At night she stayed up late studying the ball. She prodded and poked it and studied bits of it under a microscope. She pored over her father’s medical textbooks looking for any mention of thread that lived inside the ear canal, but found nothing. It meant she had made a scientific breakthrough—that, perhaps, Lavinia herself was a breakthrough! Beside herself with excitement, she dreamed of opening a clinic where she would use her talent to help people. Everyone from paupers to presidents would come to see her, and one day, perhaps, nightmares would be a thing of the past! The thought made her so happy that for days she was practically walking on air.

Her brother, meanwhile, spent most of his time avoiding her. The ball made him deeply uncomfortable—the way it stayed in constant, wriggling motion even while sitting still; the subtle but pervasive smell it gave off of rotten eggs; the low, steady hum it made, impossible to ignore at night when there was no other noise in the house. The way it followed his sister everywhere, nipping at her heels like a devoted pet: up and down the stairs, to bed, to the dinner table, where it waited patiently for scraps—even to the bathroom, bumping against the door until she came out.18

“You should get rid of that thing,” Douglas told her. “It’s just trash from people’s heads.”

“I like having Baxter around,” Lavinia said.

“You named it?”

Lavinia shrugged. “I think he’s cute.”

But the truth was Lavinia didn’t know how to get rid of him. Lavinia had tried locking Baxter in a trunk so she could walk into town without him rolling after her, but he had broken open the lid. She had shouted and raged at him, but Baxter had simply bounced in place, excited for the attention he was being paid. She had even tried tying him in a sack, marching him to the outskirts of town, and hurling him into a river, but Baxter had gotten free somehow and come back that same night—wriggling through the mail slot, rolling up the stairs, and jumping on her chest, a filthy, sopping mess. In the end, giving the sentient ball of nightmares a name made its constant presence slightly less unsettling.

She’d been skipping school, but after a week she couldn’t miss any more. She knew Baxter would follow her, and rather than try to explain her nightmare thread to teachers and classmates, she stuffed Baxter in a bag, slung him over her shoulder, and took him along. As long as she kept the bag near her, Baxter stayed quiet and didn’t cause problems.

But Baxter wasn’t her only problem. News of Lavinia’s talent had circulated among the other students, and when the teacher wasn’t looking, a fat-cheeked bully named Glen Farcus put a witch’s hat made of paper on Lavinia’s head.

“I think this belongs to you!” he said, all the boys laughing.

She tore it off and threw it on the floor. “I’m not a witch,” she hissed. “I’m a doctor.”