The Buyer of Hearts

for Trevor on his 13^th birthday

When your life stops, there’s a good chance you’ll listen to the Buyer of Hearts. Don’t do it. Listen to my story instead.

My life stopped the first time when I got an email from my father that started off with “My dear Dominic.” My name is Dominic Melton all right, but usually dad starts his letters with: “Hey Dom!” I kind of froze right from the start, fearing that I was in for a real downer. It was worse than a downer. A lot worse. Dad said he was really sorry, but he was not coming back from his business trip this time. He said it broke his heart that he wouldn’t see me for a while, and maybe he won’t see me again, because he really loves me. Yea, right. He’s really heartbroken that he won’t see me grow up. There’s just this little detail that he has to move on with his life before it’s too late. Yea, right. With my thirteenth birthday just a few weeks away, I’m a big boy and ready to be the man of the house. I don’t need to have a papa around to help me celebrate my birthday. I’m old enough to move on with my own life, just like my dear old dad. Yea, right. Freeze a kid’s life and tell him to move on. Who is he kidding? Just as I hit the delete button to erase the email, I heard my mother scream. Her life was coming to a screeching halt, too. I wasted no time in erasing all the emails I’d ever gotten from the man who is my father. My next project was to trash every gift I’d ever gotten from him. Who wants to think of a jerk like him every time he picks up his iPod? By the time I flopped on my bed for the night, I’d used every bad word I knew over and over again.

When I say my life stopped, I mean my life stopped. Not only did my relationship with my dad stop, but so did my relationship with my mom. I couldn’t make myself go and talk to her about that email when it came in, and she didn’t come to me to talk about hers. The next morning at breakfast, I could hardly look at her face. You see, mom looks a lot like me. Maybe that’s why dad decided to ditch us both. It couldn’t stand seeing my refection in mom’s face when that the mild spice I usually saw in her eyes wasn’t there. Her long dark hair that flows down her back wasn’t brushed properly for the first time in history. Each day, a slight crease in my mom’s forehead got deeper until her face turned into a permanent frown. We didn’t manage to have a meaningful conversation about anything anymore. Mom watched television all the time when she wasn’t at work and she was at work a lot more than she used to be because we needed the money. I think she also stayed away because she didn’t like looking at my blank face if she showed up when I was around.

My friendships stopped, too. At school, I felt like a ghost walking the halls and everything around me looked like stills from a movie. One of the worst stills on the day after that email was the looks I could from Bruce Denton, John McDonald, Henry Pearson, and Winston Westerfield when I sat down with them at lunch day. They could see right away that something awful had happened and were afraid to find out what it was. Bruce asked me anyway, and I spit the news out. Bruce Denton’s plump, moonlike face kind of went blank. John McDonald cracked a couple of jokes that had nothing to do with anything. Henry Pearson, a thin kid with light-brown hair and a nervous look all the time pretty much looked the other way. Winston Westerfield, a blond kid with a girlish face, almost looked pleased about it. Right then, I thought I saw these friends edging away like I had some kind of disease they would catch if they got too close to me. It made me feel like a dead weight who could do nothing but hold everybody else down.

You wouldn’t think my life could stop when it had already stopped , but that’s what happened when my mother told me that I could no longer take piano lessons with Mr. Matecki. She had heard some rumors that he took certain “liberties” with some of the boys who studied with him. How absurd! I try not to be vain about my good looks, with my dark wavy hair complementing my pale, soft face, but it’s worth saying here that if Mr. Matecki was the type of guy who would make improper advances to boys, I would have been a likely target. Yes, sex has suddenly gotten interesting this past year—what do you expect of a boy closing in on his thirteenth birthday?—but sometimes I think we our minds get so filled up with sex that we can’t think about anything else, and then we nobody else can think of anything else but sex, either! The worst thing about this is that Mr. Matecki was the only person who was helping me cope with that jerk who split on me and my mom. The lines on his face and the look in his eyes are filled with the same delicate feeling I sense in Mozart’s music. That made me feel comfortable with talking to him about what my dad had done to my life. When my mom pulled the plug on my lessons, I yelled and screamed at her and defended Mr. Matecki’s innocence for days, but she was not about to re-start her life long enough to listen to me. Her snap judgment was inscribed in stone and that was that. Of course, Mom said I could get another piano teacher, but piano teachers like Mr. Matecki don’t grow on trees. My piano playing stopped along with the lessons. I waited for my mom to complain that my brilliant career as a concert pianist was going down the deepest tubes in the world, but her life had stopped too much for her to say anything.

Being a kid who dreams of being a Great Boy Detective, I did some asking around about these rumors about Mr. Matecki. I started with Winston Westerfield because I knew him better than the other kids who took lessons from him. When I asked him if Mr. Matecki had done anything improper to him, he shrugged his shoulders and said: “It doesn’t matter.” Winston looked so stiff and cold, like his own life was stopping, that for a few horrible hours, I thought maybe Mr. Matecki really had groped at Winston, or something. But when I asked around further, all the other kids all said that nothing had ever happened to them, and Mr. Matecki had never done or said anything to make them worry that anything like that ever would. Not even a kid who said Mr. Matecki is a bit wimpy said he’d had any problems. Another important clue I got from playing the part of a Great Boy Detective was that I found out that Mr. Matecki didn’t recommend Winston for a piano competition he wanted to be in. It probably didn’t help that I was recommended for it. With my investigation complete, I explained all my findings to my mom, but, like I said, her snap judgement was set in stone. In case you’re wondering, I withdrew from the piano competition. I wasn’t ready to re-start my life any more than my mom was.

About a week after my piano lessons stopped, Mr. Matecki was performing in a local concert. My mom didn’t want to go and she really didn’t want me to go, either, but we had the tickets and I insisted. She gave in and took me on the condition that we wouldn’t stay for the reception. I should have known better than to have gone to a concert after my life had stopped. Especially when I should have known that Mr. Matecki’s life had stopped, too. My heart sank when I saw a frown on Mr. Matecki’s face that looked just like the frown on my mom’s face. His performance of a Beethoven sonata was a huge disappointment with no real feeling in his playing at all. If I’d played like that during a lesson, he’d have lit a fire under me. Life stops, but music goes on, even when the heart is gone. I didn’t want to talk to Mr. Matecki after the concert anyway. The only thing that kept the concert from being a total loss was Peter Baum, a high school senior who is Mr. Matecki’s prize pupil. He played some pieces by Schubert beautifully. I did want to say something to Peter after the concert, but mom didn’t give me the chance.

My life stopped a third time when Bruce Denton’s mom was killed in a car accident. Even though he’d kind of edged away from me after my dad stopped my life, I felt sorry for him. I knew what it felt like to have someone slam on the breaks of your life. So I broke the quarantine the other guys put up around Bruce and spent some time with him. I even got excused from school on the morning of the funeral and stood at the graveside with my Bruce. He stood as straight and tall and frozen as a pillar of ice that the spring sun couldn’t melt. Bruce’s dad was the same way. Bruce’s kid sister, Mandy, tried to look the part of a solider, too, but she cried a little anyway. After we all threw some dirt into the grave and left, I had the feeling the Bruce wasn’t really moving at all. I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t feel like moving on with my own life, either. In a way, I envied Bruce. At least he had a funeral for his mom. I didn’t even get that with my dad.

I trust you can see how I might be tempted by the Buyer of Hearts after all that. And things were about to get worse.

* * *

A fog filled my mind the day my life stopped the first time, and the fog got thicker when my life stopped the second and third times. With all this mental fog, I might have been seeing ghosts around the school before I knew I was seeing them. Or, maybe it takes a critical mass of mental fog before you can see ghosts. Anyway, a few days after Bruce’s mom’s funeral, I was walking to school with Bruce, when I saw some ghosts for the first time. The weather was fitting for ghosts. The spring weather had turned cold and cloudy and the wind was throwing fistfuls of rain at us. Bruce’s hairdo looked something like a porcupine and his face was smeared with purple jelly, a couple of signs that his mom was no longer around to take care of him. Mandy, trailed behind us by about half a block. I wouldn’t have minded having her walk with us, but I knew Bruce didn’t like to be seen with a kid sister anywhere near the school so I didn’t say anything.

Bruce and I had almost gotten to the school when it happened. Now, maybe the weather was fitting for ghosts, but our school definitely is not. It’s one of these sprawling flat- top boxes that makes it a great place for putting your life on hold indefinitely, but it’s the last place you would expect to be haunted. Just as Bruce and I were walking through the flood of kids getting off the busses, Ethan Elway cut right in front of us. Ethan is tall, dark, and handsome. In fact, he’s the tallest boy in the school, and our best basketball player. He’s sure to be a real star on the high school team in a couple of years. He’s a straight A student, too. He does it all. He’s pretty noticeable even when he’s not cutting in front of you, which he does all the time, both on and off the basketball court. Just as Ethan was blocking my view of just about everything, I saw a pale, transparent image of Henry Pearson. Henry kind of frowned for a few seconds and I felt a stab of fear, Henry’s fear, as I thought my father was going to slap me. I mean his dad, not the man who walked out of my life. For a few weird seconds, it felt like I was Henry Pearson and I was feeling his fear of his dad. I was afraid I was seeing Henry’s ghost because he’d just been killed by his father in an act of domestic violence and I was startled enough to let out a yip.

“What’s the matter?” asked Bruce.

“Nothing.”

I could hardly tell Bruce I was looking at Henry’s ghost. Especially when I was pretty sure he hadn’t seen anything. That sort of thing is okay in a movie, but It’s not so cool in real life. I was starting to think I’d watched The Sixth Sense one time too many. Mandy had gotten pretty close behind us by this time. I glanced at her face, fat and cute as a pumpkin, for signs that she had seen any ghosts. There was something odd in her look, but she turned her face blank as soon as she caught me looking at her. Much to my relief, the image of Henry faded away and I could relax a little, but I had the feeling I was walking into a damp cellar underneath a haunted castle instead of a middle school in suburban America.

I was hoping that seeing Henry’s ghost was just a one-shot deal, but I was afraid it wasn’t. I found myself expecting to see a ghosts float out of the wall or drop down from the ceiling at any time. And they did. While struggling through the usual spaghetti of kids going from one class to another, I passed by the ghost of a boy I kind of wished was really dead. That’s not very nice of me, but Terry Kemp is a horrible bully and I’ve rescued more than one smaller kid from his clutches. A horrible flare of anger rushed through me as Terry’s ghost went by. What did he have to be angry about? He was the one hurting people. I sure was glad he was past me in a couple of seconds.

I didn’t have any time to recover from that fright before I ran into Henry Pearson’s ghost again. But this time, I didn’t walk through him; I bumped into a boy as solid as I was. Actually, with his pale face and hair more white than blond and eyes that looked like washed-out blue and white marbles, Henry always looks like a ghost.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Henry with a shrug.

I looked at Henry just long enough to see that he wore the same frown his ghost did, before he slipped in between some kids and was gone. You’d never know wee used to be friends. That little encounter told me that Henry was still alive, but it left me with some questions. Like, why was I seeing the ghost of a live person? Did it mean Henry going to die soon?

In English class, Ms. Dinwoodie was scowling at us worse than usual, and that’s saying something. The wrong side of the bed she was getting out of every morning was getting worse. Her class was pretty good when the year started, but then something went wrong in her life and it showed in her teaching. But much worse than the scowl on Ms. Dinwoodie’s face was seeing the ghost of Mr. Van Pelt, my history teacher, sitting on top of Ms. Dinwoodie’s purse. Now I love history, but Mr. Van Pelt managed to bore me stiffer than a starched two-by-four. Throughout the period, I heard the ghost of my history teacher saying“These kids hate history, these kids hate history” over and over again.

I was fretting about what history class with the real Mr. Van Pelt was going to be like when a ghost in the corner of the hallway, caught my attention. It was the ghost of Winston Westerfield. That was unnerving enough, but to make this fright a doozy, the real Winston Westerfield was standing right next to his ghost while he talked to Lyle Banks, a slimy snake of a kid if there ever was one. Lyle is a kid who dies his hair dark blue just to make sure you notice him. I thought the two deserved each other. It looked like they were making a deal, with each giving the other something small. Just as I passed by Lyle and the two Winstons on the way into Mr. Van Pelt’s room, I felt overwhelmed with hatred of Mr. Matecki for trashing my piano playing and with fear of what my parents would say next if I wasn’t the very best pianist in the world. As for Mr. Van Pelt’s class, he taught like a real dead man, in spite of his moving lips.

I was pretty frazzled by lunch time, and it didn’t help when I got to Bruce’s locker, only to see Mandy standing there. Worse, she looked like she was waiting for me more than she was waiting for Bruce.

“Dominic?”

“Yes.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yea, sure. Just don’t make me promise to answer your question.”

Just as Mandy opened her mouth to say what she wanted to say, Bruce cut in between us. His forehead was creased into a deep frown when he looked at Mandy and then at me. Taking the hint, Mandy promptly melted into the crowd of other students. Before I could say anything to Bruce, John McDonald flagged him down. That was odd. John had fallen off the edge of Bruce’s life as well as mine. But Bruce went off with John and that was that.

“Want to have lunch with me?”

The voice was so thin I almost didn’t hear it, and no wonder. It was Jeremiah Wilson slipping out from half a dozen kids. Jeremiah is one of those cowering shrimps with thick glasses and a rabbit’s face that I’ve had to rescue more than once from bullying kids like Terry Kemp.

“Is somebody after you?” I asked him.

“No,” Jeremiah answered, looking a bit surprised at the question.

The thing is, I’m willing to defend Jeremiah and any other kid from a bully like Terry, but that doesn’t mean I want to be friends with kids like that, and Jeremiah least of all. He’s such a nerd that I can’t stand it. I’m all in favor of using brain power once in a while, but Jeremiah carries that to extremes. This time, there was no graceful escape, so I let him tag along.

We got in the lunch line right behind Barbara Young, the girl whose flowing blond hair and soft eyes turn me into a bag of Mexican jumping beans and makes my heart itch every time I look at her. It’s kind of fun to have these itches, but at the same time, I don’t like having a dirty mind. Know what I mean? I’d been trying for months to work up the nerve to ask her to the next school dance. When she looked at me, I said a hopeful “hi.” Then Ethan Elway took cuts in the lunch line—as usual—right in front of me, and between me and Barbara. Unfortunately, he’s one kid I can’t complain to about these things. But I had something a lot bigger than Ethan’s rudeness to worry about anyway. You got it! Two ghosts tumbled out of Ethan Elway’s book pack. One of them was Jack Lewis, one of the fattest kids in the school. I suppose that’s why he’s not very popular. When Jack’s ghost floated past me, I suddenly felt like I weighed a thousand pounds and the looks of my classmates weighed more than that. The other ghost was Michelle Munson, a real cute girl who was always shrinking away from everybody. I suddenly felt like I was being kicked in the stomach by a feeling of terror like nothing I’d ever felt before. When an image of a man came to me, I bent way over like I had a belly ache of my own.

“What’s the matter?” Jeremiah asked anxiously.

“Nothing,” I gasped.

I could hardly tell a shrimp like Jeremiah that I was seeing ghosts who were socking me with their traumatic experiences. Then Henry’s ghost materialized next to Jack’s and Michelle’s. This was too much. I made a quick exit to the bathroom. Lyle Banks was at the urinal. The ghost of Sarah O’Hare, a kind of dumpy and not all that bright sort of girl, somebody I’d never paid much attention to, was looking over Lyle’s shoulder. For a horrible moment, I felt totally trashed and disregarded by the entire human race. That sent me running out of the bathroom and right into Jeremiah.

“Dominic? Are you all right?” Jeremiah asked me.

“Yea, I’m all right,” I answered.

“Are you sure?”

“Yea, I’m sure.”

Of course, I knew Jeremiah knew I wasn’t all right. The frown deepening on his forehead told me I’d hurt his feelings by not admitting it. But how can you tell a shrimp you defend from bullies that you have problems of your own? I shifted back into Great Boy Detective mode while Jeremiah chattered away. That made me feel more in control of things. As he thought about it, at the expense of the food he picked up and picked at, the Great Boy Detective noticed that every ghost he had seen was the ghost of some kid who was a loser in some way. The second thing he had noticed is that the real-life version of each kid whose ghost he had seen looked about as much like a ghost as their ghosts did. Those clues led to my theory that somebody was stealing the souls of people who didn’t have much in the way of souls to start with. I suspected that Ethan Elway was a ringleader, maybe the ringleader, in this dastardly plot because I had seen more ghosts clustered around him than anybody else. While Jeremiah went on and on about his own pet theories about questions that had all other scientists stumped, I kept an eye on Ethan. Sure enough, Lyle Banks sit down across from him. Lyle handed something to Ethan and received something back. I’d never thought Ethan would give scum like Lyle the time of day, but he was obviously doing more than that. Whatever they were talking about, it wasn’t basketball. Obviously, a shady business deal was going on. At about this time, Jeremiah shut up. That jolted me a bit, because that told me he realized I wasn’t listening to him. His frown deepened. I felt bad about that, but what else can a Great Boy Detective do when he’s hot on a case?

* * *

When school got out, I wasted no time in getting to the spot outside the front door where Bruce and I usually met. Some kids were climbing into school busses, other kids were walking home in small groups. The losers like Jack Lewis and Sarah O’Hare were walking all alone. John McDonald drifted by without even a nod in my direction. I didn’t need an cloak of invisibility to hide from him. Being ignored like that was enough to make me feel like a ghost myself.

Barbara Young went by with a couple of her friends. I felt a jolt of electricity, but something else snatched my attention away from her. Terry Kemp, the Terry Kemp with flesh and muscle, was looming over Jeremiah Wilson,. I geared myself to intervene at the first sign of trouble, but so far, it was all talk between them. I noticed, though, that both were frowning a lot. Then, to my surprise. Terry offered something to Jeremiah. That was strange. I’d never seen Terry give anything to anyone. Then Terry punched Jeremiah in the chest. I got in position to pounce. Wait. Terry didn’t punch Jeremiah in the chest. Instead, Terry gave something to Jeremiah. He actually gave Jeremiah something! I couldn’t believe it. Not that Jeremiah looked happy about what he was getting. Neither Jeremiah nor Terry looked happy about anything. Jeremiah quickly put what he’d been given into his pocket. Terry walked away, leaving Jeremiah intact. Or was he? No! Jeremiah’s ghost was riding out of Terry’s hip pocket, and the real Jeremiah was leaning against a tree, looking pretty lifeless for a boy who could still blink his eyes.

“Hi Dominic.”

That was Henry Pearson. He looked like his ghost, but so far, ghosts weren’t talking. I hoped that my dark brown eyes didn’t look as lifeless as his, but I was afraid they did. There was a slight crease in his forehead I didn’t remember seeing before. It seemed that frown was getting to be the latest style. Maybe I needed one just like it. Jeremiah shuffled off. Nothing I could do about him.

“Hi,” I said to Henry.

Not the warmest greeting I’d ever given anybody, but I’d stopped thinking of Henry as one of my friends.

‘Looks like you’re hurting, if you get my drift,” said Henry.

I got his drift, all right, but he didn’t exactly look like he was oozing with sympathy for me. Not that I like having people feel sorry for me.

“Maybe,” I said.

As I said that, the ghost of John McDonald floated over Henry’s shoulder. That raised my suspicions further about Henry’s motives. Was he collecting ghosts for Ethan Elway? And had Terry Kemp just taken Jeremiah’s soul? A sense of hopeless boredom with everything in life swept over me. That helped explain all the jokes John cracked that had nothing to do with anything.

“Want to stop hurting so bad?” Henry asked.

Of course I wanted to stop hurting, but how do you stop hurting when so many horrible things have happened to you? And should I try to stop hurting? I remembered Mr. Matecki telling me once that the only cure for pain is to let it flow through you the way music flows through you. All I had to do was play a sad Chopin nocturne to know what he meant. But now, thinking about Mr. Matecki only hurt more than ever. I wondered if he was taking his own advice now that he’s lost most of his students.

“Maybe,” I said for the second time.

“You know,” said Henry, “there’s a way to get rid of the pain and make some money in the bargain.”

“Yea, right.”

I wished the ghost of John would go away, but it didn’t. John’s feelings were pretty oppressive. At about that time, I noticed that Mandy Denton was shuffling around at such a snail’s pace, probably waiting for her brother.

“It’s true,” Henry persisted. “I can take the hurt out of you and pay you good money in the bargain.”

“What do you want my pain for so bad that you’re ready to pay me for it?” I asked. “Is it because you’re so dead that you need the suck my sorrows out of me like a vampire?”

The thing is, Henry did look like all the life had been drained out of him. Had his life stopped, too? He had that crease in the forehead, too. Suddenly I realized I’d seen it in the forehead of everybody who had appeared to me as a ghost.

“You don’t seem to believe me,” said Henry.

“Duh!”

“But it’s true. It’s the latest psycholo—uh—psycho-technology.”

I saw a bit of life creep into Henry’s face as he said that, but it was only the eager look of a dope pusher closing in on a sale. There was something fishy about this generous offer. I was pretty sure that the result of this “latest psycho-technology” was turning into a ghost like John MacDonald, and I didn’t want that.

“I don’t need this,” I said to Henry.

“Hear me out, will you?” said Henry.

He whipped out a small, dark, gray container from his pocket, the shape and size of a clam shell, and snapped it open. The inside, though, had very different look than a clamshell’s. It was filled with razor-thin wires of all colors swirling around a black spot that seemed to empty into nowhere. I practically felt Mandy’s eyes burning through me. Was she spying on me?

“Just let me put your heart into this little box and I’ll give you five thousand dollars in hard, cold cash,” said Henry, making it sound like the simplest thing in the world. “You won’t feel a thing.”

“Yea, right.”

1.         That’s what I said, but visions of the iPod I could buy and a really good keyboard to play in a band I wanted to start followed the lines of the wires inside that clamshell Henry was holding. But these visions didn’t excite me as much as you might think. Listening to music wasn’t helping me much and, like I said, I wasn’t much interested in practicing the piano. It was getting hard to even think of who I’d ask to play in my band if I started one. The kids I would have asked a few weeks ago, like Henry and John, had slipped out of my life. Did Terry just make the same offer to Jeremiah? I had a sneaky suspicion he did. The idea of getting rid of the pain that was welling up in me like a flood was more tempting than it should have been, considering the slime ball who was making the offer. It’s like I didn’t even know how much my life hurt me until somebody offered to buy the pain and cart it away . The more I thought about it, the more my eye moved away from the hypnotic wires and the even more hypnotic black spot.

“Why do you want to give me all that money for a rejected heart?” I asked. “What are you going to do with it?

Henry shrugged.

“What should it matter to you what I do with it? You get rid of the pain, you get the money. What more do you need to know?”

This wasn’t making any sense. Unlike some kids in our school, I didn’t feel morally obligated to be stupid just because I’m a boy and can play sports about as well as anybody. Henry didn’t seem to have a clue as to what to say to anybody who challenged him. Were the other kids just accepting the offer without thinking about it? Even such a nerd as Jeremiah? God help us if I’m the only kid who even thinks about what this strange offer is all about!

“Let me put it this way:” I said. “I have a hard time believing that somebody just wants to be nice to everybody by making everybody feel better just to make everybody feel better. So what’s the catch?”

Just as I said that, Bruce walked past us. His moon face crumpled when he saw me standing there with Henry and he walked on.

“There’s no catch,” said Henry. “We get your heart, you get your money. Fair and square.”

“Hey Bruce!” I called out to my friend. “Wait up!” But he didn’t wait up. He walked on past me and then past his sister as if we were both invisible ghosts.

“See you,” I said to Henry, and ran after Bruce.

“Did mean old Mrs. Fox keep you back again?” I asked him as I caught up with him.

“Yea.”

“Poor boy,” I said.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Bruce, his look all chilled. “What did Henry want?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” I answered.

Bruce didn’t say anything more about it, but I didn’t like the look on his face. I hoped I wasn’t being blamed for selling my heart when I hadn’t really done it.

“You don’t have to walk home from school with me if you don’t want to,” said Bruce.

“But I do want to walk with you,” I said. “Let’s go stop at Sharkey’s.”

“Okay.”

Sharkey’s is a convenience store run by the crabbiest man in the world. That’s why we call him Sharkey, and name the store after him. One step into the store and Sharkey glowered at me as if I had already ripped off half his stuff. It’s amazing how so round a face with a bald top can look as mean and sharp as a shark. A couple of seconds later, I didn’t care what Sharkey thought of me. I saw a couple of ghosts, grownups this time, floating about in the store. It’s a strange world where even corner convenience stores get haunted! Getting away from the school hadn’t delivered me from my curse of seeing ghosts as I’d hoped it would. One of the ghosts was an old woman who I recognized from the nursing home where my grandma spent her last year before she died. I remembered her telling me to call her Sylvia. When she came close to me, I felt like a discarded rag that nobody wanted.

“Uh—want to see what we’ve got in our refrigerator at home?” I asked Bruce.

“You don’t have much; we looked yesterday,” said Bruce. “Don’t wait up for me.”

By this time, I was more rattled by these ghosts and irritated with Bruce than sympathetic to his grief. I walked out of the store and ran right into Mandy. She looked like she’d seen a ghost herself. This was too much. I got away from her as fast as I could. By then, I knew how Cole Sear felt, looking at all those dead people. Except that the ghosts I saw were still alive. Or were they? The dead people Cole saw thought they were alive when they were dead. Were Henry Pearson and Winston Westerfield and these other kids whose ghosts I saw among the walking dead?

* * *

Walking into an empty house was a relief. I don’t think I could have faced seeing my mom just then. Not with her almost looking as much like a ghost as the ghosts I’d been seeing all day. Mom had a note waiting for me, though. It said she was working late, so would I please do the grocery shopping for her? Attached to the note was a shopping list. At least that gave me something to do, so off I went. After what I’d been through, even going up and down the aisles in a super market was a nerve-wracking experience. I was afraid I’d see ghosts squeezing out from between the boxes of cereal. My fears were realized more than once. I noted them in my mental great boy detective file for future reference. The thing that surprised me about the list, was that it had a few expensive things on it that we couldn’t afford even when dad was still home and paying for the food. I liked the idea of eating some tenderloin steak, but after finding out what Henry Pearson was willing to offer me for my heart, I was pretty sure I knew how mom could suddenly afford these things. That kind of took away my appetite. At the bottom of the list, Mom wrote, “Get a few treats for yourself.” So I bought a fresh Boston creme cake, although I wasn’t hungry for that, either.

When I got home, I microwaved a deep-dish pizza and munched on it while thinking about other things. I watched the news to see if they were announcing the end of the world. They weren’t. Yet. The newscaster had a frown just like Henry and Jeremiah and Ms. Dinwoodie. It seemed that every politician they interviewed, no matter which country or political party, had the same frown. They were Marked! All of these people were Marked! The Mark of the Beast! That phrase from the Bible started to echo in my head. It sounded fanciful and absurd when Pastor Newton carried on about these off-the-wall visions in the Bible and got into a tizzy about how Jesus was going to come back to beat up all these marked people with a sword of fire, or something like it. Pastor Newton sure didn’t make Jesus sound like the same guy who welcomed the little kids like I was taught in Sunday school. Anyway, the Mark of the Beast was as good a way as any to describe what I was seeing in front of me. It looked like somebody was putting a mark on people as a way of controlling the world. I didn’t have to be a religious nut like Pastor Newton to think that. And it sure was starting to look like there was an international conspiracy to destroy humanity. Maybe there was a cosmic conspiracy, just for good measure. Once I’d seen enough, I turned off the TV. The Great Boy Detective had his work cut out for him. I went upstairs to my room to have a marathon thinking spell.

I thought of a lot of things that didn’t have much to do with solving this case. It turned out that it was my wildest train of thought that was the most helpful. It was about some of the fairy tales I remembered from when I was a little kid. In some of those stories, there were ogres and giants who protected themselves by putting their hearts in hard containers and then feeding the containers to dragons who live at the bottom of the ocean. That made sense in a screwy sort of way. An ogre could eat little children with a clearer conscience if he’d gotten rid of his heart. Anyway, the hero, like me, the Great Boy Detective, the Knight in Shining Armor, would have to slay the dragon to get at the giant ogre’s heart and stab it through with his sword. The difference, though, was that I only wanted to slay the dragon; I didn’t really want to kill the people who had sold their hearts to the Beast. At least not unless these people were turned into such violent zombies that I had to.

As I stayed up all night doing all this thinking, I got so discouraged with thinking about how many people had already sold their hearts and how many more were likely to do so before I could put a stop to this whole thing, that I thought of going to Henry and selling him my heart if he would up the price to seven thousand dollars. But no matter how miserable I felt, something inside me told me not to do that, something else told me I didn’t really want to that, and another voice told me I didn’t want to do that at all. Don’t ask me what there was inside me that said those things. Maybe it was the voice of conscience. Maybe it’s because God gave me a stubborn streak that’s more stubborn than what anybody else has got. That would be an interesting thing to ask my minister about, but he’s not good at answering questions, especially not from kids. Not that I get a chance to ask him anything these days. The first Sunday after getting that email that stopped my life, mom didn’t get me up for church. I didn’t mind. But in a way I did. Church was something I was used to. I asked mom why we weren’t going and she said there was no point in it. I hadn’t bothered to pray much except when we went to church for quite some time. After all, a twelve-year-old is a little big for bed time prayers with mommy and daddy. That Sunday morning, though, I sat in my room and tried to pray. It wasn’t long before I knew mom was right: there wasn’t any point in it.

So, it’s a funny thing that my God-given stubborn streak kicked in anyway. I guess that’s the way God does things sometimes. I got so mad at whatever beast was marking all these people, that the Great Boy Detective became very determined to get to the bottom of the whole conspiracy, even if his investigations took him to the bottom of the sea. I knew there was something rotten in my town, something rotten in my state, something rotten in my whole country, something rotten in the whole world. My first questions was: Who wants everybody’s hearts and why? I assumed that Henry was the lowest on the totem pole, so it wasn’t him. Ethan Elway was probably not much higher up. They had to be agents of somebody else, probably agents of other people who were agents of somebody else. By the wee hours of the morning, I was pretty sure that I was on to a pretty big operation. But who and why? I would start with tracking the low kids on the totem pole and see where that lead me. With that decided, I sat down at my computer and tapped out the first part of my plan.

* * *

By the time I usually would be getting up for school, if I had gone to bed to start with, my mind was pretty well fogged over, but this fog burned with the fire of the Great Boy Detective who was determined to uncover the international conspiracy against humanity. I went downstairs to do the first serious piano playing in several weeks. I figured that if Mr. Matecki had washed the life out of music by selling his heart, then keeping the life of music pumping into my heart was a major defense against the Beast. Another thing: the Great Boy Detective has, of course, read all of the Sherlock Holmes stories. In these stories, the Great Boy Detective learned that Sherlock would play the violin to free up his brain when he was working to solve a crime, so I followed in his footsteps in the hope that I would have some new ideas by the time I finished. Although my mom was strict about not letting me disturb her late at night, this was the time she had to get up for work, and she didn’t mind having me as her alarm clock, so, I could play as loud as I wanted to. I didn’t so much play music so much as let it gush out. I improvised by letting parts of one piece flow into parts other pieces, wherever my feelings took me. Bits of Mozart and Chopin rubbed shoulders with a bunch of songs I knew. I belted those out at full voice. That’s another thing I owe to Mr. Matecki: my singing voice. During one of my lessons, I sang the melody of the piece I was working on. Mr. Matecki kind of froze for a minute, then asked me to sing it again. Then he asked me to sing a song I liked. So I sang “My Heart will Go On” from “The Titanic.” Then Mr. Matecki told me I had a great singing voice and it was too bad there wasn’t a good boys’ choir around that I could join. There is a choir at my Middle School, but it’s all girls except for about two boys, and I’d never hear the end of it if I joined that! Mr. Matecki did talk me into both playing and singing “My Heart will Go On” at a recital. Not even as snotty a kid as Winston could hide his feelings when I sang it, much as he tried to. Mostly, singing is a private matter for me; a way of pouring music out of my heart in double measure. I figured if I was going to take on some big organization that was trying to buy up all the hearts in the world, then I was going to have to make my own heart as strong as possible. But just as I got to the climax: “Near . . . Far. . . Whereve-e-e-ver you are . . .” I was stopped as suddenly as if I’d gotten a bucket of ice dumped on me. Suddenly, I stopped playing. I sensed my mom standing behind me. I was afraid to turn around and look her in the face, but I knew had to face it. So I turned around and faced it. Just as I feared and almost knew, the Mark of the Beast was imprinted across her forehead. She didn’t look angry, but she was hardly bright and bushy-tailed, either.

“Isn’t it a bit early in the morning for this?” she asked me.

“I thought you didn’t mind my playing in the morning.”

“Didn’t say I did. Just seems a bit much.”

What a downer! Mom’s indifference hurt more than any bawling out would have done. No wonder a lot of people are tempted to sell their hearts. But my stubborn streak kicked right back in right then. I felt that even if I was the only person in the whole world who hadn’t sold his heart, I would cling to it with all my strength. Like Beethoven, I was ready to stand up against the whole world and shake my fist at it. I pounded out some stormy Beethoven chords just to prove it.

* * *

The first item in my plan was to follow Henry Pearson’s trail. Being up early, I had no trouble getting to about a block from his house, where I could catch him as soon as he came out th door. When he did, I stayed a block or two behind him so he wouldn’t get suspicious about being followed. I was puzzled and dismayed when Henry slowed down and stopped right at the corner where I usually meet up with Bruce. I moved further away and circled back a couple of times to keep him from noticing me. On my second time back, I found Henry talking to Bruce Denton! Bad news. Really bad news. It sure looked like Henry was trying to make the same business deal he offered me the day before. I walked toward the boys and on past them. I made a point of not looking at them, but a Great Boy Detective uses the corners of his eyes at times like this. As I passed them, I heard Henry ask Bruce: “Who else will pay you to make you feel better?” I really wanted to slow down to hear more and maybe save Bruce from selling his heart, but I couldn’t risk it. I’d found out all I needed to know and that’s what counts. Besides, after seeing the way Bruce looked and acted yesterday, I didn’t think he’d listen to my warning about selling his heart anyway. I was on a cosmic mission, and I had to stick with the big picture.

I didn’t get much further before I practically ran into Mandy Denton again. I don’t think she was looking at me at all. Otherwise, she might have gotten out of my way. That meant she was looking at something, or somebody else, and I was pretty sure that was her brother and Henry Pearson. Well, there’s no law against being a Great Girl detective. Mandy didn’t say anything to me as I walked on past her. I think she was too discouraged to worry about people walking into her face. I turned the corner and slowed down near Sharkey’s. I still had a little time before school, and Sharkey’s seemed to be a meeting place for ghosts. Maybe I would collect some more information. Just as I got to the store, a woman parked her car right in front and got out. It was Sharon, one of the nurses who took care of my grandma at the nursing home. I started to raise a hand to wave to her, but shrank back against the store window when I saw the ghost of my mom floating over the open car door. Somehow, I held my ground, but I felt like my body was burrowing a hole in the store window. Like Cole Sear, I was going to embrace my sixth sense and meet the ghosts head on. No more shrinking away from ghosts for me!

Sharon went into the store and straight to Sharkey. I couldn’t see what they were doing by looking through the window from outside, but I saw enough. Now, I was pretty sure I knew how Sylvia’s ghost got into the store yesterday afternoon, and I knew who had bought my mother’s heart, too. The Great Boy Detective had penetrated to another level in the heart-buying racket. Somebody nudged me on the way into the store. It was Mandy—again! She stood just inside the door for a moment as if spying on somebody herself. If she saw any ghosts in there, it didn’t show. Then she went over to an older kid who was near the magazine rack. That was odd. I risked pushing my face into the glass for a couple of seconds to get a better view. Mandy was talking to Peter Baum! What could a sixth-grade girl have to say with a high-school senior? Well, they could be talking music if Mandy was into music, but I didn’t think she was interested in any music that wasn’t on her iPod. Or they could be in the business of selling and buying hearts. Discouraged by that thought, I pushed myself across the street to the school.

The Great Boy Detective readied himself for the onslaught of ghosts that he knew would appear to him in the haunted school. When he saw them and felt their pain over rejection and failure, they could not faze him. Not even Bruce’s ghost floating out of Henry’s hip pocket could skewer me in the gut. I was already resigned to losing him anyway. The Great Boy Detective knew he had to take everything in stride and made notes. I confirmed my observation that everybody I knew or suspected had sold and/or bought anybody’s heart wore the Mark of the Beast on their foreheads. When I practically tripped over the new pink shoes louder than a hundred electric guitars that Ms. Dinwoodie wore that day, I started to pay more attention to any expensive clothing or toys I could see. It didn’t take me long to spot new palm readers in the hands of Jack Lewis and Michelle Munson. While Mr. Van Pelt droned on during history class, not didn’t even stop to complain that nobody was paying attention, I studied the list of ghosts I’d seen that day and compared with the list I made last night of the ghosts I saw yesterday. So far, I hadn’t seen any of the ghosts I saw yesterday. Wherever those ghosts were, they were not haunting the school. The other thing I was starting to notice was that these ghosts seemed to stick pretty close to the clamshells that were holding their hearts, such as seeing saw Bruce’s ghost in Henry’s hip pocket. I concluded that the clamshells of those kids who sold their hearts yesterday had been handed in to whoever was higher up in the crime chain.

When the bell rang for lunch, Stephanie Cleary stopped me and asked to borrow my class notes for history. The Great Boy Detective was anxious to push on with his investigation, but he also fancies myself to be a Knight in Shining Armor who will help a maiden in distress. Stephanie had missed a couple of days of school, so I knew she really needed the notes, and that counted as being a maiden in distress. All the more so as she is a girl with cute eyes and light brown hair that flows over her neck like a river of silk. I can’t believe I wrote that! Cute girls are going to make a poet out of me yet! So, I took a couple of minutes to give her the notes. Such are the trials of a kind and generous and gallant boy with brains. I didn’t even have to worry about getting my notes back because I had all the stuff filed in my head, ready to roll out at test time.

“Dominic?” Stephanie asked me hesitantly, just when I thought the Great Boy Detective was about to get away and resume his investigations.

“Yes?”

“Can I ask you a really weird question?”

Stephanie used a tone of voice that had me thinking she was going to ask me if I saw alien creatures lurking in the hallways. She looked anxious enough that she could be dodging monsters threatening her with teeth and claws.

“Sure, go ahead,” I replied.

But just then, Lyle Banks slithered past me with Barbara Young at his side. Seeing Barbara in danger distracted me from Stephanie, and she saw it .

“I was wondering . . .” Stephanie stammered, “if—I mean—like do you ever see—oh, never mind.”

Stephanie melted away as quickly as a ghost would have. That freed me to go run and save the maiden who was in the greater distress. The trouble was, I couldn’t break my cover without blowing the whole case. I decided that the sensible thing to do was walk over and casually ask Barbara to go to the next dance. So that is what I started to do.

“You didn’t meet me this morning.”

That was Bruce who stopped me. He looked and sounded more dead than he did just twenty four hours ago. This was messed up my little plan to save Barbara.

“Sorry, got held up at home again.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Bruce.

I felt bad about not being honest with my friend, but I had no choice. I still kept an eye on Lyle and Barbara. For once, I didn’t have to feel guilty about looking at Barbara, because I was looking at her in my role as the Great Boy Detective, and not because of other thoughts I have about her.

“I can have lunch with you,” I offered, thinking that the Great Boy Detective might get some useful information out of him.

“Okay.”

Just then, Lyle slipped a clam shell out of his book pack. It was too late. Barbara was a goner. I could have only hope that I could save the other pretty girls in the school before it was too late. As Bruce and I worked our way through the line, I looked back again at Lyle. Sure enough, Barbara’s ghost was riding on his shoulders. That made me wish I had Barbara in the flesh riding on my shoulders. Oh, sorry about that. Even a Great Boy Detective gets those thoughts.

“You know, Dominic, I’m really worried about you,” said Bruce, once we’d bought our sloppy lunches and sat down.

“How come?”

 I knew what Bruce was getting at, but I had to pretend I didn’t. I glanced over at Kyle and Barbara. My heart sank like a stone when I saw the Mark of the Beast on her forehead. She and Lyle sat down with some six or seven other kids who were swarming around Ethan Elway. What I couldn’t figure out was how come such a good athlete as Ethan would want to sell his heart. For that matter, I couldn’t figure what had gone wrong with so popular a girl as Barbara to make her sell her heart to a skunk like Lyle. Were a lot more people in a bad way than I thought? Lyle slid something that looked suspiciously like a clam shell across the table to Ethan. Further confirmation that Ethan was the key member of the heart-buying ring at the school and the conspiracy of the Beast to destroy the world.  

“I can tell you’ve been hurting real bad since your dad split on you,” said Bruce. He sounded as sympathetic as a post. “Then, my mom’s going six feet under must have made things even worse for you.”

“I’m glad to give you support when you need it,” I said. “That’s what friends are for.”

“Yea,” said Bruce, his eyes iced over, “that’s why I want to offer you the best deal going.”

“What deal?” I asked, trying not to sound too suspicious.

Bruce started on his sales pitch with almost the same words Henry used yesterday. When he pulled out a clamshell for me, I looked over at Barbara again. That turned out to be almost as bad as looking at the hypnotic wiring of the clamshell. Barbara was sitting next to Stephanie Cleary, obviously having gone from selling her heart to buying them in a matter of minutes. This business was making the domino theory work so well I felt like giving up right then and selling my heart to Bruce, but by the time Bruce finished his deadpan speech, I the Great Boy Detective Bug was itching in me again and I wasn’t about to give up yet.

“Do you know who’s behind all this?” I asked.

Bruce shrugged.

“Not really. Does it matter?”

“Do you mean to say you don’t care who ends up with your heart or what he does with it?” I asked.

“No, why should I? It isn’t mine anymore.”

“I guess selling your heart keeps you from worrying about anything, doesn’t it?”

“Yea,” said Bruce. “Are you ready to sell your worries, too?”

“Hmm, I’ll have to think about it,” I said.

By this time, Stephanie Cleary was looking a lot less worried about whatever had her worried half an hour ago, and her ghost sat uneasily on Barbara Young’s shoulder. Well, nothing I could do about that except get to the heart of this conspiracy.

* * *

When the bell rang at the end of math class, my last period of the day, I geared myself to run out and get a beat on Ethan Elway, but the Great Boy Detective was foiled again. Mikey Tucker stopped me with that look he gets when he hasn’t understood anything Mr. Jackson has said in class. As you can see by now, I’m a sucker for helping people out—that’s why I stuck with Bruce when everybody else fell away from him like he had the plague—so I sat back down and went over the math with Mikey. Mikey is one of those kids who looks like he is defeated by every minute of the day. Even his freckles droop the way his mouth does. I try really hard to lead Mikey to the solution of a problem so he can feel a sense of accomplishment, but even when that happens, his smile melts, like he’s sure it will never happen again. This time, I was fretting so much about Ethan and uncovering the Great Conspiracy of the Beast that I kind of rushed through things. Mikey obviously felt it. After about a quarter hour or so, he said he’d never understand anything, stuffed his messy papers into his notebook, and shuffled off.

Free at last to get on with my investigation, I made a quick search of the hallways and spotted Ethan easily enough. All I had to do was look for the largest cluster of ghosts. The problem was, the ghosts included Barbara, Michelle, Bruce, and Stephanie. Near the door, a crush of students wedged itself between me and Ethan. I was afraid I might lose him, but I didn’t. Ethan made it easy for me by walking slowly to a spot in the middle of the front lawn where he waited for some three or four kids to come up to him and give them their clam shells. The cloud of ghosts surrounding Ethan doubled. I wanted so badly to reach in and pull Barbara out, but I knew my hand would just go through her, and I wouldn’t be able to stand that. Not to mention the problem of explaining myself to Ethan. I felt guilty about the way I had failed Stephanie especially, but there was nothing I could do about that except follow Ethan. So that is exactly what I did when he finished collecting clam shells and paying out the money for them.

Ethan headed up the street at very brisk pace, but one of the advantages of tracking a tall kid is that it’s harder to lose him. The Great Boy Detective could keep a safe distance as he should, and cunningly use clumps of kids as buffers. When Ethan crossed the street, I stayed on the side of the street I was on. After another block, Ethan walked into Sharkey’s Convenience Store. That clinched it! Sharkey’s was the local center of the Beast’s Great Conspiracy against humanity! I turned myself into Super Boy, the boy made of steel, and plunged into the store. The ghosts inside were so thick I could hardly see the merchandise. Lots of kids had stopped by on the way home from school so there was no need to worry about my cover. Besides, I’m a growing boy who needs his daily fix of candy bars and pretzels. To my surprise, Peter Baum was at the magazine stand. I would have thought he’d be too busy practicing the piano and reading a dozen books to have time to leaf through junky magazines. And twice in the same day at that! Or had he quit taking lessons from Mr. Matecki, too? Sharkey was too busy talking to Ethan to look up at me and remind me that all twelve-year-old boys are thieves. Period. End of Story. One look at Sharkey told me what I already knew: He had the Mark of the Beast on his forehead big time.

I slipped down the nearest aisle. All around me, kids were pulling stuff off the shelves. Most of them, even those in groups, seemed to be in their own little worlds of beef jerkys, potato chips, and soda pop. I took sneaky looks at the faces of as many other kids as I could. To my dismay and growing despair, every last one of them had The Mark of the Beast on their foreheads. I dove for the pretzels first, and surfaced in front of the drinks. My mom doesn’t think soda is good for me, and I know she’s right, so I go for the fruit juices. I inched my way closer to the counter where Ethan and Sharkey were talking softly in the kind of tone you use only when you are plotting the downfall of the world. Barbara’s ghost floated up so close to my face she could have kissed me if her lips were real. I practically melted. Suddenly I felt sorry for myself because that cute boy, Dominic, just didn’t seem to notice me. Wait a minute! I’m not gay! Then Barbara’s ghost floated back to Ethan and I realized I was just feeling the way Barbara was feeling for a few seconds. I melted a second time, fearing that the Great Boy Detective was a criminal himself.

Another bunch of kids came into the store and swarmed over to the sliding door where the soda pop is. Sharkey glanced at us. My breathing almost stopped. I expected to be hauled into the police station with the other kids for stealing the soda pop, but Sharkey went back to what he was saying to Ethan. I kept my ear as sharp as I could. I couldn’t hear much, but what I heard was big. I heard Sharkey say “Saturday morning.” That’s all I needed to hear to know who I was going to follow that morning.

As soon as Ethan left the store, I came forward with my pretzels, candy bars, and fruit punch. Barbara melted in with all the other ghosts whose hearts Sharkey had collected and was gone. Well, if there was anybody who would get into the business of buying peoples’ hearts after selling his own, it would be Sharkey. As soon as I’d paid for my stuff, I glanced over at the magazine rack. Peter Baum was still there, leafing through a sports magazine. The Great Boy Detective had to follow this up, because this wasn’t making any sense. Peter hates sports, so I knew he wasn’t looking at those magazines for fun. Or, was the Mark of the Beast turning everybody’s brains into melted jelly? Those swirling wires were still making circles inside my head, so probably the Mark of the Beast obviously did just that. None of these other kids with the Mark looked like they were going out for the debating team. I maneuvered myself over to the magazine rack to an angle where I could see Peter’s forehead. For a moment, I was afraid to look. If I saw The Mark of the Beast on Peter, I might just fold and ask him if he buys kids’ hearts, too. Suddenly, Peter looked right at me, glasses, frog-like face, blond hair, and all. But no Mark of the Beast on his forehead. I almost collapsed with relief.

“Hi Dominic,” said Peter. “How are you doing?”

“Fine.”

“I know it’s been rough for you lately,” said Peter. “Are you keeping up with your piano?”

“Uh—getting back to it.”

“Good. Stick with it. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, just to humor him.

“When are you guys going to buy the magazines you’re reading?” Sharkey yelled over at us.

“Sorry,” said Peter.

He dropped the sports magazine and followed me out of the store. I was seriously tempted to turn around and ask Peter if he saw the ghosts I saw and if he could see how many people now had the Mark of the Beast on their foreheads. But all you have to do is think of what you would say to some kid who asked you questions like that and you know why I walked away from Peter as fast as I could.

* * *

Although the Great Boy Detective knew what he was going to do on Saturday morning, he still had to make the most of Thursday night and Friday. I couldn’t concentrate on homework that wasn’t anywhere near as important as saving the world from the Beast. Instead, I ran the same questions through my head over and over again: Who benefits from the Beast’s worldwide conspiracy? Why are people’s hearts valuable enough to somebody that they worth so much money? Who wants all these hearts? And why? I got a few inklings of the answers for all my mental work. Just seeing the way all the Marked kids wolfed up everything in Sharkey’s store was enough to make me see how Sharkey was getting back the money he was paying out for their hearts. But I was pretty sure he was getting money from the next highest guy in the chain of command. Was stealing the hearts of everybody the best way to make good consumers of everybody? Maybe. Other questions buzzed around in my head.. Like, how could any evil scientist invent these clamshell-like contraptions that draw the hearts out of people and lock them up? Needless to say, I’d never have thought such a thing was possible if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. I wish I hadn’t. The whirlpool of wires kept spinning in my head every time I thought about it.

Once I’d done more thinking than I could stand, I went downstairs and played the piano and sang until my mother came home from work. She didn’t even stop long enough to wish me a good night or tell me not to keep pounding the keys all night. I was tempted to keep on playing until mom came back down to make me stop, but I was ready for another restless joust with my brain anyway, so I went back to my room.

* * *

Friday morning, I stopped at Sharkey’s on the way to school. That was a bit risky, because too many stops there could make it obvious that I was a spy. But then it was pretty normal for me to stop there to fortify myself for the day by buying a piece of candy. I decided that if I saw Peter Baum there one more time, I would be convinced he was a spy. But Peter wasn’t there, so maybe he wasn’t a spy after all. There were a few school kids, but most of the customers were men and women stopping for coffee and donuts and a newspaper on the way to work. I decided to leaf through magazines Peter Baum style. The trouble was, the magazines I wanted to look at most were stapled shut, and I couldn’t afford to get caught trying to read them. Being a Great Boy Detective means controlling my dirty mind, at least a little.

I did get rewarded for the time spent looking at worthless gossip about Hollywood movie stars. A man came in with an entourage of ghosts and went up to the counter. I could see him hand a small bag over to Sharkey while he asked for a carton of cigarettes. Then Sharon the Nurse came in. Two of the ghosts following her were patients I recognized at the funeral home. The third ghost, though, was a doctor I recognized. That was bad news. Being at the mercy of heartless nurses and doctors was not good for the patients at the nursing home. A few minutes later, another nurse from the same nursing home, Nelly, came in and went over to the coffee urns. Nelly is a woman made of cream puff. What I mean is: she’s the nicest nurse at the home, the one who took the best care of Grandma. I just hoped she still was as nice as she was then. Nelly seemed to take her time picking out a donut while Sharon finished with her business and walked out of the store.

“Good morning, Dominic,” said Nelly.

That startled me. I had no choice but to look at her plump face. She looked worried and worn out, but at least she didn’t have the Mark of the Beast on her forehead. I was afraid, though, that she was probably next on Sharon’s list.

“Morning,” I said.

“I miss seeing you around,” Nelly said, “but then I miss your grandmother.”

“Me too,” I choked.

I rushed out of the store before I broke down in front of everybody. I had forgotten how badly I missed my grandma. Out on the sidewalk, I ran into Jeremiah and Mikey, enough to almost knock them down. That’s not saying much. You could knock down those skinny kids with a feather I started to apologize, but the words froze in my mouth when I saw Jeremiah holding a clamshell over Mikey’s chest. I hurried across the street to the school, determined that the Great Boy Detective was going to finish his investigations before every kid in my middle school sold out to the Buyer of Hearts.

So many ghosts were roaming the hallways that I thought I should be choking on the smoke. I seemed to see the Mark of the Beast of their foreheads on just about everybody! Where had I been all this time? I guess I’d been so bummed out with my own issues that I didn’t notice how totally bummed out everybody else was. In English class, the ghost of our phys. Ed teacher, Mr. Fenton, kept vigil over Ms. Dinwoodie at her desk. A fitting fate for that drill sergeant, I thought. With the Mark of the Beast fully displayed on his forehead, Mr. Van Pelt was worse than boring in history class. He made me feel like he was daring me to care about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's or what the Viet Nam War did to our country. That’s when I first began to get another inkling of how it might be to the advantage of some people to buy up the hearts of everybody in the country. People with economic or political power would have an easier time getting their way if nobody had the heart to care about anything the way Martin Luther King, Jr. did. That thought told me that the Great Boy Detective was getting into some pretty deep waters, waters where dragons lurk, dragons who can swallow whole trainloads of human hearts.

At lunch hour, I took note of who sat together by choice, and confirmed my hunch that social alignments had gone haywire. That was a sure sign of terrible trouble, because social groups in a middle school are set in stone. I became particularly concerned when both Jeremiah Wilson and Terry Kemp sat down close to Ethan Elway. Bruce was also very much in with this group. Most of the other odd-looking groups were made up with kids wearing the Mark of the Beast as well. Every time I saw an odd pairing, it looked suspiciously like one kid was offering to buy the heart of the other. Then Barbara Young sat down on the other side of my table. My heart did a few handsprings until the Mark of the Beast on her forehead hit me between the eyes. Then, to make it a double-barreled attack, Barbara’s gorgeous new sweater and how expensive it was hit me between the eyes.

“Hi, Barbara.”

I’d never thought I’d sound so down while greeting Barbara, but that what the Mark of the Beast will do to you.

“Hi, Dominic.”

She didn’t sound so bright herself. Obviously, her sitting across from me had nothing to do with liking me. That knocked my own heart down a few pegs.

“How are you doing?” I asked Barbara.

“Pretty good—at least now, anyway.”

“Had some trouble before?” I asked, hoping I could coax some heart out of Barbara.

“Yea. Doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Trouble matters, believe me,” I said.

“Yea, trouble matters,” Barbara echoed, but with no conviction. “You know, maybe I can help you out if you still have any trouble that matters.”

Even though I knew it was coming, Barbara’s words plunged my heart into a black hole. It’s a good thing I was in Great Boy Detective mode, or I would have sold my heart to Barbara without waiting for her sales pitch. My mind went numb as Barbara repeated everything Henry and Bruce had said already. My mind went number still when Barbara opened up a clamshell with those wires wound so invitingly around the black spot. I looked away just in time and tried to think.

“Barbara, there’s something I don’t understand?”

Barbara looked genuinely puzzled.

“What is there to understand? You sell me your heart, and I’ll give you five hundred dollars. Won’t that make life easier for you, now that your father is gone?”

Another double-barreled attack! Up to that lunch hour, I’d wanted to give Barbara my heart. Selling her my heart for any amount of money felt like selling my soul to the devil, whether I believe what Pastor Newton says about the devil or not.

“I understand about getting rid of the pain and getting a lot of goodies instead,” I said, “but why would anyone want to give so much money just for a heart I don’t want anymore?”

Barbara gave me a look so drained of comprehension that I knew I wasn’t going to get any clues out of her.

“Dominic! Hasn’t anybody ever told you not to look a gift horse in the mouth?”

When I got to phys. ed. that afternoon, I saw the Mark of the Beast on Mr. Fenton’s forehead just as I expected I would after seeing his ghost in Ms. Dinwoodie’s room. The drill sergeant’s bark wasn’t as sharp as usual when he led us in our calisthenics, but he ended up running us pretty ragged before he finished with us. It seemed that he didn’t care how many boys collapsed and needed to be carted away. After that, we had to play dodge ball. I have mixed feelings about dodge ball to begin with. The fun part is that it turns me into an animal. The bad part is that turning into an animal who guns down kids I usually care about makes me feel bad. I deal with that by cutting loose and gunning down the kids who pick on the smaller ones and being a shield for those boys. But this time, the predators smiled like scientific alligators looking for the best way to dissect a living body and most of the kids who usually fell behind me didn’t seem to care that much if they got banged on the head or not. That was deflating for the Great Knight in Shining Armor.

* * *

When I came out the door after the last bell, I walked into a widely-spaced semi-circle of kids with familiar faces: Bruce Denton, Henry Pearson, John McDonald, Barbara Young, Michelle Munson, Mikey Tucker, Stephanie Cleary, and Jeremiah Wilson. The running shoes I knew Bruce had wanted for a long time were staring me in the face. With this group, the Mark of the Beast, small as it really is, was as oppressive as every kid had a red brand mark covering the whole forehead. I felt like putting my life on hold for the rest of my life.

“Hey! Dominic!” Bruce called out.

“Yes.”

I didn’t know what else to say.

“It was really nice of you to be my pal after my mom got killed,” said Bruce.

“You used to be the spirit of our group before your dad ran off,” said Henry.

“You’re a big help with my math,” said Mikey.

“You may not realize it,” said Barbara, “but you are the sweetest boy in the whole school.”

“I really like your eyes,” said Michelle.

“Your class notes are the best,” said Stephanie.

“You’ve saved me from getting my bones torn apart lots of times,” said Jeremiah.

“You’re a good friend,” said John. “That’s why we all want to help you.”

“We’re really concerned about the way you’re still bummed out with your life,” said Bruce.

I spun the wheels inside my head as hard as they could go. My first thought was to ask them how they intended to improve my life, but I knew what they were going to suggest and I still wasn’t ready to listen to that. While I was still thinking, Mandy Denton caught my eye. She was standing way off to the side, and I could feel her eyes glued on to me and these other kids. Maybe I could get an idea of what she was up to by observing how she reacted to the things I said.

“I guess some of you guys have had some bum days, too,” I said. “Want to come to my house and talk about it?”

That seemed to stop any wheels that might have been creaking in the heads of my classmates.

“There really isn’t anything to say,” said Henry.

“Talking about bum deals in life is a real bummer,” said John.

“We want to do you a favor for all the things you’ve done for us,” said Jeremiah.

“A favor much better than the bum deal you’re getting,” said Barbara.

“A profitable favor,” added Mikey.

“We’ll give you ten thousand dollars for you heart,” said Bruce.

“Is it worth that much now?” I asked.

“It’s hard to put a price on a heart,” said Barbara, “especially a dream heart like yours.”

“We really want you to be together with us,” said Stephanie.

Even a couple of days ago, I would never have believed that hearing those very words from Barbara and Stephanie would chill me in the gut.

“I’m glad you’re all feeling close to each other,” I said, trying not to sound as sarcastic as I felt.

“You see,” said Henry, “selling hearts is really catching on.”

“You mean it’s catching?” I asked.

I wasn’t just trying to be smart; I was starting to see this fad of selling hearts was a plague of some sort. I felt like I was coming down with the fever just by being near so many kids who had it the heart-buying sickness. But none of the kids winced at the bad joke.

“Why did you guys sell your hearts?” I asked them.

“It doesn’t matter, really,” said Michelle.

“Nothing matters anymore,” said Henry. “That’s the whole point.”

Never in my life had I felt so hopelessly alone. Each kid standing around me held up a clamshell and opened it up invitingly. I felt like I was being drawn into a dozen whirlpools at once. I was paralyzed. I couldn’t move; I couldn’t think. The black holes inside the clamshells were sucking my mind right into them. Somehow, my stubborn streak was just strong enough to push me a step forward toward the gap between Jeremiah and Mikey. Both of their hands faltered just a little, and that game me the strength to take another step. Leave it to those shrimps to be the weak link in the chain. All of the kids surrounding me tensed up, but nobody moved to stop me.

“I guess it doesn’t matter if I use the weekend to think about this,” I said.

One more step and I was outside the circle. I crossed the street as soon as I could without getting clobbered by a car. Mandy shuffled along in front of me at a very slow pace. She was playing some sort of game and no mistake. I didn’t want to talk to her, so I pointedly walked ahead of her at a fast enough pace to discourage her from following me. When I’d gone a block, I looked back long to see if anybody of interest was going in or out of Sharkey’s. Somebody of interest did: Ethan Elway. Now that I had escaped the circle of friends who tried to get me to sell my heart, my Great Boy Detective brain was fully activated again. This was my chance to try and follow Ethan home so that I would be sure of where he lived. Better than just looking up the address on the web and hoping I had the right Elway. That would make the next phase of my plan a lot easier. I knew which direction Ethan started off from school, so I got a head start, since he was riding his bike. I ran a few blocks and then slowed down, waiting for Ethan to pass me. He did, without looking at me. That’s the advantage of being of no account to a hot-shot eighth-grader. I walked quickly after him, then burst into another run when Ethan turned a corner. I got to that corner just in time to see Ethan turn again. My hustle was rewarded when I got to that corner just in time to see Ethan turn his bike into a driveway. I walked slowly past his street and then circled back to walk past Ethan’s house once he was inside. To my surprise, Ethan’s house was small and dingy. It practically looked like it was constructed out of cardboard boxes. Hardly fitting for a star athlete. Looked like a clue for the Great Boy Detective as to why Ethan was in the heart-buying-and-selling business. The living room window had a long piece of silver tape running across it where the window had gotten broken. Oddly, the front lawn looked really good. Somebody must have just mowed and edged it. I knew enough for trailing Ethan the next morning to see what his meeting with Sharkey was going to be all about.

* * *

For the first time in several days, mom was home for dinner, and she cooked the tenderloin steaks I’d bought on my shopping trip. They made my mouth water, but my stomach didn’t respond as it should have. As usual, Mom had the news on. Most of their stories confirmed my conviction that the Beast was busy buying everybody’s heart. I got the feeling that those newscasters who were themselves Marked by the Beast were reporting the news in such as way that people were entertained, but not moved to do anything about anything they reported. To my surprise and relief, mom turned down the volume when she brought the food to the table. Was it possible she was finally going to talk to me about something? But I knew better than to get my hopes up.

“You know, Dominic,” said Mom, “I’m sure it’s been really hard for you since your father left us the way he did.”

Those were the very words I’d been hoping to hear from her for so long! But knowing the effects of the Mark of the Beast as I did, and knowing how it was that mom could afford the tenderloins, my heart sank into the belly of the dragon.

“Yes, it’s been hard,” I admitted.

“I have some good news for you, though.”

“You do?”

You can bet I was pretty scared about what mom might think was good news if she’d sold her heart as I was sure she had.

“I’ll be able to get you a nice present for your birthday coming up with some extra money that’s come my way, and you can ask some friends over on Sunday afternoon if you want.”

Now that all my friends had sold their hearts, my own heart folded up at the thought of inviting any of them over for a birthday party. The thought of getting a good present that I wanted sounded good, but I knew it wouldn’t be worth it if I only got it because mom had sold her heart.

“Uh—thanks,” I stammered, knowing I had to sound gracious.

“However, there is something else I can offer you that might turn out to be the best birthday present you’ve ever had,” my mother went on. “It’s something that can make your life a lot easier for you.”

I knew it! My heart turned to ice, as I pretended to listen to my mom say the same things that Henry, Bruce, and Barbara, and the whole gang of kids said about how much better life will be if I sold my heart. It was amazing how everybody used the same words in the same tone of voice. Whoever was buying up these hearts was not very creative. But then you have to have at least a bit of a heart to be creative. The price had gone up again in just a couple of hours. I could get fifteen thousand dollars for my heart. When Mom opened a clamshell to invite my heart into it, I was ready for her. I looked down and away to keep the wires and the black hole from hypnotizing me. I promised to think about it, but I felt so horrible, I didn’t even cross my fingers.

After dinner, I played the piano for two or three hours with a lot of singing thrown in. At least I was following Peter Baum’s advice about that. Then I made the mistake of thinking too much before going to bed. First off, I thought about how much I wanted to have Bruce over to watch a video, or play chess or a computer game with me. Then I got to thinking about how many people had sold their hearts in such a short time. How come all these other kids and a lot of adults, too, had sold their hearts and I hadn’t? Was it my God-given stubborn streak? As soon as I asked myself that question, I knew deep inside that my stubborn streak really was given by God. I didn’t see how I could be so stubborn about not selling my heart when my heart was breaking if it was just my own stubbornness holding me back. Then I remembered when I sang “My Heart Will Go On” for my grandma. It turned out to be the last time I sang for her before she died. I knew she was deeply moved by my singing, and not just because I’m her grandson. Sylvia was there, and she was deeply moved as well. And now Sylvia had sold her heart because nobody came to see her anymore. When I finished my song, Grandma said, “In my condition, I have to believe that, no matter what happens, our hearts will go on.” My grandma, once strong enough to carry me in her arms when I was little, looked so small and frail that the smallest breeze could blow her away. And yet there was something so rock solid about her that I believed her heart was still going on even when I saw her coffin being lowered into the grave.

Then I prayed. It’s hard for me to talk about prayer, and I don’t want you thinking I’m some kind of religious nut who throws bombs at people who don’t believe the same way I do. It’s just that praying seemed to have something to do with my heart still going on and prodding me to be a Great Boy Detective. By the time I dropped into bed for a brief and uneasy sleep, I’d decided it’s a good thing God doesn’t get upset with us because we only pray when we need something. At least I hope not. If God sells his heart because of the way we treat him, we’ve had it.

* * *

I had no idea when Ethan Elway was going over to Sharkey’s house or his store, so I had to get there early, just in case. I was going to ride my bike, but when I got to the garage, I was so overcome with its shabbiness that I couldn’t stand the idea of taking it out. It rode okay, but it was too embarrassing to be seen on a bike that looked like it belonged in the junkyard. That’s just one more little social handicap in my life since dad left. I needed more than my own two little feet, though. It only took me few seconds to decide on my skateboard. That isn’t any beauty, either, but it zips by too fast for people to notice it. Better still, it would make me less conspicuous. Who ever follows a suspected criminal on a skateboard? The ever-inventive Great Boy Detective, of course!

I rode so smoothly along the almost deserted streets on that partly cloudy, partly sunny, partly windy Saturday morning that I almost felt like the carefree boy I used to be before my life stopped three times. I did have some time to practice some pretty tricky maneuvers on my skateboard before I finally saw him ride down his driveway and into the street on a glistening bike that made my mouth water. It was hard to believe that such a handsome bike could have been parked behind a house like that. It made me all the more glad I hadn’t taken my own rickety contraption on my mission as the Great Boy Detective. It wasn’t long before I was pretty sure that Ethan was heading in the direction of Sharkey’s store. That allowed me to skate around blocks and still keep track of him without having to skate behind him the whole way. While I was skating down a street in my loop around Ethan, I saw Peter Baum drive by. He waved at me solemnly and I waved back. For a couple of seconds I was tempted to try and stop him to ask his help in trailing Ethan and , maybe, Sharkey, but the Great Boy Detective quickly realized that he couldn’t expect a level-headed high school senior to believe a seventh-grade boy who thinks that eighth-grade basketball stars and convenience store owners are crooks who are buying the hearts of everybody in town.

I saw a mushroom cloud of ghosts rising above Sharkey’s from about three blocks away. Sure enough, Ethan turned his bike into the alley behind Sharkey’s. I skated past the alley, but used my great powers of observation as befits a Great Boy Detective to notice a gleaming white SUV parked behind the store. I skated around the corner and past the front of Sharkey’s. Nelly came out carrying a mug of coffee. She waved at me when she saw me. I looked for the Mark of the Beast on her forehead, but didn’t see it. I wondered if this was going to be her last day of living like a human being before she succumbed to the plague. Across the street, the school playground was filled with kids at soccer practice. It reminded me of the many happy hours I’d spent at the sport and the many goals I’d scored. It also reminded me of the many times I’d looked over to the sidelines, hoping my dad was there urging me on, but of course he never was. I skated around the corner and thought about how I’ve gotten to be a big boy who knows how to move on with his life.

Coming down the other street, I glanced down the alley just as the back door opened. Sharkey and Ethan came out, practically hidden by the cloud of ghosts. I badly wanted to skate down the alley past them, but I didn’t dare take the chance of drawing their attention to myself. I was almost down to the next corner when I heard a grinding sound behind me. It was Mandy Denton riding out of the alley on her roller blades. What was she doing up so early on a Saturday morning? I had too many other things on my mind, though, to wonder about that. Impatient as I was to get around to the alley from the other side, I skated at maximum speed and almost plowed into an old man who unexpectedly opened his car door in my path. A glance down the alley showed me what I expected to see. Sharkey and Ethan were loading bags of clamshells into the back of the bright and glistening SUV while the cloud of ghosts covered the SUV. I felt a quick slam of fear and hurt and rejection as I sped by. Thinking of Ethan’s new bike and Sharkey’s new SUV confirmed my theory that the Buyer of Hearts was so generous in the purchasing price for human hearts because each heartless person will spend the money on the things the Buyer of Hearts sells. Sounds like a good system for anybody who has thrown his heart into the jaws of a dragon in the sea.

I skated around the block again to give myself another good look down the alley, and crossed paths with Mandy a second time. I checked her forehead. She looked sad enough to be wearing the Mark of the Beast, but she didn’t have it. At least not yet. I figured she would soon if Bruce remembered her existence long enough to make her the generous offer he made me. I skated around the block a couple times more before I heard the slamming of a car door just before I passed the alley. My glance in that direction showed Sharkey and Ethan coming from around the back of the SUV toward the front. I spun around and flew by the alley again. The front doors of the SUV were closing. By the time I got to the corner, I heard the motor starting up. Now the Great Boy Detective was going to have to really show his mettle if he was going to stay hot on the trail of the criminals who were working for the Beast and his worldwide conspiracy.

A skateboard isn’t the ideal mode of transportation for following a brand spanking new and shiny white SUV. Maybe I should have flagged Peter Baum when I had the chance, but it was too late for that. There was nothing for it but to grit my teeth in the face of the wind that got chillier the faster I moved against it. In spite of these disadvantages, three factors helped me fulfill this leg of my journey of pursuit. One: I am a very good athlete who knows how to cover huge amounts of ground on a skateboard in a very short time. Two: Red lights and stop signs have their uses when you are a Great Boy Detective following a white SUV on a skateboard. Three: The cloud of ghosts towered into the air like the pillar of cloud that led the Israelites through the desert to the Promised Land. If I lost sight of the SUV, I could see the pillar of ghosts just fine.

That is how the Great Boy Detective followed Sharkey’s SUV to Dave’s Auto Parts Center. I‘ve always thought this place was a real eyesore, but I soon found that passing by it when my mom was driving me around town was nothing compared to actually entering into it. Dave’s Auto Parts Center is a jungle in the middle of our little city, a jungle of dead and dissected cars with only weeds for vegetation. Here, there was more than the pillar of cloud of ghosts rising from Sharkey’s SUV. In this jungle of dead cars, there were so many clouds of ghosts that if it was smoke from a fire, the whole place would have burned to the ground. Just as I approached Dave’s, I saw Peter Baum drive by yet again. It was enough to make me wonder if he was following me the way I was following Ethan and Sharkey. What kind of game was he playing? To get away from Peter, I rode my skateboard into the thick grass surrounding the car dissection center until the wheels got jammed and I fell.

I picked myself up right away and brushed the loose grass off my jeans. If you can’t take a few bruises, you just shouldn’t go skateboarding, and you should give up on being a Great Boy Detective. I hid my skateboard in the tall grass, and scampered behind to the nearest dead car. There’s nothing like rusted out car bodies, torn-up upholstery, and gouged out motors to cheer a person up. At about that time, a couple of guys who looked like legitimate customers drove in and then started to pick through the graveyard for the parts they wanted, I started to look over the engine of car that was concealing me as if I really was looking for a part for my mom’s car. It made me choke a bit when I realized that I was the one who would have to be doing that stuff for her for now on for real. I made sure that nobody was looking my way, and then ran over to the next car. And so it went. Just like the good guys in the old westerns who run from rock to rock and bush to bush to sneak up on the outlaws, I maneuvered myself to where I could see Sharkey’s SUV, a couple more SUV’s, and some station wagons all parked around a pickup truck. There, Ethan Elway and four other boys about his age were loading the pickup truck with the bags of clamshells. I recognized one of those boys as a high school basketball player named Joey Hamilton. Dave was a thickly bearded man with a pot belly. He was wearing a jacket that was in about as good shape as the car seats I was hiding behind. Judging from the racket coming out of his shack of an office, he was spending his ill-gotten gains on his sound system. Actually, I don’t blame him; that’s what I’d do if I end up accepting the offers I was getting. Trouble was, I probably wouldn’t care about the music as much if I didn’t have my heart. I got several whiffs of fear, hurt, anger, boredom, and even sheer horror from the ghosts floating around Dave’s truck as the clamshells were loaded. Each sample of human misery was mercifully brief, sort of like getting a whiff from a chemical factory when the wind gusts in a certain direction. As soon as the truck was loaded, Dave handed out huge wads of cash to Sharkey, Ethan, and the other guys who had brought the carloads of clamshells to him.

That presented me with the problem of how to keep on Dave’s tail. My skateboard probably wasn’t going to cut it this time. Especially if the truck got on an expressway or something. I thought of calling Peter Baum on my cell phone to ask his to help in following the truck. Yea, right. I didn’t have Peter’s number anyway. That left me with one very uncomfortable option. I would have to sneak into the back of the truck without getting caught and hitch a ride to wherever it was going. Yea, right. Well, a Great Boy Detective has to do what he has to do to crack a case. One of the many things I’m good is geometry and I used that talent to figure out the quickest and safest route to the back of the truck. I hid between one dead car, and then another, until I got to the spot where I wanted to be. Unfortunately, that got me so close that the ghosts floating out of the truck were practically in my face. I didn’t mind seeing Sharkey or Sharon among them, but it was really hard to catch clear glimpses of my mother, Bruce, Jeremiah, and Barbara. They didn’t attack me or even show any sign they knew I was there. But some of the their hurts, their rages, feelings of rejection shot straight into me like arrows. This should have told me what my little plan was about to lead me into, but I was so psyched up about being the Great Boy Detective, that I didn’t think about what was going to happen to me when I jumped into the truck. I stayed hidden, waiting for my chance until, with cash in hand, Sharkey and Ethan went back to their SUV and drove away. The other heart buyers and sellers did the same except for Joey Hammond. I knew my moment would come any minute. And then it did! Dave took Joey into his office for a minute. That’s all it took!. The very split second the coast was clear, I sprinted to the truck, vaulted the back gate, and buried myself in the bags of clamshells.

It felt like a plunge into the white rapids of a river where each wave buffeted me with its own truckload of sorrows. I felt torn apart from limb to limb to limb from one person’s private pain and another’s. I hope you get the picture. I really can’t give you any idea of what it was really like. I wouldn’t wish that kind of pain on the meanest kid in the world. Early on during this attack, I heard the truck start up and pull out of the gravel drive of Dave’s Auto Parts Center. The truck’s movement made the air very cold. My jacket would have been useless. The bags of clamshells kept me warm. But the ghosts and their wrecked feelings chilled me to the marrow of my bones.

For my own sanity and yours, the only way I can describe my hellish trip with all these bought and sold hearts is to give you a list of some of the people whose hurts made the biggest impression on me. It wasn’t as neat as I make it sound with one person and then another coming at me. It was more like being pushed two and fro by their hurts.

I was my mom, ripped in two by the email from my dad froze her in that awful moment into distrust of everybody, especially all men: her foolish trust in her husband, her trust in Mr. Matecki that endangered me, and my frozen presence at the breakfast table the next morning where I won’t even look up at her. I tried to tell mom that I wished she had come to my room and told me she knew how hard it was, but I couldn’t get any words out.

I was Bruce Denton, frozen by the shock of dad’s announcement that mom was dead, that the doctors he knew would heal her injuries had nevertheless failed, and then quarantined by his friends the next day at school except for Dominic, the kid who’s been such a drag since his dad left him. I tried to tell Bruce I just wanted to be what a friend is for, but I couldn’t tell him.

I was Winston Westerfield, desperately pounding the piano keys, doing those exercises over and over again, determined to get everything right and knock everybody dead with his rip-roaring technique. I Heard his parents chant over and over again, “You have to be the very best. You have to be the very best. Second place doesn’t cut any ice in this family. Dominic Melton is your biggest enemy. Don’t let him walk off with any of the prizes that belong to you.” I felt the feeling in the music drain out of Winston as he practiced harder and harder. I tried to tell him that music wasn’t about winning; it was about music itself, but he was pounding the keys too hard to hear me.

I was Stephanie Cleary, overwhelmed by the ghosts who were suddenly haunting the school. Her fear, her confusion, was my own fear and confusion. She desperately wanted to tell somebody what she was seeing, but she was afraid. She thought I was one kid in the school who might understand, but she lost the courage to say anything when I looked just a little preoccupied with something. I tried to tell Stephanie that I was seeing ghosts all over the school, too. She is not the only freak around. We have to do something about it. But she was too afraid of what I was thinking to hear me.

I was Henry Pearson, reeling from a stinging slap from dad, while listening to a string of insults and a list of everything he had done wrong since the day of his birth. He’s too embarrassed about his home life to ask any friends to come home from school. He did try once to tell me what it was like at home, but he only got empty reassurances with no understanding. I tried to tell Henry I was trying to understand what he was going through, but I was drowned out by his father.

I was Mikey Tucker being told by father that his grades aren’t good enough, that he is stupid, that he will never amount to anything. He was starting to get a little hope when I took time to explain math to him, but he lost all hope when I tried to explain something and I seemed impatient when he couldn’t get it. I tried to tell Mikey he’s not as stupid as his father thinks. I learn some things myself when I try to explain them to him, and he can be a great student if he gave himself a chance. But Mikey was too busy tearing up all his school papers to hear me.

I was Mr. Matecki, in shock over the accusations flung at him by Winston Westerfield. The made him feel as filthy in his gut as if he had even thought of doing what he was being accused of. Now he’s marked for life no matter how much his can clear his name. Blow after blow followed as one student after another stopped taking piano lessons. The worst blow of all was the loss of Dominic Melton, the one student he most thought would believe in his innocence. I tried to tell him I believed in his innocence and I tried my darndest to convince my mom of it. But Mr. Matecki was too lost in playing the piano without any feeling to hear me.

I was Terry Kemp, ignored by his father except when he sneered at him for being a sissy who wouldn’t stand up for his rights. The only approval he got from his father came when from angry phone calls from the school or another parent complaining about what he had done to some kid that day. He hates that self-righteous slimeball, Dominic, for stepping in front of punks like Jeremiah. Any kid with a name like that and a silly face like his deserves to be beaten to a pulp. Who does Dominic think he is? I tried to tell Terry I was sorry his father was like that, but he was too mad at the world to hear me.

I was Lyle Banks, cold-blooded as a snake, with not an ounce of warmth. There was nothing but numbers and bank accounts and gadgets in his life. He didn’t even have a heart to sell, but he sold it anyway, since he could use the money. I couldn’t even think of anything to say to him, and I know he wouldn’t have heard me anyway.

I was Barbara Young, desperately trying to get the right dress and the right hair style to attract the right boys, but somehow she failed to get the attention of Dominic Melton, the cutest boy in the school. She’s wondering why I don’t come to her and ask her to the school dance and then kiss her. That got me dreaming of some other things we might do together, but I’m too embarrassed to write about that. I tried to tell Barbara that she’s really cool, but she was so upset that I hadn’t responded to her that she couldn’t hear me.

I was Jeremiah Wilson, approaching the school in fear of being beaten up again by Terry Kemp or another of the bullies, just for wearing glasses and being smart. He’s grateful that I rescue him when he’s in t rouble, but he wishes I really liked him and would talk to him. Why is Dominic so afraid of being called a nerd that he won’t use his brain and have an intelligent conversation with him? I tried to tell Jeremiah I’m sorry that I never thought to talk to him, and I thought that saving him from bullies was enough. But Jeremiah was lost in a book and he didn’t hear me.

I was Ethan Elway, practicing long hours on the basketball court because if he scores more points than anybody else and his team wins, dad will stop drinking. He is always cutting the lawn and repairing the family car because if the lawn is just right and the car runs without a hitch, dad will stop drinking. He feels responsible for breaking the living room window because he ducked when dad threw a whiskey bottle at him. He’ll replace the window when he gets home from helping with the delivery of the purchased hearts. He is determined to buy every heart in the school, especially the heart of Dominic Melton, because if he completes the job, dad will stop drinking. I tried to tell Ethan that selling my heart to him won’t make his dad stop drinking anymore than selling my heart will bring my dad back home. But Ethan was too busy working out his next plot to buy my heart to hear me.

I don’t know how long this went on while the truck rumbled along to wherever it was going. I felt like I was being ground into the dust, then ground into the mud under the dust, and then ground into the slime under the mud under the dust, after which I was ground into the garbage pit under the slime under the mud under the dust, at which point I was ground into the cess pool under the garbage pit under the slime under the mud under the dust, and then finally ground into the bottomless sewer under the cess pool under the garbage pit under the slime under the mud under the dust. The rejected hearts were yelling at me, shaking their fists, and blaming me for everything. All this time I’d thought I was a decent, caring, kid when all this time I was nothing but a stuck-up kid who only tries to look good. Everything was my fault. I was wrecking everybody’s life. Visions of the multi-colored wires inside the clamshells swirled in my head, and my heart beat to their rhythm as the wires drew me closer and closer to the black spot in the middle of the clamshell. Any minute I would be a goner! Some Knight in Shining Armor and Great Boy Detective I was!

I hope you understand why the Great Boy Detective failed to keep track of where the truck was going, as fundamental a mistake as that was. It isn’t every Great Boy Detective who gets the horrible lives of a whole town dumped on him when he steals a ride on a truck. I just knew I’d gone far enough at high speeds that it’s a good thing I didn’t try to follow on my skateboard. I did manage to notice when the truck slowed down and I raised my head out of the clamshells enough to see that we had reached the entrance of a gated community. Dave gave a name to the guard, and the guard let the truck through. The truck moved slowly through the streets that twisted in every direction in a maze I thought would never end. Every house we passed looked just like the last one. Clone upon clone upon clone. The maze reminded me of a story I read about a guy who followed a maze to the center where he found a monster. The two had a good fight and the good guy finally winning. I wondered if I was going to find a dragon sort at the center of this maze. A truck just like the truck I was riding passed us on its way out. I just knew it had delivered more clamshells filled with human hearts. We passed a large pond. Under the cloudy sky, it looked like the kind of swamp that would conceal a dragon who swallows human hearts.

All this time, the bombardment from all the ghosts in the truck continued without giving me any kind of break at all. I was Sharkey seething with hate at all the kids who ripped off everything in the store. I was Sharon, frustrated to the teeth with filling out forms when so many ungrateful patients need help. I was Sylvia, sitting in the hallway of the nursing home, hoping somebody would say “hello.” For several months, this one nice boy stopped to talk to her, but then he stopped coming. I was Michelle, trying to shrink under the bedcovers when she heard daddy’s footsteps. The shock of her fear unraveled me completely. I’d heard about parents doing these things to their kids, but I hadn’t believed it until Michelle’s fear and pain hit me so hard I had to believe it after all.

That’s the state I was in when the truck passed some humongous houses in the same style as the smaller houses, only bigger, the kind that only billionaires can afford. Then the truck rolled over a causeway of a mote that surrounded a monster house. Brand spanking new as it obviously was, the mansion looked like a ruined Victorian house with gables all over the place. Each window looked like the eye of a dragon who was brooding over its treasury of human hearts. One of the windows had a crack running the full length of it. The facade was made of shakes so warped that they looked like the broken scales of a dragon. The whole thing reminded me of Edgar Allen Poe’s story, “The Fall of the House of Usher.” I thought the house in that story where this lady got buried alive in her coffin was a good name for a house filled with human hearts locked away in clamshells.

The truck stopped in the middle of a circular driveway in front of the mansion. Only then did it occur to me that the Great Boy Detective hadn’t planned things out very well, and he had only half a minute or less to decide what to do. It didn’t help that my mind was running in circles from the onslaught of all the ghosts I’d shared my ride with. Fast thinker that I am, I worked out Plans A and B in five seconds and vaulted out of the back of the truck.

Plan A was vault out of the back of the truck and run for the nearest tree, but I froze when I was only half-way in position to make my move. The dragon mansion had me hypnotized and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. First, one of the upstairs windows half-closed like a blinking eye. When the window opened again, it showed a large eye filled with winding colors centered on an empty black pupil. One by one, each window blinked and opened in the same way until dozens of eyes were turning my mind in slow, dizzy circles. The broken window opened to a bloodshot eye with a really gross red gash running across it. That broke the pattern and so I didn’t fall completely under the spell of the other eyes. Then one gable twisted itself about and sharpened into a large horn. A second gable did the same, followed by all the others, until a dozen horns stuck out of the roof of the House of Usher. Last of all, the front door opened, but nobody stood in the doorway to welcome the delivery men. The dark opening widened until it had spread across the first story of the house. Sharp, jagged points formed from the top and the bottom to make the door a gaping mouth ready to devour all the clamshells in the truck. I felt like everything I had eaten in the past month was about to turn into a river running out of my rear end and down the driveway of the dragon mansion. No question about it: I had tracked down the Beast who was marking the foreheads of everybody in the world.

Dave came round to the back of the truck. Dave didn’t’ seem to be the least bit fazed by the sight. Joey looked nervous, but he didn’t lose it, either. The Mark of the Beast must be protecting them both from feeling the fear the dragon mansion would otherwise overwhelm them with.

“Hey! What are you doing here?” Dave asked when he saw me standing in the middle of the clam shells.

time for Plan B. I opened my mouth to tell them I was sent along to help with the delivery, but spots of all colors filled my eyes, the way they do when you’re feeling faint. The colors started going in circles just like the wires inside the clamshells. I tried to say the words I intended to say, but the pain of all the ghosts in the truck weighed more than a mountain of lead and it crushed those words out of me and squeezed out the question, “How much will you give me for my heart?”

That stopped my life for good. So much for Plan B. I didn’t take in the price they offered me, and I didn’t look at the stack of bills they put in my hand. I was only vaguely aware of the clamshells they gave me for the customers I was expected to find for them. Dave’s instructions in how to talk other people into selling their hearts drained out of my ears and dropped off into some other universe. As Henry promised, I didn’t feel a thing when Dave pressed a clamshell to my chest, although I felt pinch in my forehead that I assumed was the Mark of the Beast appearing there. The clamshell snapped shut and freed me of My heart stopped, just as my life had stopped.

Dave picked up the nearest bag of clamshells, carried it over to the dragon’s mouth and threw it into the house-turned-beast. The ghosts in the bag swelled up into a large cloud before they melted in the darkness inside the Beast’s jaws. I expected to hear the lost souls scream as they plunged into the monster’s belly, but I only felt weak stabs of the same hurts these ghosts had been inflicting on me since I first stole myself away on the truck. As soon as Joey picked up a bag, I picked one up myself. I learned right away that clamshells are heavy when you have enough of them in one bag. I was sure the hearts would have felt just as heavy in my heart if I still had it. When I got close enough to the Beast’s mouth to heave the bag in, I saw the blank faces of many ghosts. Most of them were strangers to me, but I recognized Dave and Joey Hamilton among them. Another cloud of ghosts swelled up when I flung the back into the house. Among them, I saw my hauntingly handsome image fade in with the other ghosts who had been thrown in to feed the Beast.

Although selling my heart freed me from the crushing griefs of the rejected hearts that I was feeding to the Beast, their complaints about their lives drone on inside my head. My mother complained that I had shut her out of her life. Henry reeled from another slap from his father. Barbara fussed with her hair and fussed about the boys she wanted. On top of that, I got dumped on by the ghosts of people I’d never known before. Many of them were nearly carbons copies of Barbara or Henry or Mikey or Michelle or Sharkey. Many others were different. A lot of the ghosts were of kids and grownups from the inner city. I saw gangs of boys running from the police. I saw one boy get beat by three policemen who caught him. I saw other boys run from house to house with packages of dope. I heard women crying over their children who were lost as soon as they were born. Those lost souls who were Afro-Americans had gotten the message that black was ugly pounded into their systems in ways I couldn’t imagine even as I felt it. If I hadn’t sold my heart, I would have started a crusade right then and there to do something about all this. That’s another reason to think that somebody, or several somebodies, have vested interests in buying up all the hearts they can. It’s a lot easier to run the world the way you want to run it if people don’t have enough heart to go on crusades to make things better.

By the time the truck was half-emptied, Dave and Joey were still throwing out the bags at a steady pace. They glanced at me when my strength flagged and didn’t conceal their contempt for my weakness, but they didn’t bother to say anything. Another advantage of not having a heart was that I didn’t care about how much my arms ached. But, still, the ghosts would not leave me alone. I heard ghosts gloating about the great harvest in hearts. The domino theory was working. Buy up some hearts and the parents and friends of those people will be so heart-broken they will sell their hearts. That will break the hearts of everybody who cares for them, and so you can buy them up their hearts as well. It was like a black swirl in my head. The images of these ghosts grew fainter until I couldn’t tell one face from another as they mumbled to each other on their cell phones to people in other houses just like this monstrous mansion, who, in turn, were mumbling to people in other houses. Further confirmation that this was a world wide conspiracy. Good thing for them I didn’t have a heart that would get upset enough to try and do anything about it. I moved deeper and deeper in the downward spiral. No colors, this time. Just black coils leading me into a black hole that was going to suck me in forever. I should have known that the Beast was a bottomless pit. Well, at least I didn’t have the heart to care about it, so it didn’t matter..

“Dominic! What are you doing here?”

That voice somehow pulled me back from the black hole whirlpool of the Beast. It was Jeremiah Wilson.

“I came here to save you guys,” I said. “Sorry I blew it.”

I was kind of surprised I said that. I had given up the idea of saving anybody from anything by this time.

“You did?” said Mikey Tucker.

“Yea, I did, but it’s all over now,” I replied.

“It’s never all over,” said Mr. Matecki.

“Now that I know you saw the ghosts, too, I don’t feel like such a freak,” said Stephanie Cleary.

“Why Dominic came back to see me!” Sylvia exclaimed.

“We’re going to have to save you,” said Jeremiah.

“Good luck,” I said, with all the sarcasm in the world and more.

“We don’t need luck; we just need determination,” said Mikey.

Since I didn’t have a heart anymore, I didn’t have the heart to tell them that a couple of shrimps, a girl, a helpless old woman, and a wimpy piano teacher couldn’t do much for me. No sense in letting guys like that get my hopes up.

Finally, the truck was empty. The eyes of the House of Usher slowly turned back into windows, the horns to gables, and the gaping mouth shrank back to a door. Dave and Joey climbed into the front of the truck. The motor started up. The truck pulled away. Only then did I realize they had left alone in front of the monstrous house with no idea where I was. I didn’t even have the heart or the smarts to jump into the back of the truck before it left. It was starting to get dark. The wind snapped at me like a baby ice dragon. The Great Boy Detective had failed completely for all time. So much for my God-given stubborn streak. My heart had stopped. It would never go on again. Both the song and my Grandma were wrong about that.

The fading light made the House of Usher look like the brooding dragon I knew it was. Several ghosts flickered in the windows like fireflies. I recognized the faces of Jeremiah, Mikey, and Stephanie. “Thanks for coming to get me!” I heard Mikey cry from a distance. “Thanks for saving me from being a freak!” said Stephanie. “We’ll bring you out of here with us,” Jeremiah promised. “Thanks guys,” I whispered. Then I turned away from the House of Usher. The Mark of the Beast felt like a chisel pounding into my forehead. As I shuffled along the causeway across the moat, I heard a loud pop. Something clattered on the gravel close to my feet. I didn’t even bother to look at it. Then I heard two more pops, followed by the sound of shattering glass. I whirled around in time to see a couple of sparkling lights fly out of a broken window on the second floor like firecrackers and land on the gravel close to me. They were three or four empty clamshells with the wires inside unraveled. I shuddered and hurried across the moat. Maybe this House of Usher was about to collapse just like the house in Poe’s story.

There was nothing I could do except walk the maze of the gated community and hope I found my way to a main road before I died of exposure. I knew there was no sense on knocking on any of the identical doors all around me. The place was gated to keep people like me out. When I heard the hum of a car motor, I thought nothing of it. When I saw cream-colored car crawl in my direction with its headlights peering at me like an underwater monster, I thought nothing of it. When the car stopped and a window slid down, I thought nothing of it.

“Dominic! Need a ride?”

It was Peter Baum. It would have warmed my heart if I hadn’t just sold it and thrown it into the dragon’s mouth.

“Sure,” I said.

I opened the door and hopped in.

We didn’t say anything while Peter drove around the streets that twisted back on themselves like a dragon eating its tail. A Mozart piano sonata was playing on the sound system at a low volume. Peter punched in a number on his cell phone.

“I found him,” he said. “I’m bringing him home.”

Not until he switched the phone off did I realize he was talking about me.

“Am I in trouble?” I asked.

“I think your mom’s too happy I found you for you to be in any trouble.”

After following a few more twists and turns, Peter found the gate and we were free of the place.

“How did you get in here?” I asked.

“I told them I had to pick you up when you finished your work,” said Peter.

“Why did you follow me?”

“You’re not the only one who’s noticed some things.”

“Was Mandy spying on me this morning?” I asked when I remembered her skating around the same block I was.

“Yes. You could have saved yourself some trouble by working with us.”

“I know.”

“But then I could have saved you some trouble by stopping to talk to you when I saw you following Ethan this morning, but I was afraid you’d think I was crazy.”

I understood his sentiment all to well to say anything about it.

“Did you see the house that we fed it all those clam shells to?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Peter, his voice heavy.

“Is it enough to make you sell your heart?

There was a brief pause.

“Do you really want to buy my heart?” Peter asked me.

Another pause.

“No.”

I was surprised I had said that. I had sold my heart. I had clamshells for capturing more hearts. I’d get thousands of dollars if I bought Peter’s heart. Then Mandy’s and Nelly’s. So why didn’t I want to give Peter the hard sell?

“Did you get the address of the house?” Peter asked me.

“No.”

By this time, the Great Boy Detective was completely deflated. How could he have possibly forgotten to look at the address of the House of Usher and memorize it?

“That’s okay. I did.”

“They’ve got a finger in several businesses,” I said.

“I know.”

“I suppose they get back all the money they pay out.”

“I’m sure they do,” Peter agreed.

The reason I knew that is because I was still getting visions of the ghosts inside the House of Usher and I could still hear what they were saying to themselves and what they were saying to me. Not only that, but I was mentally replying to the ghosts.

“I think Winston is listening to me a little,” I said.

That didn’t make sense. I didn’t have the heart to say anything to Winston, and he didn’t have any heart to listen to me.

“Anybody else?”

Peter’s question loosened my tongue, and I spilled out everything I was seeing and hearing from inside the House of Usher. It was a weird feeling to see my ghost at a distance talking to ghosts and telling a live person what was going on. I was trying to comfort Henry Pearson with the help of Jeremiah, Mikey, and Stephanie. We promised to support him as he told his school counselor about his dad so that something could be done about him. I tried to talk to Barbara Young but couldn’t reach her. Same with Bruce. But for some reason, Winston listened to me and he even listened to Mr. Matecki until Winston said, “I can’t wait to see the expression on my parents’ faces when I tell them where they can stuff their accusations and that piano competition.” When Winston said that, I heard another popping sound followed by shattering glass. I also spent a lot of time talking to my mother. To my surprise, she was listening to me and talking to me. In all, it was quite a lot of activity for a dead heart. It didn’t make any sense.

“Do you think I’m crazy?” I asked, when I was talked out.

“About as crazy as I am,” said Peter.

* * *

It was a long drive home, but Peter finally got me there. The living room lights were on; a welcome sight. I didn’t get passed the door before my mom gave me a tight hug and held me until I was out of breath. Until then, we hadn’t even touched each other since my dad left us. When I finally got further into the living room, I found Nelly sitting there. By this time, I should have known she was a co-conspirator with Peter. Nellie told me gently that I really shouldn’t try to save the world all by myself, but I should let a few other people help me. I didn’t feel like I’d saved anybody, not even myself, but I listened very nicely to what Nelly had to say. Peter invited me and my mom to go to his church and then have brunch over at his house. When Nellie told me Peter was the organist, I was quick to accept the invitation. Then they left me alone with my mom

My mom and I stayed up late, talking about how we felt about my dad, and what we needed to do together to get on with our lives. I felt like we were continuing the conversation my ghost was having with her ghost back in the House of Usher. For somebody who had sold her heart long before I did, she was pretty sensitive with me. It was enough to make me feel bad about selling my heart just when she was getting ready to relate to me again as a human being and be a real mom. But maybe again, it was just as well I’d sold my heart. If I hadn’t, I might have broken down and cried in my mom’s arms. When you’re almost thirteen, you’re a little old for that. Come to think of it, I cried in her arms a little bit as we said our good nights. Don’t tell anybody. It wouldn’t be cool for word to get around.

* * *

Like I said before, It had been several weeks since Mom and I had last been to church. It felt good to be going again, even if the church was new to me. Jeremiah waved me and my mom over to sit next to him. That felt good. If I hadn’t sold my heart, I probably would have liked the service a lot. The preacher made Jesus sound more like the guy who welcomed the children than a cosmic whip-swinger. That was good. The best part of the service by far was the music. Peter played the organ better than I could ever play anything in a millions years. Better yet, Jeremiah came forward and sang a hymn called “Here am I, Lord.” He looked straight at me while he was singing, like he was singing it just for me. His voice was beautiful. One verse especially made a strong impression on me:

            I, the Lord of snow and rain,

            I have borne my people’s pain

            I have wept for love of them.

            They turn away.

I felt that I had borne the pain of a lot of people, a lot more pain than I could stand. People had turned away from me, but I had turned away from them. Heck! I had even turned away from myself by selling my heart. At the same time, I felt like Jeremiah’s singing was carrying my heart dead as it was. For a shrimp, he was pretty strong. By why do I keep calling Jeremiah a shrimp when he’s stronger than I am.

After puttering around at coffee hour where the pastor talked to me and mom an invited us to come again, mom drove me over to Peter’s house. When Peter’s mom answered the door, some ragged singing exploded in my face: “Happy Birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy Birthday dear Dominic! Happy Birthday to you!” It took me while to take in who all was there, but I’ll give you complete list now. Filling up the Baums’ living room were Winston Westerfield, Mr. Matecki, Mandy Denton, Mikey Tucker, Jeremiah Wilson, Stephanie Cleary, Sylvia, Nelly, Henry Pearson, and, of course, Peter and his family. I vaguely knew that it was my birthday, but after I selling my heart, I hadn’t thought much about it. It was a strange feeling to look around at this mix of people, most of whose ghosts I had talked to about their woes in life, only to give in and sell my own heart. Colorful balloons floated about the living room. Even at age thirteen, I’m a sucker for balloons. On the coffee table, there was a birthday cake decorated with the words: “Happy Birthday Dominic.” Never had I been so frozen, so clueless, as to what to say or do. I was sure I would have broken down and cried like a baby if I hadn’t sold my heart, but the next thing I knew, I broke down and cried like a baby. I think it was my mom who wrapped her arms around me first. Then everybody got their turn. I have to admit that the hug from Stephanie had a little something extra for me, if you know what I mean. No dirty thoughts; just really glad she was hugging me. When I got to Mr. Matecki, I looked over to my mother.

“Yes, Dominic” said Mom. “You are getting your piano teacher back. I thought that might be the best birthday present I could give you.”

“It is,” I replied.

Winston turned very red and looked down to the floor.

“Thanks, Winston,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

Winston was still embarrassed about what he had done, but I thought he was breathing easier. I wished I could have said more to him just then. A shy hug would have to do for now.

At the end of it the hugfest, I had Stephanie sitting next to me on one side of the couch and Jeremiah on my other side.

“When I saw that you had followed us like you did,” Jeremiah explained, “I wanted my heart back right then.”

“Me, too,” Mikey chimed in.

“Did you get your hearts back?” I asked.

“What do you think?” Stephanie asked me.

I looked around the room. For the first time I actually saw what had been staring me in the face all this time. Nobody there had the Mark of the Beast on their foreheads. Well, nobody but me.

“How did you guys get your hearts back?” I asked, my voice almost a whisper.

“Same way you’re getting your heart back,” said Jeremiah.

“They cannot keep your heart any longer than you want them to,” Mr. Matecki explained.

“Then—does that mean . . .?”

I heard a loud pop that sounded like it came both from a far distance and right inside my chest. It was just like the pops I heard yesterday before some clamshells dropped around me in front of the House of Usher. A few seconds later, I heard a crumbling sound. Maybe that horrible house really was going to fall. I looked at the other people in the room questioningly.

“Yes, it means exactly what you think it means,” said Sylvia.

“Then maybe we can talk other guys into wanting their hearts, back, too,” I suggested.

“That’s what I’m going to do,” said Stephanie, “and I want you to help me.”

At that moment, there wasn’t anything in the world I wouldn’t do for Stephanie. Just thinking about the people I would have liked to have at my party but who weren’t there was enough to remind me that we still needed to reach a lot of people. Bruce, especially. I felt sorry for Mandy because I could see she was bummed out about her brother as much as I was. And then there were kids like Jack and Sarah who probably wouldn’t be such losers if somebody cared about them, and Michelle, who would need a lot of help.

Before serving the cake, Mrs. Baum served scrambled eggs mixed with bacon, ham, and cheese. There was more than even a growing first-day teenager could eat in one sitting. Of all the people there, Henry was the most wiped out, and he had a hard time joining in on the conversation. I could hardly blame him, knowing as I did what he was going through at home. It must have been hard for him to take back his heart, and I suspected it was still a close game. When he went over for second helpings of the egg dish, I scooted over to him.

“We’ll make sure we find someone who knows what to about your dad,” I whispered to him.

“Think you can?” Henry whispered back.

“I bet we all can do something about it,” I told him. I was catching on that I can’t rescue the world all by myself. Even a Great Boy Detective needs help.

That took enough weight off Henry’s shoulders that he batted a balloon in my face. I was also catching on that having my heart back was going to hurt sometimes. I wasn’t just feeling bad about Henry; I was feeling bad about my dad and a lot of other people besides. But I was going to need my heart if I was going to do anything about everything that’s wrong in my life, and then do some things about that’s wrong with the world, and I wanted to do a lot about those things.

An hour or two later, when not even I could eat another piece of cake for another hour or two, Sylvia said, “Dominic, would you mind singing that lovely song you sang at the nursing home for your grandmother?”

I would have turned down anyone else, but I couldn’t do that to Sylvia.

“Well—my voice is changing—but I can try,” I stammered.

There was a grand piano in the corner of the living room and my fingers were itching to do something with it. I made my way over to it and played and sang as much of the song as I could. I did pretty well, if I do say so myself. Singing that song told me something important. Maybe my stubbornness was a gift from God, but my heart was a greater gift. My grandma was right after all. No matter what happened, my heart was going to go on, and on, and on.