May 24th

Jason waved at Mrs. Faust as she pulled out of the clinic parking lot. She'd left a little early so she and Mandy could head off to Albany, where Mrs. Faust's parents lived; they would spend the long holiday weekend there . . . As they drove away he watched them go with a funny feeling inside. He and Mandy would be online or on the phone through the weekend, but that wasn't the same as her there with him. He liked her practical mind, the honest way she spoke even when she was bossy, her goofy laugh, how she stretched and curled up like a kitten when she was on the couch to read or write. And she was one of the few people outside his family circle who actually liked him.

"She'll be back. Stop mooning around and come inside," Rob said from the doorway.

"I'm not-not mooning around," Jason said, but he followed Rob into the clinic.

"Yeah you were. It's okay though, Mandy's worth it." Rob brought him into the conference room. A plate with bananas and cookies stacked on it sat on the table, along with a couple of bottled iced teas and some anatomy charts. "Ready for a pop quiz?"

Jason felt nervous and excited at the same time, as usual. "Yeah, I think so."

"Okay, good. Take off your coat and get comfortable, we're gonna be here a while." Rob sounded cheerful. "Lots to go over today."

Jason nodded. Right now he worked on what Rob called 'bone basics'; they'd already begun with fingers. It wasn't as easy as he'd thought it would be—he'd never imagined there were so many bones, and all with Latin names he'd found difficult to remember at first. Now it was a bit more familiar and he'd started to know his way around the words a little, but he still had a long way to go.

Rob took a seat at the table, popped the top on an iced tea, took a long swallow and snitched a cookie. "Need to use the bathroom before we start?"

Jason took the opportunity. He didn't really have to pee, but he also didn't want to take time later, when he'd be busy and distractions would cause problems. So he used the toilet, washed up and wrinkled his nose at the flowery hand soap—Clare must have bought it, neither Mom nor McMurphy would get something so girly—and went back to the conference room. Rob was kicked back with his feet propped on the table as he ate another cookie and glanced through the battered copy of Grey's Anatomy he'd given Jason as a gift.

"I see new notes added to mine," he said, and sounded pleased. "Ready?"

Jason grabbed an iced tea, opened it and took a taste. Though he really didn't want it, he knew from experience his mouth would get dry from nerves. "Yeah, I'm ready."

"Okay." Rob flipped a page. "Bones of the wrist."

"There are thirteen bones. Eight carpal bones: scaphoid, lunate . . . tri—triquetral . . ." Jason faltered. "Pisiform . . ." His mind blanked. "Dammit."

"That last one isn't right," Rob said, and chuckled when Jason glared at him. "Sorry, couldn't resist." He finished off a cookie. "There's a good way to remember bones and other systems, Jay. It's called mnemonics. You use words with the same starting letter to make a sentence that helps you remember the thing you're really trying to remember." At Jason's confused look he laughed again. "Okay, here's an example for the carpal bones. Eight bones, right? Scaphoid, lunate, triquetral, pisiform, trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, harnate." Rob named them off without hesitation, and Jason envied him that ease of knowledge. But he also knew Rob had gained that ease the same way he did right now, by plenty of study. It was sort of like an enormous pile of dirt to be moved, and the only thing you had to move it was a shovel. "The sentence you use to remember their names and the order they come in is 'some lovers try positions that they can't handle'."

Jason blinked. After a moment he thought he understood. "'Some lovers . . .'"

"' . . . try positions that they can't handle.'" Rob sipped some tea. "Now match up the names of the bones with the first letter of each word in the mnemonic."

Jason thought about it. He saw the sentence in his head. After a few moments the Latin names settled in above the words somehow. "Scaphoid lunate triquetral pisiform—" He paused.

"Alphabetical," Rob said.

"-trapezium trapezoid capitate harnate!" Jason caught himself before he bounced up and down in his chair like a three-year-old. Rob nodded.

"Excellent. Now name the other five."

"First, second, third, fourth, and fifth metacarpals," Jason said quickly. Those were easy.

"Good. Give me all thirteen," Rob said. Jason did as he asked and felt a glow of pride when he named them all successfully. "Excellent. Now tell me how many bones there are in a baby's wrist."

The glow was doused by panic. "Uh—I don't know," Jason said, and hated the uncertainty in his words. "The—the same as an adult's?"

"It's a trick question. The answer is none," Rob said, and smiled when Jason frowned. "Babies are born with fewer and softer bones, Jay. They grow and calcify as the child gets older. That's part of how we can determine general age and gender from remains found in graves, and also from body parts." He sat back with his iced tea, his gaze steady. "You'll need to know that too—how bones are formed as the fertilized egg turns into a zygote and then eventually a fetus, and then after it's delivered. Bones have stages, and so do muscles and nerves, veins and arteries. Everything changes as we grow up and get older. Nothing stays the same."

Jason thought about that as he took a cookie and ate it. "So what bones show up first?" he asked after the last bite. Rob grinned at him.

"Good question. Let's find out."

They were well into a discussion about bone formation in early childhood when House said from the doorway, "Thought you were working on the wrist." He stared at Rob, who stared back, apparently unfazed.

"He needs to know how things start out."

"True enough. Right now I'm interested in wrist bones." House turned his stare on Jason, leaned against the doorframe and folded his arms. "Name 'em."

Jason gave the names without hesitation; the mnemonic was fixed in his mind now and would always be there. When he was finished House gave a brief nod.

"'Mnemonic'—from the Greek mnemonikos, 'to be mindful'," he said, and glanced at Rob, who offered him an innocent look. "Use what works to get the information in your head. Now show me where the bones are on a live model."

Jason had been practicing this part. He was better at visualization than almost anything else. He held up his left hand and pointed to each one as he named them. When he was done House straightened.

"Arm and shoulder next. You'll find out why you can't stick your elbow in your ear," was all he said, and went off to the kitchen. Rob gave Jason a slight smile, his gaze warm and friendly.

"Good work. All right, overview of finger bones." He wiggled his own long set just to make Jason groan.

"Am I gonna be stuck with you for everything?" he wanted to know.

"Better me than House," Rob said, and Jason knew he was right. Rob flipped the charts to illustrations of arm bones and pushed the copy of Grey's Anatomy toward his student. "Okay, let's get started."

Two hours later Jason was on the way home with Mom. His tired brain buzzed with new knowledge. He felt both elated and scared.

"Rob says you did really well today," Mom said. "You've been working hard. I'm proud of you, Jay."

Her words warmed him, made him feel happy deep inside. "Thanks," he mumbled. Mom chuckled and ruffled his hair gently. "Mom . . ." He really didn't mind it all that much, but he felt a protest was necessary all the same.

"Can't help it, you're too irresistible," she said as she always did. "You need a haircut!"

Jason rolled his eyes. She always said that too. "House says I should learn about magic," he said, to get her off the subject of his hair.

"What kind? Magician magic, most likely," she said. Jason nodded.

"Yeah. He says it's a good thing for a diagnostician to know." He hesitated.

"What is it?" Mom asked softly.

"I don't like magic," he said. "It's . . . it's a lie. It's fake. It's deliberately fooling people. Why would someone want to do that? Why should I know it if I want to be a doctor who diagnoses people? Aren't doctors supposed to find out the truth about someone who's sick and then tell them so they can get better? I don't understand." The words spilled out before he could stop them. At the end he looked away, ashamed of his outburst.

Mom didn't speak right away. "Well, technically you're right—that kind of magic is a lie. But it's also a skill, called sleight of hand. And I think the reason why House wants you to learn about it is because diseases are often quite good at their own version of sleight of hand."

"You mean, they can fool you," Jason said slowly.

"Yes, exactly."

"But how is pulling a rabbit out of a hat supposed to help me learn more about disease?"

"Magic is based on misdirection," Mom said. "You think you're seeing everything the magician is doing, but he or she is using your presumption to fool you." She pulled Minnie Lou into their driveway. "Gene still has some of his old magic library from when he was your age. I bet he'd let you borrow some of the books to read."

"Sure," Dad said at dinner. "You can read my books. Milbourne Christopher is a good place to start. I have Panorama of Magic and Magic Book, you'll like those."

Jason ate some chicken. "Do you know how to do magic?"

Dad smiled a little, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Yeah."

"I've never seen you do anything," Jason said.

"I don't, not anymore." Dad pushed some green beans around his plate. "When I was in the military . . . the kids where we were deployed, we'd make friends with food and joking around. Magic is a great way to break the ice." He was silent a moment. "Most of those children were refugees. They'd never known anything like a stable life with three meals a day and a roof over their heads, and nights without gunfire and terror. But when you showed them the simplest tricks, for a few seconds they got to be just kids." He bowed his head a little. "Since then, I haven't . . . haven't done magic."

"'msorry," Jason muttered. Dad looked over at him and managed a smile of sorts.

"Hey, not your fault." He glanced at Mom, then began to eat. Jason got the feeling it was more because he knew he had to. Mom gave him a look made up of equal parts worry, love and sadness, but said nothing.

After dinner Dad went into the office and came out with a couple of books. He sat next to Jason on the couch and handed them over. "Would you like to read them together?" he said. Jason looked at him. Dad returned his look, his gaze steady.

"This is just some weird thing House wants me to do. You don't have to help if it's—it's gonna bother you," Jason said.

"It's all right." Dad put his hand on Jason's shoulder for a moment, then gave him a pat. "We can start the first chapter of Panorama tonight, after we finish the last chapter of The Face in the Frost."

"Okay, cool."

It was much later, after the reading was done and the house was quiet, when he moved through the shadows on his way to the bathroom, that Jason saw Mom and Dad on the couch in front of the fire. Dad lay stretched out, his head in Mom's lap. They talked softly, so Jason couldn't make out what they said; but as he watched, Dad turned his head so that his face pressed into Mom's belly. Even in the dim light it was possible to see he trembled. Mom eased down so that she half-lay, half-sat with him. She put one hand on his back, the other on his head, and held him to her. She had that same look on her face from dinner, only now, as Jason watched, a tear spilled down her cheek. The track gleamed in the dying firelight.

Jason stood there for a few moments, then went on past the bathroom and outside, to close the door behind him soundlessly. He traversed the back part of the yard and ignored the cold dew on his bare feet. It wasn't the first time he'd peed outside due to the need to be invisible, and anyway, he had a warm bed to return to now. He could handle a little discomfort.

It was a clear night; the moon already risen, yellow as butter in a sky full of stars. They winked and glittered above the trees, their soft presence strangely comforting. Jason stared up at them, aware of several emotions as they banged around inside his heart and demanded attention: anxiety about Dad, annoyance too, a dark fear that this would change everything for the worse somehow, and behind it all, a love for both of his parents so deep and strong it hurt—and yet it was a good pain somehow. He drew in a lungful of cold night air and held it, let the mild ache take his attention until a soft rustle off to his right put him on alert. With caution he lowered his gaze and turned his head.

About fifty feet into the yard a doe watched him. In the faint moonlight she was barely more than an outline, but Jason saw the nervous flick of her ear as he moved, her big dark eyes fixed on him. When he stayed where he was she lowered her head and sniffed the grass, took a tentative taste, then moved to the side a bit—neither farther nor closer. Her hooves made almost no sound. Jason watched her, enchanted. Slowly she drifted into the main yard toward the garden. She'd have no luck with the new plants; they'd put in a fence a couple of weeks ago, when they'd sown the first crops of lettuce and radishes and broccoli. Still, Jason felt the crazy urge to go back to the kitchen, get some carrots and offer them to her, the way he did with Mom's horse, Blackie. He snorted under his breath at the idea. At the soft sound the doe's head came up, ears raised. And then she was gone, silent as the starlight, with only a faint trail in the dew to mark her path.

"Wicked," Jason whispered, and shivered. He turned and made his way back to the house, almost chilled through but filled with quiet amazement at his encounter.

When he came into the mudroom, it was to find Mom waited there with a clean towel. Wordlessly she knelt down and wiped his feet dry, then stood and put her arms around him, brought him close gently. Jason burrowed into her warmth, felt her kiss the side of his head—all she could manage, he realized with something like astonishment; he was taller than she was now. He returned her embrace, as the love he felt for her and Dad welled up inside. On an impulse he didn't really understand, he buried his face in her soft curls. They stayed that way for a long time.

"Thanks," Mom said after a while. She drew back a little and smiled at him.

"Is Dad gonna be okay?" He had to ask, no matter what the answer was.

"Yeah, he will be. Just had some old memories get stirred up. He'll talk to Prof about it tomorrow—well, later today." She rubbed his back. "It's all right, Jay. You didn't do anything wrong. This is part of what it's like to live with someone who spent time in the military." She patted him gently. "It's late, sweetheart. You should be in bed."

"Are you okay?" He had to know. Mom didn't answer right away.

"I think so," she said finally. "It hurts me to see him or you in pain because of the past, because there isn't much I can do—"

"You do a lot," Jason said. He fought the words, but they came out anyway. "You make this place home." He winced at how stupid that sounded, even if it was the truth.

"That's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me," Mom said after another brief silence. Her voice was strange, as if she tried not to cry.

"You sound sad."

Mom made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a chuckle. "No, not sad." She gave him a fierce hug that managed to be tender for all its strength. "I love you, Jason Goldman. My beautiful boy," she kissed him again, then let go. "Off to bed now. Big day ahead."

He lay in bed and tried to make sense of his day without much success. At last he gave up and just let the images move through his mind, like the shifting colors and shapes in the kaleidoscope House kept on his desk, until at last sleep stole him away into dreaming darkness.