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Kate was slim with pale blue eyes and faint freckles. While away she’d cut her long blond hair back to a short, almost boyish length. It gave her an entirely different look, one that would take Jack some getting used to.

“‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’” Dad said.

Jack’s father and Kate shared the same blue eyes. His hair was thinning. He sipped from a can of Carling Black Label beer.

“They really aren’t, Dad,” Kate said. “Created equal, I mean. Some are mentally retarded or physically defective from the get-go.”

“I’m well aware of that, but that’s not the point. This Lodge fellow is talking about people who believe they’re entitled to special benefits and privileges and considerations simply because they are who they are. Congress is full of them.”

“But they must think you’re entitled too,” Jack said. “I mean, the Lodge invited you to join, right?”

Dad nodded. “Yeah, they did. But something about the place and the people…” He shook his head. “I don’t know. It didn’t smell right.”

“Smell?”

He smiled. “In a figurative sense, not…”

“Olfactory,” Kate said.

“Right. Anyway, there was this smug undertone running through everything. Rubbed me the wrong way.”

“Mister Drexler showed me this glob of stuff that changed color when I held it.”

“Turned blue, right?” his father said.

Jack hadn’t expected that.

“How did you know?”

“Haskins—you know, the freeholder who died—was a VFW member and he brought something like that to one of the meetings and passed it around. Mostly nothing happened till it got to me and then it turned dark blue.”

“Me too!”

“Come to think of it, shortly after that I was invited to join the Lodge.”

“Do you think it’s some kind of test?”

Dad frowned. “Test of what?”

Jack couldn’t imagine.

“I guess it’s secret. You said you blew the Lodge off because ‘Too many secrets can wear you down,’ remember?”

Dad rubbed his jaw. “Can’t say as I do.”

Jack waggled his eyebrows, Groucho style. “What other secrets do you have?”

Dad gave him a look, then turned to Kate. “You know, Kate, I think I’m getting to like your hair short.”

Talk about changing the subject!

“Well, thanks, Dad,” she said. “It was kind of necessary, what with my labs and all. Especially the cadaver lab. I couldn’t get the formaldehyde smell out of all that hair.”

Jack straightened in his seat. “Cadaver? As in dead body?”

Kate nodded. “Four students to a body. We’re dissecting it.”

“Kate, really,” Mom said. “At the dinner table?”

“Can I come see? Have you cut it open?”

“Just the back of the neck so far. We—”

Mom tapped her plate with her fork. “I insist we talk about something else. Please.”

“Okay,” Dad said, focusing on Jack, “let’s get back to this job at the Lodge. You sure you’re not taking on too much? The store, the other lawns … I don’t want your grades to suffer.”

Jack shrugged. “So far the teachers are taking it slow and the work’s pretty easy. By the time it gets harder, I’ll be freed up. Mister Rosen says after Halloween he won’t need me anymore till spring, and once we get a good frost, I’ll have nothing to mow.”

“Got it all worked out, eh?” Dad said, nodding.

Jack sensed his approval and it warmed him.

He grinned. “Pretty much.”

Except how to get past Toliver’s lock.

He suddenly realized that what he’d done to Toliver had made him, for a short time and in a very limited sense, a Mover.

Then again, no. Not according to Mr. Drexler’s meaning. Everything that had happened around Toliver’s locker had originated with Jack, not from some secret knowledge someone said he was entitled to.

Jack said, “Maybe some days you’re a Mover, and maybe some days you’re one of the Moved.”

“Why be either?” Kate said.

Jack looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“Why not just opt out and refuse to be part of the game? Step aside and play your own game with your own rules, and screw the rest.”

Mom frowned. “Kate!”

Jack sat there, stunned as epiphanies exploded in his brain like a fireworks finale. Neither a Moved nor a Mover be