Mr. and Mrs. Wilson never thought that anything like this would happen to them. They were the last people you would ever expect to be involved in anything like this. They were just too normal.

Mr. Wilson worked in an office. He was a faceless man in a faceless job, spilling drops into a pond that no one would even recognize from their ripples. Mrs. Wilson was average, having gained her normalcy from years of effort and restraint. She, and her husband, did everything they could to be average and invisible and simple, but like many other tragic people, it was this very effort that lead to their downfall and demise.

The Wilsons had two sons. That's what they would tell you if you asked. Two sons of around the same age, two boys opposite in build, skill, and attitude. If anyone had cared enough to look closely, they might have written it off to the fact that every family has "one of those" in it, but no one took the time to. It was none of their business. The funny thing is that they would've been more right than they knew, in a way. Every family did have one like that, someone who was made for trouble, but in this case, it wasn't the boy. It was his mother.

Mrs. Wilson smiled every day, and brought sunshine and bright, shining perfection into her home, and would never tell a soul about the darkness that hid in her past or the sister who had tried so many times to bring it into her present. It had been years since Mrs. Wilson had seen her sister, having not given her an address or phone number when she moved out of the city and into her slice of the suburbs. She, and the rest of Mrs. Wilson's family, had not been invited to the wedding. She, and the rest of Mrs. Wilson's family, had not been listed on any records. She, and the rest of Mrs. Wilson's family, had never truly existed outside of some hazy nightmare of no longer real, if you had ever had the gall to pry into the history with Mrs. Wilson herself, thank you very much. Civilized people never spoke of such things, so it wasn't difficult to hide it.

She had buried her sister, buried her deep, but even so, bad seeds always find their way up through the soil, as Mrs. Wilson discovered on a dull, grey Tuesday.

Mr. Wilson had been smiling as he settled the knot of a tie against his throat, and Mrs. Wilson had been absently humming as she pulled a clean, cotton shirt over her screaming toddler's head. He was a fussy child, and always had been, but wasn't that normal in itself. They were sleepwalking and too preoccupied to notice that something had slipped into the mail alongside the electric bill and the invitation to the neighborhood barbecue.

Mr. Wilson had already gone to work by the time his wife saw the stamped letter. When she saw it though, she had her first craving for a nicotine hit in years.

When her husband came home, she was determined to say nothing  of the letter, of the notice, they had received that day, of her sister, or the husband that she hadn't known had existed until he was already dead, or the baby who was missing still. Mrs. Wilson's parents had died long ago from the after-effects of a life spent poor and stupid. Still, there had to be others who they could call about the funeral arrangements. Thank god her husband never paid too much attention to the news.

She asked him about work, and told him about how the neighbor had been having troubles with her daughters and how their baby boy had learned a new word today. That night, they went to bed normal, and happy and unaware that it would be their last "normal" night for some time.

"You must have the wrong number. My wife doesn't have a sister."

The words jerked Mrs. Wilson out of bed. She had overslept, something that was never done in the win the Wilson house. Her husband was sitting in bed, eyes bleary from sleep, with the phone pressed to his ear. He tried to stifle a yawn, but Mrs. Wilson could see that something that had been said was worrying him. A small line had appeared, creased between his eyebrows, as he turned from the phone.

"Penny?" he ventured uncertainly, "There's a man on the phone, some government agency. They say they need to talk to you."

Penny Wilson did not want to talk to anybody about anything regarding her sister. Penny Wilson wanted to pretend that "Circe Andrews" and "Penelope Andrews"had never been a real person, that there had never been a dingy trailer that could never really be made clean or a father who smelled of smoke and cheap vodka. Penny Wilson wanted to crawl under the covers and block out the world and wait for it to all go away. She wanted to run again. Penny Wilson didn't have that option though. A person of authority was on the phone, asking to talk to her, and the normal thing to do was to answer the nice person's questions until they went away. The Wilsons were normal people.

Or at least, they had been. 

Mrs. Wilson was looking out the window. She was looking out the window in her beautiful, pristine, cool kitchen. She was looking at the neatly trimmed grass of her cool, green, empty back yard. She was holding a baby.

Mr. Wilson was watching her, empty confusion written across his features. The house, and the kitchen in it, was dim in the light of the setting sun. Lights seemed to bother the child, and his wife hadn't put him down once since he'd arrived that morning in a simple looking car, delivered by a simple looking man. He was the sort of man who the eyes of their neighbors would slide off of the instant that they noticed him, and if Mrs. Wilson had been in a position to think about things, she would've considered that a small blessing.

"I suppose, we ought to have some sort of celebration," she whispered barely loud enough for her husband to hear. "The neighbors will expect a celebration after our successful adoption. If we act happy, they won't think twice about any of this. It's not like his picture will be in the news."

She was still staring out the window. He was still staring at the back of her head. The baby was still asleep.

"You have a sister."

"Had, a sister," she whispered absentmindedly. "She's gone now."

"How is that possible? I've known you for five years, how can you have some sister I don't know about?"

But Mrs. Wilson said nothing.

Mr. Wilson rose and began to pace. "There has to be somebody else. They said he'd been missing? Where did they find him?"

"There was no one at the house when they got there," she answered in a flat whisper, her eyes never moving from the unknown point in the yard where they had alighted. "No one alive. Both of them had been shot, and the baby was gone. None of the neighbors had even known there was a baby there. If anyone heard the shots, no one called the police. She could've been there for weeks for all they cared." Her voice broke before she could continue and she closed her eyes hard and fast against the world that she had drawn around her like a fortress.

Her sister had been two years younger. Her sister had had dirty blonde hair. She could never stay out of messes or mud. She could never stay out of back alley brawls. She could never have survived in the world on her own.

"She didn't show up for work. Her boss said she'd never missed a day, so he called someone. The baby had been gone when they got there. There wasn't a gun in the house. He had to be somewhere."

Circe with the eyes that sparkled and the laugh that carried even through the broken glass and rusted nails that littered the ground no matter how hard Penelope tried to clear it.

Mrs. Wilson was crying silently, and the baby slept through her tears.

Mr. Wilson wrapped his arms around her, pulling her stiff form against him, cradling her head against his chest.

"There was no one else," no one else they could find, and Penelope Wilson wasn't as surprised as she could've hoped to be. 'The family' always had a good way of slipping back into the cracks and shadows whenever there was a tab to be paid or a responsibility to be covered.

"But even if there had been..." Even if there had been, Penelope Wilson didn't know how she could condemn the sleeping weight in her arms to that life. For years she had turned her face to the sun and let the reality of where she came from slip away. She had lied to herself and told herself that none of it happened, that none of them were real, that she had never had a sister.

And now she didn't have a sister.

This boy was real. This boy was a real, solid, breathing life in her hands. She thought of what would happen to him, passed from home to home, never wanted, never cared for, unless it was by someone who had something they wanted from him.

Mr. Wilson was frowning as he held the shaking body of his wife. He really was a normal man, a faceless man, a man like countless that you might know right now. He had never had any real shadows to run from. He had never known the touch of exploitation or the sting of neglect. He had always  had a normal life, and had planned to have it still.

But in that moment, he became more than he had been before.

"He's your family."

Mrs. Wilson sobbed at the word but nodded her head, willing herself not to drop out of consciousness.

"Then he's mine too."

And he turned her in his arms, looking down into the pale face of the dark-haired boy who merely a day before he hadn't known existed. The child was small and sallow. He didn't know what had happened to bring him into this world or why his wife had hidden so many things from him,  but he loved her. And in that moment, he loved the child as well.

Penelope Wilson had lost all scope of normal as her ears buzzed with the static of her husband's words. She looked up at him with eyes that were wide and more awake than they'd been in ears. "What if they find us, Charles?"

He didn't know. He didn't know who would be looking.

"Uncle Steve... The man who had him when they found him, they have him in custody now, but if he killed my sister, if he took this child, then he can find us." She sank to her knees, and her husband sank with her, keeping his arms around her as she began to rock back and forth.

"The police have him," Mr. Wilson murmured gently. "The police have him and everything will be okay. That's their job."

Penelope knew that that wasn't always the  case, but without knowing what else to do, she nodded bleakly.

"Charles... I never wanted you to know..."

And he kissed her. And in his eyes, she was as clean and pristine and cool as the home that she had cultivated for the three years that they'd been married. And if she had her secrets, he didn't care. And if she wanted to be hidden, he would hide her behind lacy white curtains and a brick-front house. Mr. Wilson would love his wife just as he always had, and he would love his sons too. Both of them.

It had been almost ten years since Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wilson, of the normal house on the normal block of the normal suburban neighborhood, had celebrated the adoption of their youngest son. The neighbors had been surprised to learn that Penny and Charles had been in the adoption process, but a hearty laugh and a plausibly anxious explanation about 'not wanting to raise anyone's hopes' in case it 'fell through' covered a multitude of prying questions. Mrs. Wilson had once known that the majority of people will accept a highly plausible lie over a complicated truth, and for that small pocket of hell, she recalled the hidden knowledge.

After the initial upset, things returned largely to normal for a good period of time. The house was cool and clean and filled with neat, even furnishings which had always been simple and traditional enough not to need updating. The only things to show change in the front of the house were the photographs, which had first shown the happy, tired couple holding a husky, blonde toddler alongside a slight, black-haired infant, progressed through the years of first bicycles, carnivals, and parent nights. Everywhere, both boys were represented, although an amount of strain increased in the posture of the father, a shadow of suspicion on the part of the mother, over the years. The dark haired waif had grown while his fair brother fell behind him in size and confidence. Over the years, one might detect a distance between the brothers, which one would have to actively work to attribute to normal sibling rivalries.

The root of the familial discord happened to also be in that front room, sleeping on the floor behind a comfortably stuffed couch. He did not stir when his mother's voice called through the house.

"Odie!" Her voice had a shrill of anxiety, a frayed edge that it hadn't had ten years ago, but it was 9 parts tired resignation. "Odie, I know you were in bed last night, where are you?!"

Odysseus Wilson's chest hitched in silent laughter as he heard his mother's nervous movements. She never remembered to check behind the couch, and it was his favorite spot to hide and sleep or while away his sunny afternoons. He had a number of similar hiding spots chosen around the house, and indeed the entire neighborhood, so his parents would always be kept guessing when he slipped out of his bed and into the twilight. It wouldn't do to let them get too comfortable.

When Odie heard his mother's footsteps retreat into the kitchen, followed by the knocking of a frying pan on the gas-light burner, he allowed himself to stretch languidly and consider getting up. She was finally starting to understand that he was going to do as he pleased, whether she looked for him or not.

The sharp odor of coffee wasn't far behind the sizzle of butter on the skillet, and that meant that the others would be awake soon. j

"Is he up?" the deep, sleepy voice of Odies' father carried from the base of the stairs.

"He's not in bed," answered his mother.

"I can see that, dear, but is he about?"

Odie heard his mother sigh. "If he's in the house, I wasn't able to find him, but if I put off breakfast any longer we were going to be late."

A chair screeched over linoleum. "If he's knocking around outside somewhere..." his father's words drifted off.

"I don't like him out there, associating with, I'm sure I wouldn't know who. It's dangerous."

"I know, dear, just... Maybe today..." he was faltering. "I want everything perfect for Davey's special day."

Odie rose silently. He had completely forgotten little David's birthday, and he certainly wouldn't want to miss that. Still, his mother's voice was drifting in from the kitchen, with the warm breakfast smells, as Odie pulled together the socks he had kicked off the night before.

"I know he's a bit of a handful, but we just need to be careful. They're both our boys."

"I know that, Penelope. I haven't forgotten. I just..." But by then Odie had made his presence known by opening the door to the downstairs bathroom. He'd learned how to open the house doors silently by that time, and no lock could seem to hold him. Still, it occasionally was good to rattle his keepers. That was why Odie had slammed the bathroom door behind him. It was to shake up his parents. Or to scare his brother, wherever he could be. It certainly was not because his father had just been on the verge of suggesting that they leave him behind from their yearly outing for their eldest's birthday celebration. No no. It was not because Odie was bothered by the quiver that had entered his mother's voice when she'd mentioned the word 'handful.' It had nothing to do with his parents discussing the problem that he had become over the prior two years. Not at all. Odie reveled in being 'a problem.' Being a problem was not a problem, not at all.

Right.

Odie groaned lightly as he stretched in front of the mirror. He could shower. He woudlnt' be able to hear anything that was said, but he doubted that anyone would say anything about him now that they knew he was in the house. They never did really. He ran a hand through his greasy hair and thought about how it would make his mother happy if he was clean today. She liked things tidy. A sickly twinge in his stomach stopped him though. Odie could never explain that twinge, but it had slowly worn away his will to resist it, just as he had worn away his parents' will to resist him. So whether it told him to leave his bed and wander the streets at night, to break a window, steal from his brother, or wear the same pair of jeans until they were almost as oily as his scalp, Odie did it without question. After all, wasn't it rude for 'normal' people to ask questions?

Odie knew he was adopted, and he always had known. He didn't know how it could've been kept from him either way, considering how different he looked from everyone else in the family, but regardless of the sneaking contempt that he had built up regarding his parents and their son he had to admit that the children had both been treated equally. Odie knew nothing of his real parents, and he didn't think that the man and woman in the kitchen, his 'mother and father', knew anything about them either. These phantom people from Ody's past had given him his first name, but everything else had come from the Wilson's.

If Odie had been any kind of good person, he knew, he really would disappear for this day, at least for the day, to give these people some peace from him. If he had been truly capable of repaying them for their kindness in loving him the best they could and keeping him off of the streets, he probably would've disappeared for much longer. He couldn't though. He couldn't resist the slick impulse that crept behind his eyes and told him to pay this family of his back in an entirely different fashion.

His mother was knocking on the door and letting him know that there were pancakes. She'd made blueberry pancakes for the family, David's favorite, but Ody knew that she would've saved a little batter aside to make some plain ones for he, Ody, who hated berries of all kinds. She would serve it to him with maple syrup that she heated in the warm oven while the pancakes were frying, because she loved him, and he knew that. She loved him and she was going to take him to the zoo along with the father who loved him also, in his way, and the brother who had always tried to. 

An hour later they were in the car on the way to the zoo, which was David's favorite place, and Odie was wearing a fresh pair of jeans.

Odie was not gong to ruin this. He was not going to ruin his brother's birthday, his brother's 13th birthday, which was his first step into being a teenager, which was almost like being an adult. Odie was not going to let the fact that he was only 11 and already a head taller than his brother lull him into lording his physical size over the small, shy boy strapped next to him in the car. He was not going to make his mother put on the smile that told him, but somehow no one else, that she was going to lock herself in her room to cry when they got home. He was not going to make his father look at him with the determined but tired face that was always turned to Odie when he got up to mischief.

Except that Odie didn't really believe that.

Bad things always happened around Odie. It was just how his life worked.

Once he had been found snipping off a lock of his mother's hair to take with him to sleep, to keep his nightmares away, and when he had been scolded he'd gotten so agitated that he'd had little choice but to shave off the golden curls of his older brother in the dead of night. Another time, when his mother had been making a scarf for David, Odie had found himself dumping the length of fabric and all of the accompanying balls of yarn into the mud at the edge of their neighbor's garden. Then again, most of the bad things that happened around Odie just involved his climbing onto buildings or sneaking past fences where he wasn't wanted.

Today, he could keep from doing all of those things, if he concentrated very hard. They were his family, and he owed them that.

The zoo was bright and hot. It was full of happy people who were all very loud. Odie did not like things that were bright and glaring and loud, preferring the soft, cool corners where no one was likely to look for him. He did however like to see the animals held back in their "habitat" cages. It made him feel free seeing them stuck behind the thick, clear walls, much as it made him feel free seeing his parents and brother caught in the lock-step of their pre-determined existences. He also liked the chocolate ice cream that his father had gotten for everyone who was along on the trip.

The morning was manageable. Odie looked at the gorillas and maintained a studied distance from the things that made the serpent of impulse start to slither over the back of his skull, things like his father and his brother and his brother's stupid friends. He had to sit with the family at lunch in the zoo's restaurant, but he didn't speak to anyone other than his mother, and then only to tell her what he wanted to eat so that she could tell the too-happy waitress who had asked for his order. Odie didn't like people who smiled that much. It made the serpent itch.

Still. It was only a matter of time, wasn't it? That's always how it went for Odie.

In the afternoon, his mother shepherded the family to the reptile house, which Odie did not appreciate on account of having someone else trying to manipulate them even if they were his mother and therefore slightly less stupid than anyone else at the zoo that day, but which he did appreciate because it was cool and dark and quiet from all the people being a little afraid of the snakes and lizards behind lit panes of glass. It was the latter of those feelings that Mrs. Wilson had been working to create. She was not a foolish woman. She had, in fact, a very rightful claim the modicum of Odie's respect, a thing that he only grudgingly gave to anyone. It was only because of her close observation, informed intuition, and decisive actions that Odie and the family had lived in any kind of balance over the two years since Odie had started having his 'episodes', as they were called by whispering neighbors. She loved her nephew. She loved him as a son and as a fellow traveler along a road that was darker and more treacherous than anything that her son or husband were ever going to encounter, at least as long as she could keep them from it. She couldn't undo what had already been done to the boy, but she could give him the benefit of her years of learning to step out of the shadows. It was for him that she had stopped closing her eyes completely to the world she had run away from, but it was also for her love of him that she closed her eyes to how bad things were likely to become. Maybe if she had taken a more honest look at her nephew's behavior, things would've been different.

The lizards had fascinated the three boys, Odie, David, and a slight boy who David had invited from school, whose name they had all been told and all just as quickly forgotten. In the various inset tanks the snakes and lizards crawled over bits of wood and stone, sunning in patches of heat and stalking crickets that mindlessly followed the enclosure walls. David wondered why they did that. He wondered why they did the same thing over and over again, marching onward even as the crickets in front of them marched right into the path of a lizard's sticky tongue. He didn't ask though, not wanting to draw too much attention.

Odie had made his way directly, purposefully to the largest enclosure, at the back of the building. The snake inside was large and slick. He could see its muscles slowly tighten as it slid around a hanging branch, enough muscles and enough snake to have completely wrapped itself around and over his father, crushing the air out of him before swallowing him whole, Odie imagined. That's what he would do if he were a snake. This snake though was doing nothing, and his father and mother were at the back of the exhibit with his stupid brother and his brother's stupid friend.

Odie stared at the snake, wishing it would move. Wishing it would spill like black tar water across the floor of the cool, dark room and swallow up all of these people, swallow them while they were tired from the hot day and cowed by their fear into silent stillness. He wanted them all gone. He wanted them all swallowed away before they returned to the bright outside day and ruined everything all over again. He wanted them gone. He wanted to be the snake. He wanted to make them gone.

And he knew that he could be the snake.

“What's that?”

It was the boy who had come with them in the car, riding in what was normally Odie's seat so that he could sit next to Odie's stupid brother and forcing Odie to sit in the very back where no one ever sat, because it was stupid. Odie ignored him. He was thinking much more pleasant thoughts, of crawling through over the cool, dark tiles.

“What kind of snake is it? Does it say?”

The boy wouldn't be quiet and still like all things should be. The rocks were still. The branch was still. This boy should be still but he was talking. He was talking, but Odie was a snake.

The boy tapped the glass. “I think he's asleep... I mean, if it were awake it would be moving right? Hey! Hey, Snake!”

And the tapping, plunking and hollow in the dark room was an affront. It pounded against Odie's eyes, and he felt himself not free as he has presumed but trapped, like this animal was trapped. He could wander around the house where he wanted to go and wander through the neighborhood in the dusky grey of twilight, and he could hide, as many of the lizards here were hiding, but he felt it now. Their eyes were all on him, the neighbor's eyes, his father's eyes, his mother's eyes. He, the snake, was powerful and strong, and although the walls of his cage were clear glass they were still walls that allowed these lesser objects to gawk at his ferocity when he just wanted them to leave him alone.

His hands were tightening around the branch. His muscles were flexing in their coils, beneath cool, dark scales

Something was screaming.

It wasn't Odie. Snakes never screamed. And it wasn't the branch either, the stupid, pointless branch, with its red hair and its stupid freckles that no one remembered, not Odie or Odie's mother or even Odie's stupid father who was always in the way. Odie thought about wrapping his coils around his father and smiled as he constricted tighter.

No one had seen how it had happened.

Mr. Wilson was still at the front of the exhibit, watching a bearded dragon with his oldest son. Mrs. Wilson had just noticed that not only was their youngest missing but that that other boy was gone too. She had been wondering how she could contrive to subtly get his name again without letting anyone else know that she'd forgotten when she heard the scream.

Odie was on top of him. His hands were wrapped around the older boy's neck, and he was pinning him to the floor. Odie was two years younger and a full head taller than his brother, and the little red-haired boy was slighter even than him. Odie was staring down at the boy with a fixed intensity as his face turned blue. When the little girl, who was only a yard away with her mother, started screaming, he didn't move his eyes away from the boy's face, but he did start working his arms and shoulders to rhythmically beat the smaller boy's head against the tiled floor.

The moment of shock that overtook the rest of the bystanders did not impede Mrs. Wilson. Knowing that if she was not the first to intervene that others, who did not love her nephew, would do it for her, she surged forward to kneel behind him and shove her arms behind his. He was too big now for a cradle-hold, but she had prepared for the day that he might need to be held to keep from hurting himself, even if she had thought it wouldn't come this soon. Her hands slid behind his back, crossing so that each hand could grip the opposite forearm. She threw her weight backwards, yanking Odie's hands away from the boy and pulling them both onto their backs. She wrapped her legs over her nephew's legs and angled her face away to keep him from butting his head back, as she feared he might. He wasn't going to though. He didn't put up any struggle. This was his mother, and once he had known that it was her behind him, he had relaxed his grip on the boy beneath him. He relaxed against her, knowing that somehow, even though they had come from different worlds, even though she had brought him into her home from some other, distant place, that they were the same. He wouldn't hurt her.

An ambulance was called for the boy, who didn't seem materially injured but who everyone knew, and key people voiced, should be checked out just to be safe.

Odie had ruined his brother's birthday.

Laying in the back of an ambulance, which Mrs. Wilson had insisted be sent for to take her 'son' who was 'clearly having some kind of nervous break and needed medical attention' to the hospital as well, Odie had some time to think. He couldn't be sure what time it was or when he would be going home. He had been strapped down, much as he saw his brother's friend being strapped down, so he couldn't have a good wander to think it over.

He'd lived for ten years with his adoptive parents. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson had been good to him since his real parents had disappeared, and he really did love Mrs. Wilson as his mother. He didn't see her like he'd started to see other people, as pieces of very annoying furniture. She was like him, if not completely than at least to some degree. Sometimes he didn't think of her as his mother though. Sometimes, alone in his thoughts, he called her what he heard his 'father' call her. Penny. Odie loved Penny. Penny was the only person who had ever tried to watch out for him, and he regretted, on some level, that she had made her feel upset.

Odie sometimes had dreams where Penny would wake him up in the middle of the night to leave the confining, bright space inside their awful house in the suburbs, but by now he knew that this was unlikely to happen. Whatever there was inside of her that Odie felt he knew as he knew himself, she was also one of the things that made the house so bright and unpleasant. Even if she maintained dark corners of the house, even as she liked it cool and quiet as he did, she was one of the glass walls in his enclosure. He was going to have to accept that eventually.

He felt the same sympathetic twinge at the base of his spine at other times too though. Sometimes he felt it in public, bright places, like the supermarket, but the light in those places shut the feeling out before he could examine and define it.

Odie wanted to be away from the awful, bright house and from his awful, bright family, but he wasn't ready to leave his mother behind.

He supposed he would just have to try harder.

Except that Odie didn't really believe that any amount of trying would fix this.

That just wasn't how his life worked.

They waited for hours in the hospital. The men who had come with the ambulances originally had tried to get Odie's mother to accompany them in her own car, but she knew better than to let her boy out of her sight for even one moment now that the authorities were involved. She had been straightforward and unbending in her advocacy, and they had been on the highway with the sirens on before even one policeman made it to the scene. She wouldn't be able to keep Odie completely away from them. She might lose him. She'd known that was a possibility ever since she'd found that dead cat at the base of the neighbor's garden. Odie was family though, and the notion of family, especially family unified against some outside authority, was something that had been driven so deep into her bones that she barely felt when it was working on her.

Odie was glad that they had left the zoo. He was glad that his mother was with him in the ambulance. He was not glad to be strapped to a table or to hear the sirens, and he wanted to be at the hospital quickly so that he could get this over with and go home to his spot behind the couch. He'd had a long day of being a snake, and he needed some alone time to mull it over. Maybe his mother would make him some hot chocolate. Maybe she would put some little marshmallows in it. Maybe he could show her his favorite spot behind the couch. She had handled things well today, and Odie took it as a good sign that she, and not his father or stupid brother, was there with him.

There was no escaping the light and noise though, not even after they got to the hospital.

Odie had spoken to a nurse when they arrived, and then Odie had been sat with her in a room with many other people. His mother hadn't wanted to talk to him about what happened, which was good. She looked upset, like when she'd found the stupid cat at the bottom of the garden. Odie told her that he didn't do it, but she knew that he was lying. That was when he knew that she could see him and that she wasn't like the others in the house. She wasn't exactly like Odie either though, because instead of calmly discussing the manner in which Odie had disembodied the various limbs of the creature, she had begun to have a very unpleasant conversation with him about why he'd done it and where he'd gotten the cat and how he should never do any such thing ever ever ever again. It had been awful, and he hadn't repeated the stunt. Other things he had done, yes, but not dismantling a cat. That was, for some reason, off limits.

Odie had begun to think that perhaps being a snake was also off limits. He didn't want to have another talk with his mother. He didn't want to look into her eyes and know that she was going to cry once he was gone. If she had yelled at him he could've tuned it all out, but her voice crept in under everything. It was Odie's least favorite thing about her but also what he respected most. He had stopped yelling once he realized that. He hadn't yelled anymore at all, like some others his age did. He was always quiet, even when he was angry. Even when he used his shouting words, he kept his voice soft. He didn't quite have the hang of it yet, but he thought he might.

His mother had finished a stack of paperwork that they had been asked to do. It was good. Odie didn't like this room. It wasn't as bad as the big room that they had sat in when Odie had broken his arm a year ago, just to see what it would feel like in case he ever wanted to do it to someone else. There were less people here. Still, it was bright and loud, and Odie wanted to go home.

The nurse went with Odie into a back room, and Odie remembered what his mother had told him that first time.

“Don't tell them what you're thinking,” she had whispered into his ear in her voice that was quiet but also firmer than usual, another thing he wanted to learn how to do. “Don't tell them where your brain goes. Don't tell them why you do these things. Don't tell them about the ways you scare people. If you tell them, they will take you away and won't let me see you anymore.”

Mrs. Wilson was thinking of that day too, and of those words that she had tried to impart to her nephew. She had hated saying those things. She sounded like one of her aunties had the first time she had been taken to be examined by child protective services. Of course, in that case the insanity that she had been meant to hide had been that of her parents, but the principle was the same. You keep it in the family. You settle things at home. We don't need someone taking the children away to a cleaner home and taking the grown-ups away to a penal facility.

“If they ask you what you did, what anyone did, just say that you don't remember,” she had told him. “If they find out what you did, don't deny it, just stick with not remembering anything about it. If they ask you why you did something, say that you don't know. If they ask you to give any answers for anything, to make any decisions, ask for your mommy. Say it like that. 'I want my mommy.'”

Mrs. Wilson felt heavy disgust in the pit of her stomach even as she hoped that Odie would remember his lines this go-around. They hadn't needed to do the whole song and dance last time, but there would undoubtedly be questions after an assault like this. She wouldn't be able to take him home and protect him and hope that he outgrew this sort of behavior like so many of her cousins had. She was going to have to trust in the instructions she'd tried to give him and to take the best she could get for him.

She'd done the best she could by both of her children. There was no escaping the creative cruelty that had nested inside of Odie, but she had accepted that as long as the boys didn't spend too much time together it was manageable. She had prepared to send David away to school somewhere else if need be, knowing that he would adjust on his own. It was what one did when there was a child who had more needs than others in the brood. David had initially gone away to camps and had many outdoor activities arranged for him over every school holiday, but when Odie had taken to spending his time wandering around on his own that had become less of an issue. She didn't know what she was going to do when they caught up to each other in high school. Things hadn't gotten out of hand until David was already in middle school, since she had opted to keep Odie in kindergarten a year longer than was strictly necessary. It had been her husband's idea, and at the time had seemed to be a good one. When Odie started growing so quickly, much faster than even others his own age, she'd wondered if it had been a bad choice. Putting him there, making him so much larger and more powerful than his classmates, had made him something of an apex predator in the end. There was no way of telling really, and in the meantime, David had a place where he could laugh easily without worrying about his “little brother” bothering him and his friends. After this time though, Mrs. Wilson didn't know how much safety there would be, even if Odie never attended school with David again. How could they keep him from being known as the boy with the psycho brother. How could he overcome his best friend being outright attacked on his birthday outing.

Mrs. Wilson didn't know.

The nurse was talking to Odie, who had asked if his 'mommy' could stay in the room with him. That was good. He was following the script. I don't know. I don't remember. I don't know. I don't remember. I want to stay with my mommy.

Over the course of the hospital ordeal they were going to wind up talking to three different nurses, all of whom would get nothing but the same. In addition they would draw blood, which Odie would fight until his mother held his arm still. They would talk to doctors, who would get nothing more out of Odie than the nurses and sometimes less considering Odie's distaste for most men. A chart would be passed from hand to hand, and it would be dark before they would see any resolution to their situation.

Mrs. Wilson's mother had once tried to outrun something like this. It had been a collector of some sort. Mrs. Wilson, then Penelope, had been too preoccupied with the day to day struggle of living to notice what the particulars were, at least until it was too late. The envelopes that had been sent to their house had been thick, white, and heavy, with her mother's name written in angry type over the front. They sported words like “urgent” that made her squirm. Her mother hadn't bothered much with collectors, but something about this had made her shake.

Penelope had tried to read one of the letters, and her mother had screamed at her then, slapping it out of her hands, in more agitation than Penelope had ever seen her in before or since. When she saw that sort of letter come to the door again, she grabbed Circe and left the room. They could learn enough about it outside of the range of fire.

At first they had tried to ignore it. Penelope's aunties had tried to have talks about whatever it was, but it had been to no avail. The best that came out of it was that Penelope, Circe, and their mother had gone to spend some time in their auntie's spare room.

The family had lots of other rooms in their houses, and mostly different families would live together , sometime with more than one family in a single room if times were tight but often letting them out to little cousins or nephews, brothers or sisters, elderly parents or new mothers who needed a place to hide away.

No matter where they went, everything was mostly broken. There were televisions and computers that were older even than the ones that Penelope used at school. There were toys, all dated and handled by many hands before they got to Penelope. There were even usually spare sets of clothes, in case someone had had to move quickly, and if there weren't any of those some could always be acquired. It was never nice, but Penelope had thought that none of them were nice enough to deserve nice things anyway.

This auntie's house had been rather similar, but she had also had something that many of the other houses didn't, books. They were worn and old but obviously cared for, and for a little while Penelope had been happy.

Circe had thrown a fit. She'd screamed and yelled and kicked their mother and their auntie. She'd begged for her daddy back, but after a while she'd worn herself down into a sullen sort of acceptance.

That had been just in time for another letter to arrive.

Her mother had cried. They had heard it in the spare bedroom. They had heard questions, and in turn they had had questions. Who had sent that letter? How had they known to find them at their auntie's house? What did they want?

They had moved around from house to house, and everywhere the letters found them. They sent them to every home. They sent them to her mother's work. They sent them to the girls' school, and her mother looked more and more sad and anxious and worn down each time, like Circe after a tantrum.

They had gone to stay with family out of town, and for a while it had gotten better, but it never lasted. By the time they moved into the smoky motel her mother seemed like she was only half alive. She'd stopped getting out of bed and generally refused to eat. It had been two years since the ordeal had started.

It was going to be their birthday soon, Penelope and Circe, born on the same day two years apart, They had sat together in the dark, dirty motel room while their mother slept, and Penelope had stroked Circe's hair, and watched the clock turn from 11:59 to midnight, listened as a heavy hand fell upon the door. Penelope was 15 then and Circe 13 years old.