Obviously, this had an effect on my self-esteem, not to mention my love life, which was hardly healthy anyway. I went back to killing things to make myself feel better. Rats; mice; a neighbor’s cat; and, finally, a mongrel dog belonging to a family friend, after which my parents intervened, appealed to the Church, consulted a variety of therapists, and took me to a prayer sanctuary in Philadelphia, where I saw a faith healer, who totally failed to cure both my baldness and My Condition, but from whom I managed to catch a sexually transmitted disease which led to my immediate removal, both from the sanctuary and from my school, where my grades had slipped so badly that there was by then no hope of recovery.

You see how it happens, Mousey. See how those school years cling on to you. The best days of our lives, they say, and yet I was dragging them around like a dog with a stone around its neck. I’d tried so hard to forget, you know. I’d torn out the diary pages. But even so, the memories kept coming back—the smell of chalk dust, and cut grass, and wood; the sleepy sound of the classroom clock; the feel of his hand on my leg, on my head; the way he’d whisper in my ear—

Good boy. Good boy.

By then, I was in a bad way. I lived with my parents for four more years, rarely leaving my bedroom. My mother brought my meals to my room; my father, improving literature, and occasional exhortations to pull myself together. The dreams of escape receded. College was no longer a possibility. I settled into a routine of TV, reading, and apathy. I put on weight; at my heaviest, I weighed over three hundred pounds. I knew I’d lost something, and yet I was unaware of what it was.

Perhaps if I’d had my diary, I might have put the whole thing to rest. But I’d torn out the relevant pages—besides, that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it I never wrote down. I never put it into words.

Words give shape to things, Mousey. Words bring the monsters into the light. But this monster stayed hidden, like something rotten and mouldy at the back of a cupboard, growing less recognizable as time passed, only perceptible in dreams. And so I forgot it, Mousey. I forgot the monster.