He moved things without touching them. He could hide in a closet so well that he came out a completely different closet in another room. He could talk to animals, like their cat, or the birds outside his window. He once turned a rainy, cloudy day bright and sunny so they could go to the park, but he was exhausted and hungry afterward.

His parents thought this was all part of King Jeremy's Land. They smiled when he told them about it, but they didn’t believe him. Not really.

Charlie believed him. Charlie told him he was special. Not many people could do what Jeremy did. Charlie wanted to help him make the whole world like King Jeremy's Land.

His parents, as much as they loved him, said Jeremy was getting too old for these things. They wanted him to play with the other kids at his preschool. They wanted him to listen to his teachers, who were boring, and never got his name right. (They called him Jerry sometimes. He hated being called Jerry.)

Jeremy preferred to spend his time in the corner of the preschool yard with Charlie, who told him how to use the things he could do.

Like when the bigger boy, Micah, shoved him off the swing set. Charlie told Jeremy to wait until Micah was at the very top of his swing, as high up as he could go — and then showed him how to nudge the chain in the right place so it broke.

Micah landed badly and broke his leg. Jeremy had to cover his mouth so he wouldn’t get in trouble for laughing. That was fun. That was great. Micah had it coming.

Jeremy wasn’t as sure about the other kids that Charlie told him to hurt. They’d never done anything to him, not really. But he had to admit, none of them ever got in his way, or fought him for a toy, ever again.

“Oh,” Grace said. “You mean — they were scared of you?”

Jeremy’s grin fades. He looks ashamed and angry. “I didn’t do it. It was Charlie.”

“Right,” she says quickly. “But you were telling me about your parents? About how Charlie was going to take you back to them.”

Jeremy looked at her suspiciously. She was steering him places he didn’t want to go.

“They left,” he says.

“They left you? Alone?”

“No,” Jeremy admitted. “Not really.”

Jeremy noticed that he was talking more and more like Charlie all the time. He was using words that only Charlie knew, and sometimes he got in trouble — like when he said bad words — and sometimes his parents didn’t understand him. And there were times when Charlie sort of…moved forward, and did the talking for both of them.