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"All right. You weren't. Anyway," he said, turning back to his room, "I think my bed is where her bed had been, between those two windows. My mother had the panes replaced with more efficient ones, but that's where the windows were then and that's where they are now."

I walked in slowly and looked around. It was difficult now to envision this room ever being my mother's or any girl's room, for that matter. The furniture was heavy-looking dark oak. He had a set of dumbbells on a stand in the corner. Over the headboard of the bed was a school banner celebrating the basketball championship last year. On the top of his bookcase, he had trophies as well.

I thought the most interesting thing was an oil painting of a baseball player swinging his bat. The artist captured his movement and the tension in his forearms, neck and shoulders. There was just enough of his profile to show his intensity.

"That's very nice," I said, nodding at it. "It has great detail."

"Yeah. I saw it in a gallery in New York and my father bought it for me. It's called Hitter's Dream. I heard you paint, too."

"Heard?"

"Dicky Steigman is in your art class. Mr. Longo's pretty impressed with what you do. I agree with him. I saw one of your paintings."

"When?"

Nothing I had ever done was put on display.

"Oh, one day when no one was in the room. I went in on my own and found it on Longo's desk. It was the one you did of a hawk or some large bird sailing over a pond."

"That's sneaky," I said.

He shrugged.

"Would you have shown it to me if I had asked?"

"Probably not," I confessed. The last thing I needed was for the other students to start poking fun at my art.

"Case closed."

I turned away and looked out the window. It looked down on the front of the house, but from this vantage point, I could see the street and some of the village as well. Had my mother felt as trapped up here as she had back in our attic? It was a good-size room, but nowhere near the size of the attic.

"What exactly do you know about the Pearson case?" he asked.

"Not that much. My grandparents don't like to talk about it," I said.

He was just staring at me now, wearing the expression of someone who wasn't sure he should say anything else.

"What?" I urged.

"As I said, because I'm living in the house and sleeping in her room, I couldn't help but have some curiosity about it. However, my parents don't even know how much I've learned. It's better that way. They accused me of having a macabre curiosity, and my mother hates to hear about it."

"What did you learn?"

"I know what she claimed was happening to her and how in the end no one believed her because she made so much stuff up. Some of it was quite off the wall. Actually, I suppose most of it was."

"I think I better go," I said. Talking about my mother as if she was someone else was starting to bother me, and I was afraid of what else he might say. "I didn't tell my grandparents I was going for a walk."

"Take it easy," he said. "I'll drive you home. You might be interested in what I think about it all."

"I'm not," I said, starting out.

"Why not?"

"I'm tired of people making fun of me, for one thing," I said, pausing. "Slipping notes in my locker, whispering behind my back. Spying on my art," I added.

"Wait a minute," he said as I walked out. He followed me to the stairway. "I'm not making fun of you and I don't whisper behind your back. I'm not going to say I haven't heard other girls making fun of you, but they're idiots."

"Exactly what do you want?" I asked, turning at the top of the stairs.