Page 12 of The Imaginary Friend's Obsession

I canseehim, and he is achingly familiar and strangely different at the same time. He’s tall and lean, his limbs long and spindly. He must be nearly seven feet now, so tall he has to tilt his head to the side to look through the viewing panel. He has the same washed-out quality I remember, his coloring sepia-toned and his image blurry around the edges like an old photograph. He wears a black suit and a bowtie, like an old-fashioned butler. His skin is covered from his polished boots to his dark gloves, stretched to cover the long, long fingers on all four of his hands.

And of course, he wears his mask. Porcelain and blank, with holes for his eyes and his mouth—the latter stretched into a crude smile, just like the picture I once drew for him.

Our gazes meet. His eyes are wide, almost frantic.

“Dorian!” Possessed by a sudden, franticneed,I lurch out of my chair and toward the window, my hand outstretched.

Just before I reach it, Dorian grabs the radio and hurls it toward the glass. I flinch away as it hits the window with a loudbang, and by the time I lower my hand from my face and look again, he’s gone.

I press my fingers to the glass, searching—but there’s nothing but the radio on the floor. Still, I can’t stop a smile from spreading across my face, even as tears well up in my eyes.

“Hi, Dorian,” I whisper.

He’s real. He’s really real.

Right? Struck by a sudden need to confirm I wasn’t the only one who saw that, I turn to Ezra, who is pale with shock as he stares at the viewing panel.

“That…that wasnota poltergeist. The size of him…”

My eyes widen. “You saw him too?”

His mouth opens, shuts. “I saw the height the radio was held at. He must be, what, seven feet tall?”

“Something like that.” I realize with a lurch how scared Ezra looks. His fingers tremble as he turns off the intercom.

“This is good,” I say, desperate for Ezra to see. “He showed himself!”

Ezra’s eyebrows pull together, his fear bleeding into incredulity. “He tried to attack us.”

“He was just getting our attention! He knew the window wouldn’t break.”

Ezra shakes his head. “I think this is a mistake,” he murmurs. “I thought I knew what I was dealing with here, but I was wrong.”

No. Panic wells up inside of me as indecision crosses Ezra’s face. “Please don’t say that,” I say. “This means what we’re doing is working. It’s making him stronger.”

“But it also might be making him dangerous.” Ezra stares into the cell at the shattered remains of the radio. Then he slaps the button to close the viewing panel. I resist the urge to protest as the metal shutters close off my view of the room. “I think… I think we should take a break and reevaluate what we’re doing.”

The panic inside of me swells. I struggle to keep it down, to keep myself under control. I wrap my arms around myself as if I can physically restrain the feeling. “But we don’t know how much time we have,” I say. “What if he fades while we’rereevaluating?”

“I want to help him. I do. But not at the expense of your safety or anyone else’s.”

No.Not now. Dorian is real, Isawhim, and that glimpse has intensified the ache of his loss tenfold. The panic is a living thing inside of me now, clawing and desperate. It snarls through my chest, climbs up the back of my throat like bile.

Breaking free.

No, no, no.

“You promised me,” I whisper.

“I told you I’d give you a chance to say goodbye, and—”

“No!”

Anger breaks through the terror gripping me. Something inside of mecracks,and the metal table on the other side of the room suddenly lifts into the air before thumping back down, sending Ezra’s files scattering all over the floor.

Ezra flinches, staring at it. Then at me.

My jaw drops. I try to speak, but nothing comes out. The anger is gone just as quickly as it arrived, leaving me with nothing but fear and the desire to make myself small and unnoticeable.

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