I knew that Altemonte missed his dad really bad even though he acted like he didn’t and I knew he missed his mom, too, even though he said she was a hypocrite and I knew that Altemonte acted like he didn’t know anything at school when actually he knew more than the principal and the teacher put together and I knew that Altemonte’s favorite plant was gall of the earth because it had the dwarfest name and I knew that one time Altemonte tried drinking cooking sherry and it made him throw up and then go right to sleep and I knew that Altemonte liked to gnaw on unripe pears like a deer eating a tree but I did not know how to ask Altemonte if he was being tipped into the death portal, too.

But one night when we lay in our bunks waiting for Grandma Barlow to come give us our medicine and turn out the light my scar murmured, it glimmered. I was like, Altemonte, and he was like, What? And I was like, Wouldn’t it be so toxically sweet to find out what would happen to our brains if we stopped taking our medicine?

But I’ve always taken my medicine, Altemonte said.

Why? I asked.

My grandma said I have to, he said. She said that before I took medicine I was like a lethal weapon.

I want to be a lethal weapon, I said.

But my grandma won’t let us, Altemonte said.

I said, I heard about this top-secret ninja spy who wouldn’t swallow his pills. Instead, he saved them inside his cheek like a squirrel, and then he flushed them down the toilet.