After I started taking the blue pills with Altemonte, my special powers increased. I mean all the background noise died down to zero and when we played the PlayStation I could beat the levels, and at school I could do my Specials and I could read the tablet, and I started getting like one hundred percent. I wasn’t super-popular anymore but I didn’t care, I was like a ninja. A ninja isn’t super-popular. A ninja is just a ninja. A wolf is just a wolf. Elves and dwarves aren’t super-popular. They are entities.

I said to Altemonte, I am so focused, I am so clear, let’s climb out the window. So we did. And we went to the stone house.

At the stone house the moon smacked down off the chimney, blinding us. We crept inside. There was only enough room for two people, those two people were me and Altemonte. What should we do now? I asked, but then we both knew. We both knew at the exact same time. Altemonte said it out loud. I mouthed the words right along with him. We should dig a hole. We should dig a portal to the elf world, to the World of Two Moons or to Middle-earth, whichever world we got to first. So we did. We used sharp stones and sticks. We scraped at it and burrowed, and carried red clay out of the gnome house in our hands cupped together.

That was the first night but it became the second and the third. We were so sharp, we were so focused, I was like, How will we know when we are finished? and Altemonte was like, We will probably see some kind of light I imagine. We have to make it extremely deep. When the time comes, we will know.

My brain on fire became a goblet. My brain became the wizard statue chiseled out of the very stone that is holding a crystal ball.

The only downside was that my tongue tasted like I ate the pan instead of the food inside the pan, and my stomach felt like I swallowed the dish and the dishwater. First I pooped like ten times, and then for a week I didn’t poop at all. But I didn’t tell anyone.