13 ½ by Nevada Barr Page B

second he was back in the courtroom in black and white and Chinese. Eleven years outside seemed as if they’d never happened and the months in juvie felt like all of his life. Life before rushed in, and then receded, and it shook him.
    The doctor wanted to shake him; at least Dylan chose to believe that. If it wasn’t a trick to get him to respond in a certain way, then Dr. Kowalski was “one mean fuck,” as Draco would say. One who wanted to pry Dylan’s brain out and look at it under bright lights. Fear shuddered up. He tried not to let it show.
    Rich wouldn’t let anybody see him scared.
    “Yes, sir,” Dylan said. The man stared at him. Edges of the fake room wavered slightly like they’d done at the trial. “Butcher Boy,” Dylan said, in case that was what the doctor was waiting for him to admit. If the man didn’t start talking soon, Dylan was afraid he wouldn’t be able to understand him, that his brain would turn on him like it had with the lawyers. Survival instinct told him Dr. Kowalski wouldn’t deal well with that.
    “And you don’t remember anything. That so?” the doctor said.
    “No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. I don’t remember.” He did remember bits here and there but he knew they weren’t the bits Kowalski cared about. Besides, he didn’t think the doctor really wanted him to answer; he sounded like he had all the answers already and was waiting to spring them.
    “I’m here to help you remember that night. I’ve worked with boys like you—men too. I wrote a book on a case of a woman who had blocked out drowning her infant daughter. Didn’t make the New York Times Best Seller List, but it sold well enough.” Dr. Kowalski smiled and waited.
    Having no idea what the New York Times list was or whether it was bad or good that the book didn’t get on it, Dylan looked at the murky oil painting over the doctor’s chair so his eyeballs had some place to be.
    “Do you believe that?” the doctor demanded.
    Dylan didn’t know if he was asking if he believed he was there to help him or that his book had sold well enough. Confusion was growing up thick as brambles in a fairytale.
    Tick, and tick, and tick, the doctor let more silence clock by. Dylan knew he should say something, remember something, but since he couldn’t he went as far into the murky picture as he could. The painting wasn’t laid out very well and it made him slide in his mind toward the trees on the left side. The warden’s wife wasn’t a very good artist, he decided.
    “So, tell me about your dreams,” the psychiatrist said. He crossed his legs like a girl and leaned back in his chair.
    Dylan came out of the painting with a twitch. The eyes behind the tortoiseshell glasses were boring into him.
    “Should I lay down or something?” Dylan asked. The sofa looked clean but it smelled of damp and carbolic.
    “Do you want to lie down?”
    The way he asked the question made it sound important. Not knowing whether he was supposed to want to lie down or not to want to lie down, or if the doctor would think he was going to kill people if he did the wrong thing, Dylan did nothing.
    Dr. Kowalski sighed.
    Nothing was clearly not the right thing to do, Dylan knew then, but it was too late to do anything about it.
    “Tell me about your dreams,” the doctor repeated.
    Usually Dylan dreamed a lot and vividly but as he cast back in his mind he couldn’t recall a single dream. It could have been the drugs they gave him at night, but he guessed it was because the doctor was being so screwy he could hardly think.
    Kowalski nodded sagely. “You’re afraid to dream,” he said. “Your unconscious mind is afraid to let you relive the bloodshed.” He jotted something down on a little note pad.

    Dylan flinched. A dream jerked loose from his brain. He had dreamed. A vivid dream. “I remember,” he said excitedly.
    The doctor leaned forward, his eyes intense.
    “I was outside,” Dylan said. “Me and Rich were playing a game or