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“Okay, where’s that?”

“Just use a pencil,” Natalie said, looking up.

“Shhhhh,” Vickie scolded. “You can’t talk.”

Natalie closed her eyes again and opened her mouth.

I reached over to the table beside the sofa and grabbed a pen. “Will this work?”

“Yeah,” Vickie said.

I placed it in Natalie’s mouth and she clamped down on it.

“Okay, Nurse. Are we ready?”

“Yes, Doctor,” I said.

Vickie turned the dial on the machine. “I’m now giving you one million volts.”

Natalie convulsed, her whole body trembling. She opened her eyes and rolled them back in her head. She screamed over the pen.

Vickie laughed. “That’s good, that’s good.” The wire under Natalie’s neck slipped out and Vickie tucked it back in. “Nurse, increase the voltage,” she said.

I reached over and turned the dial. “Okay, it’s all the way up,” I said.

Natalie shook violently.

“She’s repressing a memory,” Vickie said. “We need to go deep into her subconscious mind.”

Natalie screamed louder and the pen flew out. She was shaking with such force that I was worried she’d really hurt herself.

Poo Bear burst into tears and ran from the room.

Natalie stopped.

Vickie laughed.

Poo Bear disappeared down the hall, his cries of terror growing fainter as he ran deeper into the house.

“Woops,” Natalie said. She was sweating and red-faced.

“We better get him,” Vickie said.

They ran out of the room, chasing after Poo.

I glanced at the TV, a commercial for Herbal Essence. And then I ran after them.

Poo Bear was squatting beneath the grand piano in the living room. His eyes were squeezed closed. He was shitting.

I froze.

Vickie and Natalie sat on the sofa across from the piano. They sat side by side, hands in their laps, like they were watching him do scales.

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”

Poo Bear pinched a turd out on the bright blue wall-to-wall carpeting and Vickie and Natalie clapped.

“Way to go, Poo,” Vickie cheered.

Natalie giggled. She slapped her knees.

Poo Bear opened his eyes and looked at me. He grinned with his grape jelly mouth. “Poo can poo,” he said.

I looked at Vickie and Natalie. “Have you seen my mother?”

“She’s in the kitchen,” Natalie said. I started to leave, but she added warningly, “With my dad.”

“Well, I just have to ask her one thing, really quick.”

She watched as Poo brought his finger to his nose and sniffed.

I backed out of the room and walked down the hall. The old Victorian had many rooms and many hallways; two stairways and so many doors that it was easy to get lost. But the kitchen was easy—just straight back at the end of the house.

My mother was sitting at the kitchen table, which was piled high with dirty dishes caked with food. She was smoking a cigarette.

“Mom?”

She turned to me, opening her arms. “Augusten.”

I hugged her. I loved her smell, Chanel No. 5 and nicotine. “How much longer are we gonna stay? I wanna go home.”

She hugged me closer and stroked the back of my head with her hand.

I pulled away. “Are we gonna go soon?”

She picked her cigarette from the rim of a plate on the table and sucked the smoke into her lungs. When she spoke, her words came out smoking. “Dr. Finch is saving our lives, Augusten. It’s important that we be here now.”

In the distance, I heard Poo Bear laugh.

She took another drag from her cigarette, then plopped it into what was left of a glass of milk. “I know this is all new for you and it’s very confusing. But this is a safe place. This is where we need to be. Right here in the doctor’s own home, with his family.”

Her eyes looked different. Wider, somehow. Not her own. They scared me. So did the roaches scrambling across the table, over the dishes, up the arm of a spatula.

“Have you been playing with the doctor’s daughters? With Natalie and Vickie?”

“I guess.”

“And have you been having a good time?”

“No, I wanna leave.” The doctor’s house was not at all what I had expected. It was weird and awful and fascinating and confusing and I wanted to go home to the country and play with a tree.

A toilet flushed down the narrow hallway that