A little while ago, Arno noticed that Lucas’s tablet-painting skills had become noticeably diminished. Most of the violet dye was winding up on Lucas’s fingers and on the newspaper. Arno asked what was going on. Lucas must have told him, but he’s too wrecked to remember for sure.

Through the mist, two people come hurrying along the sidewalk toward them. Lucas forces his eyes to focus. “You called my parents?” He tries to stop again.

“Come on, jerk.” Arno yanks him hard.

“Why are you so angry?”

“What? Jesus Christ, Lucas, when are you gonna grow up and stop feeling sorry for yourself?”

“Wha . . . what’s that mean?”

“You’re such a fuckin’ idiot.”

Faces portraits of concern, Mom and Dad meet them. Lucas is handed over. Why exactly did he take two of every pill in Arno’s parents’ medicine cabinet? The thought of killing himself never entered his mind. Nor did any concern about overdosing.

Blind spots.

Mom slides her arm around Lucas’s waist. It’s a typical summer evening in suburbia. Across the street, Mr. Patrick moves his sprinkler to a patch of front lawn where the grass has turned brown. The Lewandowskys’ station wagon passes filled with kids. The Bakers hustle their totally spaced-out son home.

In the kitchen, Mom’s on the phone. The paterfamilias paces, pretending to care. They don’t get angry at Lucas anymore. They’ve moved on to resignation. At the kitchen table, Lucas’s chin keeps dipping. He keeps jerking his head up. Sure seems cloudy in here. On the phone, Mom’s telling someone that she doesn’t know what Lucas has taken, but for some reason both of his hands have turned violet. “Not violent. Violet.” She hangs up and calls Arno. Now it appears that she’s writing down the names of the medicines in the Exleys’ medicine cabinet.

She’s on the phone again, telling whomever she’s talking to what Lucas ingested. “Never mind his hands. They were fooling around with food coloring.”

Lucas’s head feels heavy. His chin dips. Oh, dear, is that his drool on the table?

Mom hangs up and tells the paterfamilias that too much time has passed to have Lucas’s stomach pumped. That’s good news. Lucas knew a girl at school who had to have her stomach pumped. She said they don’t put the tube down your throat because it makes you gag. Instead, they put it through your nose. It reminded Lucas of how the Egyptians got the brains out of mummies by sticking a hook up the nose and pulling the brain out through the nostrils.

(Did the guy who decided the stomach pump tube should go through the nose think it was a no-brainer? Life without a brain might be an improvement.)