally, he asks, "Is that the health cla.s.s word for b.a.l.l.s?"

We all crack up. My father almost snarfs wine out his nose, but he eventually manages to nod.

Benji starts chanting, "Scrota. Scrota. Scrota." We giggle for a good minute, but Benji's in fourth-grader overdrive and he can't stop it, he just keeps going. "Scrota. Scrota. Scrota."

My father has had it. "Benjamin. That's enough." Benji keeps chanting and Dad has to use his authority-figure voice. "Benjamin. I said no more."

He stops. He sulks. He stabs his spaghetti and twirls it around like a madman before saying, "Why not? It's not a bad word. It's not like the f-word or something."

"Any word is a bad word when chanted incessantly at the table," Dad says. He looks to me for help. I can't really give him any.

"It's a pretty weird word," I say.

Benji pushes his plate away, sad faced, feeling betrayed or something. "Can I be excused?"

My father and I look at each other like one of us should be the parental figure but neither actually wants to be. I sc.r.a.pe my fork around the plate. My dad sips his wine. Footsteps whisper across the floor upstairs.

Benji's back straightens up and his voice perks out, "What's that?"

My father holds his gla.s.s in midair. My fork stops by some clumped spaghetti. Dad puts the gla.s.s down slowly while Benji stands up. "It sounds like footsteps."

He races out of the dining room, smashing past the bookcase. A tea candle drops off and spins across the floor. Dad barrels after him. "Benji!"

His chair b.u.mps up the Oriental rug, but I don't fix it. I just get up, too, rushing up the stairs into the hall. Benji's hopping in place, looking around. Dread fills my throat.

"I heard footsteps!" he bubbles out. "There's n.o.body up here. You guys heard it too, right? You heard the footsteps? And it smells. It smells like vanilla!"

I cross my arms over my chest and turn the hall light on. I force my throat to swallow.

"Did you hear it, Dad?" Benji keeps going, eyes big. My dad nods. "I think we're haunted!" Benji paces back and forth down the hall. He stomps to make footstep sounds. "It sounds like someone walking, like a woman."

I whisper out all my hope. "Like Mom?"

"Your mother is not haunting our house." Dad says it like an edict, like a judgment. "Aimee, why do you fill his head with this nonsense? What's wrong with you?"

I gasp, can't even think of what to say because I'm so shocked that my dad is talking this way to me. He never acts so mean.

Benji's eyes go big. "Then what was the noise?"

Dad waves his hand in the air. His eyes look to the left like he'll find the answer there. "The house settling."

Benji rolls his eyes. "Yeah. Right. Gramps thinks Mom is haunting us, too. Did you know that?"

He stomps off to his room and slams the door.

"Benjamin Avery! We do not slam doors in this house!" Dad yells after him, but his voice is defeated. He turns and goes back downstairs to the kitchen. I trail after him and we return to our places at the table.

"Dad-" I think about those footsteps, Courtney, Alan, and my dreams, and change direction. "Do you know anything about the man in the river?"

He stands up, giraffe-leg strides across the wide wood floor planks to the kitchen counter, and grabs a bottle of Glenfiddich. Scotch. He's switched to scotch, which means he's stressed. "What?"

I push my piece of garlic bread around my plate in a great big circle. "Mom saw him before she died."

"This is not a discussion that I'm going to have with you, Aimee."

"Why not?"

He pours his scotch into one of his special gla.s.ses that rounds out like a pregnant woman and has a pattern etched into the gla.s.s. His hands are steady, like mine. He could be a surgeon slicing into people with hands like that. He could paint.

"Because."

"Because why?"

He swirls his gla.s.s. "Because I can't." He takes a sip. His Adam's apple moves down and up with the swallow and release. Something inside me burns hot and hard, the way I know scotch burns hot and hard when you swallow it. Some sort of vital organ falls into itself, lost, lost, fire, burning into itself.

"Please, Dad ..."

His voice comes out flat and dull. "Your mother lost a baby. She was very early on in her pregnancy and it ... well, it pushed her over the edge, Aimee. She became obsessed with protecting you and Benji from some delusion she had. She'd stay up all night and say she heard footsteps, like you, only they were heavy, and there were scratching mice noises. She said she smelled dead things, not vanilla."

"I don't say that," I blurt out.

"No. But you are hearing footsteps."

"So is everyone!"

"The house was settling." He rubs his hands across his closed eyes. "She twisted things so they were frightening. She was crying out for attention just like you."

"Dad! It wasn't even me. It was Benji!" I push my chair away from the table. This day could not get worse. Courtney is sick. Blake and I broke up. According to my dreams, someone is in danger and I have no idea how to help. I had an awkward ride with Alan, and now this? This? He's comparing me to my mother. My voice is wood-plank hard because I am not crazy and I am not the only one who heard footsteps and it's unfair.

"Fine, then. You clean up. I made dinner." My feet take me away from the table.

"Aimee ..."

"Dad?" The word comes out before I can stop it.

He swirls the amber liquid in his gla.s.s again. He is so tall and strong looking. Why is he acting so weak? "Don't make Benji think your mother is here."

"It was Gramps."

"I will talk to him, too."

"We aren't going to be Mom, Dad. We aren't her. You aren't going to lose us, too."

"Don't go there, Aimee."

My hands turn into fists but I nod. I will let him believe what he wants to believe, what he needs to believe. Even though my heart is heavy fire burning, I cross those wood planks of our kitchen floor and lift myself up on my toes. I kiss his cheek. I will pretend I do not need a dad to save me. I will pretend to be normal. He is weak. He can't help it. He is more like Blake than Alan. I think the whole world is more like Blake than Alan.

"I love you, you know," I whisper, because I do. I do love him, no matter what.

"You, too," he says, and that's when I notice the knife on the stove.

It's the big serrated-edge knife I used to slice the garlic bread. I point my finger at it, but my hand is not like my hand. It shakes.

He turns to see what's got my attention. His free hand wraps around my waist. He pulls me close. His words are more a curse than a prayer. "Holy G.o.d."

The knife, the foot-long bread knife, is standing up on its tip, perfectly balanced and slowly spinning around.

* 10 *

ALAN.

I slow the truck to a crawl as I approach Aunt Lisa's house-home. Aimee caught it during the car ride, called me on it, so now I'm calling it home. Aunt Lisa's Chevy Tahoe is in the driveway. Lots of lights are on. I stare hard at Courtney's window, wondering if I'll see the shape of a man behind her pink curtains. Her light is on, but I can't see any shadow-men.

Pulling into the driveway behind the Tahoe, I turn off my truck. I can't help but look up at Courtney's window again. There is a shape. A dark form stands there, looking down at me. But the curtain is parted a little and I can see that the shape is female. Aunt Lisa. The front door opens and there's Mom, waiting for me, so I get out and go up to her.

"Alan, are you okay?" she asks, coming out on the porch.

"Yeah, I'm fine. How's Courtney? Is she okay?"

"She will be. A few st.i.tches and a mild concussion. What happened?"

I study Mom for a minute, wondering why she's asking me about it. "What did she say happened?"

"She doesn't remember," Mom says. "Someone at the school told Lisa you carried her to the nurse."

"Yeah, I did." I pause and look around, stalling, wondering what to say, and finally just tell her what happened.

When I'm done, she steps forward and hugs me. "No more skipping cla.s.ses, Alan Whitedeer Parson. Okay?" I nod. Mom sighs. "She's upstairs. We have to keep her awake until midnight, the doctor said."

"Let's go see her."

Courtney and Aunt Lisa are sitting on the bed. "Hi, Alan," Courtney says.

"Hey. You okay?" I ask.

"I have a headache. Thanks for carrying me to the nurse." She smiles at me. I guess she's done being mad about me barging into her room the other day.