"The original orphanage?" asked Penny. "There are others?"

"Mr. Steamspell is the most successful owner of orphanages around! He opens a new one every month! If I knew the secret of his cost efficiency, I wouldn't be working in this dump of a law enforcement station, I can tell you that much."

"Is he a kind man?"

"Steamspell? I think the majority of his success comes from other attributes besides kindness, but you can't argue with his results. You're in luck. He has a brand-new facility not ten miles from here."

Nathan felt as if he'd been gored in the stomach by a rhinoceros. The eggs he'd eaten for breakfast immediately threatened to spew from his body in a yellow-and-white waterfall of terror.

"Isn't there another option?" asked Penny. "Foster care, perhaps?"

"No, ma'am. I'm afraid there isn't."

Penny looked over at Nathan. "I don't think the orphanage is the most enriching environment for a boy like him."

"I agree with you completely," said Officer Danbury. "There are countless better places for a child to grow up, but the other options are all based on the a.s.sumption that the child's parents aren't dead. If one parent is alive, then the options increase by about fifty percent, but in this case there's really nothing else we can do."

"What if..." Penny cleared her throat again. "What if we wanted to keep him? Just for a short while?"

"Oh, no, I'm afraid that isn't possible. You could be an unfit parent. If you want to adopt him, you'll need to get him from the orphanage. We can't just hand him over to you-I mean, I'd be a pretty shabby officer of the law if I just said 'Want a child? Here you go.' You needn't worry about his safety, though. I'm sure Steamspell will be so elated that Nathan here wasn't eaten that he'll put him under his own personal protection."

Nathan felt as if the imaginary rhino that was currently goring a hole in his chest had begun to move its head in larger and larger circles. Should he flee? Should he quickly commit some sort of crime so that he could live in jail instead of the orphanage?

Penny glanced at Nathan, and then at Mary. The sisters exchanged a look that Nathan couldn't quite decipher. And then Penny's expression transformed into one of rage, and she grabbed Nathan painfully by the ear.

"You awful child! How dare you impersonate a dead boy? I should have known that this was another of your lies! I shall take you back to the house next door where I found you and tell your parents all about your disgraceful deception!" She stood up, not letting go of Nathan's ear. "Officer Danbury, I apologize for not discovering the lie until just now. Sometimes my sister and I are very slow. I a.s.sure you that he'll be dealt with and that it will never happen again."

"That's quite all right," said Officer Danbury. "I don't like having my time wasted, but this actually saves me time because I won't have to make arrangements with the orphanage. The whole process would have taken a good half hour or so, and you barely wasted five minutes, so I believe I may go out and have a smoke."

Penny said nothing as she dragged Nathan back out to the car. But as soon as they drove away, her expression softened. "Are you okay? Did I stretch your ear too much?"

"It's fine."

"We do not promise that you can live with us forever. But until such time as we feel the need to end the arrangement, we would like to invite you to be our son."

Nathan said yes.

EIGHT.

They went home-home!-and had a delicious lunch. And then Penny stood up, folded her arms over her chest, and looked quite serious.

"In this household, we do not tolerate those who wish to wallow in the warm mud of their own laziness. You will be expected to work. I do not mean that you will have to get a job in a cannery or anything like that, but you'll have to help keep the house and the yard clean. At mealtime, you will eat everything on your plate, unless one of the adults declares it unsuitable for consumption. And you'll have to go to school when the new term begins in the fall."

"School?" Nathan was horrified. "But the other kids will make fun of me!"

"And so what if they do? I won't have people think that we're raising an uneducated hill child. It's never enjoyable to be ridiculed by others, but you'll learn to cope."

"Yes, ma'am."

The next day was Monday. Penny worked as a librarian and Mary managed a small restaurant, and though they were both scheduled to work, they took the day off in order to take Nathan shopping. They bought him seven new sets of clothes, a brand-new pair of shoes, and a toothbrush that they promised him wouldn't be stolen. He was given his choice of any stuffed animal at the toy shop (except those on the top shelf; they were too expensive) and picked a friendly looking orange bear that he named Cartwheel, for no reason except that he thought a bear like that would be inclined to do a cartwheel.

"One more stop, and then we'll go home and play Exploding Nines again," said Penny, as they got back into the car. Nathan was so happy to have Cartwheel on his lap that it didn't occur to him to question why Penny had not identified the actual location of the stop.

"No!" he said, following that word with a gasp, when the moment of revelation finally arrived. "Please!"

"Nathan, you have to go to the doctor. Who knows what kind of germs or parasites you acquired while living in the woods? We'd be irresponsible parents if we didn't make sure you had a clean bill of health."

"What if he gives me a shot?"

"Then you'll thank him for his concern about your well being. Many boys who need shots don't get them."

"What if he wants to take out my teeth?"

"Don't be silly. He's not going to try to remove your teeth. We're not going to let him hurt you. And by that, of course, I mean we're not going to let him cause any damage that has no long-term benefit. The shot itself may sting a bit."

Though Nathan wanted to protest some more, he also didn't want Penny and Mary to decide that they were caring for a bratty child, so he said nothing else.

"Don't worry," said Mary. "If he seems overly fixated on your teeth, we'll tell him that you, being unintelligent, glued joke teeth into your mouth, and that our next visit is to the dentist to have the adhesive removed, with great physical discomfort to be endured on your part."

"Okay," said Nathan.

Nathan was not good at judging people's ages, but the doctor seemed to be the oldest man who had ever existed. He was gray and wrinkled and frail, with a neatly trimmed mustache and beard.

"Dear me," he said, as Nathan sat down on his examination table. "Such malnutrition! A wider array of blisters I've never seen. I should think that he was kept locked in a bas.e.m.e.nt, with nothing to do but pace day and night."

"He is the son of our cousin," said Penny. "He was sent to us when his parents moved to an island that did not allow children."

"Well, I would discourage them from returning to the mainland, because I would have a word or two with them, and they would not be words that they wanted to hear. They would be stern, menacing words. This is disgraceful, simply disgraceful. I would weep if I were the type of person who believed that it is okay for a man to weep."

"Can you help him?"

"Yes. His body has not yet degenerated to the point of no return, which is why he is still alive. I'll give him a shot to cure his obvious case of Deadly Forest Plague, another shot to replace six of the eight vitamins his body is sorely lacking, another shot to cure the mange, another shot just in case, and, finally, a shot to tame his urge to kill."

Penny looked shocked. "Does he really have an urge to kill?"

"All children do these days."

"Are you sure you're not trying to sell us an unnecessary shot?"

"I'm not going to lie to you," said the doctor. "I very well could be and probably am. But it's not an expensive shot, and now that I've instilled that sense of unease about the boy's possible murderous impulses, it will be well worth the purchase price to remove the fear."

"You're right," said Penny.

The doctor smiled. "Tell me, Nathan, do you want the shots in your arm or in your eyes?"

"My eyes?" asked Nathan, horrified.

"Yes."

"I don't want a shot in my eye!"

"Good. For that was a test. If you'd said that you wanted me to stick you in the eye with a hypodermic needle, I would have known that you were deranged, and would have discretely suggested that you be sent to the care of a sanitarium. So, put out your arm, and we'll get started."

Nathan put out his arm and the doctor gave him the shots, one after the other. The doctor actually gave him six shots instead of five, looked confused for a moment, seemed to recount in his mind, and then chuckled at his own foolishness. Nathan didn't enjoy the shots, but he'd spent much of his time in the forest stepping on sharp twigs and accidentally poking himself with branches, so the pain was minor.

"Very good," said the doctor. He took a wooden tongue depressor from a jar and held it up to Nathan's mouth. "Say ahhh."

"Ahhh."

"Actually, I wasn't interested in hearing the noise itself. It was really just a ruse to get you to open your mouth. So let's try it again."

"Ahhh," said Nathan, opening his mouth and sticking out his tongue.

The doctor held the tongue depressor in mid-air. "Is this some kind of joke?"

"Do we look like the kind of people who would play such a joke?" asked Mary, believing it to be a suitably evasive answer.

The doctor looked wistful. "My entire life, I've been ashamed of the normalcy of my teeth. Each night as I brushed I thought about how wonderful it would be to be a shark or a barracuda, swimming around in the ocean with a mouth full of jagged teeth."

"Wouldn't the other kids have made fun of you?" Nathan asked.

"They did! In a moment of poor judgment, I told one of my cla.s.smates about this fantasy, and he thought it was ever-so-amusing. 'Hey, everyone, let's ridicule the warped boy who wishes he had razor-sharp teeth!' Those were dark times for me. But I had the final laugh, because now I am a rich and successful physician, with a huge house and a thin wife, while he has a small house and a huge wife. Did you want another shot?"

"No, sir."

"Good. You pa.s.sed another test."

"See, now that wasn't so bad, was it?" asked Penny, as they drove away. "Doesn't it feel good to be healthy again?"

"It does," said Nathan. "It really does."

If one were to draw up a comparison chart between any two months of the year that Nathan spent in the forest, and the two remaining months of his first summer with the sisters, the line for the months in the forest would be drawn near the bottom of the page, indicating sadness, while the line for the months with the sisters would be drawn near the top of the page, indicating happiness. The bottom line would be drawn in an unhappy color, perhaps dark blue, while the top line would be a bright yellow or purple.

Nathan's bedroom was small (they'd converted a room in the back where Penny used to like to sit and read) but comfortable. He stayed at home while the sisters went to work each day, since they supposed that a boy who'd lived by himself in the forest could stay by himself in a locked house during the daytime. He was given a list of ch.o.r.es to do each day, and almost always did them.

Each night they played games. Mary would usually win, and Penny would pretend to be furious and storm off, and everybody would laugh. Sometimes Penny would win, in which case Mary would also be furious and storm off, except that she wasn't pretending. When Nathan won, he would do a dance, which would be adjusted in scope and intensity depending on whether he'd won by a little or a lot.

The sisters would scold him when he did something wrong, and even punish him when necessary, but he always felt loved.

Was he happier with them than with his real mother and father? That is an unfair question. Given the opportunity to change history, he certainly would have saved the lives of his parents and gone back to excitedly antic.i.p.ating his candy store visit. Yet he also enjoyed being able to go grocery shopping, to eat in inexpensive restaurants, and live beyond his front and back yard.

He would have changed the past if he could, but since he couldn't (to the best of his knowledge), he would simply live the life he'd been given and enjoy being happier than he'd ever been.

The happiness was impacted by a sense of dread, though, as the date for his first day of school approached. He liked social interaction such as ordering hamburgers, but to be stuck in a cla.s.sroom all day? With other children? Who might chant "Fangboy" at him? And who might draw mean-spirited pictures of him depicting his teeth as even larger and sharper than they were? This seemed like it could go terribly wrong.

"Can't you just teach me at home?" Nathan asked Penny and Mary.

Penny, who sat on the couch, patted the cushion next to her. "Come here, Nathan, and let me tell you a story."

Nathan sat down next to her.

"Once upon a time there was a little boy, a boy who looked much like yourself as a matter of fact. This little boy did not want to go to school. But we made him. And he went. The end."

"That wasn't a very good story," said Nathan.

"That's because it's based on reality. Would you really have us devote as much time as a teacher to your education? Shall I quit my job and let Mary support us? Would you like to get a job?"

"I'm sorry," said Nathan. "I'll go to school."

"Yes, you will. And you'll bring home good grades. Your handwriting is so atrocious that you'd think you had sharp pointed fingers instead of teeth. What is six times seven?"

"I don't know, but six times five is thirty."

"The fives are easy. You have many things to learn, Nathan Pepper, and you will go to school like any other child."

Nathan nodded, and felt ashamed that he'd ever protested. This was his chance to have a normal life. He couldn't expect anybody to quit their job to keep him from feeling awkward. When had he become such a selfish boy? He was going to go to school and study hard and learn his multiplication tables and be able to point out every country on a map and become smart and invent things and get rich and move himself and the sisters into a mansion with a butler and a gardener and a special room filled with b.u.t.terflies.

He would change the world!

NINE.

Two weeks before school started, Nathan lay in bed, nearly overcome by sleep, when he discovered that one of his teeth was loose.

It was one of the corner ones that could legitimately be called a fang. The upper left. If he poked at it with his tongue, it jiggled. He lay there for a moment, jiggling his tooth, then got out of bed and hurried into Penny's room. She sat up in her bed, reading.

"Look!" he said, proudly opening his mouth and making the tooth move. "It's my first loose one!"

Penny leaned forward. "I believe you're right!" She called Mary into the room, and they both admired his loose tooth, the way it could wobble forward and backward.