I wasn’t allowed to wait inside while they did it, so I stood out on the steps. It was summer, bright and hot as the surface of a star. My skin burned slowly as the afternoon wore on. I listened as they pushed back the ugly blue rug in the living room, tore up the floorboards and knocked a hole in the wall in the back of my closet because they thought it sounded hollow. Dogs went all over my yard, my bedroom, everything. I knew what kind of dogs they were. They had the white trees of death in their eyes. A thin man with a camera came and took pictures as I stood there. I didn’t think to stop him.

“No picture, no story,” he said to me as he left. I didn’t know what that meant but he waved goodbye in a cheerful way so I waved back.

“What is it, Mr. Bannerman?” The woman detective looked like a possum. Very tired.

“Nothing.” I was shaking. Got to be quiet, Little Teddy. My teeth made little clicks like I was cold, but I was so hot.

“You were yelling my name. And the word ‘green,’ I believe.”

“I must have been thinking about this story I made up when I was a kid, about the lost boys who turned into green things, at the lake.” She gave me a look. I knew it well. I get that look all the time. I held tight to the trunk of the little oak in the front yard. The tree lent me its strength. Was there something to tell? If so it hovered just over the edge of my thoughts.

“Mr. Bannerman, is this your only residence? No other property around here? No hunting cabin, nothing like that?” She wiped sweat off her top lip. Care pressed down on her, like an anvil on her back.

“No,” I said. “No, no, no.” She wouldn’t understand about the weekend place.

The police went away in the end. They had to, because I was at the 7-Eleven all afternoon and everyone says so. The security tape says so. What I used to do there was: I sat outside on the sidewalk by the sliding doors. When they parted with a whoosh and released people in a blast of cold air, I asked for candy. Sometimes if they had it they gave it to me, and sometimes they even bought it for me. Mommy would have been ashamed if she knew but I loved candy so much. I never went near the lake or Little Girl With Popsicle.