There are long stretches when the little boy is gone from the house, but Grace doesn’t know where. When he is around, Kirk and Susan seem nervous and twitchy. They use his name over and over. “Jeremy, would you like more cookies? Jeremy, do you want some chocolate milk? Is everything okay, Jeremy?”

She’d think they were actually worried for him, but it’s something different.

Sometimes Grace hears another adult voice in the house, shouting orders, or making low, growly threats. She hasn’t seen this man, but she hears Kirk and Susan making obsequious noises in response. She doesn’t hear Jeremy’s little-boy voice at those times. She wonders if he’s scared and hiding in his room.

Kind of like she is.

She wonders how many people are actually living in this house, and what they’re doing to Jeremy.

Grace learns the answer the next morning, when Jeremy opens the door and walks in on her.

“Hi,” he says shyly.

“Hi,” she says back. He’s ridiculously cute, like a doll. She’s always liked little kids. She wanted a brother or sister, but her parents split up before that could happen. And she’s worried about him. The way they are treating him — it’s like they’re fattening him up for the witch’s oven.

“Do you want to play?” he asks. She says sure, and he comes inside and sits down on the carpet.

Her room is furnished like a hotel, minus anything interesting or useful that she might use to break out. So she doesn’t have any toys.

That’s okay, as it turns out. Jeremy has quite an imagination. He spins a long, complicated story about Jeremy’s Land, where he is King of Aleeservase (it takes her a minute to unwrap that: all he surveys) and everything works exactly as he commands, where he doesn’t have to pause for breakfast or lunch or dinner, and where he makes the rules. Mostly, all she needs to do is listen, as his stories twist and fold in on themselves, and come back to where they started.

After about an hour of this, or what feels like it, Grace thinks they’ve bonded enough to interrupt him with some questions.

“Jeremy, can I ask you something? Are Kirk and Susan your mom and dad?”

He gives her a sideways glare — he doesn’t like changing the subject — but answers anyway.

“No.”

He tries to start again, but she talks over him. “Where are your parents, then?”

He shrugs. He won’t meet her eyes now.

“Don’t you miss them?”

“Charlie says he’ll bring me back to them.”

“Charlie? Who’s Charlie?”

“He’s my friend.”

“Tell me about him.”

He does. He brightens up a little as he describes how they met. Charlie was his imaginary friend.

Charlie took him seriously. See, Jeremy could do things that other kids couldn’t do.