It would have been different a few years ago. One minute she was clear as a bell and the next she was calling him Simon. For the last year his grandma had been slipping in and out of reality. 'Someone has to watch Boots while I'm at work, and we both know your grandma can't handle it anymore.' And she really had been sorry, too, he could tell by the look on her face. 'I'm sorry, baby, you can't go,' his mother had told him a few weeks ago. But this morning, the bus had left for camp, and every kid between the ages of four and fourteen had been on it. Usually it was full of kids playing ball, jumping rope, or swinging around the creaky jungle gym. Gregor caught a glimpse of a couple of shadowy shapes scurrying along the wall and grimaced. The dog set its paws on the rim, tipping the can and sending the garbage across the sidewalk. He stared out at the courtyard where a stray dog sniffed around an overflowing trash can. Gregor got an ice cube from the freezer and rubbed it on his face. On really hot nights, Gregor and his mother could spread quilts on the floor to sleep, but with five in the room it wasn't cool, just lukewarm. It was the only air-conditioned room in the apartment. At least she was cool in the air-conditioned bedroom she shared with their seven-year-old sister, Lizzie, and their grandma. He considered waking up Boots, his two-year-old sister, just for a little distraction, but he let her sleep. Not the heat, not the boredom, not the endless space of summer laid out before him.

What was the point, anyway? It wouldn't change one thing. He even went so far as to open his mouth and take a deep breath before he banged his head back into the screen with a quiet sound of frustration. It was building up in his chest, that long gutteral howl reserved for real emergencies - like when you ran into a saber-toothed tiger without your club, or your fire went out during the Ice Age. He ran his fingers over the bumps and resisted the impulse to let out a primal caveman scream. Gregor had pressed his forehead against the screen for so long, he could feel a pattern of tiny checks above his eyebrows.

Overlander book