Chapter 5: Dennis

"It was a lucky guess," I told Dr. Wheelock at the coat check.

"Was it?" he said.

"I read a lot. I'm sorry I stared."

He nodded slowly, and I heard him think, She's lying, and it's a kind lie.

He wrote a phone number on the back of a lab receipt and pressed it into my hand.

"If your luck turns into something else," he said.

Heels clicked across the marble.

"Dr. Wheelock!" Daphne called, bright and warm. "Two of the donors want to meet you before they leave."

She slid her arm through his, and she looked at me over his shoulder.

Her thoughts were cold and plain.

Whatever he wrote on that paper, I'm getting it out of her pocket.

I put my hand in my pocket and closed it around the paper.

That night I went down to the boathouse.

It stood at the end of the dock, a long wooden shed with a light on.

The door was propped open with a brick.

Inside, it smelled of oil and sawdust.

Felix sat at a workbench under a hanging lamp, with a brass clock in front of him and a screwdriver in his teeth.

"Dennis is being difficult," he said around the screwdriver. "Sit anywhere. Not on the blue stool. The blue stool is for thinking."

I sat on a crate.

The walls were covered in drawings and labels, and one label on the shelf above his head said NOT FOOD.

I had a bad headache and a bad conscience.

"Felix," I said. "I'm going to tell you something, and you're going to think I'm lying."

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