Our homeroom got a hamster to replace Snowball. My teacher changed the system for taking the hamster home for weekends—it was random, now, pulled from a baseball cap. Somehow my name never came out of the hat. He became the principal, in the end, that homeroom teacher. It was years later, when I punched someone in the hall by my locker, that he found his chance. I can’t even remember who it was that I punched. Was it a punch, or a kick? But it was my third strike, that’s the point, and the school expelled me. I knew that teacher had been waiting for his chance to get me out, ever since the thing with the mouse.

I look at the cassette tapes. They sit in a neat row on the bookshelf. I think of the tape I hid in the hall closet. Maybe if I were braver I would listen. Her last words.

Thoughts are a door that the dead walk through. I feel her now, cold fingers walking up my neck. Mommy, please leave me alone.

I have to focus. I shake my hands loose and turn my palms upward. I look at my hand—each finger, the pillowy base of the thumb, the palm as dry as leather. I take a deep breath for each part. This is something the bug man suggested I try, and surprisingly, it works.

I unlock the laptop cupboard and start the computer. The photograph of the man behind a desk comes up, grinning. It doesn’t look like a real picture at all. But if people are lonely enough, they don’t care about what’s real and what isn’t. Once again I feel bad for using a fake picture but no one would meet me if I used my own.

I look at the rows and rows of women. There are so many. The search hasn’t been going well but it’s important not to give up.

Maybe I’ve been doing this wrong. I’ve been focusing on butter-blond hair and blue eyes and so on, whereas what I really need is someone with whom I have more in common. A single parent. I change my search and the faces disappear, replaced by new ones. These are older, mostly. I try a couple, but they seem more wary than women without children, less responsive.

Finally I find one. She’s willing to meet tonight. She answers quickly, within three seconds, which even I can tell is a mistake. It’s too eager. She will meet me at a coffee shop after work. She does look nice, actually. She has a soft face and her jawline is doughy. Her dye job is old, gray shows at the roots, interrupting the dull black. It’s late, but she’ll try to get her sister to babysit. She has a twelve-year-old daughter.

I have a daughter myself, I tell her. Lauren. What’s yours called?