Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Flick's stomach hurt. His stomach had been hurting for days, and he didn't want to think about why it was hurting because the more he thought about it the worse it felt. His mother had died last summer, and when she had first gotten sick two years earlier, it had started out as a vague and undefined stomachache. Flick didn't have ovaries and so he knew he couldn't have the same kind of cancer she'd had, but he had plenty of other parts that could get cancer, and it still seemed horrifically unbelievable that a person could be sick with something that would ultimately kill them and yet only feel a mild stomachache.

But Flick's stomach hurt a lot, which made him worry that it was serious, that it was already too late. His dad sometimes told him that he was worrying himself sick, and Flick couldn't get a clear answer from him if he meant that literally or if he only meant that he would feel sick but not actually be sick, but at any rate Flick tried not to worry about his stomachache in the hopes that it would go away. And sometimes it did for a little bit, but then it came back even if he wasn't worrying about it and that made Flick worry even more.

Flick was laying on the couch with a blanket piled around him when his dad, Nat, called from the kitchen, “Flick, dinner is ready.” Flick didn't move. After a minute Nat walked into the living room. “Flick!” he said again with annoyance, but then stopped when he saw Flick on the couch.

“My stomach hurts,” Flick said.

Nat walked up to him. “Do you feel like you might throw up? Do you need to use the toilet?”

Flick shook his head.

Nat knelt on the floor next to the couch and put his hand to Flick's forehead. “Oh! You're burning up. I'm going to go get the thermometer. Take that blanket off you, just for a minute.” He stood up and left the room.

Flick kicked the blanket off and rolled over onto his back, but then his stomach cramped up again and he rolled over onto his side so that he could curl up in a little ball.

A minute later, his father sat on the floor again and held the thermometer to Flick's forehead; after it beeped, he looked at the reading and frowned. “How long has your stomach been hurting?”

“A few days,” Flick croaked out.

“A few days! Why didn't you tell me earlier?”

Flick shrugged miserably, avoiding eye contact.

Nat sighed, and looked at the clock, then the thermometer, then back at Flick. “Do you think you can eat something?”

Flick shook his head no.

“I made spaghetti...” Nat offered.

Spaghetti was one of the few things Flick ate without complaint, but he just shook his head again.

“Can you show me where it hurts?”

“All over.”

“Can I touch your stomach?”

“No!” Flick curled up into a tighter ball, wrapping his arms over his torso.

“Okay, okay...” Nat leaned back against the end table. “Well, I can at least get you some paracetamol for the fever. I need to think about what else to do.”

His father went back to the bathroom and returned with a little cup of medicine; Flick propped himself up on an elbow enough to drink it, then laid back down again. He didn't feel the limp fatigue he usually felt when he was sick and instead felt shaky, which scared him even more because he didn't know what was going on. Nat sat on the other end of the couch with his phone, and after a few minutes he sighed and said, “I think our only option is A&E.”

“No!” Flick said, half rolling over to face his father. “I don't wanna go!”

“It's Saturday night, everything else is going to be closed. I don't want to wait until Monday morning, if you're in this much pain.”

Flick started crying.

“Oh, Flick, I'm sure it's nothing serious. Just a stomach bug or food poisoning or something. The doctors will take care of you.”

They didn't take care of Mum, Flick thought as he wiped the tears off his face, but he didn't say anything.

Nat lightly patted Flick's leg. “I'm going to pack up dinner, and then we'll head out.”

Flick listened to his father move pans and dishes around the kitchen, and soon after he was back in the living room. He sat back down on the couch and put Flick's shoes on his feet, tying the laces, then he helped Flick sit up and guided his arms through the sleeves of his hoodie. “In the future, though, Flick, please tell me right away if you're not feeling well.”

Although his father had spoken gently, Flick still cringed and thought, This is all my fault. It's my fault I'm sick and it's my fault we have to go to A&E.

By the time they got to the hospital, Flick had used up so much energy worrying about his stomachache that he was tired now, and he leaned against his father while Nat talked to the receptionist in halting German. Nat made a little noise of frustration as Flick tried to nestle into his armpit, and after a moment said, “Flick, I'm sorry, I...” He gently nudged Flick upright again. “Give me some space, I need to fill out a form.”

Flick sighed and then, because he was still tired and he wanted to be near his dad, sat down to lean against his legs.

Nat grabbed his arm almost immediately. “Oh god, Flick, no, don't sit on the floor!”

“But I'm tired!”

“I don't need you picking up whatever germs are on the floor of A&E. Go wait for me on those chairs while I finish this up.”

Flick resignedly shuffled over to the chairs.

Nat called after him, “And use some hand sanitizer.”

Flick turned around to pout. “But I don't like hand sanitizer.”

“Do it anyway.”

Flick scowled, but he resentfully shoved a hand under the automatic sanitizer dispenser and half-heartedly rubbed his palms together, then scrubbed them hard against his pants to get the smell off. He slumped in one of the hard plastic chairs and watched his father talk to one person, then another. The paracetamol had kicked in enough that he wasn't in as much pain anymore and he started to think that maybe they didn't need to be here after all, maybe he just needed some paracetamol, but his stomach still felt heavy and full, even though he had barely eaten today, and he wasn't the least bit hungry. After a few minutes, Nat walked up to him and said, “Flick, the triage nurse is going to examine you. Follow me.”

The nurse put a plastic ID bracelet on Flick's wrist—Flick recognized his name and birth date, but everything else on it was in German, or was some incomprehensible hospital code—and then Flick, Nat and the nurse walked down a short hallway to a little curtained off nook. Flick sat on an exam table while a nurse checked his temperature and blood pressure and pulse, then the nurse said something in German and his father said, “She's asking you to lie back so that she can feel your stomach.” Flick reluctantly did as he was told; the nurse pressed her fingers into different parts of his abdomen and Flick squirmed under her touch. After she was finished, she said something in German to him that sounded like it was meant to be soothing or apologetic but his father didn't translate this time. Then she spoke directly to Nat and Nat said, “Danke,” which was one of the few German words Flick recognized, then the nurse gathered up her things and left.

“Are we done?” Flick asked as he sat up.

Nat smiled gently. “No. That was just to make sure you weren't in some immediate crisis. We're going to head back to the waiting room and they'll come get us when there's a doctor available.”

The waiting room was bright and noisy and crowded. There was a baby wearily crying while their parent bounced them and patted their back, an old man wetly coughing into a handkerchief, and somebody loudly complaining to a hospital worker in scrubs; a television played a German news broadcast, the fluorescent lights buzzed overhead and somebody's portable oxygen tank hissed. Flick put his hands over his ears. But after a few minutes, he got tired of holding his hands up, so he slouched to lay down sideways in his chair, resting his head on his dad's lap; Nat shifted his weight, as if he didn't know what to do, but then he took off his own jacket and laid it over Flick. Flick pulled the jacket up to cover his face, and then he felt a little better, in this warm, dark cocoon that smelled like his father.

An hour passed, then another. Every so often, Flick would take the jacket off his face and ask his father, “How much longer?” and every time Nat would answer, “I don't know.” Every time Flick looked, there was a different assortment of people in the waiting room, which Flick tried to interpret as a good sign, that he wasn't that sick after all, if everybody else here needed to see the doctor before he did, but if he wasn't really that sick then why couldn't they leave? He just wanted to go back to the flat. But eventually someone called their names and led them back to a curtained-off exam room where a different nurse once again checked Flick's temperature and pulse and blood pressure. Nat started talking to the doctor in German, but then the doctor held up a hand and said, “You speak English?”

“Yes,” Nat said with relief.

“Wait,” the doctor said, then stepped back behind the curtain. Flick heard two voices talking in German and then a different doctor stepped into the exam room, looking put-upon. “What is the problem?” the new doctor asked in English as he sat down in front of the computer. German accents always sounded angry to Flick, and Flick already had enough trouble telling whether or not a person was actually angry, so he couldn't help but cringe a little.

Nat said, “My son Flick says his stomach has been hurting for a few days. He's hardly eaten anything today, he's weak and tired, and tonight he had a fever of 39.2.”

“Have you taken him to his regular pediatrician?”

“H-he doesn't have a local doctor here yet. We only just moved here from London about a month ago.”

The doctor sighed as he typed some notes into the computer. “Any changes to his diet?”

“No,” Nat said. “It's, uh, it's a struggle getting him to try any new foods. He sticks to his favorites.”

“Any medication changes?”

“No, no changes. He only takes a multivitamin.”

“Any vomiting?”

“No.”

“Any diarrhea or constipation? Blood in the stool?”

Nat turned to Flick and then the doctor turned to Flick, too, and Flick didn't like all these people looking at him so he quickly shook his head no.

The doctor frowned as he typed some more, then he stood up and said to Flick, “Lay down.”

The doctor's voice sounded harsh, and Flick flinched and looked to his father, but Nat just said to him, “Go on.”

So Flick laid back on the exam table and the doctor pushed on Flick's stomach, not nearly as gently as the triage nurse had earlier, and Flick instinctively pulled away and said, “Ow!”

But the doctor didn't stop and only said, “Keep still!” and pressed on Flick's stomach harder, so Flick balled up his hands into fists and tried not to move so that the exam would be over sooner. When the doctor was finished, he said something in German to the nurse, who said something back to him. Then to Nat, he said, “We are doing blood work and a, uh, a scan.”

“A scan?” Nat asked. He looked worried now, which made Flick worried. “What kind of scan?”

“A scan!” the doctor insisted. Then he turned to the nurse in exasperation and said something to her in German, and the nurse said to him, “X-ray.” Then the doctor turned back to Nat and said, “An x-ray. To check for structural issues or obstructions.”

Nat nodded mutely and the doctor left the room. The nurse followed behind him and on her way out said to Nat in heavily accented English, “I will be back shortly.” Nat nodded to her, too.

Nat sunk down in the chair next to the exam table and gave Flick a weak smile. But then he sighed and furrowed his brow, and after a moment said, “I hate hospitals.”

Flick hated them, too—the constant noise and the harsh lights and the antiseptic smell and the memories of visiting his sick mother—and he was sure his father hated them even more because he was the one who had taken her to all her appointments while Flick was dropped off with his grandfather or more often with a babysitter when his grandfather was unavailable. (Flick had preferred the hired babysitter; his grandfather never actually played with him and regularly said to him things like, "Boys don't cry," and once when Flick was very little and had accidentally spilled a cup of juice, his grandfather had made him stand in a corner until his parents came to pick him up and then Flick's parents hadn't let his grandfather watch him for a year after that. But then his mother had gotten sick and he had to go back to spending the occasional afternoon with his grandfather.) And now Flick had gone and made himself sick enough to force them to go back to a hospital and they were both upset and it was all Flick's fault. He was about to lay down on the exam table and cover his head with his arms when the nurse came back, pushing a little cart of tools. “We need a blood sample,” she said. “How is he with needles?”

Nat said, “He's been getting better for his vaccinations. I don't think he's ever had a blood draw before, though.”

The nurse nodded and said, “I have, uh...” She fumbled for the English word, and held up a canister. “A spray. To numb.”

Nat said to Flick, “Take off your hoodie.” He did, and the nurse rolled one of his t-shirt sleeves up to his shoulder, then tied a rubber band around his upper arm. She gently turned his arm and wiped down the crook of his elbow, then sprayed it with the canister she had held up earlier. Flick jumped at the noise, and she offered him a reassuring smile. Then she took an alarmingly large needle and guided it into his arm. The spray did what it was supposed to and he didn't feel the needle go in, but it was unsettling to watch blood flowing so freely out of his body, filling up a little tube, and he started to feel nauseated and like he might faint. But then the nurse untied the rubber band and cheerfully said, “All done!” She pulled the needle out again, pressing a square of gauze over the spot where it had been, and put a plaster over it. Flick exhaled. She rolled her cart off to the side and took a hospital gown out of a drawer. “He will need to change into this for the x-ray. Shirt, trousers and shoes off, socks and underpants can stay on if there is no metal.”

Flick took the gown from her, and after she left the room, he asked his father, “Do I have to?”

“Doctor's orders, I'm afraid.”

Flick frowned. “Don't watch.”

Nat rolled his eyes, but turned his back so that Flick could undress with some privacy. After he was done, he crumpled up his clothes and dropped them on one of the chairs, then climbed back up onto the exam table. Nat shook out Flick's clothes and folded them neatly, then sat down in the other chair.

It was another long wait for the x-ray, and Flick laid down on the exam table. The gown was long, almost to his knees, but it was open in the back and every time Flick moved he had to readjust the gown to keep himself covered. Other than Nat asking him once how he was feeling and Flick shrugging in response, he and his father didn't talk, and mostly Flick listened to the noises of A&E all around him: people talking, people crying, the beeps of machines and the squeaks of wheels. After a while, Flick started tapping his thumbs against his fingertips in a complex pattern, a soothing little ritual he'd developed recently to take his mind off whatever he didn't want to think about, but as soon as Nat noticed what he was doing, he reached over and gently batted at Flick's hands. “I've asked you not to do that. It makes you look neurotic.”

Flick scowled at him. “I don't care,” he said, and rolled over onto his side, his back to his father, and after he adjusted his gown once more he went back to his tapping.

Eventually, the nurse returned and announced, “We are ready for your scan.” Flick sat up and started to scoot to the end of the exam table, but the nurse smiled and put her hand up. “No need to get up. The table has wheels. You can, ah, go for a ride.” She raised barriers on either side of the exam table and used her foot to unlock the wheels. As Nat stood up, she turned to him and said, “You will wait here.”

A brief look of panic crossed Nat's face, but he pushed it away with a nervous smile. “It-it's just that he doesn't speak German. I think I should—”

The nurse cut him off with a shake of her head. “I know a little English. There is no room for... for extra people. It will be fine. We will not be long.”

“O-okay.” Nat put his hands in his pockets and gave Flick a smile that still managed to look troubled.

The nurse wheeled Flick down a series of hallways, past other doctors and nurses and patients and all kinds of machines and finally to a small, dark room, where he got off his exam table and onto a different one. The nurse guided him into a laying position with his hands above his head and placed heavy coverings over his hips and chest. A technician adjusted a machine over his belly, and the nurse told him to hold still for a few seconds while they both left the room, then the machine beeped and a second later they both came back in. The technician looked over the image on the computer screen and he and the nurse spoke to each other in German for a moment, then the nurse said to Flick, “All done!” She took the lead weights off and helped him back up onto the other exam table and wheeled him back to his room.

But when they got there, his father was gone. Flick hoped at first that they had gotten the wrong room, but there were his clothes still folded on the chair. He looked around uneasily, hoping that the nurse would reassure him, but she said nothing as she parked the exam table and locked the wheels again. She said to him, “Let us get you a blanket while we wait.” She took a blanket out of a cupboard and laid it out over Flick's legs; it was thick, rough cotton, but it was warm, and as Flick was gathering it around himself, his dad finally blew into the room, slightly out of breath. Flick exhaled in relief.

“Sorry,” Nat said. “I just stepped outside for a moment.” As he took off his jacket and laid it over the back of the chair, Flick could smell the cigarette smoke coming off it and he glared at his father. But Nat either didn't notice or chose to ignore it, and he said to the nurse, “How did it go?”

“The scan is complete. The doctor will look it over and will be back to talk with you shortly,” she said. “Can I get you anything? Water? Coffee?”

“No. Thank you,” Nat said.

After the nurse left the room, Flick looked darkly at his father. “You weren't here.”

“I'm sorry,” Nat said, his shoulders sagging a little. “I hurried back as soon as I could. Were you waiting long?”

Flick didn't feel like answering him, so he just sulked and laid down, pulling the blanket over his head and making a little nest around him.

“Flick, I said I was sorry,” Nat insisted.

Under the blanket, Flick made a face. A stupid cigarette is more important than me apparently, Flick thought, but then he went back to tapping his thumbs to his fingertips and tried to focus all his attention on that instead.

After a while, Flick pushed the blanket off him and slid off the exam table; his father looked in his direction when Flick got up, but then Flick glowered at him as he grabbed his clothes off the chair and Nat turned away to give him some privacy to change. Flick left the hospital gown in a pile on the floor, then climbed right back up onto the exam table and laid down, pulling the blanket over his head and arms so that he wouldn't have to look at anything and so that he could continue his tapping in peace.

After another eternity, the doctor came back to their room and announced, “I have looked over the test results.” Flick peeked out from under the blanket and the doctor glanced at him briefly before sitting down and logging in to the computer. “The blood work is all normal, there is nothing of concern there. The scan as well. There are no abnormalities that I can see. He is, however, very constipated.” The doctor called up the image from the x-ray on the computer and gestured to it. “Look how backed up he is.” Flick sat up for a better view; he couldn't tell what exactly the doctor was pointing to, but it still felt embarrassing and revolting to have his insides on display like that. Then the doctor faced Flick directly and asked him, “When is the last time you had a bowel movement?”

Flick did not like being looked at or asked questions, so he didn't answer.

“Today?” the doctor asked.

Flick shook his head.

“Yesterday?”

Flick shook his head again.

“This week?”

Flick shrugged. He couldn't remember.

The doctor threw up his hands, then turned to Nat and asked, “What are you feeding him?”

Flick's father had been looking relieved, but now he seemed startled to be on the defensive. “W-well,” he stammered. “I'll admit there have been a lot of cheese sandwiches as of late, but I—”

The doctor cut him off. “He needs fruits and vegetables every day! At every meal.”

“I realize that, it's just—” Nat started.

“He should have ten to fifteen grams of fiber daily.”

“I know,” Nat insisted. “It's just that he's very picky and—”

“Well, you cannot let him manipulate you like that. Because this is the result.” He gestured to the screen again, then sighed in frustration. “Where is his mother?” the doctor asked.

Now Nat's face turned stony. “She died in June.”

The doctor didn't react, but after a moment conceded, “Stress could be a factor here as well. But the fact remains that you need to feed him a more well-balanced diet. Maybe cooking meals did not used to be your responsibility, but it is now, and you need to do a better job meeting his nutritional needs.”

Nat seethed, then said, “Well, if it's only constipation, then why did he have a fever?”

The doctor leaned back in his chair. “He does not have a fever.”

“He did at home! 39.2! I gave him paracetamol. And he seemed so tired.”

The doctor shrugged casually. “Children can sometimes work themselves up to a mild fever, especially if they are, hmm...” He cast his gaze over to Flick, who had the blanket wrapped over the top of his head and around his shoulders like a shawl. “Overly sensitive. Is he a bit of a drama queen?”

Nat opened his mouth and then closed it again without saying anything.

The doctor said, “I do not see any signs of an infection. I don't expect the fever will return, but you can give him more paracetamol if it does.” He typed more notes, then said to Nat, “I will send you home with some laxative for him. If he does not have a bowel movement by Monday, take him to a Bereitschaftsarzt. And you really must find a regular physician for him. It is a waste of everyone's time to bring him into the emergency department for simple constipation.”

“I thought it—” Nat started, then sighed and said through gritted teeth. “Fine. Yes.”

The doctor closed out the file on the computer and said to Nat, “Someone will come with your discharge papers shortly.”

After the doctor left the room, Nat muttered under his breath, “For Christ's sake.” Then he tried to force a small smile for Flick and said, “I told you it wouldn't be anything serious.”

Nat didn't say much more while they were in the hospital and was compliant and polite with everyone who spoke to him. But once they were outside and walking back to the car, the mask came off and he started muttering to himself. “The nerve of that doctor! Fruits and vegetables. As if I don't know to feed you fruits and vegetables, as if I'm not trying to do exactly that every single day. And what did he mean by where is his mother—what the hell is he implying by that? That fathers are all incompetent buffoons? That I don't know how to take care of my own child? We wouldn't have gone to A&E if there wasn't some legitimate concern and the least he could have done is to show us an ounce of compassion instead of acting so arrogant and condescending and...”

Flick tuned him out after a while because it was just too much, but once they were in the car and Nat was quiet again, Flick said, “I'm sorry.”

Nat sighed. “Flick, I'm not angry with you,” he said, but his voice still sounded tense. “I am tired and I'm...” He trailed off and leaned back against the headrest. “But my point is, I am not angry with you.”

But Flick couldn't see how it wasn't all his fault: he was the one who kicked up a fuss at mealtimes about eating his vegetables and he had somehow managed to give himself a fever and he had worried his dad and made them go to the hospital which neither of them wanted to do and then they got yelled at by a mean doctor because Flick didn't even know he was constipated because he didn't have the words to describe what he was feeling. It was all too much, the whole night had been too much, and now that he was safely alone in the car with his dad he could practically feel himself breaking down and before he could stop himself he started crying.

“Oh, Flick,” Nat sighed, and put a hand on Flick's shoulder.

Flick did not particularly want to be comforted but he didn't know what he wanted, he just had to cry for a while, so he turned away from his father and slumped his body against the passenger side door, sobbing against the window, and after a moment Nat slid his hand off Flick's shoulder. Once Flick had cried himself out, he sat back up, still sniffling and breathing raggedly, wiped his eyes and nose with the sleeve of his hoodie, then did up his seat belt. Nat buckled his, too, then started the car.

The hospital was across town from where they lived and it was a twenty minute drive back to the flat. Flick watched the flashing streetlights and dark storefronts pass by the window, feeling morose, and after a while he said into the silence, “I want to go home.”

“We are on our way,” Nat said.

But that's not what Flick meant, not the flat they were renting here in Frankfurt, but home-home, back to London. But Flick was too tired to have that conversation again right now so he didn't say anything else.

It was nearly midnight by the time they got back to the flat. Nat took the bottle of laxative from his jacket pocket and set it on the kitchen counter. “We'll start this tomorrow,” he said. He picked up the kettle, topped it off with more water, then turned it on. “You should eat something before you go to sleep. And drink some water.” Flick sighed and sank into one of the kitchen chairs. Nat looked inside the fridge. “I could reheat dinner...?”

Flick wrinkled his nose and shook his head.

“No,” Nat said and closed the fridge. “We'll have it tomorrow night.” He looked around the kitchen. “A banana?”

Flick shrugged, then said, “Fine.” Nat set a banana in front of him, then filled up a glass of water and put that in front of him, too. The kettle whistled and he started a cup of tea for himself, then sat down at the table with Flick. Flick peeled his banana, broke off a piece, then pushed his thumb into the middle of it to break that into three segments. Normally when he did this, his father would scold him and tell him to just eat the banana like a normal person, but tonight he just drank his tea and said nothing as Flick ate his banana tiny mouthful by tiny mouthful.

By the time Flick had finished his banana, Nat was done with his tea and was just sitting there holding the empty cup in one hand, staring off into the distance. Flick swallowed the last sip of water and set his empty glass on the table. Nat offered him a tired smile and said, “Off to bed, then. Don't forget to brush your teeth.” Flick nodded and slid off his chair.

The next day was mostly spent letting the laxative work, a disgusting and uncomfortable process, and on Monday morning, Flick was still feeling unwell enough that his dad let him miss school that day. But that meant that he had to come with Nat to work, because he couldn't stay in the flat alone and they didn't know anybody in town who could watch him. So in the morning, they drove out to the university and Nat led Flick down a series of long hallways to an office he shared with three other people, where Nat cleared off the top of his desk and instructed Flick to stay put while he worked in the lab in the morning. Nobody else was in the office first thing in the morning either, but Flick was made uncomfortable by the presence of other desks and the implication that some stranger could come in and look at him or talk to him. In London, Nat had been a professor at a university, with his own private office with a door that closed, and so on the rare occasions that he had to bring Flick to work there at least he could be alone, and Flick once again felt resentful about having come to Germany at all.

After Flick's mother had died in June, Nat had spent the first half of the summer in a daze, sleeping too much or not at all, letting the food rot in the fridge and forgetting to make meals, and at first Flick hadn't objected much because he wasn't hungry anyway and he wasn't sleeping well either, and his father's negligence meant he could stay in bed until noon, watch cartoons all afternoon, then sneak off to buy himself a packet of crisps from the corner store for supper. After a while, Flick had missed having a daily routine, but his father had not appreciated his reminders that it was time to get up, that the milk was spoiled, that they'd gotten another letter in the mail about Flick's overdue school fees. Then one day in July, his father had suddenly gone into his office at the university and come home with a box of all his work things, and that evening he had announced enthusiastically to Flick that they'd be moving to Germany in the fall so that Nat could join some beetle study thing. To Flick, Nat was insistent that it was an exciting research opportunity, that a change of scenery would do them both good, that it was fortuitous that they were able to travel and see more of the world. But Flick had also eavesdropped on a conversation between Nat and Flick's grandfather during which Nat had snarled into the phone, “No, I don't think you do understand, I am going to lose my fucking mind if I have to keep sleeping in that bedroom and driving past that hospital and being tangibly confronted every day by all those memories of her suffering and dying.” Flick couldn't figure out how to complain about it—he wanted his mother and the life they used to have back but that was impossible, and while he certainly didn't want more of the misery and chaos of watching his father fall apart as he had been all summer, he also didn't want to move away from everything he'd ever known. But it was only after the announcement that they'd be moving to Germany that Nat had started cooking and cleaning more regularly again, and making sure Flick ate and slept and wore clean clothes, and so Flick tried his best to go along.

In his father's office now, Flick tried to entertain himself. There was one window in the room, but since they were in the basement it only looked out on some brown grass and an occasional pair of feet as somebody walked by. Flick dug around in his backpack, which held some schoolwork he didn't feel like doing, snacks and water, and a few other odds and ends. His father had told him that morning that if he drank the full bottle of water and ate a few prunes that he would take him out to the chip shop on the corner for lunch. Flick did not like the English word prune—something about the long U vowel sound felt vulgar or indecent in a way he couldn't identify—but this bag was labeled in German, getrocknete pflaumen, which Flick didn't know how to pronounce and so didn't have an opinion about, and the actual fruit tasted okay, so he nibbled on one while he read the book he brought, a chapter book about an American girl his age who lived on Klickitat Street. After he finished the chapter, he set the book down and took out his sketchbook. Flick had trouble drawing things from his imagination like other kids did, but he was pretty good at drawing things that he could see, so he looked around the room for something to draw. One of the other desks had a little succulent in a novelty pot shaped like a cowboy hat, so Flick snuck over to that desk to draw it. But it didn't take long since he hadn't brought anything to color it in, and when he was done he went back to his father's desk. He turned on the computer on his father's desk, but it was password protected and when he typed in the password Nat used for his laptop at home it didn't work, so Flick just turned it off again. He opened up a drawer and hooked some paper clips together to make a bracelet, then he unhooked them and put them back. He took a piece of printer paper and folded it into an origami crane, then he dug around in the desk drawer again until he found two different highlighters and then he colored the paper crane and set it up on his father's desk next to the computer monitor. He drank some water. He looked over his bag of getrocknete pflaumen to see if he could find any words he recognized. He got another sheet of printer paper and folded it into a paper airplane and sailed it back and forth across the room a few times until it got stuck on top of a tall file cabinet. He picked up his book again, but he was tired of sitting down and it was only nine thirty and he didn't know how he was going to occupy the next two or three hours until lunch. He walked down the hall to the bathroom although he didn't really need to go, it just gave him something to do, and he took his time walking back to his dad's office, peering into any open doors along the way, and that is how he found the laboratory.

At first, Flick just stood in the open doorway. Inside, there were rows of terrariums with different species of Coleoptera beetles inside and on the far end of the room was some equipment that Flick didn't recognize where his father and two other people stood, their backs to Flick. Flick listened to them talk for a moment, then slipped into the room to get a closer look at the bugs. Once he was inside, he saw there were more terrariums along the wall behind him and he realized that if he was quiet and careful that he could hide behind some of the taller terrariums in the center of the room and watch the beetles for a while. Then he got an even better idea, and he went back to his father's office to get his sketchbook and pencil. When he got back to the lab, it was empty, although there was a door in the back of the room that had been left open. Flick stepped into the lab and found a clear spot on the counter next to a terrarium. His father had told him that some scientists here were trying to create a biodegradable plastic and were working with entomologists to breed some bugs that would eat the plastic, but what was in front of him here was a small colony of dermestid beetles swarming over the grisly skeletal remains of some animal Flick couldn't identify and which he didn't particularly want to look at. Still, Flick opened up his sketchbook to a blank page and started drawing the beetles along with the rib cage of whatever it was they were eating. The beetles were small and Flick had to press his face right up against the glass to see all the fine details, and he was so focused on his drawing that he didn't realize somebody had walked up behind him until they cleared their throat and he jumped.

The stranger smiled down at him and said, in heavily accented English, “Are you Nat's boy?”

Flick didn't want to get himself or his dad in trouble, so he said nothing.

After a few moments of awkward silence, the man asked, “Can you talk?” It was the sort of question Flick always hated because calling attention to his quietness made it harder for him to say anything at all. Then the man asked, “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” And even though Flick knew what that meant, he still did not answer.

Finally, Nat came rushing across the laboratory. “Flick, I told you to stay in the office,” he scolded. To the man, he said, “I'm so sorry, he's...” Then he took a breath and started over in German, and Flick frowned at being talked about in a language he didn't understand.

The man said something back to Nat in German, then he turned back to Flick and said, “You are quite the little artist.” He tapped Flick's sketchbook with one finger. “This is better than what some of my first-year university students turn in.” Flick glanced down at his drawing. The man said, “I will tell you what, you can stay here to finish your drawing, but you need to color it in for me so that I can show off to my university students what they can do if they try a little harder. Yes?” He opened a drawer and set a tin of colored pencils next to Flick.

Flick gave him a tiny little nod. Nat gave the man a smile and said, “Thank you, that's very kind of you.” After the man walked away, Nat turned to Flick and hissed, “Stay out of trouble. Don't touch anything. And for god's sake, go back to the office and stay there after you're done with your drawing.” Flick nodded again.

Despite all that, Flick had hoped that he could go with his dad to work again on Tuesday, but Nat sent him to school. Flick disliked school. He hadn't particularly liked his school in London either, but at least it had been familiar. Here there were different kids, different teachers, a different building, different everything. There was no required school uniform, but there was a dress code that was so strict it may as well have been a uniform and that frustrated Flick even more than a uniform would have because he didn't like having to think about what kind of clothes were and were not allowed at school or what the other kids would say about it—one day he had worn a purple t-shirt and the other children in his class had laughed at him and told him that purple was a girl's color. His father had him enrolled in an international school where most of the students were Brits or Americans or Australians so at least he didn't have to learn German, except as a foreign language three days a week. But the curriculum was so unlike what he was used to that he felt like he was starting school all over again, and the material it covered was either so rudimentary that he was bored or was so complex that he couldn't follow it at all, and either way his attention drifted off a lot during class time; there were almost daily occurrences where an assignment would be suddenly put in front of him and then he would realize that he hadn't been listening to the teacher's instructions and so he'd have to make his best guess on how to complete it because he was too embarrassed to ask, which meant that his grades were an inconsistent mix of perfection and complete failure, and then he'd have to talk to the teacher anyway to ask to re-do the assignment because his dad would be disappointed if he brought home bad grades. School was stressful. He didn't even bother trying to make friends, because there was already too much going on and the other kids didn't seem to like him anyway.

But sometimes on the weekends or in the afternoon he would play with the little girl who lived in the flat downstairs from him. Her mother wouldn't let him in their flat and wouldn't let her come up to his, so they only got to play together when one of them saw the other outside in the garden; Flick understood in a vague sort of way that there was something unseemly about an eight year old boy being friends with a four year old girl, but he couldn't figure out what exactly was wrong about it—if they were siblings, he'd be praised for playing with her, so why was it so different when they were just neighbors? She spoke almost no English, and he didn't know enough German to actually communicate with anyone—they didn't even know each other's names—but they managed to work something out, and he liked the quiet and peaceful games they played, like hopscotch or jump rope.

The following weekend, Flick and his father were coming back from grocery shopping, and once they got past the gate around their block of flats, he saw her in the garden with a pink plastic box of fashion dolls. She waved and smiled and said something in German to him. Flick turned to his father and said, “Can I stay outside to play?”

Nat pointedly looked to the box of dolls, then back to Flick, but he shrugged and said, “I suppose. Just stay in the garden, please.”

Flick handed his sacks of groceries over to his father, then walked over to the girl and sat down in the grass next to her. “Hello.”

“Hallo,” she said, and held out a naked Barbie doll.

Flick took it gingerly. “I don't actually know how to play dolls.”

She said something in German, then rifled around inside the box and held up a few doll dresses to show him.

“Are we just dressing them up?” he asked, and dug into the box as well. He found a red dress with silver stars and put that on his doll, then went back to look for some shoes. When the girl was struggling with a pair of doll tights that were half inside out, he reached out and touched his fingertips to her hand, then gently took the tights, turned them the right way out, and handed them back to her. He found a plastic doll hairbrush and tried to brush his doll's hair, but it was so matted that he worried about damaging the hair so he stopped. He bent the legs of his doll so that it could sit in the grass next to them, then he reached into the box for another doll and changed its outfit, too. Now and then Flick or the girl would say something that the other couldn't understand, but that didn't seem to matter and it didn't change what they were doing. Once they had dressed all seven of her dolls and lined them up in the grass, the girl looked over their work, smiled and said something in German, then picked one of the dolls back up and started undressing it, and so Flick did the same, and they got back to work changing all the outfits again. But before they could finish, the girl's mother opened a window and leaned outside to say something to the girl. They exchanged a few words in German, and once the mother looked over at Flick without smiling, then back to the girl, and finally the girl scowled and ruefully packed her dolls back up in the plastic box. Flick helped her. The girl closed the latches on her box, then stood up and said to Flick, “Tschüss.”

“Bye.”

Flick and the girl's mother both watched her walk back into the block of flats, then the girl's mother closed the window again. Flick leaned back on his hands and sighed as he looked over the empty, boring garden. It was October now and soon it would be getting too cold to casually play outside and then he wouldn't see the girl as much any more and he wouldn't have anyone to play with. He walked up to the gate and balanced on his toes on one of the bars so that he could look over it onto the street and thought it might be interesting to walk around—he knew the route to school and the route to the market, but not much else in the neighborhood. Maybe there was a park with trees to climb or a plaza with a fountain or something else worth exploring. But his father had told him to stay in the garden. So he just hung on the gate and watched the cars and people on the street for a few minutes before he went up to his flat, too.

There weren't any parts of school that Flick actually enjoyed, but recess was the worst; it was noisy and chaotic and unstructured, and because Flick took so long eating his lunch, by the time he got outside to the playground all the swings were taken, and it was too awkward to share the climbing frame or anything else with the other children; Flick didn't especially want to be friends with any particular kid who went to his school, but it still felt embarrassing that none of them wanted to be friends with him, either.

One day at recess, Flick was sitting by himself at the edge of the schoolyard, watching ants build a hill over a crack in the pavement, when three other boys stepped up to him, casting a shadow over him and the ants. Flick glanced up, decided he didn't like the expression on their faces, and looked back down to the ground. An older boy with an American accent said to him, “Hey, so, we were just wondering—what's wrong with you? How come you never play during recess?”

Flick knew there was no answer that he could give that would satisfy them, so he said nothing.

The boy nudged Flick's bent knee with the toe of his shoe. “Did you hear me?”

Flick had always been told to ignore bullies, although that rarely actually worked, and so that is what he tried to do now. He didn't want to get up and walk away because the other boys were standing so close to the ant hill and he didn't want them to step on it by mistake.

Another boy said, “Are you retarded or something? Can you even talk? I don't think I've ever heard you talk.”

“He can talk,” the third boy said. “I've heard him talk, he's in my class. But he thpeakth like thith.” The boy affected a theatrical lisp and struck a pose with his hip cocked to one side; Flick knew that was not what his actual voice sounded like or how he acted, that it was instead meant to represent something about him, but he didn't quite understand the exact details. He frowned. The boy from his class sat at the same table as Flick and had lent him a pencil once; Flick had thought they were not exactly friends, but at least not enemies, and he didn't know why he was teasing him now.

The three boys laughed, and the older American boy leaned down and poked two fingers against Flick's forehead. “Say something,” he said. “I wanna hear it.”

Flick scowled and tried to bat the boy's hand away, but that only made the three of them laugh harder, and although Flick kept his gaze locked to the ant hill on the ground, out of the corner of his eye he could see them mocking the way he had moved. One of the boys said, “What a spaz,” and another said “Is he always this much of a poofter?”

“He is,” the boy from his class said. “He cries during class. The teacher asked him once to come up to the whiteboard to solve a problem and he didn't want to and she asked again and he just started crying. Like a baby.” Flick couldn't even remember that day; it certainly hadn't been the only time he'd cried in class. He started tapping his thumb to his fingertips but then stopped almost immediately when he remembered his dad saying it made him look neurotic.

The older American boy said to Flick, “Are you just going to sit there?” He poked Flick's forehead again, harder this time. Flick made a point not to react. “Are you stupid? Are you for real retarded?”

The boy from his class said, “Hey, leave him alone,” and for a second Flick thought he might come to his defense. But then the boy added with a smirk in his voice, “He can't help it if he's retarded.” The three of them laughed again.

The American boy took a half step back, and Flick hoped they were getting ready to leave. But instead the boy said, “He's just sitting there watching the dumb ants. Like a mental case.” Then he scuffed his shoe against the pavement to kick sand and ants into Flick's lap.

Flick flinched as the boy's shoe came shockingly close to his face, then jumped up and shook out his clothes. He was furious; he might be a spaz and a crybaby and whatever else they wanted to call him, but the ants were innocent. He launched himself at the bigger American boy, swinging his fists. The boy startled, then shoved Flick away hard enough that Flick's body bounced against the chain-link fence behind him and a stray wire tore his shirt and cut a gash into his arm.

After that, Flick was too hysterical to remember much. Somebody took him to the nurse's office and then his father came and took him to hospital, not the same A&E they'd gone to when he was constipated but a different clinic, where he was so out of control that they gave him something to make him sleepy and when he came to he had seven stitches and a sore arm from a tetanus shot. The school gave him two days suspension for fighting and so he went with his father to work again for the rest of the school week, and the hours must've passed somehow but he didn't sneak into the lab this time and at the end of the day he couldn't remember what he had done all day.

And then it was the weekend and then back to school again on Monday. The school would not let him stay in the classroom or go to the library during recess, so he sat outside leaning against the building next to the door. He brought a book with him but only for show and instead just watched the other kids to make sure they didn't come too close; on the rare occasions another kid talked to him, he immediately stood up and walked away without a word and then spent the rest of recess pacing the perimeter of the schoolyard. The cut on his arm itched as it healed and Flick found himself poking and squeezing and picking at it, which made it feel worse but only for a few seconds and then instantly better for several minutes after.

After about two weeks of this, one night at dinner Nat said to Flick, “Tomorrow after school I'm going to pick you up in the car. You have a doctor's appointment.”

Flick was confused. “For my arm?” he asked. He had already gotten the stitches removed and he didn't know what else they needed to do.

“No,” Nat said, and cleared his throat. “Not, ah, not that kind of doctor. A talking kind of doctor. A therapist.”

They had done family therapy after his mother had gotten her diagnosis, but had only gone to two or three sessions because his mother and father both agreed that that was not how they wanted to spend what little remaining time they might have. Flick had been six years old at the time and barely remembered it, could only remember sitting on the floor lining up Hot Wheels while his parents had some sad and serious discussion with a stranger, but he shook his head now and said, “No.”

“I think it might be a good idea,” Nat said gently. “You're clearly having a hard time right now. It might be helpful to talk to someone about your thoughts and feelings. Someone who can... maybe offer more insight or advice than I can.”

Talking about his thoughts and feelings sounded like literal torture, and Flick shook his head again. What's more, they had made it through his mother's long sickness and then death without having to go to therapy. What could be worse than that? What was so wrong with him now that he needed to go to therapy? Were the bullies at school right—was he really stupid and crazy? “I don't want to go.”

As if reading his thoughts, Nat said, “Therapy is a normal, healthy thing. Everyone can benefit from therapy. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you.”

Flick glared at him. “Then why don't you go?” he said, getting angry now.

Nat sighed. “Maybe I should. But right now your needs are more pressing, so we're focusing on you.”

Flick slumped in his chair, slipping his fingers into his shirt sleeve and idly scratching the cut on his arm.

Nat reached across the table and caught his hand. “Stop that,” he said. “You're going to open the wound back up again. If you keep that up, it's never going to heal.”

Flick glowered at him, but he took his hand out of his shirt.

Nat said, “Listen, I had to make a lot of phone calls until I found someone who was accepting new patients and it was a minor miracle that they had an opening so soon. I would appreciate it if you would at least give it a try.”

Flick sulked, and since it was clear he wasn't going to get out of this, he said nothing.

Nat said nothing more on the subject either, but after a few minutes of silence he said, “Eat your dinner. At least the vegetables.”

Flick sighed dramatically and stabbed carrots onto his fork.

The next day after school, Flick noticed his father before his father noticed him, and for an instant he considered going back inside the school to hide, but then his father caught his eye and gave him a nod and Flick reluctantly trudged over to him. They lived a ten minute walk from Flick's school and usually Flick was allowed to walk back to the flat alone, and now some of the other children were making teasing comments about why Flick's father had come to pick him up today, but Flick ignored them, and if Nat heard anything, he didn't react. Nat smiled stiffly as Flick walked up to him and said, “All set?”

“No,” Flick growled.

“Well, let's get going anyway.”

Nat had parked the car around the corner, and as soon as they were out of sight of most of the other kids, Flick wrapped himself around his father's arm and said, “Please don't make me go.”

Nat shook him off. “Don't hang on me,” he said, and Flick shrunk away and shoved his hands in his pockets. Nat said, “You're being melodramatic. It's just talking.”

“I know. I don't want to talk.”

“He said he tries to make it fun. There'll be games and toys and whatnot.”

“It's going to be terrible.”

“You have to go into it with an open mind.”

“No I don't.”

In the waiting room, there were two other children and two other grown-ups, and nobody was looking at each other, which was just fine with Flick. After a while, a man stepped into the room and said, “Flick?” and Nat nodded and raised a hand. The man walked over and knelt down next to Flick's chair. “You're Flick, then?”

The man obviously knew who he was, so Flick did not see the point in answering him. He'd been hoping that the therapist would only speak German and that therefore Flick would have a valid reason for not talking to him, but he spoke English with a lilting Irish accent. Flick still did not want to talk to him.

“I'm Dr. Michael, but you can just call me Michael if you like. I've already talked to your dad a bit on the phone, but today you and I are going to spend some time getting to know each other. How does that sound?”

Terrible, Flick thought. But he knew that was rude so he did not say it out loud.

“We're going to go down to my office and have a little chat, and your dad's going to wait here. But he'll be just down the hall, and we can come get him at any time. All right?”

Flick finally shrugged, and then wobbled his head in an approximation of a nod.

“There's a good lad,” the therapist said. “Come with me.”

Flick slid off his chair, shot his dad one last nasty look, then followed the therapist down the hall.

The overhead lights in Michael's office were turned off and the windowless room was lit by lamps. There was a desk with a computer and two folding chairs next to it, a small couch, a beanbag chair, and a child-sized table with two child-sized chairs. Behind the table was a shelf with puppets and plushies, a dollhouse, Play-Doh, a box of Lego, a box of fidget toys, a stack of paper and a box of drawing materials. Above the toys, children's drawings were taped to the wall. Flick stood in the middle of the room as Michael shut the door behind them. Michael said, “You can have a seat anywhere you like.” The shelf of toys at least provided a distraction, so Flick sat at one of the little chairs by the kid's table. Michael perched in the chair next to him. “Feel free to play with anything that catches your interest. And you can get up and move around, too. I've got a mini trampoline I can get out if you want. And a stereo for music.”

Flick pointedly shoved his hands back in his pockets and slouched in his chair.

“As I've said, I've already talked to your dad a bit, and I know your dad's talked to you, too. But maybe you could tell me why you think you're here today?”

My dad made me come, Flick thought. But he kept his gaze locked onto a scratch on the surface of the table and did not say a word.

The therapist waited for a moment, then spoke again. “You know, going to therapy doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. Everyone can benefit from therapy. It's just a tool to help people better understand their thoughts or feelings or why they do the things they do. And from the sounds of it, you've had a pretty eventful couple of months. It's normal and healthy to need some help sorting things out.”

It was so nearly word-for-word what his father had said to him yesterday, and Flick understood immediately that his father must've just been repeating what the therapist had said to him and Flick felt an inexplicable sense of betrayal, as if they were working together to coerce him into talking, which made Flick even more determined to stay silent. Michael kept talking, and Flick was intentionally tuning him out, but he was still caught off-guard when Michael said, “Flick?” in a tone of voice that implied it was not the first time he'd tried to get Flick's attention. Flick squeezed his eyes shut in shame; it was one thing to drift off during class but it was quite another to go off into his own little world during a one-on-one conversation, and Flick thought maybe it was true, maybe he was stupid or crazy. He was drifting off like this more and more and it scared him because it made his life feel unreal. But the alternative—life being so real that it hurt—was not any better, and Flick didn't know what to do about it. A therapist's office did not seem like the best place to let on about any of this—what would they do to him if he truly was measurably stupid or crazy?—and so Flick continued to say nothing, and he balled up his hands into fists inside his pocket because tensing his body helped him feel safe.

Michael also said nothing for two or three minutes, long enough that the silence started to feel uncomfortable, even for Flick. Then he said, “Flick, do you like Lego?”

Flick untensed incrementally; he did like Lego.

“A lot of the young friends I meet with like Lego. Maybe we could build something?”

Flick opened his eyes. He did not particularly want to build with Lego at the moment, but he was feeling bad about losing track of the conversation earlier and building with Lego was a thing he could do, so he gave a little nod.

“Excellent!” Michael said. But when Michael brought down the box of Lego bricks, Flick frowned. He had his own Lego sorted by color—he'd have them sorted by size and shape, too, if his father would buy him enough containers to do so—but these were all in a jumble, an obvious mix of different sets, with some partially built creations mixed in with the loose bricks. Flick sighed, and disassembled some of the bricks that were stuck together. Michael asked, “Should we build something together?”

Flick froze. He definitely did not want to build something together, but he also did not want to say so, partly because he didn't want to talk to Michael at all but also because he didn't want to be called rude and people seemed to always think that Flick was being rude when he just wanted to be alone.

Michael said, “Or we could build our own things for now, if you'd like.”

Flick exhaled, and went back to sorting the bricks. But the whole box was too messy and it was hard for Flick to focus with Michael sitting so close to him and talking to him and he couldn't think of anything to build. So he picked out about a dozen yellow bricks and arranged them on the table in front of him to make a square, then he started picking out red bricks and did the same with them.

Michael interrupted him by saying, “I think I'm going to build a car. I know I've got a couple sets of other wheels in here, too, but were you planning on using these?” He held out two pairs of wheels in his hand.

Flick shook his head distractedly, then after a moment went back to the squares he had arranged on the table, reorienting them so that the bricks would overlap, then he pressed the red bricks on top of the yellow. He built other things with his Lego when he was alone, but sometimes he made squares like this, too, because it was exquisitely satisfying to line up the bricks just so with such nice, sharp delineations of color. He layered blue bricks on top of the red, and he was just starting to dig through the box for white bricks when Michael asked, “What are you building?”

Flick considered ignoring him, but then mumbled, “A cube.”

“Ah, how lovely to hear your voice!” Michael said, and Flick grimaced at his patronizing tone. “Could you repeat that though? I didn't quite catch what you said.”

“A cube,” Flick said more loudly. “It's a three dimensional square.”

“I know what a cube is,” Michael said with just a hint of sharpness to his voice.

Clearly you don't, Flick thought, and pieced the white bricks onto his cube.

Michael had stopped building his car now and just watched Flick for a few seconds, then he said, “You're sure you don't want to build something else? A house maybe? Or a spaceship? Or... I have a propeller in here, you could build a helicopter.”

Flick's shoulders sank and he tossed his bricks back into the box; he couldn't even do Lego right.

“It's fine,” Michael said. “You can build whatever you want. I like the stripes of color you were making.”

Flick slouched in his chair and shoved his hands back into his pockets.

Michael pieced a few more bricks onto his rudimentary Lego car and wheeled it back and forth on the table. “Do you have Lego at home? What do you like to build at home?”

Flick was all done answering him. This was a disaster.

Michael waited for Flick to respond and meanwhile toyed with his little car, adding a windshield and then a minifig, but after a few minutes of silence, he put all the Lego back in the box and returned the box to the shelf. He asked Flick, “What sort of things do you like to do with your friends? Do any of your friends have Lego? Or what about sports or video games?”

Even if Flick was going to talk to Michael—which he wasn't—he wouldn't have mentioned the little girl who lived downstairs from him, because he knew she was the wrong kind of friend and that they played the wrong kind of things. Sports and video games with boys his age was what he was supposed to be doing, not playing dolls with a preschool girl whose name he didn't even know.

The therapist waited for an answer and Flick waited for him to give up, and the silence stretched on and on and Flick thought about how this was such an absurd waste of time for everyone. Eventually, Michael said, “Maybe you could draw a picture for me? Your dad said you liked art.” He brought down the stack of paper and box of drawing materials. Flick glared at it sullenly. The drawing materials was the same kind of jumbled mess that the Lego bricks were—crayons and markers and colored pencils were all mixed together; several crayons were broken or had the paper peeled off and at least one marker was missing its cap and the pencil tips were all worn down and dull—and Flick was not particularly inspired to use any of them. Michael added, “Anything you like. I've got...” He reached up to pull down another box. “Scissors and glue sticks, too.” Flick frowned at the box; the scissors were blunt baby scissors that would be more likely to crease the paper than to actually cut it, and Flick didn't like the implication that he or any other kids that came to see Michael couldn't be trusted with real scissors.

After the incident with the Lego, Flick was reluctant to draw anything, and Flick suspected that Michael wanted him to draw a frowny face or a picture of his mum or something from his imagination so that Michael could use the drawing to analyze Flick's inner thoughts, and Flick wasn't about to give him the satisfaction. But Michael kept looking at him, and keeping busy would at least make the time pass faster, so Flick grudgingly took a sheet of paper off the stack and a felt-tip pen out of the box, then glanced around the room for something to draw. He liked drawing living things, like bugs or plants, but the only living things in the room were himself and Michael, so instead he decided to just doodle. He had a game he liked to play with himself during class sometimes, where he'd see how big of a spiral he could draw without letting the lines touch. He picked a spot in the middle of the paper and started a spiral, and he could feel Michael watching him but neither of them said anything, so Flick leaned forward, resting his cheek on his bent arm, and tried to focus on his work, pulling the pen in slow, careful circles around the paper. When the lines touched, Flick lifted up the pen and started a new spiral a few inches away. Michael said, “That looks very meditative. It reminds me of Japanese sand gardens. Have you heard of them? People rake designs into sand, around rocks or potted plants. There's big outdoor gardens, but some people have a little tabletop version.”

Flick did not look up from his spiral, and when the lines touched he started a new one.

Michael watched him a while longer, then said, “I wonder what kind of picture you could make from that. Maybe they could be flowers or... maybe they could be eyes for some alien space creature.”

Flick stopped drawing and cocked his head. He had never heard the word creature spoken in an Irish accent before, but he liked it very much, the way the sounds flowed together, like bells or like bubbling water.

Michael noticed his interest and smiled. “Would you like to do that? You could turn these circles you've made into a three-eyed monster. What else might it have?”

Flick shook his head, and looked up into Michael's face for the first time. “Say it again,” he said.

“I'm sorry, what?”

“Creature. Say the word creature.”

Michael stared at him for a second, then obliged. “Creature.”

Flick watched Michael's lips move as he spoke, then he tried to mimic his accent. “Creature.”

Michael's lips quirked into an expression of disapproval, and Flick cringed as he realized that Michael must think he was making fun of his accent, when he was in fact intending to do just the opposite. He bent his head down again and went back to his drawing. But the word and the accent were still stuck in his head, and he couldn't help but whisper to himself, “Creature,” hoping he was quiet enough that Michael didn't hear him.

But Michael didn't say anything else after that and neither did Flick, and so Flick just kept drawing his spirals while Michael watched him. Eventually, Michael said, “You know, when I was a lad, children would get in trouble for drawing in class because the teachers thought they weren't paying attention to the lessons. But then I had a professor in university that actually encouraged us to doodle during lectures because it can help you focus.”

Flick did not respond, although he did tuck that information away for the next time the teachers scolded him for drawing in class.

Michael asked, “Do you ever get in trouble at school?”

Flick tensed, guessing what was coming.

Michael said, “Your dad mentioned that you got into a fight recently.”

Flick's pen skidded on the paper and the lines touched on his spiral; he paused for a breath, then lifted up his pen to start a new spiral. Was that really how his father had explained it to Michael—“getting into a fight”? The phrase “getting into a fight” implied some mutual aggression and Flick didn't like to think of himself that way, although he also supposed he had thrown the first punch so it probably was actually his fault after all. Beside him, Michael was nattering on about school and other kids and who knows what else; Flick was now only half paying attention to him because now the cut on his arm was aching to be poked and he was not about to do that in front of Michael. He leaned in closer to his paper and focused on making a slow, careful spiral. This therapy session had been going on forever now and Flick was starting to feel so overwhelmed that he was nauseated, and he felt like he couldn't get enough air even though he was taking big, long breaths through his mouth.

Eventually Michael stopped talking and just watched him draw, which was still a little unnerving because Flick did not like to be watched. After a few minutes, Michael sighed, checked his watch, and said, “How about I bring your father in for the last twenty minutes? There's some things I'd like to discuss with him, and maybe we could all talk together for a bit, too.”

Flick had no intention of talking for the last twenty minutes of his session no matter who was in the room, but he nodded anyway.

Michael said, “I'll be right back then, You can wait right here if you'd like.”

Flick nodded again, and watched out of the corner of his eye as Michael left the room. Michael left the office door cracked open, and after Flick had heard him take a few steps down the hallway he set down his pen and squeezed the cut on his forearm so hard that he involuntarily gasped in pain, then he let go and the relief that flooded his body was so absolute that he slumped forward onto the desk and closed his eyes. This was the feeling he was after, and was the only way he knew to make his body feel good. He hoped the cut would never heal, and he'd keep picking the scab off as long as he could to make that happen.

He heard footsteps coming back down the hall, so he sat upright and picked up the pen, but after squeezing his cut he was in too much of a daze to draw anything right now. A few seconds later, Michael and his father entered the room. Michael closed the door behind them and said, “Flick, your father and I are going to have a little chat over by my desk. You're welcome to join us if you'd like, or you can keep drawing.” Flick looked over at his father for some clue as to what he should do, but Nat only gave him a small, fake, unhelpful smile, so Flick stayed where he was, and Nat and Michael sat down on the other side of the room. Flick stared straight ahead at his paper but did not draw because he wanted to eavesdrop and did not want to be distracted by the noise of the pen. Michael said to Nat, “It was a quiet first session, but that's not unusual—a lot of kids need some time to warm up. But Flick was very cooperative, and I think we'll be able to make some progress in the coming weeks. I'm happy to keep working with him to address the issues we discussed earlier.” Michael paused, and Flick heard some papers shuffling. “However, in addition to my sessions with him, I, ah...” He cleared his throat and lowered his voice, and Flick had to strain to hear him now and could still only pick up snippets of words or phrases, some of which he only half understood, like psychological evaluation and developmental disability and selective mutism. At first Flick was awed to be spoken about in such hushed tones and big words, until he realized that this was probably just professional, grown-up speak for stupid and crazy. When his father spoke, his voice was so low that Flick couldn't make out any words at all, and Flick started to worry about what was going to happen to him; the stupid and crazy kids got sent to special classrooms away from everyone else or even separate schools all together, they got put on medication, they were sent away to live in institutions with the other stupid and crazy kids. Flick's stomach knotted up; he wasn't trying to be stupid and crazy, but he didn't know what was wrong with him, or why he always felt so out of sync with everyone around him.

His father and Michael kept talking, but Flick was feeling shaky and dizzy now and couldn't make out any words at all, so he just sat there, squeezing the pen in his fist and waiting for time to pass. And then suddenly Michael and his father were at his side, and the way they were looking down at him made him think that they had been there for a while and that one of them had spoken to him but once again he hadn't been paying attention and then he felt scared and embarrassed. He set the pen down on the table and moved his hands to his lap.

Michael said, “May I keep your drawing, Flick?”

Flick nodded.

“Would you like to sign your name to it?”

Flick shook his head.

“That's all right. I'll put it up on the wall right here, and you can see it next time you come.” Michael took Flick's drawing of spirals and taped it to the wall between a drawing of a princess and a drawing of a house. Flick frowned; even his dumb spirals looked out of place among all the other children's drawings, and he thought he must be even stupider and crazier than the other stupid, crazy, broken kids who came to see Michael. His father put his hand on Flick's shoulder and Flick stood up. Michael said, “Thank you both for coming in today. I'll see you again soon, all right?” Nat said goodbye, and he and Flick walked down the hall, through the waiting room and across the street to the car without saying a word to each other.

But once they were in the car with the doors closed, Flick said, “I am not going back there.”

Nat leaned back in his seat and looked out the front window for a moment. Then he said, “No. I don't think you will be.”

Flick was not expecting agreement, and didn't know what to say.

Nat continued, “I'm sure he means well, but I didn't like his assessment of you.”

So his father didn't think he was stupid and crazy. And his father would know better than anyone, wouldn't he? Flick felt a surge of relief and love for his father, knowing that he was safe, that his father would protect him. And if he really was just melodramatic, like his dad said, that meant he'd just have to try harder to be better.

Nat took off his glasses and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Maybe I could find somebody else, or...” He put his glasses back on and stared off into the middle distance. Then he buckled his seat belt and started the car. As they drove across town, Nat said, “Maybe I'll just wait until we're in Stockholm. I've been calling around looking for a flat available in December. We'll head out as soon as you're done with school and we'll be there by Christmas. They do Christmas right in the Nordic countries. That'll be a sight to see. And maybe a fresh start and a new school will be good for you.”

Another fresh start and another new school did not sound appealing to Flick, especially since he knew they wouldn't be staying there, either; his dad had been hired to be a guest lecturer at a university in Stockholm, but only for one semester. But his father had announced this move last week with the same enthusiasm that he had announced the move to Germany a few months ago, and so Flick had resigned himself to it. And maybe his father was right, maybe it would be better. Flick asked his dad, “Are we going to see Grandpa and them at Christmas?”

There was a moment of silence, then Nat answered coldly, “No.”

Flick turned to look out the window and didn't argue; he'd never particularly enjoyed spending Christmas with his grandfather and with his uncle and aunt and cousins from Liverpool, it's just what they'd always done. But after a moment he asked, “After Sweden, can we go home?” It was a variation on a question he asked almost weekly, and Nat never did give him a good answer and today did not answer at all, and they drove the rest of the way back to their flat without speaking.

It was getting dark by the time they got back and the girl that lived downstairs was not out in the garden, so Flick went right upstairs with his father. Once they were inside, Flick said, “Can I skip my bath tonight? Can I just put my pajamas on now?”

Nat looked at the clock and sighed. “That's fine. It's later than I realized.”

So Flick went to his bedroom to take off his school clothes and put on pajamas—long-sleeved, so that his father wouldn't see how red the cut on his arm still looked—then he went to the living room to wait for dinner. He took a blanket off the sofa and wrapped it over the top of his head and around his body to make a little cocoon, then turned on the TV and flipped through the channels and eventually stopped at some game show. It was entirely in German, so Flick couldn't follow what was happening, but the people were happy and the colors were bright and it would be a suitable background distraction. Flick turned the volume down low and laid down on the sofa, letting his eyes unfocus as he slipped his hand into the opposite sleeve of his shirt and idly picked the scab off his cut, and then he kept scratching and picking until his whole forearm was a pleasant, stinging ache.

By the time his father called him in for dinner, the TV program had switched to a newscast without Flick realizing. He turned off the TV and walked into the kitchen with the blanket still wrapped around his shoulders, but his father said, “The blanket stays on the sofa. I don't want to have to wash it if you spill.” Flick took the blanket back to the other room, and before he returned to the kitchen, he hiked up his sleeve to check on his cut. It was bleeding a little, but his shirt was dark blue so the stain didn't really show from the outside, and he could just leave that arm under the table so that his father didn't see.

At his place at the table was a plate with mashed potatoes, peas and some kind of meat. Flick nudged everything apart with his fork so that the foods weren't touching, ate the potatoes, then asked his father, “Can I be done?”

His father looked over at his plate. “You need to eat more than that.”

“But I don't like peas. And this looks...” He poked the meat with his fork. “Weird.”

“Try it. Tastes change as you grow up. Maybe you do like peas now.”

“I don't wanna.”

“Do it anyway.”

Flick sighed and set down his fork. He rolled a fingertip over his peas until he found one that was less soft than the others, then he picked it up and, grimacing, popped it into his mouth and tried to swallow it whole like a tablet, but he still felt it squish and tasted in the back of his throat its earthy, mildewy flavor and he involuntarily coughed and made noises that he knew were rude but he couldn't help it. Across the table, Nat rolled his eyes. Flick drank the rest of his milk to get the taste out of his mouth.

Meat was worse, though. At least the peas were all uniformly bad, but meat had chewy bits and greasy bits and the outside was different from the inside and if Flick thought too long about where it came from he felt queasy. Meat was a nightmare. But his father was watching and waiting, so he reluctantly carved off the tiniest sliver he could manage, closed his eyes, and swallowed it with as little chewing as possible, and he tried not to make any gross noises this time but he knew he still made a face. Then he looked up at his father.

Nat shook his head. “So picky,” he muttered. “You didn't get that from me.”

It was one of the rare instances that Flick's mother was referenced, even tangentially, and for a moment Flick didn't know what to do: should he try harder to eat gross food to please his father, or would giving in to the pickiness be somehow honoring the memory of his mother?

Nat seemed to realize what he had said just after the words left his mouth, and he said gently, “It's fine. You're excused.”

Flick went back to the living room and wrapped himself up in the blanket again and watched television for another forty-five minutes without really paying attention to what was on the screen, just letting the noise and the light wash over him. Now and then his mind would drift back to his therapy session, but already the memory was becoming hazy, as if his brain didn't want him to hold onto it, and the only clear thing was the only part that he had liked, which was when Michael said the word creature. “Creature,” Flick whispered to himself in an exaggerated Irish accent. “Creature.”

Later, Flick used the toilet and brushed his teeth and went to bed, and he must've slept at least a little because while he remembered rolling over a few times, he didn't notice the time passing, although the clock on his bedside table read two-oh-seven a.m. It didn't feel like he had slept, though, and he felt hot and uneasy and a little nauseated, as if he had been up for hours, running or fighting. But at least he hadn't had a nightmare, or if he had he couldn't remember it anymore. He pushed off the blankets and got up. Maybe he was just hungry.

But when he stepped into the hallway, he saw the light in the kitchen was still on, and as he silently walked up to the open doorway, he saw his father seated at the table, his back to Flick, smoking a cigarette.

Flick had seen his father cry exactly three times in his entire life. The first time had been when Flick's mother and father had sat Flick down to tell him that the last treatment she had tried had failed, that there were no more possible treatments, that it was all just a matter of time; Nat had been so overcome that he hadn't been able to get any words out, and his mother had to be the one to tell him. The second time had been at her funeral two months later, just a few stray tears streaking down an otherwise expressionless face. And the third time had been last week. Flick had woken up in the middle of the night and walked down to the kitchen, just like tonight, only then he had found his father at the table with his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking, his breath catching in his throat. Whatever Flick had gone into the kitchen for that night was immediately forgotten, and instead he just watched his father for a few seconds, feeling stunned, before creeping back to his room unseen.

(Meanwhile, Flick himself felt like he was crying all the time, over everything. He cried when he couldn't get the seams on his socks to line up right, he cried when his father bought the wrong kind of bread for his cheese sandwiches, he cried when a light bulb suddenly burned out, he cried when he accidentally colored outside the lines. He felt like he was doing all the crying for the both of them and it was exhausting.)

And so he waited now to see if his father was crying tonight. It was such a rare sight that last week when he stumbled upon it, he had felt almost scared, but he hadn't stopped thinking about it and he couldn't tell if he wanted to see his father cry or if he never wanted to see it again. But tonight Nat just smoked his cigarette, blowing the smoke out the open window. His father had smoked when Flick was little, quit abruptly when his mother got sick, then started up again after she died, although he usually tried to hide it from Flick because that was another thing Flick cried about; he knew that smoking was unhealthy and he didn't want his father to die, too.

After a minute, Flick shuffled his feet and coughed; Nat startled and turned around to face him. “You should be asleep,” he said, snuffing out his cigarette in a little dish.

“My stomach hurts,” Flick said.

Nat stood up and walked over to Flick, laying a hand on his forehead and cheek to check for a fever. “Do you need to use the toilet?”

Flick shook his head. “I went after dinner.”

“Let's get you back in bed, then. I think you just need more sleep.”

“Can I skip school tomorrow?”

“We'll see how you feel in the morning.”

“Technically two a.m. is morning.”

“Let's see how you feel a little bit closer to six.”

Nat walked Flick down the hall back to his bedroom. Flick's bedroom was a disaster, and his father was always on his case about that, but tonight he just gently nudged the clutter off to one side with his foot to make a path to the bed, then he straightened out the blankets. “Back to bed, little man,” he said.

“You should go to bed, too,” Flick said.

“I should. I'm on my way there now.”

Flick climbed into his bed and pulled the covers up to his chin. Nat switched off the lamp on the nightstand and started for the door.

Flick stared up at the dark ceiling, and just before his father reached the hallway, Flick said, “Tuck me in?” Nat stopped in the open doorway, the light from the hallway casting his shadow on the opposite wall. “Like you used to?” Flick said to the darkness. “When I was little?”

For a second, Flick thought he would say no, but instead he turned around and walked back to the bed. Flick straightened out his body, and Nat tucked the blanket snugly underneath him so that it was tight across his shoulders and chest and hips and legs. “It's time for sleep now,” Nat said gently. Then he left the room and shut the door behind him.

Flick had not asked to be tucked in in years. When he was little, his father would indulge him once or twice, but his mother had always made a game of it, tucking him in and waiting in the open doorway for him to kick the blankets off, then she'd come back in, laughing and making some comment about how the blankets had jumped right off him and she'd have to tuck him in tighter this time, and they would repeat this again and again. Now, at age eight, Flick knew he was far too old to be asking to be tucked in and he knew that he would never ask again, so he tried to lay as still as possible, hoping that the blankets would hug his body all night long. But when he woke up in the morning, he was lying on his side, curled in a little ball, the blankets their usual mess around him, as if the whole thing had never happened.