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Natty was “special,” at the gym, and I had inadvertently confirmed it.
    I realized then that she hadn’t put the nail through herself just because she was a nut bag. She’d had an agenda. She’d watched me run out of the gym with Natty as he seized and shook, and she’d wanted to go to the hospital, because where else would I be taking him? She’d caused her own injury so her mother would take her along. So she could follow us.
    No, worse. Follow Natty. God, she must have done it immediately, seconds after Natty seized, to get there so soon after us.
    There was nothing I could say to her now that wouldn’t make things worse. I slid down the ladder, jumping the last rungs to land on my shaking legs. My heart was pounding, but across the park, Walcott and Natty sat side by side on top of the picnic table, blessedly regular and whole and dear in the fresh morning sun. Walcott’s long, long legs folded like jackknives to rest on the bench. Beside him, Natty’s legs were so short that his feet swung free in their blue Keds. Walcott thumbed at his phone, probably texting with CeeCee, because Natty had of course taken over the iPad. Walcott looked up, smiling, as I hurried to them, but his face changed when he saw mine.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “We’re going,” I told him.
    But now he was looking past me, over my shoulder. I turned and saw Hilde Fleming worming on her belly through the clear plastic tunnel that connected the forts.
    “What the what is that?” Walcott said, as she disappeared into the second one. A few seconds later, she sailed slowly down the slide, her purse across her shoulder, legs together in front of her, primly holding her skirt down. She landed lightly and stood, brushing at herself. Then she waved at us, all cheery with the bandaged hand, the one I knew had a hole clean through it. She turned and trotted off the other way, toward the diner, and disappeared inside it.
    “Is that the weird kid from the blood drive?” Walcott asked, his voice rising. “What the hell just happened?”
    “Walcott said hell ,” Natty reported, not looking up from his game.
    I had no idea how to begin to answer. I’d been so relieved in the emergency room when Natty came back to himself that I’d forgotten her. I’d ignored the whole encounter, assuming we’d never see her again. Big mistake.
    Natty didn’t need to worry about Hilde, though. He didn’t seem to be fretting about the encounter in the playhouse or fixating on the sprig of super-short hair chickening up at the back of his head. I wanted to keep it that way. I pulled Walcott up off the table and walked him a few feet away, out of earshot.
    I spoke in a fast, low whisper. “She’s not right. She’s so not right. At the gym, remember, her mother was telling us that she’s some kind of genius? But I think it’s going wrong in there. In her head, it’s going very wrong. She has a thing about Natty, and I don’t think she’s safe. She thinks she’s magic or something, and she thinks my kid is like her. But he isn’t. He’s not like her. Natty is just regular.”
    Natty looked up, though I knew he couldn’t have heard me.
    “Done!” he said.
    He turned the iPad to show us, and I saw he hadn’t been playing with Dinosaurs! It was the Rubik’s Cube app that had been tormenting Walcott for days. Natty’d had it less than ten minutes, but on the screen, fireworks were going off on the black background, and the cube itself spun in a beam of white light.
    I shook my head no, because it wasn’t possible. He was three. No way was it possible. And yet he grinned at me so proudly, lofting the iPad where the cube spun, finished and whole, each side a smooth plane of a single color.

 
    Chapter 4
    W alcott and me, we did what we should have done the second Hilde Fleming got freaky with a nail at the blood drive: We went and told on her to all our mothers.
    Mimmy first. I had Walcott keep Natty occupied with Legos in the den because my kid had