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home.”
    “Don’t cry, Jamie,” Hank said. “Let’s get home and tell your parents. “We’ll get your bike back, I promise. I don’t know how, but we will.”
    When we eventually made it home as dusk descended—a rickety, long, difficult ride with me on the back and Hank pumping heroically over the rutted sidewalks and stopping at crosswalks so both of us could dismount and walk safely across the street—my parents were furious. My mother in particular was enraged that we’d ventured so far out of Buena Vista, our neighbourhood, and managed to lose an expensive new bike in the process.
    “It wasn’t a toy, Jamie.” After everything that had happened that afternoon, her voice seemed unbearably harsh in my ears. I had seen my mother angry before, but this seemed to be a level of developing anger that was new and a bit frightening. “It was a very expensive bicycle and now it’s gone. You lost it. You should have been more responsible instead of being such a damn
dreamer
all the time. I’m very, very disappointed in you.” My mother had wanted my father to spank me, but he’d refused.
    “He didn’t
lose
it, Alice. It’s not
lost
. It was
stolen
. Another kid
stole
Jamie’s bike.”
    “If he’d stayed in our neighbourhood,” my mother said, “this would never have happened. This is his fault and I want him to take responsibility for it. If you won’t spank him, I will.”
    My father held up his hand. He, too, was furious, but his anger was directed differently: he seemed mostly angry that an older kid had bullied me into giving up my new bike. “Alice,
please
,” he snapped. “One thing at a time. I want to know how this happened. We can discuss the rest later, but right now I want to understand how this took place. I want to know who this kid was, and where this happened.” He turned to me and said, “Jamie, can you tell us again how this kid came to take your bike?”
    I told the story again, feeling calmer under my father’s steady questioning. He asked me if I could remember the neighbourhood where it took place. I told him no, but that Hank would probably know how to get back to the field. The boys likely lived in the subdivision across from the field, since that was the direction from which they had come.
    My father looked glum. “Well, Jamie, let’s call Hank’s parents and see if she can go for a ride with us tomorrow and see if we can find out who this kid is. We can drive around the neighbourhood and you can see if you recognize him. But I have to admit, it’s going to be a bit of a long shot. Your mother is right—this was very irresponsible of you. I hope we can get your bike back, but don’t get your hopes up. In the meantime, I’ll go call the police and see what the procedure is to file a report.”
    “I’m sorry, Daddy. Really, I am.”
    “I know, Jamie,” my father said. “But it doesn’t really help matters. It doesn’t really change things. You should have been more responsible. I think you should go downstairs and get ready for bed. I’ll be down in a little while to tuck you in.”
    In my room, sobbing and in disgrace, I told Mirror Pal about what had happened.
    As always, I did both of the voices, mine and Mirror Pal’s, and they both sounded like me. Both voices bore the imprimatur of my grief: one bore it plaintively; the other bore it with justifiably loyal outrage.
    A casual adult observer who happened to walk in on me would likely have seen an eight-year-old boy, his face red and puffy and streaked with tears, sitting on the edge of his bed talking to himself in the mirror, working himself into a state of near-hysteria, arms flailing and pointing, punctuating the air with angles and jabs. I have a memory of actually slapping the wall beside the mirror and imagining I heard two slaps.
    But of course, I could only have heard one slap. I was entirely alone in my bedroom. The only illumination inside the room came from my bedside lamp, a green-glassed brass