I picked up the picture of Roscoe that sat on her desk. Four years later, I could still hear his voice in my head, and I missed him more than ever. The photograph didn’t show him smiling. Roscoe rarely smiled; he was serious, both as a boy and as a man. That didn’t serve him well in school, where the other kids picked on him because he was bookish, small, and black. I wasn’t much bigger myself, but Edgar had taught me to be a dirty fighter, and I beat up the largest of the bullies who taunted Roscoe. They didn’t bother him after that, and Roscoe and I became best friends. That fight was also the last time I ever felt like he needed any help from me. Instead, Roscoe was the one who became my rock through my many ups and downs.

The photograph showed him in his priest’s frock and collar. Roscoe was a straight-A genius who could have been a doctor like his mother, but he’d chosen to serve God in a South Side Catholic parish instead, where he railed against guns and gangs with every breath. I wore a tough shell around me, but my best friend—five foot four, skinny, and mostly bald, in his Goodwill sweaters and old-fashioned glasses with Coke-bottle lenses—had been a far tougher man than I’d ever be.

Alicia sat down in front of me again. She noticed the photograph in my hand. “I still talk to him, you know. It makes me feel better to do that. You can, too.”

I put the photo back on her desk. “These days, I’d be concerned that he might start talking back.”

“I really don’t think you’re crazy, Dylan.”

“Then what’s the explanation? I’m obviously having hallucinations, but they don’t feel like hallucinations. I’ve seen myself. Twice. Looking as flesh-and-blood real as you are right now. This other Dylan interacted with me. He saw me, gave me this strange stare, as if he wasn’t surprised to see me. How is that possible?”

Alicia took my hand. Her skin had an antiseptic smell. “The first time this happened was at the river, right? When you were in the midst of a horrific, stressful event that no human being should ever experience? Nearly drowning and losing the love of your life?”

I nodded.

“The second time was at the museum today? And ‘you’ were wearing a leather jacket that doesn’t exist anymore—the jacket your father was wearing when he murdered your mother? In other words, another horrific, stressful event in your life that no human being should ever experience?”

I nodded again.

Alicia looked at me as if I were a child. “Do I really need to explain this to you, Dylan?”

“Okay, it’s a mental breakdown. I get it. Of course I do. Grief, loss, stress, shock. My mind is misfiring.”

“Exactly.”