Saturday he walks to the ice rink, sits on a bench high above the swirling skaters, switches on the new tablet, and logs on to the wireless network. It takes a half hour to download all the updates. Then he watches a dozen videos of Bishop, everything he can find, and by the time he remembers Marian’s invitation, it’s after 3 p.m. He scurries up the block: at the corner of Lake and Park, bolted to the concrete, is a brand-new book drop box painted to look like an owl.

It’s a fat cylinder, painted gray, brown, and white, and looks as if it has wings pressed to its sides and talons on its feet. Big yellow eyes glow in the center of its face and it wears a little bow tie: a great grey.

Across the door it says, PLEASE RETURN BOOKS HERE. On its breast:

LAKEPORT PUBLIC LIBRARY

“OWL” YOU NEED ARE BOOKS!

The front door of the library opens and Marian bustles out with her bag and keys wearing a cherry-red parka and her buttons are done up wrong and her expression is hurt or angry or annoyed or all three.

“You missed the dedication. I asked everybody to wait.”

“I—”

“I reminded you twice, Seymour.” The painted owl seems to fix accusatory eyes on him as Marian tugs up her collar. “You know,” she says, “you’re not the only person in the world,” and gets in her Subaru and drives away.

April is warmer than it should be. He stops going to the library, skips Environmental Awareness Club meetings, dodges Mrs. Tweedy in the halls. After school he sits on a low wall behind the ice rink, in Wi-Fi range, and chases Bishop’s videos into ever shadier corners of the internet. Humans are best understood as exterminators, he says. Every habitat we enter, we decimate, and now we have overrun the earth. The next thing we exterminate will be ourselves.

One for the toilet, one for the sink—Seymour stops taking the buspirone. For several days his body crashes. Then it wakes up. Sensations roar back; his mind feels as if it becomes the huge, curved mirror of a radar telescope, gathering light from the farthest corners of the universe. Every time he steps outside, he can hear the clouds grinding through the sky.

“How come,” Janet asks one day as she drives him home, “you never want to meet my parents?”

A dump truck rumbles past. Out there Bishop’s warriors are gathering. Seymour feels as though he is preparing for a metamorphosis; he can almost feel himself breaking down at the molecular level, building himself into an entirely new thing.

Janet pulls up in front of the double-wide. He balls his hands into fists.

“I’m talking,” she says, “but you’re not listening. What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing’s going on with me.”

“Just get out of the car, Seymour.”