The author describes Plano’s rapid shift from frontier remnants to suburban sprawl. When his family arrived in 1990, he found artifacts of earlier eras—horseshoes, arrowheads, even a scorpion in the toilet. By 1992, identical houses and strip malls covered the landscape.

The first weeks of homeschooling were mostly spent on shopping trips and movie outings. When Aaron asked what they actually did, their mother stated that she and Stefan were “global learners” who needed free-form education, while Aaron and his father were conventional, “linear learners” who required structure. Each morning, Stefan watched 12-year-old Aaron board the school bus.

Stefan’s classroom was the formal dining room. During a math lesson on rhombuses, his mother taught him the rumba as a mnemonic, then left to take a phone call. Alone with the teacher’s edition, Stefan used the answer key to complete two days of work. When Debra returned, she praised his brilliance rather than suspecting cheating. She also revealed she had no other textbooks, believing only math needed structured lessons.

When Stefan cried, afraid he would fall irreversibly behind, his mother grew angry, insisting he must take the lead in his own education. In the following weeks, his schoolwork became self-directed projects—drawings, stories, posters—based on his interests. His mother was happier with him home all day, reminiscent of their Indianapolis years. She praised him extravagantly, compared him to Leonardo da Vinci, and revived her unfinished children’s book, Princess Lore, imagining they would finish it together and become famous. 

After a tense phone call with her sister, Carol, Debra took Stefan to a café for a lesson she called the economics of survival: they ate cheap soup and filled up on free bread. When Stefan worried about falling behind in geography, she bought him the educational game Brain Quest, claiming it covered everything he needed. Debra insisted they catch as much sun as possible. In their pool, she cradled and quizzed him from Brain Quest cards, dunking him underwater for wrong answers. Playing along despite discomfort, Stefan realized how much his mother needed him and that returning to school would be hard. When Aaron came home and saw them, he quickly retreated indoors.

Stefan visited his friend, Noah Polk, who noted Stefan’s tan and said he didn’t look like he’d been in school. Noah, still resentful about Stefan leaving school, mentioned he might leave early for a basketball game with Clayton Howley, a popular but unreliable boy. He also shared school gossip: Their friend Tiffany Houser had a new best friend, and Mrs. Malek had grabbed a student. Realizing his social world had moved on and fearing his mother would limit future visits, Stefan gave Noah a valuable comic book as a token of friendship.

The next day, a severe storm drove Stefan and his mother into the tornado shelter in the closet. Surrounded by childhood memorabilia, his mother inspected Stefan’s brown hair and declared her sun-lightening experiment a failure. She retrieved a lock of his blond baby hair, lamenting the loss of her angelic little boy. The following day, she bought chemical lightening spray and applied it to Stefan’s hair while holding him in the pool. When his hair turned orange, she switched to pure hydrogen peroxide. After multiple painful applications left his scalp burned and his hair fluorescent yellow, Stefan cried that he could not continue. Debra relented, comparing his bleached hair to his baby hair and calling it close enough.

Stefan resolved to tell his mom he was returning to fifth grade during their summer trip to New Hampshire. He developed a habit of pricking his hip with a compass and began writing a new story. The chapter closes with an excerpt from his story about a boy from Nowheresville on Anywhere Lane, forgotten by everyone except his mother. On his 10th birthday, during a storm, a portal appeared, and the boy stepped through into another world.

The Block family arrived at Echo Cottage in New Hampshire for their annual summer vacation. Stefan’s maternal grandmother, Nana, greeted him with confusion, showing advancing dementia. Over the following days, his mother and her sisters, Carol and Patricia, discussed plans for Nana’s care.

While Stefan enjoyed spending time with Nana, sharing music and movies, Debra spoke critically of her estranged older sister, Ella, and complained that Nana never stood up for her as a child. Debra repeatedly tried to draw Nana into the past, mentioning Ella’s pregnancy as a teenager. Nana, confused, asked why Ella’s parents didn’t take better care of her. That night, Stefan heard his mom crying. 

The next morning, Debra took Stefan kayaking into Copps Brook, which she called “the Haunted Place” (61). Stefan’s mom recounted playing in the dirty water there at age four, developing a fever, and being placed in a quarantine ward for suspected polio. Her first memory was of being terrified and alone behind glass before doctors concluded she never had polio. Debra insisted that professionals could not be trusted, applying this to homeschooling. She pushed Stefan to agree to continue at least another semester at home. As their kayak snagged on an underwater log, and they struggled to free it, Stefan anxiously asked whether he would be allowed into middle school after being homeschooled for fifth grade. Debra told him not to fixate on grade labels and pointed out a heron as a good omen.