Matty crawled forward on his elbows and got up while Jack crouched there with the hammer still in his hand. He felt as if he were falling from a great height. Slipping through particles of air. Matty just sat, looking at him. He seemed in a haze.

Jack dropped the hammer and pulled Matty to him. Brushed the cobweb from his hair. Hold him close. Like this.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “I’m sorry.”

He held Matty, trying to breathe. Dragging air into his lungs. The effort of staying alive. He was getting stupid. It was stupid to stay here so long, and his head was not working right. Concentrate, he told himself. You have to think better.

Doyle. What you might have done to him.

What he might have done to you.

And then: He is going to come back. And when he does it will be too late. Too late to think or do anything at all.

“Who was it?” Matty asked.

“We have to go.”

Matty just sat there, staring at the hammer.

“Come on,” Jack said. “Pack everything. We have to go.”

XXX

Once in school I learned about this Austrian physicist who told a story about a cat. It was like a thought experiment or something. I don’t know why he used a cat, but I remember it was a cat. I like cats.

He said to imagine a box. It’s a special kind of box, where you can’t see or hear anything inside it. Imagine someone comes and puts a cat in the box, and that person sticks a bottle of poison in with the cat and closes the lid. If the poison spills, the cat dies. There’s no way it doesn’t. And the bottle has an equal chance of spilling or not spilling. The odds are dead even.

So what happens?

Simple, you say.

The poison spills and the cat dies,

Or the poison doesn’t spill, and the cat stays alive.

You look at the box and wonder. Is the cat dead in there, or is it alive?

But you don’t open the box.

You don’t look.

You won’t look.

Jack gathered clothes and stuffed them in the duffel and got the cereal from the drawer and what food was left and packed everything in the grocery bag. In the bathroom, he found Batman and the tape and the gauze and the bottle of antibiotics and brought them into the bedroom. All this time, Matty sat hunched by the bed. He hadn’t moved. Jack went and crouched beside him. The panic never got too far from him now, would come at any time. The torn page in his coat pocket. Two words scrawled. GO BACK.

“We’ve got to go,” Jack said.

Matty didn’t answer.

“We can’t just stay here. I need you to do what I say.”

He was silent.

“Look at me. You have to get up.”