“What stuff? You don’t have any more homework than me. Anyway, it’s Saturday tomorrow. You can’t work Saturday. You’re turning into a proper hermit.”

“Yeah. I dunno.” Alex stole a look behind.

“Just come,” David pressed. “It’s Mum’s gran’s birthday, she’s like . . . ninety-one or something. Mum’s doing her Old Country menu in honor: pumpkin soup, rice and beans, pen patat, the whole Haitian Kitchen Blowout. She’s made tons. You’ll be doing me a favor. I’ll have to eat it for a fortnight. You loved it last time.”

“Maybe. Can I text to let you know?”

David popped another disappointed green bubble and shrugged, unconvinced. “Sure.”

They walked on, Alex trying to resist the urge to look back again. David turned to him, opened his mouth to speak, then frowned off over his shoulder. “Uh-oh.”

Alex spun in alarm and groaned. Far back along the street, Kenzie Mitchell was waving, tripping over his oversized feet in a hurry to catch them.

“Alex!” Kenzie called distantly.

“Guy really seems mighty keen to talk to you these days,” David mused. “What’s all that about?”

“Don’t know.” Alex squinted ahead to his bus stop. A bus was approaching through slow traffic. If he sprinted, he might just catch it. “I’m going to try to get this one.”

“Just come over, Alex,” David called as he set off. “It’ll be a laugh.”

It felt good to run, and not only to put distance between himself and Kenzie’s lumbering figure. But with every step, Alex felt the object in his coat pocket hitting against him, reminding him it was there. As if he could forget. When he jumped onto the half-empty bus and collapsed panting onto the back seat, he pulled it out.

An old toy robot made of tin.

He twisted around to look back. He spotted David, trotting across the road, going to meet his dad. Kenzie alone at the street corner, just standing there, watching Alex’s bus roll away. Nothing out of the ordinary. Alex studied the rainy scene a second longer, then turned back to the robot.

He carried it everywhere now. The secret prize he was supposed to have destroyed far away, but which a compulsion he couldn’t name had made him keep, sneaking it home like smuggled goods. The scratched little face leered up with its jagged metal grin. Alex stared down into the hollow eyes, closed his own, and concentrated.

The bus vibrated suddenly, violently, rattling his skeleton in his skin. Alex’s eyes snapped open. For a second, he sat caught between terror and tingling elation. Then he realized. It had only been a shudder as a wheel hit a pothole. He let the hand holding the toy drop.