The best part is what Jason called the Turdy Way. He held Harvey up on his shoulders and let him draw in all the different turds he learned from the trail where his daddy took him hiking one time. He used the sticky stars and the glow-in-the-dark marker and only he knew which was which: coyote and bear and squirrel and rabbit, fox and raccoon and possum. “Want me to do a people one?” he asked and Jason said yes and then they both laughed so hard that Jason had to lean over and flip Harvey out onto the bed, which was a game they liked to play. Instead of a moon, they did a great big mustache. A handlebar, Jason said, not a Fu Manchu, which made Harvey laugh. A mustache is the trademark of the superhero Harvey has invented and spends a lot of time drawing—Super Monkey. He has a big mustache like Harvey will have someday and he wears a baseball cap and has supersonic ears that can hear anything being said in the whole world. He just tunes his ears and can go to places everywhere in the universe, like Raleigh or Myrtle Beach or Texas, or Lake Titicaca or Uranus, which make people laugh. Jason taught him those last two and kids at school liked it when Harvey said that. They like to say Lake Titicaca and they like to hear about turds and butts and all the words you can call a butt, like fanny or bum or tail or a-s-s. And they also like knock-knock jokes, especially the ones that go on for a long time, like “Banana banana banana banana who?”

Super Monkey’s specialty is that he hears murderers about to murder and he gets there just in time to make them not do that. Harvey himself wrote in teeny-tiny letters behind his bedroom door Super Monkey’s message to the whole universe: Don’t get kilt. Harvey also has left that message out in the part of the yard where he isn’t supposed to go. Don’t get kilt, he wrote in the dirt with a stick and he also put it on a piece of paper and left it near where he saw a ghost all in black crawling on the ground one night. He peeked out the window and saw that, and the next day what he wrote was gone and he found some fresh rabbit turds.

Every night before bed, his mom says the same things: “There is no such thing as ghosts, Harvey. No, we are not getting a miniature horse. Lizzie Borden never lived in this house. People cannot live without heads. That is ridiculous and has never happened. It’s okay, Harvey.”

“Jason?” their mom said before Jason had to move to his school. “Please tell Harvey that there’s no such thing as ghosts.”