“I don’t want to play with baby toys,” he said, picking at a loose thread in the rug. “When are we going home?”
That smile, if possible, tightened further. She was one wrong move from shattering. “Just listen to Doctor Maxwell, okay? He’ll take care of you.”
He sighed. “Okay.”
She escaped and closed the door behind her. It would be some time before he’d realize that was the last time he would ever see her.
There was a large, rectangular mirror set into one wall. Strange for a nursery. He stood, padding over to the toy box and rummaging around. None of the toys interested him, but there in the bottom, he found a screw that had come loose from the lid. It was almost as long as his finger, and he picked it up curiously, carrying it back over to the rug and sitting down with it. He twirled it between his fingers, feeling the thin, sharp thread that spiraled down its length.
He counted absently while he waited. How long would it take her to return this time? He knew there were sixty seconds in a minute, so he counted to sixty and then pricked his thumb. One minute. At two minutes, he pricked his index finger. Then his middle finger. Ring finger. Pinky. The pain reminded him of the Fourth of July, before his mom started making him stay in his room. They’d gotten sparklers and lit them in the backyard. One of the sparks had landed on the back of his hand. It felt like a sparkler had been lit behind his eyes, colorful and hot and exciting.
He pricked his right thumb, and the door opened. A grownup in a white lab coat—a dark-skinned man with thin glasses and a clipboard in hand—rushed into the room.
“Mister Morrow, please put that down,” he said calmly. “You’re hurting yourself.”
“I’m keeping time,” Isaac said, setting the screw aside.
“You’re bleeding.”
Isaac shrugged. “It’s just pain.”
“Pain hurts, doesn’t it?”
Isaac shrugged again.
Maxwell made a note on his clipboard. Ah, Isaac thought. He’s one ofthosekinds of doctors. The ones who made notes and then told him he wasdifferentthan other people. Usually his mom sat in on these meetings. Sometimes she cried after.
“Where’s Mom?” he asked, eyes darting to the door and back to the doctor.
“She’s talking to one of my colleagues right now. Do you know why she brought you here?”
“No. But you’re a doctor. She brought me here for another diag-a-sis.” He frowned, unsure of the word.
“Diagnosis,” the doctor corrected kindly.
Isaac nodded.
“And no. I’m going to evaluate you and see if you’d be a good fit for our special program.”
“What kind of program?”
“We’ll get to that. Your mother… she tells us that you’ve been killing animals. Can you talk to me about that? Why did you start?”
Isaac scowled. “I don’t want to talk about it. I screwed everything up. She looks at me funny now. She doesn’t kiss me goodnight anymore.”
“The first one was a dog, wasn’t it?”
“It bit me,” Isaac said defensively. “My ball rolled up to the fence next to it. I wasn’t going to reach through the fence and mess with the dog, but when I reached for my ball it snapped at me andits teeth went past the metal wires.” He looked down at the scar on the webbing of skin between his forefinger and thumb. “Mom had to take me to the hopsital?—”
“Hospital.”
“—and give me stitches and shots to fix it.”
“And then what?”
Isaac looked away, picking up the screw again to have something to focus on. The doctor inhaled as though to reprimand him, but when Isaac didn’t do more than hold it, he let it back out.
“Mom was complaining about a neighbor who put antifreeze on his back step so any strays who wandered up to his house would eat it and die. She keeps some in the garage for her car. All I did was pour some in a bowl and leave it by the fence. It’s not my fault if the stupid dog stuck its tongue through the fence and drank it.”
