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stormed down the aisle, belly bouncing under her blue sweater vest, face bright red under a sheath of dyed blonde hair. The other kids stopped chanting, but murmured excitedly, jostling each other, vying for a good view.
    “Up,” she said.
    Rob and Finn got up.
    “You’re sitting up front the rest of the way. C’mon. Rob   ? Rob Chappell   ? I know your mother. Come on now, right now, and she won’t hear a word about this.”
    Among cat-calls and jeers they followed her to the front. Finn spared a glance back at the kid. A trickle of blood ran down the side of his face from under the radio. When the bus stopped, Finn and Rob were among the first to exit. Rob hustled off to class, but Finn waited. He wanted to look at the kid’s radio, to see if that dial sat down in the low numbers, to brace the kid and steal his damned radio and listen for himself. But the kid must have slipped by him somehow. Finn never saw him get off the bus.
    ***
    That evening, Finn and his father sat across from each other in the dimly lit dining room, eating dinner in silence. Tom Groomer demanded that Finn have dinner with him every weeknight, though Finn could not fathom why, as the television was always on, and they barely spoke to one another. Finn was volatile, agitated. He had searched for the kid all day, looked for him in the halls between classes, in the cafeteria. He was nowhere to be found. He didn’t even show up for the bus home.
    “Miss O’Connell says Leeds has more missing kids than any Massachusetts city of this size and population count,” Finn said, trying to force eye contact.
    Tom Groomer looked at a spot about a foot over Finn’s head. He tore off a piece of garlic bread and his brow furrowed as he dabbed the bread in sauce. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I’ve been ten years on the force, I know cops in every city in Christendom. Miss O’Connell should stick to Physics.”
    “Do you know three kids were pulled out of school last year so their parents could home-school them   ? And they were never heard from again.”
    His father burst into derisive laughter. “Never heard from again   !”
    “It’s true. Kelly Kitter.”
    “Finny, I know the Kitters. Do you want me to call Carol right now   ? Kelly left school, what, junior year   ? Carol home-schooled her, and she got accepted at Oberlin College. Full ride, housing and all. As far as I know, that’s where she is right now. Now, that’s the last I want to hear of it.”
    Finn nodded, jabbed his fork at a piece of ravioli, shoving it around the plate. Kelly’s best friend Margot hadn’t seen nor heard from Kelly since the day her mom pulled her out of school. When she called, Mrs. Kitter said Kelly had gone out. Or was studying. Or asleep. Asleep at seven in the evening   ! Kelly hadn’t just moved to Ohio without calling Margot, without saying goodbye. Tom Groomer stared blankly at the television, where the long smoke trail from the space shuttle explosion billowed across the screen for the umpteenth time. He was lying, Finn decided. His father was lying to his face.
    ***
    Finn dreamed that night, nightmares strung together like grotesque garland, an anthology of abominations. He would remember only one, the last, ultimately interrupted by the insistent screech of the clock radio alarm. He stood in the midst of a vast, noisy carnival under a sky of dirt. Rocks tumbled above, in defiance of gravity, making a noise like thunder. Lightning spiked down from the dirt, lightning made of long, wriggling glowworms. A mad barker bellowed inanities into a megaphone from a warped seat at the apex of the rusted out Ferris Wheel, the voice echoing throughout the fairgrounds. The air smelled of popcorn, charred meat, wet animal fur. Finn walked over to a metal gate, beyond which a colorful Chair-O-Plane spun, its angled column lined with lights, cadavers lolling in the basket chairs as they swung sidelong through the fragrant fry-o-later