“All little boys have imaginary friends, Jackie,” his mother told him. “That’s part of growing up. An imaginary friend is someone whom little boys can talk about their troubles when no one else will listen, someone they can tell their secrets to when they don’t want to tell anyone else. Sometimes they can help a little boy get through some difficult times. Pick is your imaginary friend, Jackie. But you have to understand something. A friend like Pick belongs just to you, not to anyone else, and that is the way you should keep it.”
He looked for Pick all that summer and into the fall, but he never found him. When his father took him into the park, he looked for Wartag under the old stone bridge. He never found him either. He checked the skies for Daniel, but never saw anything bigger than a robin. When he finally persuaded his father to walk all the way back into the darkest part of the woods—an effort that had his father using words Jack had not often heard him use before—there was no sign of the tree that imprisoned Desperado.
Eventually, Jack gave up looking. School and his friends claimed his immediate attention, Thanksgiving rolled around, and then it was Christmas. He got a new bike that year, a two-wheeler without training wheels, and an electric train. He thought about Pick, Daniel, Wartag, and Desperado from time to time, but the memory of what they looked like began to grow hazy. He forgot many of the particulars of his adventure that summer afternoon in the park, and the adventure itself took on the trappings of one of those fairy tales Pick detested so.
Soon, Jack pretty much quit thinking about the matter altogether.
He had not thought about it for months until today.
He wheeled his bike up the driveway of his house, surprised that he could suddenly remember all the details he had forgotten. They were sharp in his mind again, as sharp as they had been on the afternoon they had happened. If they had happened. If they had really happened. He hadn’t been sure for a long time now. After all, he was only a little kid then. His parents might have been right; he might have imagined it all.
But then why was he remembering it so clearly now?
He went up to his room to think, came down long enough to have dinner, and quickly went back up again. His parents had looked at him strangely all during the meal—checking, he felt, to see if he was showing any early signs of expiring. It made him feel weird.
He found he couldn’t concentrate on his homework, and anyway it was Friday night. He turned off the music on his tape player, closed his books, and sat there. The clock on his nightstand ticked softly as he thought some more about what had happened almost seven years ago. What might have happened, he corrected—although the more he thought about it, the more he was beginning to believe it really had. His common sense told him that he was crazy, but when you’re dying you don’t have much time for common sense.
Finally he got up, went downstairs to the basement rec room, picked up the phone, and called Waddy. His friend answered on the second ring, they talked about this and that for five minutes or so, and then Jack said, “Waddy, do you believe in magic?”
Waddy laughed. “Like in the song?”
“No, like in conjuring. You know, spells and such.”
“What kind of magic?”
“What kind?”
“Yeah, what kind? There’s different kinds, right? Black magic and white magic. Wizard magic. Witches brew. Horrible old New England curses. Fairies and Elves…”
“That kind. Fairies and Elves. Do you think there might be magic like that somewhere?”
“Are you asking me if I believe in Fairies and Elves?”
Jack hesitated. “Well, yeah.”
“No.”
“Not at all, huh?”
“Look, Jack, what’s going on with you? You’re not getting strange because of this dying business, are you? I told you not to worry about it.”
“I’m not. I was just thinking…” He stopped, unable to tell Waddy exactly what he was thinking because it sounded so bizarre. After all, he’d never told anyone other than his parents about Pick.
There was a thoughtful silence on the other end of the line. “If you’re asking me whether I think there’s some kind of magic out there that saves people from dying, then I say yes. There is.”
That wasn’t exactly what Jack was asking, but the answer made him feel good anyway. “Thanks, Waddy. Talk to you later.”
He hung up and went back upstairs. His father intercepted him on the landing and called him down again. He told Jack he had been talking with Dr. Muller. The doctor wanted him to come into the hospital on Monday for additional tests. He might have to stay for a few days. Jack knew what that meant. He would end up like Uncle Frank. His hair would fall out. He would be sick all the time. He would waste away to nothing. He didn’t want any part of it. He told his father so and without waiting for his response ran back up to his room, shut the door, undressed, turned off the lights, and lay shivering in his bed in the darkness.