Jason said, “That’s right, Harvey,” but he also stood behind her and shook his head no. Jason said Harvey’s dad was not his dad, even though their mom had really, really, really wanted Jason to call him Dad.

“He’s not your dad?”

“No.”

“But you’re my brother.”

“I’m your half brother.”

This made Harvey stop and think and then they both started laughing. A half brother. That’s why in the corner of the ceiling is just half a boy: an arm and a leg from a stick body. Harvey said, “What if you had to choose a head or a butt. Which would you choose?”

Jason shook his head. “I can’t believe you even asked that, Harvey,” he said. “Of course I would want to be the butt.”

“And what is Mom?”

“She’s Mom.”

“But is she your mom, too?”

“Yes.”

“So who is your dad?”

“Dead. My dad is dead and don’t ever mention him, because it will make Mom cry.”

That was when Jason still lived with them. Now it’s just Harvey and his mom, and old Peggy, who just wants to sleep all day. Harvey pulls Peggy close at night so he can feel her snoring. He wishes he could stay there with her every day and just draw Super Monkey and watch TV and read his comic books. Some kids stay at home for school—that’s what Jason said—and their mom said those were some parents with a lot of time on their hands. Even now that it’s summer, Harvey still has to go to camp while his mom is working. Summer camp, which is where a lot of kids get murdered. There are a lot of movies about that. He hasn’t seen any of them yet, but he knows the killers’ names, like Freddy and Jason and Chucky, and he knows what to look out for if he sees them coming.

Jason told their mom that the only way he would ever love his little brother is if he got to be the one to name him and so she let him. Jason said it had to be a comic-book name like Marvel, DC, or Harvey. Their mom had liked DC, because then she could really name him something fancy like David Charles but Jason knew what kind of trick that was and how they would have called him Dave or Charlie and it wouldn’t have had anything to do with comics. “I threw a tantrum,” Jason told him (something Harvey is thinking about doing sometime). “And so you got named Harvey.”