Ice scraped against the riverbank, and out in the middle of the river an ice sheet cracked and echoed downriver.

“So I can’t give you what you want,” Mom said. “It’s impossible.”

I coughed up mucus and spit it out.

“Let’s get you home,” Mom said to me. She put her hand to my forehead.

Mom guided me down the road, and Frick followed. We’d not go to the graveyard—we’d all been there before, and we’d all be there again: Frick, when he had to work after the snow melted; me, when I ran out of metal balls for the slingshot and knew where to find some, scattered there in the mud; and Mom, when she went to say hello, or good-bye.

We emerged out from under the thick dark pines that shrouded the path we just walked, the path that led to a place we’d never return to, but that was the point. Up the hill, our chimney smoke rose up in quiet plumes before dispersing into a flat gray haze against the hard blue sky. Down our driveway, Mom covered her nose, the turtle decomposing on the side of the shed. I couldn’t smell anything. My nose was stuffed up. We’ll all be happy, I thought, even if it’s for a moment.

Frick stayed outside. He tied a bandanna around his face to cover his nose, and he began to gut the turtle, planned to keep the shell. I watched him through the kitchen window as he dug his blade into the turtle’s opening, scraped out the insides.

Mom made me another tea and set it on the kitchen table. The phone rang and she answered it, said hello, and then handed me the phone.

“How’s my buddy today?” Dad said. I sipped the tea—steam swirling and warming my face, and over the rim of the mug I saw Frick through the window gutting and scraping and gagging—and I told Dad his buddy was good. A little sick, but his buddy was good.

IN A FIELD OF STRAY CATERPILLARS

All the staff—the psych techs, the nurses, the doctors—kept asking if I was searching for an exit. I wasn’t. I had to pee. The ECT waiting room, where I’d been waiting for Fellis and trying to remember the third thing that needed to be done that afternoon, didn’t have a bathroom. There was one around the corner but it was being cleaned, and the janitor took his sweet time plopping the mop in the yellow bucket, and after ten minutes of my waiting for him to finish I pushed off from the wall where I’d leaned and walked the short and narrow and not-too-bright halls looking for another bathroom. As always, I got all turned around. The hallways spread out from the main building in every direction like spider legs, except unlike spider legs they crisscrossed and forked and even intersected a few times, open junctions with numerous paths to outpatient services like Mood and Memory. Every worker I encountered was like, “Are you looking for a way out?” It was a stupid question, because each and every hall ended with a red exit sign above double doors that opened to the bright outside as if the place knew how confusing it was. If you got turned around, you could burst through those exits and walk around the sprawling building to the main doors and start over for what it was you were searching for.