“No!” I practically screamed it. “I mean … let’s go to my room. We need to talk.”

“I’ll leap onto their beds and walk on their heads. It will be amusing.”

“No,” I said. “You will not walk on anyone’s head.”

Crenshaw reached for the doorknob. His paw slipped off when he tried to turn it. “Would you mind?” he said.

I grabbed the knob. “Listen,” I said. “I need to know something. Can everybody see you? Or just me?”

Crenshaw chewed on one of his nails. It was pale and pink, sharp as a new moon sliver. “I can’t say for sure, Jackson. I’m a bit out of practice.”

“Out of practice doing what?”

“Being your friend.” He moved to another nail. “Theoretically, only you can see me. But when an imaginary friend is left to his own devices, alone and forgotten … who knows?” His voice trailed off. He made a pouty face, far better than anything Robin could pull off. “It’s been a long time since you left me behind. Perhaps things have changed. Perhaps the fabric of the universe has unraveled just a tad.”

“Well, what if you are visible? I can’t let you just walk down the hall to my room. What if my dad wakes up to get a snack? What if Robin has to go to the bathroom?”

“She doesn’t have a litter box in her room?”

“No. She does not have a litter box in her room.” I pointed to the toilet.

“Ah, yes. It’s all coming back to me now.”

“Look, we’re going to my room. Be quiet. And if anybody comes out, just, I don’t know, freeze. Pretend you’re a stuffed animal.”

“Stuffed?” He sounded offended. “I beg your pardon?”

“Just do what I say.”

The hallway was dark, except for the bathroom light spilling onto the carpet like melted butter. Crenshaw moved silently, for such a big guy. That’s why cats are amazing hunters.

I heard a soft creak behind me.

Robin stepped out of her bedroom.

I jerked my head to check on Crenshaw.

He froze in place. His mouth was open and his teeth were bared, like one of those dusty, dead animals on display at a natural-history museum.

“Jacks?” said Robin in a slurry voice. “Who were you talking to?”

15

“Uh … Aretha,” I said. “I was talking to Aretha.”

I hated lying. But it wasn’t like I had a choice.

Robin yawned. “Were you giving her a bath?”

“Yeah.”

I looked back and forth, forth and back.

Sister.

Imaginary friend.

Sister.

Imaginary friend.

Aretha ran over to nuzzle Robin’s hand.

“Aretha’s not wet,” Robin said.

“I used the hair dryer on her.”

“She hates the hair dryer.” Robin kissed the top of Aretha’s head. “Don’t you, baby?”

Robin didn’t seem to see Crenshaw. Maybe because it was pretty dark in the hallway. Or maybe because he was invisible.

Or maybe because none of this was really happening.

“She smells the same,” Robin observed. “Nice and doggy.”

I glanced at Crenshaw. He rolled his eyes.

“Oh well,” Robin said, yawning. “I’m going back to bed. Night, Jacks. Love you.”

“Night, Robin,” I said. “Love you, too.”

As soon as her bedroom door closed, we retreated to my room. Crenshaw leaped onto my mattress as if he owned it. When Aretha tried to join him, he growled. It wasn’t very convincing.

“I need to understand what’s happening.” I slumped against the wall. “Am I going crazy?”

Crenshaw’s tail rose and fell, making lazy Ss in the air. “No, you most certainly are not.” He licked a paw. “By the way, at the risk of repeating myself, how about those purple jelly beans?”

When I didn’t answer, he settled into a doughnut shape, tail wrapped around himself, and closed his eyes. He purred the way my dad snores, like a motorboat with engine problems.

I stared at him, a huge, damp, bubble bath–taking cat.

There’s always a logical explanation, I told myself. And a part of me, the scientist part of me, really wanted to figure out what was going on.

Still, a much bigger part of me felt certain that I needed this hallucination—this dream—this thing—to disappear. Later, when Crenshaw was safely out of my house, not to mention my brain, I could think about what all this meant.

A soft knock on my door told me Robin was back. She always knocks the beginning of “Wheels on the Bus”: Tap-tap-ta-ta-tap.

“Jackson?”

“Please go to sleep, Robin.”

“I can’t sleep. I miss my trash can.”

“Your trash can?”

“Dad took my trash can to sell at the yard sale.”

“I’m pretty sure that was a mistake, Robin,” I said. “Nobody wants to buy your trash can.”

“It had blue bunnies on it.”

“We’ll get it out of the garage in the morning.”

Aretha made a move to sniff Crenshaw’s tail. He hissed.

I put my finger to my lips to shush him, but Robin didn’t seem to hear anything.

“Night, Robin,” I said. “See you in the morning.”

“Jackson?”

I rubbed my eyes and groaned, the way I’d seen my parents do more than once. “Now what?”

“Do you think I can get another bed someday?”

“Sure. Of course. Maybe even one with blue bunnies.”

“Jackson?”

“Yes?”

“My room is scary without my stuff in it. Could you come read me Lyle?”

I took a long, slow breath. “Sure. I’ll be right there.”

Robin sniffled. “I’ll just wait right here by your door. ’Kay?”

“Okay.” I shot a glance at Crenshaw. “Just give me a second, Robin. There’s something I really need to do.”

16

I went to my window and opened it. Carefully, I pulled out the screen. Our apartment was on the ground floor. A few feet below the window, a cushion of grass waited.

“Good-bye, Crenshaw,” I said.

He opened one eye a bit, like someone peeking from behind a shade. “But we were having such a lovely time.”

“Now,” I said. I put my hands on my hips to show I meant business.

“Jackson, be reasonable. I came all this way.”

“You have to go back to wherever you came from.”

Crenshaw opened his other eye. “But you need me here.”

“I don’t need you. I have enough to deal with already.”

With a great show of effort, Crenshaw sat up. He stretched, easing his back into an upside-down U. “I don’t think you understand what’s going on here, Jackson,” he said. “Imaginary friends don’t come of their own volition. We are invited. We stay as long as we’re needed. And then, and only then, do we leave.”

“Well, I sure didn’t invite you.”

Crenshaw sent me a doubtful look. His long, whiskery brows moved like strings on a marionette.

I took a step closer. “If you won’t go, I’ll make you go.”

I put my arms around his waist and yanked. It was like hugging a lion. That cat weighed a ton.

Crenshaw dug his claws deep into the quilt my great-aunt Trudy made when I was a baby. I gave up and let go.

“Look,” Crenshaw said as he extracted his claws from my quilt, “I can’t go until I help you. I don’t make the rules.”

“Then who does?”

Crenshaw stared at me with eyes like green marbles. He put his two front paws on my shoulders. He smelled like soapsuds and catnip and the ocean at night.

“You do, Jackson,” he said. “You make the rules.”

A foghorn bleated in the distance. I pointed to the windowsill. “I don’t need anyone’s help. And I sure don’t need an imaginary friend. I’m not a little kid anymore.”

“Balderdash. Is this because I hissed at that odorous dog?”

“No.”

“Could we at least wait till morning? There’s a chill in the air, and I just took a bubble bath.”

“No.”

Tap-tap-ta-ta-tap. “Jacks? It’s lonely in this hallway.”

“Coming, Robin,” I called.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a frog hop onto the windowsill. He gave a tiny, nervous croak.

“We have a visitor,” I said, pointing. Maybe if I distracted Crenshaw he’d move on. “Did you know some frogs can leap so far it’d be like a human jumping the length of a football field? They’re amazing jumpers.”