But most especially, you could think that one thought. Until it killed you.

Maybe if I just get on my feet, walk around the room, stretch my legs. Or maybe even head outside.

Yes, what if I go for a little stroll. A moonlight stroll. Why not? This is a tiny little town, out in the middle of nowhere, far away from the hurly-burly of city life. It’s totally safe. I could just take a moonlit constitutional.

Have I ever taken a nighttime stroll before in my life? No, no, I have not. Does it seem imperative I do right this very moment? Yes, yes, it does.

Before I know it, the outside is pulling me like a magnet.

Come to me, come, and I will soothe you. Come to me, and there will be peace. It’s tugging me down the stairs and through the entry hall, out the front door. No need to get dressed, there’s no one out there. No need to lock the door, this is country life.

I saunter out around the house, to the back, where the grass grows across the vast expanse of lawn into a field of some kind of reeds, restless, waist high, blowing this way and that—a single organism, a sea of reeds.

It’s beautiful, really. This choreographed dance to the wind. This midnight show.

This must be what has drawn me out here in my pajamas. Out here, in the moonlight expanse, just a slight breeze. A summer breeze. The night air cooling the day.

But that’s when I see it.

“See” is the wrong word. Feel. That’s when I feel it. Whatever it is.

How to describe it. It’s like a sudden rush of feeling. A slam. And suddenly I am aware of being watched. And I know exactly where I’m being watched from.

I’m being watched from inside the house.

The completely empty house.

Chapter 6

Before we go any further, let’s get the facts straight. The underlying reality of the situation. The underlying reality of me. Because otherwise none of this is going to make sense.

Some people, like the professor and his absentee wife, for instance, come from a long line of money that’s presumably been there since the Mayflower and accumulated nicely over the centuries. And some people, their dads maybe invented Post-its, or fidget spinners, or what have you, and now they live in a giant mansion with a man cave and a pool in the back with a Ping-Pong table in the pool house.

I am not those people.

I, dearest reader, am from that class of people that has to track every dime, every cent, every new pack of underwear, every extravagant Frappuccino, every bank balance, every parking ticket. Payment in and out, every bill, etc. etc. etc. And, so, what that means is . . . let’s say someone like me gets into a really good college out on the East Coast somewhere. A college with people named Muffy or Binky or Blair. Unlike dear Muffy or Binky or Blair, I would have to figure out, to the letter, exactly how such a feat could be accomplished.